MARTINSVILLE, Ohio—Along a Clinton County country road, adjacent to a winter wheat field, July 4 magic is in the making—all year long.
This nondescript 110-acre parcel is where the Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks crew incubates ideas and assembles its regional, national, and international shows—upholding a family legacy that originated in Italy more than a century ago.
While the company puts on close to 400 shows per year, almost 100 of them happen on and around Independence Day throughout the Midwest and the Eastern United States.
“It’s hard work, and everything rides on the Fourth of July,” said Joe Rozzi, the company’s vice president of sales and pyrotechnics designer. “When you guys are looking forward to having a barbecue on the Fourth of July, we’re working all year long for the Fourth of July; that’s what we do.”
Many part-timers return year after year and have become extended family to the Rozzis. They include bankers, lawyers, firefighters, an optician—and even a professional magician, James Finkelmeier.
“It is a form of magic,” Finkelmeier said, referring to when all the carefully orchestrated parts of a fireworks show come together.
A part-time Rozzi’s shooter for 20 years, Finkelmeier, 45, often makes a nearly four-hour drive from his Cleveland-area home so he can stage Cincinnati-area events.
“At the end of the show, when you hear the crowd cheering, we’re all smiles. That’s the best part … when the last boom is gone, we hear you,” Finkelmeier said.
How the Sparks Started
Pyrotechnics have mesmerized audiences for centuries and have symbolized patriotism since America’s earliest celebrations of nationhood.
But increasing challenges confront the family-centered business model that defines the fireworks industry in the United States.
The nation’s fireworks industry was largely built by Italian American families such as the Rozzis, relying on their cultural heritage.
In the 1830s, Italians figured out how to add chemicals to produce different-colored fireworks, improving upon accidental explosive discoveries credited to the ancient Chinese, according to the Smithsonian Science Education Center.
Joe Rozzi’s great-grandfather, Paolo Rozzi, began his fireworks business in Italy in 1895. After the patriarch emigrated to the United States in 1900, he set up shop in Pennsylvania.
Three decades afterward, some of his relatives relocated to the Cincinnati area. That’s where Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks and a second Rozzi company, Arthur Rozzi Pyrotechnics, continue operations.
“The Fourth of July has been special for my family, because that’s when we were always together,” Rozzi said. “We’re always working together.”
Several of his kin still lead the business. His sisters, president Nancy Rozzi and client liaison Kathy Rozzi, work at the family’s consumer-fireworks store in the Cincinnati suburb of Loveland.
Joe Rozzi’s nephew, Michael Lutz, left a Wall Street career. He now serves as vice president of finance and operations, soundtrack engineer, and pyrotechnic display designer, based at the Clinton County farm.
But Rozzi credited “all the guys, the men and women,” who work with them, noting that clusters of other families, including a pair of twin brothers and their father, work for Rozzi’s.