Italo Binelli

Italo Binelli, age 87, passed away on July 22, 2020 at his home in St. Clair Shores. Beloved husband of Anita for 51 years this June. Loving father to Mark (Caroline) and Paul (Julia). Cherished grandfather to Lydia, Evan and Matteo. Predeceased by his parents, Clemente and Bianca, and his sister Raffaella.

Italo was born and raised in Pinzolo, a mountain village in a region of northern Italy known for its moleta, or knife sharpeners. After performing his mandatory military service in the Alpini, the Italian army’s mountain infantry, and apprenticing at a butcher’s shop in Trieste, he emigrated to Detroit in his early thirties, joining his uncles and best friend in a knife-sharpening venture. Detroit Cutlery (later D.C.I. Food Equipment) would eventually supply all manner of kitchen and restaurant equipment to businesses throughout the Detroit metropolitan area.

Through mutual friends in Detroit’s Italian immigrant community, Italo met the love of his life, Anita, who was born in a neighboring village in the Dolomites. They shared a deep love of family, raising two wonderful children together, making regular, month-long trips back to Italy to visit Italo’s parents, and hosting Italo’s nieces and nephew for their own summers abroad in America. Italo also loved the outdoors. He grew up skiing and hiking, and while Michigan’s slopes never quite matched the Italian Alps, he did his best to pass on a few skills to his kids. He enjoyed deer hunting as well, and in his retirement he spent considerable time in Deckerville, in Michigan’s Thumb, where he purchased a beloved plot of rural property and built a second home.

He had so many other hobbies and passions — “junking” at flea markets and estate sales; collecting, and tinkering with, old clocks and cameras (at one point filling his St. Clair Shores garage with a clock movements he’d purchased in bulk, much to the chagrin of Anita); making his own sausage and salami, including his unrivalled version of a regional delicacy, cotechino; bird-watching, planting trees, tending a massive vegetable garden and cooking polenta over an open fire in Deckerville; red wine; white wine; grappa; singing old Italian mountaineering songs (especially after drinking enough red wine, white wine or grappa); traveling with Anita to Trentini conventions across the country, from New York to San Francisco to Mobile, Alabama — but his family always came first, especially his grandkids, whether it meant taking Lydia and Evan to their favorite “piccolo park” or Eastland Mall playground or making baby Matteo giggle over FaceTime. He will be greatly missed.

Visitation for Italo will be held on Friday July 24, 2020 from 2:00 PM to 8:00 PM at A. H. Peters Funeral Home, 20705 Mack Ave, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI 48236. A 10 person maximum will be enforced and face coverings are required for entry.

A funeral Mass will take place on Saturday July 25, 2020 at 10:00 AM at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church, 21620 Mack Ave, St. Clair Shores, MI 48080.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Capuchin’s Soup Kitchen or charity of choice.