“Sisters by the Sea”: New commission seeks to expand Newport’s six Sister City relationships

The City-by-the-Sea is twinned with coastal communities in Canada, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Japan

Brenda Bachman has been to Imperia, Italy twenty-six times. The coastal city situated along the Ligurian Sea, between Nice, France and Genoa, Italy has become a second home, one where she’s established lifelong friendships. Imperia, like Newport, sits on an active harbor that is central to local industry, including tourism, and boasts a rich history, one that is a source of pride.

These similarities are among the reasons the two cities became Sister Cities — a phrase that refers to two communities in different regions, usually different countries, who are “twinned,” whether formally at a municipal level or informally through cultural, grassroots organizations. Sister Cities often share geographic traits and have populations that are roughly the same size.

Newport has six Sister Cities — all of them coastal — that are all formally twinned at the municipal level, with varying degrees of connection and “twinning” dates: Shimoda, Japan (1958); Imperia, Italy, (1978); Skiathos, Greece (1996);Kinsale, Ireland (1999); Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal (2003); and Saint Johns, New Brunswick, Canada, the least strong of the connections with an unknown twinning date.

For Bachman, who lives in Newport, the connection to Imperia began when her younger daughter traveled there as an exchange student through a program organized by Festa Italiana. Her daughter was 14 and spoke no Italian; her host mother spoke no English. Bachman, who speaks Italian, would call her daughter and often chat with her host mother, beginning what is now a well-established friendship.

“I was impressed with what my daughter came back with,” recalls Bachman, noting the experience was her gateway to the city’s Sister City program. “I wanted other people to experience the good stuff,” she says of the rich cultural exchange embedded in the formal twinning process.

Now, Bachman serves as chairwoman of the recently relaunched Newport Sister City Commission. Following a call for interested members in February 2024, the commission met for the first time that August. The group is comprised of nine residents: seven appointed by the City Council, two appointed at-large, all serving staggered three-year terms. Members share a love of travel and focus on three areas: economic, cultural, and educational.

Current members include Bachman, a longtime clinical social worker; Carmela Geer, executive director of the Edward King House Senior Center, who serves as secretary; George Antone, director of International Programs at Salve Regina University; Delaney Daley, a leadership gifts officer at Salve; Brooke Eaton, vice president for digital brand products & marketing at American Express; Michael Falcone, former director of Baseball Operations for the Newport Gulls, and adjunct faculty member at Salve; Suzanna Laramee, pianist and president of the board of Newport Classical; Carol Turner, retired Navy rear admiral; and Alexa Waluk, chief marketing officer at the Naval War College Foundation.

The new commission is an evolution of the former Hospitality Commission, which disbanded several years ago. Sister City visits continued, although somewhat haphazardly, during the two-year hiatus.

As stated on the city’s website, the new commission “was established to assist the Council and Mayor in fostering relationships with visiting dignitaries and assist with various duties related to the City’s Sister City program.”

A formal Sister City delegation consists of four people, usually City Council members and municipal representatives, and visits are generally reciprocated in alternate years. Visits include a meeting with the mayor, an official twinning meeting, and a visit to City Hall. In addition, there are informal gatherings and celebrations, notes Bachman.

A major goal of the new commission is to educate the community on who the sister cities are, says Waluk, who also served on the former Hospitality Commission. It’s important to make residents aware of the value of these connections, adds Bachman.

“There’s intense value for our children,” says Bachman, who has visited both Shimoda and Imperia with Newport students.

“It’s a great opportunity to expand their horizons,” adds Waluk, “and create global citizens.”

Eisenhower’s Dream

The idea for pairing cities originated with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1956 created Sister Cities International, a nonpartisan, nonprofit that serves as the national membership organization for individual sister cities, counties, and states across the United States. According to its website, the network unites tens of thousands of citizen diplomats and volunteers in more than 400member communities with more than 1,800partnerships in more than 140 countries.

That same year, President Eisenhower hosted a conference at the White House on Citizen Diplomacy, which formed the capstone of the People-To-People program, the foundation of Sister Cities International. Its mission is “to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding, and cooperation one individual, one community at a time.”

