Katy Nicholson, Herald Staff Writer

KATY NICHOLSON | DAILY HERALD Giovanni Gori, right, of Elba, Italy, is visiting Pete Luter of Roanoke Rapids this week. The friends met five years ago at Spazzacamini, an Italian chimney sweep festival. Advertisement

ROANOKE RAPIDS - It's a dirty job, but those who do it seem to love it.

Chimney sweeps can be found all over North America and Europe, and their roles vary in different parts of the world. But when they get together, there is a common bond between them.

That is how Pete Luter, a retired chimney sweep from Roanoke Rapids, met Giovanni Gori of Elba, Italy.

Luter first made his way to Spazzacamini, an Italian festival which attracts more than 1,000 chimney sweeps annually, in 2003. Gori is also a spazzacamino, which means “chimney sweep” in Italian, and the title of the festival means “many chimney sweeps.”

“It's a festival that anyone would enjoy,” Luter explained. “You don't need to be a chimney sweep to go there and enjoy it. As long as I have my health and money, I'll be there each Labor Day weekend.”

Luter was the first American to attend the event, but he wrote an article about the experience for a trade magazine and more Americans have attended in subsequent years.

Last week, Luter and a mutual friend in New York managed to lure Gori to the United States for the first time for the northeast regional conference of the National Association of Chimney Sweeps.

Luter traveled to the conference in Mystic, Conn., and brought Gori to Roanoke Rapids on Sunday, stopping in Washington, D.C., to show him the White House. Gori will stay in the area until next Wednesday to observe some American chimney sweeps and do some local sightseeing.

Both men got into the profession for practical reasons. Luter got the idea in the 1970s while working at the paper mill.

“Many people reacted to the energy crisis, many by buying wood stoves, and I saw the need for a chimney sweep,” he explained.

Back then, all he had to do was buy the equipment and read the instruction manual. When he became president of the North Carolina Chimney Sweep Association, he established one of the first state certification programs in the country.

Gori explained that he used to work with his uncle, who owned a building business. After installing some fireplaces, he decided to become a chimney sweep. He began to study the profession in 1990, and established his own business in 1998.

The role of a chimney sweep varies from country to country. In Denmark, for example, the government requires everyone to have their chimneys cleaned every eight weeks because many people burn hay to heat their homes.

In Germany, the government is also closely involved with the profession. In the United States, on the other hand, it is up to the chimney sweeps to educate people on the importance of keeping their chimneys clean to prevent fires.

Since he began sweeping chimneys in 1979, Luter worked his way up to president of the state and national associations. He pushed for the establishment of a national chimney sweeping school and became lead instructor when it opened. He was even part of a team which cleaned the White House chimneys in 1988. Luter and his wife, Emily, own Countryside Chimney Sweeps in Roanoke Rapids.

Gori is vice president of the Italian chimney sweep association. Though he attends conferences each year in his home country, he also finds it beneficial to learn about the techniques of his counterparts in other countries.

“When a group of chimney sweeps gets together over beers, they talk chimneys,” Luter noted.

There are three main methods of chimney cleaning, he explained. The first involves a rope with a weighted ball at the bottom and a brush attached to it. The second uses different-sized brushes, and the third - popular in the United States - uses equipment attached to an electric drill.

Gori has found that the third method is the fastest and most effective, and he now distributes those special tools in Italy. Since arriving in the United States, he has also noticed one major advantage of American chimney sweeps.

“In the USA, you have the ability to work together and do it very well. I like it very much,” he said.

The evolution of the profession keeps things interesting for Gori.

“I really don't know,” he said, when asked what he enjoys about his job. “Maybe I like that we are just like pioneers of this work, because even after 10 years, I know that people don't understand our work, and maybe we, too, (do not understand it). There's so many things you discover every day when you come inside a house.”

For Luter, the job was simply a perfect fit.

“On a beautiful, sunny day, just standing up on the roof and seeing all the houses in the neighborhood ... It's just freedom,” Luter said.