Creating the Campana Center
The Campana Center was established to continue a tradition of giving back.
To understand why investing in others is so important to the Campana family, you need to start with Patsie and Jenee’ Campana.
Here is their story.
Patsie and Jenee’ (nee Hume) Campana understood the importance of investing in others — especially since, at an early age, both of their parents had invested in them. A lack of jobs in their home country of Italy led Patsie’s parents to move him from a poor mountain town to Lorain, Ohio, where the family ran a neighborhood market and bar. Jenee’s parents, meanwhile, moved her after the Dust Bowl from their Nebraska town to a more prosperous farm in Powell, Wyoming.
Through these investments in Patsie and Jenee’, their parents provided them not only with food and shelter but with an opportunity to gain an education, develop a strong work ethic, set high goals and show their appreciation by investing back into their family.
Patsie and Jenee’ married, and in 1968, realized their dream of founding P.C. Campana Inc. Today, the company remains successful and continues to contribute to the community.
The Campana Ideation Center at Lorain County Community College was established to continue that tradition of giving back. Patsie and Jenee’s son, Bob Campana, says the only reason his family — including his five siblings — is here in this country is because his grandfather came to America to find — and later create — jobs.
“Why did the immigrants come to where they came to? Jobs,” Campana says. “So a proud father and mother could make enough money to raise their children in a free society. That’s why we’re so passionate about this.”
Today, he says, his family is in a position to pay it forward. While there are a lot of people in the region who have the drive and the skills to work, the jobs just aren’t there. Through the Campana Ideation Center, the family hopes to help people with good ideas find funding to move their idea forward and create those jobs.
“We are passionate about job creation,” Campana says. “It’s an honorable thing to be able to work and provide for your family. If you don’t have the opportunity, if you don’t have a job, that’s a sad thing for a father or mother. Anything we can do, we invest in companies. It’s all about jobs.”