Today my family lost a mother, a grandmother, a great grandmother, an aunt, and a friend. She lived a fascinating life, she loved, and she is immensely loved in return. She will be sorely missed.
For
the past couple of months as every phone call would wind down she would
tell me how much she loves me and would inevitably remind me that she
would not be around for much longer. No one wants to be reminded of mortality, I poo-pooed her morbidness to focus on the moment with her.
On Tuesday evening we were called by my uncle that we should immediately travel in to town. We arrived yesterday afternoon. Last night before I left her room I
kissed her on her mouth and told her how much I love her. She exhaled,
pushing out, "Iloveyou," with all of her strength as a one syllable mutter. My cousin, Kim, was quietly humming, "You are My Sunshine."
This morning, as my
mother was sitting by her bedside, holding her hand, Gramma succumbed peacefully.
I am sad for my mom. I am sad for my uncle and his family. I am sad for her best friend, Miss June. I am sad for myself. I know this sadness will pass. But, I am happy that G is no longer in pain or suffering.
This afternoon, as Mom, Dad, and I were taking a long, quiet lunch and reflecting on G I remembered I took a class a few years ago and wrote a paper about Gramma.
In the Fall of 2011 I took a class, The History of Childhood in America. The assignment was to interview a person that is alive prior to World War II and relate it to the readings for class. I chose my Gramma. I called her the evening before the paper was due, of course, and spent hours on the phone with her listening to her stories. I had her on speaker phone, which I am sure she would not have liked because she had an audience of Pandora and Phaedra wide-eyed listening to every word while I furiously wrote her stories in shorthand. This assignment made me realize that Gramma was much more than just my Gramma, she is a friend. I began calling her every week and for the past two years I have looked forward to reminiscing her stories and sharing my own with her. Here is the paper in its entirety.
When
I think of the Great Depression, it usually consists of a black and white
photographic images flashing through my mind, like those of the infamous Migrant
Mother by Dorothea Lange. The Great
Depression was an economic slump that lasted between the years of 1929 through
approximately 1939, the start of World War II. Historically, these years consisted of widespread unemployment, little or no food, and
housing shortages. Most people were struggling
to survive these hardships. However, the
images painted from the memory of my Gramma, Rosalie Ghelarducci, are
anything but grimy children scrounging for their next meal while holding onto
the coattails of their waif-like mother simply surviving day-to-day in the
shanty town of Hooverville. Rosalie’s
memories paint a time, like any ordinary childhood. The Great Depression was not a way of life;
solidarity of the family was the way of life, the Great Depression was just the
name of the era.
Rosalie
was born and raised in Carnegie, PA, a small town located just outside of
Pittsburgh, PA and named for Andrew Carnegie.
Rosalie is the sixth of seven children, the third of four girls: Margaret, born in 1913; James (Jim), born in
1915; Raymond (Ray), 1917; Catherine (Kay), 1919; Thomas (Tom), 1921; Rosalie,
April 27, 1925; and, Therese (pronounced Theresa), December of 1926. With her parents, Auto and Rosalia, they all
lived in the same house her entire childhood. Rosalie only moved, at the age of 22, after she married my
Grandfather in 1947.
Auto was Bohemian. He regularly spoke German and Polish in the
house. Rosalia was Irish. The white duplex house she grew-up in was directly next door to the
neighborhood hardware store. The house
is the second building on the quaint block and diagonally across the street
from the neighborhood church. It is nicknamed The Irish School and Church, which is
also the private, Catholic school she attended. When looking out her bedroom window she could see the church and
school. Like the children in Nasaw’s
Children of the City regulated to living within a few blocks of a large city, Rosalie’s
whole life was contained within a few block radius.
Rosalie’s
mother was strict, period. If she wanted something done you did it then, not
later. “You know, your mother is very
much like my mother.” (Ghelarducci) If the children did not do something
immediately, “we would be on restriction.
At the time we didn’t know it was called ‘grounded’ but that’s what we got. She rules the house. She never
said ‘Wait ’til your dad gets home,’
he had said, ‘Take care of it when you
see it.’
When we were younger, our punishment was to go upstairs and put on
our nightgowns, because she knew we wouldn’t dare go near the windows in our nightgowns.
That was how our punishment was given.”(Ghelarducci) Rosalie recalls a story when both her and
Therese were sent upstairs for the evening for bickering, to be in their
nightgowns. At this time, the two girls
were old enough to figure out that they could crawl to the window and sit on
their bottoms without their nightgowns being seen. As they were sneaking views of the outside, it
just so happened that Rosalie and Therese’s playmate from across the street was
also on nightgown punishment in her own bedroom. The girls began making faces at one another
and sticking their tongues out. Rosalia,
who was sitting on the front porch thought she was the recipient of the face
making. She marched directly across the
street to notify the playmate’s mother.
