Mother and son team make mark with Lions

Winners of wine label contest announced

By: Lacey Korevec
   The results are in.
   The Cranbury Lions Club has chosen a winning design in its community-wide wine label contest.
   As favors for its 75th anniversary celebration on June 23, 2007, the club will hand out bottles of cabernet sauvignon made by the Cranbury Lions who crushed the grapes at the Grape Escape Winery in South Brunswick.
   The club decided to hold a contest to let community members get involved and submit designs for the bottle labels.
   The winning design, a computer graphic of a pair of eyeglasses with photographed scenes from Main Street in Cranbury reflecting in the lenses, was submitted by Petty Road resident Susan Adiletta, 56, and her son, Tony Adiletta, 25, who works in advertising and lives in Virginia Beach, Va.
   Ms. Adiletta said she never expected to win and only submitted an entry because she appreciates when organizations like the Lions Club try to get the community involved.
   She found inspiration for her entry when she researched the international club’s history and found that in its early years, Helen Keller challenged the organization’s members to be knights for the blind and the visually impaired. Ms. Adiletta then put an idea together and contacted her computer-savvy son about designing the label.
   "I just thought the glasses depicted what their history is all about and I thought it would be nice if they could reflect scenes of Cranbury," Ms. Adiletta said. "The themes sort of fit together. So luckily, I sent the pictures to my son and he was able to do the graphics for me."
   Ms. Adiletta named the wine Lionspride.
   "Of course, a pride is a lion community and also the Lions Club is very proud of their town," she said.
   Lion Bob Virgadamo said the Lions were pleasantly surprised to have received about 20 design entries. But the winner was easy to identify, he said, adding that the judges were impressed by the idea to include the club’s history in the design.
   "It wasn’t hard to pick the number one," he said. "It wasn’t hard at all. As soon as we saw it, we just looked at it and went, ‘Oh my gosh, how cool is this?’ "
   In addition to having their work immortalized on the label for the commemorative wine bottles, Ms. Adiletta and her son also won a gift certificate to Hannah & Mason’s restaurant. Though her son won’t be able to make it back to Cranbury for the dinner, or for the 75th anniversary celebration, Ms. Adiletta is still excited about both.
   "I can’t wait," she said. "It’s a wonderful restaurant, so it will be a lot of fun. My son just said the only thing he wanted was a bottle of the wine."
   The second-place winner, Amy Amico, received a gift certificate of dinner for two at Cranbury Station. Brenda Shaffer, whose design came in third place, received a gift certificate to Cranbury Pizza.
   Cranbury Lions Club President Rick Burke said he was pleased with the amount of time and effort residents put into their submissions. He said the first-place design captures the essence of the Lions.
   "I can’t wait to share the winning design with the rest of the community at our 75th anniversary event next June," he said."This event celebrates everything the Lions have done to serve our community, and I am pleased we were able to open this contest to all residents."