When Gary Puntel celebrated his first North Royalton Christmas, the former City Hall site was a schoolhouse and young people spent their weekends at the local bowling alley and roller-skating rink. North Royalton was very much a farming town and Gary’s new residence on Royalton Road contained acres of rolling, pastoral countryside, complete with a large pond for swimming, a billowing Willow tree for climbing, and plenty of space for farm animal grazing.
It was 1947 and Gary Puntel was just five years old. His parents Fiore, an Italian immigrant, and Hilda, had just moved with their children from Oakmont, a suburb of Pittsburgh, into a residence built in 1893 by the Akins Family. The farmstead included a two-story home, barn, hand-dug well, outhouse and horse trough. Though Fiore was a reputable piping engineer, he and the family lived a farming lifestyle, raising several animals on the vast landscape and growing crops as food.
On December 24, 1947, the Puntel family gathered in their home’s front room, a term coined for a residence’s living room, and shared in what would become, unbeknownst to them, an annual tradition for the next 70 years. Every year since that first Christmas Eve in 1947, members of the Puntel family and friends have gathered at the home to open presents, share reflections on the past year, and enjoy a delicious Italian feast of clam chowder, ham, roast pork, smoked fish, Capicola, salami, various cheeses and olives, clams, oysters and breads. Though the size of the Puntel clan has changed throughout the years, their love for one another and the traditions they share remains constant with each passing Christmas.
“It was never something we planned for,” Gary said from a cozy arm chair in the family’s historic Royalton Road home. “It just kept happening that way year after year. I think it all goes back to my mother and father, and how important it was to them to have our Christmas Eve. And it all just kept continuing. Perhaps if everyone in the family had moved away, it wouldn’t have kept going, but it just continues to happen every year.”
Most of the Puntel family remains in North Royalton and surrounding suburbs, and it was relatives living in Cleveland’s Italian neighborhood that brought the Puntels here in the first place. Over the years, a few family members have moved out-of-state, but they always make it a point to fly home to the quaint farmhouse year after year to celebrate Christmas. Gary and his wife, Pat, are 1959 North Royalton High School graduates and are now both retired, splitting their time between residences in Port Charlotte, Fla., and the Lake Erie Islands. Gary purchased the Royalton Road property from his father years ago, and one of Gary’s brothers lives in a home that can be seen from the property’s back windows. Their annual Christmas celebration includes more than 20 family members and friends. In the early days of the yearly tradition, the famed Loder family even stopped by to celebrate.
The picturesque Royalton Road property is adorned in family photographs – many in black-and-white and others in color – and various historical décor, including a wagon wheel clock that Gary fashioned himself, beams refurbished from the original barn, and rows of bookshelves stocked with archival North Royalton High School yearbooks, art books and well-loved cookbooks. For a time, Gary followed in his father’s farming footsteps and raised steer, pigs, chickens and horses on the property. He and his wife raised two boys there, and the couple now has five grandchildren. Pat and Gary met in ninth grade at NRHS and were high school sweethearts.
Stepping onto the property, located at 3075 Royalton Road, is akin to slipping into a simpler time where home was a true gathering place and family ties ranked supreme.
“It’s always been a very homey place,” Gary said. “The kids who lived around us would always gather here. The big field in the back was our baseball field and we’d go sled riding here in the winter. It was really a magical way to grow up. We literally ran free.”

By SARA MACHO HILL
Contributing Writer