The girl received a punishment, spankings from her own mother. Rosalie and Therese came running down the
narrow stairs of the four-bedroom house, screaming, “She was making faces at us, not you Mum!” Rosalia cleared up the mistake and
apologized. That was the last time Rosalie recalled receiving the nightgown
punishment.
Rosalia found other ways to maintain order in the household. “When we were older if we were late for curfew
you must of had a pretty good excuse or you weren’t allowed out the rest of the
week. You had to stay home.” (Ghelarducci)
Rosalia was very strict and stern with the children, Auto backed her up.
“They made it to their 49th anniversary but then my father passed
away. I had hoped my marriage would have lasted to the 50th anniversary
but it didn’t work that way.”(Ghelarducci)
When asked, “What was your dad like?”
She responded, “Dad was quiet. He didn’t raise a lot of problems. He worked.
He played cards at the Saloon. He
would drink while playing cards, come home, drink a cup of coffee and go to
bed. He’d go to card parties at the church and win many prizes. He taught us cards; we all played different
games. He played with us. I remember him giving me, what they used to
call, ‘Dutch Rubs.’ This is when he’d take his newly grown
whiskers and rub them all over my face to tickle me. I would giggle out loud, ‘Stop it Daddy, you're hurting me!”
(Ghelarducci)
Very
similar to excerpts of the 1920’s and The Great Depression read in class, the
children of the Spirik household were responsible for contributing to the
family. They had chores. “We all had our chores. We went grocery
shopping; each of us carried our own grocery bags, two of them, one for each hand.
If we got anything wrong, Mum made us take it back. She wouldn’t keep it.”
(Ghelarducci)
As
far as other chores, Rosalie’s mother kept it fair. Everyone took turns doing
the dishes. When the boys became teenagers,
they were not responsible for doing dishes any longer. At this point, the boys were required to work
outside of the house doing odd jobs and different things to help support the
family. Other chores included from time-to-time ironing and scrubbing the
floors. Although, Ray enjoyed the task of scrubbing floors, and kept this job
for himself. Rosalie recalled that Ray
would get up at 6am on Saturday morning and block off the stairs so nobody else
could come downstairs to walk on the clean floors until they were dry. He would also wax the floors and then cover
them with newspapers to keep them clean until Sunday morning. She does not remember why it was so important
to have clean floors on Sunday morning, it just made sense.
The boys were expected to finish high school;
however, the older girls upon reaching the age of 15 were removed out of school
to get jobs to help the family. Margaret
became a housekeeper, “The rich family she worked for called her the maid, and
changed her name to Maize while she was working, I don’t know why, never knew
why.”(Ghelarducci) When Kay was pulled
out of school she became a housekeeper too, but she did not like it, and quit
to work in a drugstore. Rosalie was able
to graduate from high school because when she was 14 she procured a job at
the hardware store, next door to the house.
This way she was able to go home when needed and permitted to finish
school. Therese also graduated from high
school; she then worked in an office. It
was speculated that Therese and Rosalie were able to finish high school because
both Jim and Tom where in the Army during The War and contributing money to the
household.
Rosalie is adamant that all
of her siblings were treated equally. “Both
genders had it the same. Mother never treated us better than the other. She
treated as individuals.” Rosalie recalls a time in high school Geometry class
when she was not being treated as in individual. “Sister Marie Dolores called on me to ask a
question. I told her, “I don’t know it.”
She said ‘You brother Tom would know it.’
I said, ‘I’m not my brother,’ and I
sat down and closed my book. She told
me, ‘Go to the office.’ So, I picked
up my books and went to the office. When the principal walked in she was
surprised because I had never been in trouble and was not a troublemaker; my
mother wouldn’t stand for it. The
principal said, ‘What are you doing here?’
I told her what happened and told her, ‘Also,
my mother does not compare us at anytime.
She treats us as individuals.’ The principal said, ‘I’ll take care of this at dinner.’ I went to the Irish School, the whole school
was taught by the Sisters of Charity. The Sister's were all nuns and they went
to a convent to live every night. They
had dinner together. From then on, none of the nuns compared any of the
students with our brothers and sisters.” (Ghelarducci) Rosalie still remembers
her mother saying, “You are not your
brother or sister; you are yourself.” (Ghelarducci)
One
of Rosalie’s playmates, while growing up, was Mildred Singleton. Mildred lived a yard away. Really, the families were backdoor neighbors,
but their houses were around the corner of the block and on the other side of an
empty lot. “We never dared to walk
through the empty lot, but always walked around the block to see each other.”
