The year was 1919 when my grandmother gave birth to this little boy. I am certain of the year because Angelino was my dad. All of my grandmother's children were born at home, and in that part of the century, birth certificates were issued only for hospital births.
My grandmother's name was Angelina, so this baby boy was named after her, making the name masculine by ending it with an 'o' in place of the 'a.' Neighborhood boys began calling this boy "Little Frank" or "Frankie," most likely because Grandpa's name was Frank. As the years went on, the family picked up that nick-name and they would call him "Frankie" instead of his given name of Angelino.
When my father was baptized, his full name was Angelino Larry (Larry being the name of another brother, born a few years before my father but not living past his 22nd birthday). In his adult years, my dad's friends would call him Larry, his family always called him Frankie, and only in my father's signature on legal documents would Angelino ever appear in print. (Daddy always said he had "more first names than I know what to do with.")
My grandmother always told me that my dad was a happy baby, and a happy little boy. He loved his brothers and sisters and protected them from neighborhood bullies who were known to make fun of the Italians. My father didn't talk much about the family's years in the tenement apartment in Little Italy, other than to say "It was tough. Tough. We all did the best we could and we were glad to get out of there."
When my grandfather had saved enough money to buy property out in 'the countryside,' they moved to Queens in 1922 and grandpa was able to buy a double plot of land on a quiet street. After digging out a full basement underneath the imprint of the house plans, Grandpa built straight up, three floors. Any childhood memories that my dad talked about were centered in that big house on that street in Queens. In the 1920s, there was nothing but woods at the end of that street chosen by my grandfather. In the near future, Idlewild Airport would be built across a highway that was adjacent to the end of Grandpa's quiet street and those tree-filled woods were taken down to make room for houses built by my grandfather. In 1963, when Idlewild became John F. Kennedy Airport, the highway was expanded and Grandpa's street was no longer so quiet.
My grandparents' home became the center of the universe for the entire family as the years went by. When I was little girl, my dad would walk me around the property and show me the spot where he and his brothers used to play ball... the low branch of the apple tree that made it easy for the boys to climb into the tree and land on the roof of the garage... and he showed me the spot in the grass where they would land after jumping from the top of that roof. "Papa always told us we were in America and we could do anything... and we all thought we could fly like birds."
The grammar school was within walking distance of their home, but I remember my dad telling me that "No matter how far away that school was, we would have walked anyway." My grandparents were determined that their children would get an education.... in that part of the century, for children of immigrants, finishing 8th grade was an accomplishment. By the time the 8th- grade graduates were ready for High School, most had taken full-time jobs to help supplement their family's income. My dad became part of that work force. He took whatever odd jobs he could get, bringing home his pay envelope to my grandmother, who would give him a few dollars to keep for himself. My father told me "I didn't need much money. I lived at home, ate at home, and I was too young for fancy suits. What more did I need? I bought a little chocolate now and then, but that was less than a nickel."
Dad's first full-time job was driving a trolley for the New York City Transit Authority. He had routes along Jamaica Avenue, Metropolitan Ave... and along various streets in Brooklyn. The family said my father was "Born to drive... if it had wheels, it was for Frankie." Daddy loved his job, loved to be at the head of his vehicle, loved the responsibility and respected the riding public. His belief was that when you worked for The City, you were ultimately working for a Good Pension. That became his goal: work long and hard, retire and collect your pension, then do what you want after that. Dad's job driving trolley-cars was switched over to driving city buses when the Transit Authority did away with the out-dated trolley lines.
The one thing that disrupted my dad's work plans was World War II. He enlisted at the beginning, with his three brothers. Daddy chose the Army, his brothers chose the Marines and the Navy. When the war was over, one brother was forever lost.
My aunts would refer to those years as "The War." My uncles, along with my dad, wouldn't talk much about what happened while they were fighting for their country. Aunt Dolly always said that "The War changed all of my brothers. Three of them came back filled with sadness and one died filled with shrapnel."