“Since our inception in 1956, Sister Cities International has worked to create global relationships based on cultural, educational, information and trade exchanges,” according to the website. “The result? Participants developed lifelong friendships that provide prosperity and peace through person-to-person ‘citizen diplomacy.’”

The website continues: “Our mission is as strong as it was decades ago when President Eisenhower first established the People-To-People program. As he said in his legendary speech: ‘If we are going to take advantage of the assumption that all people want peace, then the problem is for people to get together and to leap governments— if necessary to evade governments — to workout not one method but thousands of methods by which people can gradually learn a little bit more of each other.’”

Interestingly, the oldest known Sister City relationship in the U.S. predates the formation of the organization. It was established in 1931between Toledo, Ohio, and Toledo, Spain.

Sister Cities International holds an annual conference and serves as an umbrella organization encompassing sister city connections around the globe. There currently are no communities in Rhode Island (or Massachusetts) that belong to the group.

The new commission would like to change that, says Bachman, noting membership would open other opportunities for Newport.

Sisters with Shimoda

Shimoda, Japan, is Newport’s oldest Sister City connection — the two twinned in 1958 and share a unique bond. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, the naval officer from Newport who landed on Japanese shores with a fleet of “Black Ships” in1853, famously paved the way for trade between Japan and the United States, along with the West.

The city is located on the southeastern Izu peninsula, in Japan’s Shizouka Prefecture.

“Shimoda was the first port to open to the public in Japan in 1854,” says Atsushi Nakamura, who serves as head of Shimoda’s City Council. “The first Black Ships Festival was held in 1934,80 years after the event (this year marks the 86thfestival). In 1979, the 39th president of the United States, Mr. Jimmy Carter, visited Shimoda with his wife and daughter, and was warmly welcomed. It was a historic day for Shimoda City since the arrival of the Black Ships.”

There are bronze statues and portraits of Commodore Perry throughout Shimoda.

“From children to adults, we affectionately call him ‘Perry san, Perry san,’” says Nakamura. “Shimoda City has an international history that is rare for an island nation like Japan. Because of this, we always have friends on distant continents.”

The Covid-19 pandemic impacted travel and visits between cities, but he has high hopes for the future of the Sister City program.

“I think it would be good if we could create a relationship where we can always feel close to each other, not just visit once a year, but by utilizing ICT technology,” he says. “I hope that students and citizens will become true friends and be able to converse on a daily basis. If that happens, relationships will naturally develop into culture, sports, and even the economy.”

Nakamura notes that Newport and Shimoda “are both port towns, with thriving fishing industries and delicious seafood, popular surfing and summer swimming, and many tourists visiting throughout the year.”

“The difference between the two cities is that Newport has many historical buildings, while Shimoda has been hit by tsunamis many times in the past and no buildings remain,” he adds. “However, the culture that is integrated into everyday life remains. Shimoda has a long history, dating back well over 1,000 years.”

A delegation from Shimoda is expected to visit Newport this fall.

Entwined with Imperia

Two decades after Newport officially twinned with Shimoda, it twinned with Imperia, Italy.

“The twinning between Imperia and Newport began in 1978, thanks to the then mayor[Alessandro] Scajola, but already in 1910 the city was visited by President Roosevelt and this made of the citizens of Imperia a population very fond of the USA,” says Diego Parodi, a former Imperia City Council member who has been part of several delegations to Newport.

Imperia was founded on Oct. 21, 1923,uniting eleven municipalities, the largest of which were Oneglia and Porto Maurizio.

“The history of Porto Maurizio and Onegliais much older and includes among its citizens illustrious people,” says Parodi. They include: Admiral Andrea Doria; Giulio Natta, inventor of plastic and winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Renato Dulbecco, winner of the1973 Nobel Prize in Medicine; Luciano Berio, an Italian composer, pioneer in the field of electronic music, and founder of the Juilliard Ensemble at the Juilliard School in New York City, where he joined the staff in 1965.