(Ghelarducci) When Rosalie and Mildred
played, it was always outside. They
never knocked on each others front doors to play, it was only if either of the
girls were on their front porches that they sought to play together. Mildred never entered Rosalie’s home and
Rosalie never played inside Mildred’s home. This was not considered odd, it
just was. Mildred differed from Rosalie
only in that her skin is black, and according to Rosalie, “it wasn’t a big deal
to play with colored people. We called
them colored people or Negroes, but mostly colored people. And, Mildred’s mother and grandmother forbade
entrance into white people’s houses.
Mildred had two uncles that were over six feet tall. They played for the Harlem Globetrotters in
the 1930’s.” (Ghelarducci) At this
point, I asked her, “Was Mildred’s family accepted in the neighborhood?” Rosalie responded, “Oh yes, there was never a
problem. They never went visiting though, and they kept to themselves. But, Mum
was friends with her grandmother and mother, she knew the whole family.”
(Ghelarducci) When asked if Mildred
having uncles play for a nationally renowned Negro basketball team helped to
alleviate any possible racial tension Rosalie confidently responded that there
was not any racial tension on their block or in the neighborhood that she could
recall. There never had been, “We didn’t
really learn anything about race. We were taught to be nice to people and if we
wanted to be friends we could; race didn’t matter.
One
of the most interesting things I remember about Mildred is her wedding. Years later, Mum and I were invited to
Mildred’s wedding. She married a fellow
named, Carter, I can’t remember his last name.
When I saw Mildred, she was dressed all in white with a white veil. When
she turned around, I saw her face. It was
as pale as ours are! She had so much make-up piled on, her skin was white and I
said so. My mother said to, ‘Sush!’ But, Mildred was beautiful. We
only stayed for the wedding and not the reception. We were the only white
people there. We didn’t feel unwelcome, we just felt out of place. We were
asked to stay, but Mum said ‘No.”(Ghelarducci)
The reflection of race is exactly as history recalls relations between Blacks
and Whites in the Northern United States during the Great Migration and the
Great Depression, races mixed socially and it was okay.
She
went to a parochial school with most of the children in her neighborhood. It was a mixed gender school, with boys and
girls. Attending were mostly Italians,
Germans and the Irish. Rosalie cannot
recall any other races attending her school, she had not thought about it. Religion was there, and they went to church
every Sunday, “Made sure of that! Mother
didn’t preach or anything, just made sure we were in church. The teachers were nice, they were nuns, they
treated you nice.” (Ghelarducci) In school,
they were taught the four R’s: Reading,
Writing, Arithmetic, and Respect. In high
school, she took courses in Shorthand, Biology, English, Religion, and Typing. In her second year, she took German and Math. At this point, I asked if she had any sort of
McCarthy-like backlash from the community for being German and speaking German;
keep in mind she was in high school during World War II. She chuckled as she explained she had no
problem because she always told everyone she was Irish.
Growing
up they did not eat many sweets, “It had to be a special occasion for ice
cream, as far as that went.” She
remedies that now by having a bowl of ice cream every night before bed. She believes that her childhood was a very typical
childhood, like most everyone else her age.
“I was in grade school at that time (during the Great Depression) and I
never knew we were poor. Nobody ever
groaned or complained about it. We just
pitched in and helped. I was so young at the time.”(Ghelarducci) When asked, “How did the Depression affect
your life?” She responded, “We couldn’t
get everything we wanted. We’d have to
save, which I still do. I’m a bit, how
shall I say this – conservative. It’s
just within the past five years that I feel I can spend a little more.”
(Ghelarducci)
As
I sit and listen to my grandmother recalling her childhood during the Great
Depression, I cannot help but to erase the sorrowful images of worn people with
dirt under their nails, living hard lives, just barely scraping by. Those images captured by Dorothea Lange are a
distant memory. Instead, I replace those
images with recollections of fragile black and white photographs. I see my Great-Grandmother with her hair
twisted in a knot on top of her head, a face reflecting one that closely
resembles my own Mother’s, smiling as she is sitting in a metal front porch
rocker holding hands with her husband. I
see my Gramma, younger than I am now, beaming in a new suit in her backyard on
her wedding day. I remember a few summers ago, while visiting Carnegie, sitting on
the floor by the window of my Gramma’s childhood bedroom, gazing at the stone
church caddy-corner across the street and watching the people go to mass,
thinking she must have done the same thing.
I imagine her life was much like mine was growing up. At times, it may have been hard, but the
family worked together, and it was not impossible. Of her childhood Rosalie says, “Some had it
better than others, but we didn’t realize it until we got older. I’ve had a good life.” (Ghelarducci)