There were two 'war stories' that my father told me when I was growing up, and over the decades of his life, he would repeat these stories time and again, until they began to sound like prayers. In the telling and re-telling, the details never changed, the emotion was as new as if it had occurred just the day before, and the sadness in my father's eyes didn't lessen over the years.
The first story was about a little German girl. My dad was a Staff Sargent and his unit was assigned to a small town in Germany near Dresden. My dad said the town had been destroyed beyond recognition, and the sight of the crumbling and bombed-out churches that had been so lovingly cared for just broke the hearts of everyone in his unit. Dad and some of his soldiers were trying to clean up the inside of the town's church for the people there, who were standing outside on the church steps and crying over the damage. As daddy walked up the center aisle of the church, he said a little blond German girl came out of hiding from underneath one of the pews. "She was only three or four years old, she was burned a little bit and she had no clothes on. The little girl was so scared... she was in shock and she wasn't even crying."
My father said he put down his rifle, took off his uniform shirt, then took off his undershirt and put it on the little girl. "My undershirt was so long that it was hanging down to her toes. She looked down at the bottom of that shirt and she wriggled her toes a little, then she looked up at me and smiled, and then the tears came falling down from her eyes and she couldn't stop crying." Daddy said that he put his uniform shirt back on, picked up his rifle and slung it over his shoulder, then picked up the little girl and carried her out to the German people who were on the steps of the church. He asked the people there if anyone recognized the little girl... did she belong to anyone there... did they know her parents? "They were Germans. They didn't speak English, they didn't understand Italian. What could I do? I walked around the steps of the church and looked at all the women there. I finally found one who looked like my own mother and I put the little girl in her arms and told her "Please take care of this little girl. She's just a baby. Please." Daddy said the woman took off her shawl and wrapped it around the little girl whose hands were clutching the hem of his undershirt and twisting it into a ball of fabric.
My dad always ended that story with the same few sentences: "I never saw that old woman or that little girl again, and our unit was in that town for almost two weeks. I hope they both made it out of there. Horrible what happened to their church. Horrible what happened to their lives. That War was hell. Hell on earth."
The second story of daddy's took place in a small French town. Once again, his unit was sent there to "police the area" and do what they could for the residents. Nearly all of the town's buildings had been either badly destroyed or totally ruined. The town was so small that all of the people there just put every usable and salvageable item they had into one building that had the least damage. With help from the soldiers in my dad's unit, they gathered up tables and chairs, beds and blankets, and any food they could find. In the midst of all this hunting and gathering, a nine-year-old boy walked up to my dad with a bicycle that was nearly broken into two pieces. "Can you fix this for me?" the little boy said to my dad. "Imagine that," daddy told me... "The town is destroyed beyond recognition and the most important thing to that boy was his bicycle." My dad later found out that the boy needed that bicycle to visit his grandmother in the next town, something that he did every day.
When my dad told me this story, he would say that the little French boy reminded him of his nephew and godson R, back at home in my grandmother's house. He said the little boy had tears in his eyes, and my father immediately understood that the broken bicycle was the boy's prized possession. My dad told the boy he would fix the bicycle the best he could. He had soldiers search the town for other bicycles... thinking that he could take parts of other broken bikes to repair this boy's bike. It took five days... but that's exactly what my father did. The little boy couldn't stop crying when my dad gave him a bicycle that he could once again ride.
My father told me that story every time he bought me a new bicycle, and over the years of my childhood, I had a lot of bikes. I was told "Take good care of this bike... there was a little boy in France when I was in the war....." I knew the story by heart by the time I was seven, but I listened to it each and every time as if I'd never heard it before. My dad always cried at the ending, saying "I wonder whatever happened to that little boy."