“Imperia is therefore a young city and still with many typical ‘battles of habits’ of the Ligurian villages,” adds Parodi, noting the area includes the birthplaces of three saints, the municipality is divided into two parts by the river Impero, and there are different dishes and traditions among the various fractions of the city.

“In recent years, after an important industrial activity — especially olive oil and pasta — the local economy is focusing on tourism thanks to the new bike path, the new marina and the many open premises in the renovated area called Prino,” says Parodi, highlighting some of the similarities the Italian city shares with Newport.

A Newport delegation is expected to visit Imperia this autumn.

Kinsale Connection

Two decades after Newport twinned with Imperia, it twinned with Kinsale, Ireland.

John Twomey, chairman of the Kinsale, Ireland Twinning Committee, first visited Newport in a twinning capacity in April 1998.The first face-to-face meeting between Newport and Kinsale representatives had taken place in Kinsale a few months earlier. The twinning relationship became official in 1999, a result of the efforts of the late Paul Crowley, along with Rick O’Neill and David Kerins.

Roughly 100 people traveled from Newport to Ireland last year to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Newport-Kinsale Sister City program. A similar celebration will be held in Newport in April. Twomey plans to attend with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He travels to Newport two or three times a year and has developed lasting friendships with members of the community, just as many Newporters have formed close relationships with Kinsale residents. There have even been a few across-the-pond marriages, notes Twomey.

“There are wonderful friendships that have been made from this very positive thing,” he says. “It’s a great community-based relationship — it focuses on the whole community. That’s the secret for the twinning sister city relationships.”

The cultural elements of the exchange are especially important, says Twomey, noting there have been golf trips, sailing events between yacht clubs, an ongoing rugby relationship, and an exchange of local chefs at different times of the year.

“It encompasses the whole community in Kinsale,” he says, describing both Newport and Kinsale as seafaring towns that count annual jazz festivals among their common attractions.

The Irish city has two forts similar to Fort Adams in Newport at the mouth of its harbor. British forces vacated Kinsale’s Fort Charles in1922, causing a dramatic decrease in the city’s population. Twomey likens the event to the U.S. Navy withdrawing its fleet from Newport in 1973. Both cities turned to tourism and the hospitality industry to fill the resulting economic voids.

The influx of Irish migrants during the 19thcentury established a close-knit and proud community in Newport. The annual Newport St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which this year steps off on Saturday, March 15th, is a celebration of its contributions to the city’s evolution and the legacy of those earliest Irish settlers. Kinsale holds its annual tribute to Ireland’s patron saint on March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. On two occasions a grand marshal from Newport has led the procession.

Skiathos, Saint John, and Ponta Delgada

While the Shimoda, Imperia and Kinsale connections are the strongest — and the only cities with planned visits between delegations in the near future — Newport is still formally twinned with Skiathos, Saint John, and Ponta Delgada.

The Skiathos connection has roots in the city’s Greek community, anchored by St. Spyridon Greek Orthodox Church on Thames Street. According to the church’s history page on its website, four men from Skiathos arrived in Newport in the late 1800s: “Drawn by the lure of the sea these men saw that they could make a living in Newport’s small but thriving fishing industry.”

More residents of Skiathos, an island off the coast of Greece in the Aegean Sea, arrived in Newport, eventually joined by immigrants from Lesbos, another Greek isle.

Ponta Delgada, located on Sao Miguel Island, is the capital of the Azores archipelago of Portugal. It is also twinned with Fall River, Mass., and seeking to twin with New Bedford, Mass., both communities with large Azorean populations.

And Saint John is a city on the Bay of Fundy, in New Brunswick, Canada, also known for its coastal culture and rich food scene. Developing stronger relationships with these cities is a possibility now that the Sister City Commission has renewed energy. Other areas of opportunity include creating artist exchanges and expanding educational programs, both for students and members of the public who might like to travel as a group to the sister cities.

After Mayor Alessandro Scajola’s first visit to Newport in the 1970s — apparently an unplanned detour based on a recommendation offered during a trip to Boston — he wrote in a letter to then City Manager Paul Steinbrenner: “The friendliness shown me by the town of Newport moved me deeply — so much so that I sincerely wish to consolidate relations between Newport and Imperia and their respective citizens.”

