The first thing I can tell you about Larry is that I was named after him. As soon as my parents found out they were expecting their first baby, my dad told my mother that the baby would be named after his brother Larry, whether it was a boy or a girl. My mother probably told my dad that he had nine months to figure out how to give a baby girl the name Larry. With a tweak to the spelling, daddy came up with Larrie. My mother wasn't too thrilled, but I can imagine daddy telling her "Larrie it is, and that's that." (My dad went to the Ralph Kramden Charm School.)
Larry was a favorite of my grandmother's children. He was the third born, in what eventually would be a family of 12 children.... with 8 of the twelve growing to adulthood, and just 7 of the 12 getting to Senior Citizen status.
The first two of my grandmother's children died very young.... in the early 1900s, in the over-crowded tenements of Little Italy, germs spread quickly and spared only the very strong. Larry was hearty and strong, and lived a happy life until pneumonia struck him down when he was barely into his 20th year.
My grandfather always said that Larry was a happy boy.... always smiling.... always dancing or singing. "He was the life of the family," grandpa would say. "And he could dance..... he loved ballroom dancing and he won a lot of First Place prizes at the dance halls." When I asked what the prizes were, my dad said that he won "A dollar here, three dollars there, which was a lot of money back then." Daddy told me that whatever the prize was, Larry would "bring it home to mama."
When Larry got pneumonia, my grandmother sent for the doctor. In those days, doctors made house calls, and some of the doctors called on the well-to-do patients first, letting the poorer patients wait. Living in their small NYC apartment, and trying to save every penny and every dollar they could for a plot of land on which to build a house, my grandfather was on the doctor's "poor patient" list. Little did the doctor know that my grandfather did indeed have money saved and could very well have paid the doctor in cash for one of his high-priority house calls.
The doctor finally came to the apartment, but it was a day too late for Larry. The pneumonia had already settled into his lungs and the medicine prescribed by the doctor was too little too late. Larry died a few hours after the doctor left my grandparents with the medicine and his bill. The entire family carried a grudge against that doctor for decades, and the grudge didn't end when the doctor himself passed away in the 1960s. Up to the doctor's dying day, and forever after, the family said that "Dr. A....... killed our Larry."
My dad told me that my grandmother was devastated when Larry died. My grandfather and his friends had to restrain her at the wake in their living room because grandma kept trying to climb into the coffin beside her son, in total disbelief that he was no longer alive and breathing. According to my dad, grandma kept screaming "Lorenzo! Lorenzo! Dio mio!"
Decades after Larry's death, his sisters and brothers, as well as his parents, talked about him as if he had died the week before. When I was born in the early 1950s and my dad named me after his brother Larry, the family said that a new light came back into grandma's eyes because she got to say the name Larry again with joy instead of sadness.... even though it was spelled Larrie, and in Italian, she would call me Laurencina. Every time I walked into grandma's house, she would sing out "Laurencina.... my Laurencina...." No one else in the family called me that Italian version of my name. When grandma passed away in the late 1970s, the name Laurencina went with her.
When I was three, the family decided that I needed to take dancing lessons. "Larry was a very good dancer. Larrie needs to dance.... she'll be like her Uncle Larry and win prizes." Off I went in ballet slippers and a pink net tutu but the dancing school didn't teach us ballroom dances...... they taught us to dance like Shirley Temple. What followed was that my mother would roll my hair into curlers every night and then brush it out in the morning so it looked like a brunette version of Shirley's hair.
The year before I started first grade, I contracted pneumonia and was put into an oxygen tent in the local hospital. The family went nuts. My mother had gone to nursing school, and she hardly left my side when I was under that tent because she and my dad didn't trust the nurses. My dad said "Who knows if they all got good grades in nursing school." My aunts and uncles took turns coming to see me... at any given time during the afternoon or evening visiting hours, one of my dad's sisters or brothers would be there, along with my grandmother, who insisted on going to the hospital each time.
I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks.... and under that tent almost the entire time. I distinctly remember my mother and my Aunt Dolly saying "How do you feel, Larrie?" My answer to them, and to all the other aunts and uncles was "I feel fine. I want to go home." While I was enclosed in that oxygen tent, at least one aunt or uncle would tell me the story of my Uncle Larry every day..... "You were named after him.... he loved to dance.... he was always so happy.... he was your grandma's favorite...."
No one ever told me that Larry died of pneumonia until I was nearly 13. When I asked my dad why everyone kept that from me, he said that the family didn't want to "jinx me." My dad said it was bad enough for everyone when I got pneumonia when I was little. Out of everyone in the family (which was a considerable number) only my Uncle Larry and me had ever contracted that illness.
I wish the family had told me more about my Uncle Larry. When I was little, they did tell me who I was named after, and my aunts showed me his picture.... he looked very much like my dad, enough for them to have been twins, but they weren't. They basically told me that Larry loved to sing and dance, loved to be happy, and that Dr. A.... killed him when he got pneumonia. Usually, when anyone got to that part of the story, they would make 'the sign of the cross,' shake their heads, and stop talking so my grandmother and my aunts wouldn't start crying.
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