In the late 1990s, we did indeed find out what happened to that young French boy. With computer access reaching small towns in France, a man in his mid-70s asked his nephew to find "the American soldier who fixed my bicycle during the war." The little boy never forgot my father's name... my dad's family still owned the same house in Queens.... a letter was sent there, and then the family forwarded it to me. It was written in French, and my Aunt Dolly thought I might know someone who could translate it for us. Not only did I get the letter translated, but that Frenchman and I sent letters and gifts back and forth for three years. I was the go-between for the man in France and my dad in New York. My dad would tell me what to write for him, and I used my computer to translate the letters into French, as well as translating the French letters we received into English, which I would read to daddy over the phone. Those letters stopped when the old Frenchman passed away. It was a nice tribute to my dad that in the last part of that old Frenchman's life, he wanted to make contact with his "American soldier."
Those letters from France were filled with love and gratitude and appreciation, from an old man who remembered the kindness of an Army soldier during World War II. My father, at that late stage of his life, not understanding the workings of the Internet at all, couldn't fathom how such a miracle could happen to "an old soldier" who was "just doing his job."
When my dad came home from The War, he vowed never to sign his name on another document for the government. "Last time I did that, they handed me a rifle and the next thing I knew, I was landing on the beach at Normandy." He would repeat that phrase over and over again for the rest of his life.
My Aunt Dolly always told me that The War took away part of my dad's happiness and she believed that he never was able to get it all back. My uncles and my dad didn't talk much about gruesome details, but when they did get to talking about their experiences, daddy was always the one who stopped talking first. He would get very quiet, listen to his brothers for a few minutes, then get up to make himself a cup of coffee and take it to the front porch of my grandparents' house. My dad would tell his brothers "I lived through that War once, I don't want to do it again by talking about it."
Daddy worked for The City for nearly 40 years.... first he drove the trolley cars, and then the buses. It was on his regular bus route along Jamaica Avenue that he met the woman who would eventually become his wife and my mother. Aunt Dolly, who remembers everything about everyone in the family, always said my mother was shy and very quiet, but much smarter than my father. After grammar school, my mother went on to high school and nursing school. Daddy went to work, and then to war, then came back home to work again.
My parents got married in the early Spring of 1951. I was born in 1952, in the middle of the first blizzard of that year. By the time I was in the 4th grade, my parents were separated, and when I started fifth grade, they were divorced. Very unusual for that decade, to have divorced parents, unless you were living in Hollywood. Queens was as far away from Hollywood as you could possibly get.
The dissolution of my parents' marriage was never really clear to me, mainly because everyone in the family had a different theory and a different opinion. Even though they both re-married in the late 1960s, I truly believe that my parents still had feelings for one another. A few family members would not agree, but I'd like to believe that anyway. My dad had given a locket to my mother before they married... this locket had tiny pictures of each of them. While they were married, my mother wore that locket on a necklace every day. After their divorce, daddy wore that same locket on his watch chain, every day, for nearly 40 years. In 2008, both of my parents died within two months of one another.
This son of my grandparents, my father, the man who fought in The War and then came home and spent hours of every day staring out of the porch windows and not saying a word, never wanted to be remembered as a soldier. Daddy felt that his Army years were a part of his life that he willingly gave away for his country, but he didn't want to be honored for that time. "I used a rifle to kill people. I couldn't help the poorest people in the towns we got sent to. I saw churches and schools blown to bits and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I had to dig graves for babies and small children. I had to watch the Jewish people try and walk out of the concentration camps with whatever dignity they possibly had left."
I think the sadness that descended upon my father during The War stayed with him for the rest of his life. At family gatherings, my dad was the life of the party... he could sing like a crooner and dance like Fred Astaire, and put him in a tuxedo and he looked like a matinee idol. But now, when I look at those old family pictures, I can see a touch of sadness in the corners of his eyes. I truly think that my dad wanted very little out of life.... he wanted exactly what his father had: a home filled with his children, a wife who wanted to be just a wife, and a little money in his pocket.