That wish became not just a reality, but a legacy. One that endures, along with the spirit of the Sister Cities program, which seems poised to honor past relationships while forging news ones, for this generation and the next.

FUN FACTS

Imperia (twinned circa 1978)

• Located in the Ligurian province, along the western shore of the Italian Riviera, an area known for its cultivation of flowers and olive oil
• Imperia was established as a city on October 21, 1923, by Mussolini when he combined Porto Maurizio and Oneglia and the surrounding village communes
• Known as “The city where the sea meets elegance”
• Since 1986, host of the Vele d’Epoca di Imperia, a regatta of classic boats in the Mediterranean
• Home to Piscina Felice Cascione, an indoor pool that has hosted numerous national and international aquatics events ,including Olympic water polo

Shimoda (twinned circa 1958)

• In Japanese script Shimoda is written as: 下田 
• The city is in the southern part of Izu Peninsula
• It’s known for being the landing place of several of Commodore Matthew Perry’s “black ships” in 1854, “an event which led to the end of Japan’s era of isolation and the start of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Japan” and ended the end of Samuri Rule
• Now known for being a beach resort with excellent diving sites; a road named after Perry is home to lively restaurants, bars, cafes and boutiques
• Shimoda Port is the setting for “The Dancing Girl of Izu,” one of the masterpieces by Yasunari Kawabata, the first Japanese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1963

Kinsale (twinned circa 1996)

• “Kinsale” derives from the Irish, Ceannt Saile, and means “Head of the Sea”
• The city was originally a medieval fishing port
• It’s located 25km from Cork City
• Some call it the “Irish Riviera”
• Also known as the “Gourmet Capital of Ireland”
• Home to two impressive fortifications: Charles Fort and James Fort
• In addition to Newport, Kinsale is twinned with Antibes, South of France, and Mumbles, Wales
• A delegation from Kinsale will visit Newport from April9-14 to celebrate a quarter century of twinning

Skiathos (twinned circa 1996)

• Located on an island of the same name, off the eastern coast of Greece in the northwestern Aegean Sea, and part of the Northern Sporades archipelago
• The town was built around 1829-30 on the same site as an older town
• Known for its natural harbor and beautiful beaches
• On Bourtzi, a small peninsula with lush vegetation, the ruins of a Venetian fortress still stand; the fortress was established in 1207 by the Gizi brothers and destroyed in 1660 when Admiral Morozini conquered the island

Ponta Delgada (twinned circa 2003)

• Located on the Island of São Miguel, one of seven islands that make up the Azores archipelago
• Elevated to the status of city in 1546 under the reign of Portuguese King João III
• In the 19th century, the island prospered in part because of its orange trade to the United Kingdom
• Its surface is very mountainous, and the highest point is within the Sete Cidades range, which reaches 2080 feet above sea level

Saint John New Brunswick (twinning date unknown)

• Located in southern New Brunswick, Canada, the region includes a major port city on Bay of Fundy
• The tides in the Bay of Fundy can rise an astonishing 16 metres, as 160 billion tons of seawater flow in (and out) of the bay as the tide changes; and where the St. John River meets the Bay of Fundy, you can get a feel for that power — at the Reversing Falls, the tides of the Bay of Fundy actually force the water at the mouth of the river to reverse its flow
• It’s Canada’s first incorporated city
• Saint John is a city of neighborhoods, each with its own unique geography, personality, and density
• Home to Canada’s oldest continuously operated farmers market

PHOTO CREDITS: Saint John image courtesy Envision Saint John; Newport image courtesy of Greg Clark; Ponta Delgada image courtesy Visit Ponta Delgada | Eduardo Costa photo; Kinsale image courtesy Kinsale Tourist Office; Imperia image courtesy ig_savona_imperia | Angela Calsamiglia photo; Skiathos image courtesy Greek National Tourism Organisation | P. Merakos photo; Shimoda image courtesy of japan-guide.com