When I was a kid, my father would take quarters and dimes and nickels and let them drop onto the sidewalk in front of stores and in the grass near park benches. His theory was that "Some old man or a little kid is going to find that money and they'll be smiling for the rest of the day." He always bought whatever little kids were selling door-to-door, and he never passed by a down-and-out street person without giving them "a buck or two."
For all of the years my dad drove a bus for The City, he never took a fare from an elderly person, a member of the clergy, or any person that looked like they needed a break. He would tell me "These old people should ride for free, they've been through The Depression. Priests, rabbis, and nuns shouldn't have to pay for anything after giving their lives to the Church. And a person who looks poor is poor." My dad's bus was always on time because my father didn't tolerate lateness... his regular riders knew him by name and depended on him.
My dad earned good money during his working life, and the bus company did indeed give him a great pension when he retired. My father tried to "be retired," but it didn't work for him. "I'm going to be dead a long time.... while I'm still able to drive, I'm going back to work." The family thought he'd take an easy part-time job. Daddy went to Kennedy Airport and started to drive a bus around the airport, taking passengers from one terminal to the other. My father told the family: "This is an easy job... everyone rides for free."
I am my father's oldest child, and I was a "daddy's girl" from day one. Just ask the family, and they'll tell you that I still am. My dad's eyes lit up every time he saw me. Even in my teenaged years when I thought I knew everything, my dad may not have agreed with all of my choices but he never judged, never criticized. When I was little, I told everyone "my daddy can fix everything," and I would bring him broken toys from the neighborhood kids. When I got older and I reminded daddy of that childhood claim of mine, he would quietly say "I fixed all those toys, but I couldn't fix my marriage to your mother."
It was my dad's belief that everyone needed a very good fountain pen and a very good watch. When birthdays and Christmas came around, everyone in the family would be gifted with one or the other from my dad. Daddy even bought fountain pens and watches for the nuns who taught at the grammar school that I attended. My dad's bus-driving job didn't make him a rich man, but he was a smart shopper. Daddy would put pens and watches on lay-away when he found just the right ones. When Bic ballpoint pens got to be so popular decades ago, my dad said that no one who cared about good penmanship would use a ballpoint. And digital watches... daddy hated those. He said it didn't take a craftsman to make that kind of a watch..... "You could train a monkey to do that job. When you buy a watch, get one that was made by hand, and only then will you have a real timepiece."
I could write on and on about this man who was my father, but typing and editing this entry has made me very sad. In my eyes, in my memory, my dad was a kind and generous man who was blind-sided by The War and disappointed with the ending of his marriage to my mother. He carried an Italian/Catholic sense of guilt with him till the last days of his life, believing that he didn't do enough, love enough, succeed enough.
In my opinion, my dad was one of the most successful people I've known. I don't measure success by bank accounts and college degrees. I measure success the way my dad did: "If you share a part of every dollar you have with someone else... if you smile at old people and you're kind to helpless animals... if you believe in tiny miracles... if people remember you with a smile... then when you come to your very last day, you will know you've had a good life."
Daddy died at the age of 89, in June of 2008. In my mind, I can still hear his voice when I called him on the phone....... his "Hello?" would sound quiet and almost whispered. When I told him it was me, he would then say "Hi-ya Larrie!" --- his voice no longer low and wispy. He would make his voice louder and more robust for the duration of the conversation.
At the end of each phone call, my father wanted me to be the first to hang up.
"I don't want to hang up on you," he'd tell me.
"But you're not hanging up on me, daddy, you're just saying good-bye."
"I don't want to say good-bye either."
So I would say good-bye, and tell him I'd talk to him in a few days.
The last part to all of my dad's phone calls was him telling me "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you." When I heard that, I knew it was my cue to hang up the phone, because he didn't want to be the first to put the receiver down.
I can still hear my dad's voice in my mind. I would give anything, anything, to really hear his voice again. "Remember that I love you, Larrie... I've always loved you."
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