Another boy-baby for my grandparents.... they named him Anthony, but of course called him Tony. My grandmother and all of my aunts agreed that Tony was a happy baby who grew into a very happy little boy, who then matured into an immensely happy man.
Tony loved to play with his brothers when they were kids, and his favorite games involved a ball, particularly a baseball as he got older. Tony was quick, very coordinated, and extremely talented with a ball and a bat. When he was older and playing baseball on school teams, a scout for the New York Yankees discovered him and wanted him to join The Yankees. Talk about a young boy's dream coming true.
However, back in the day, The Yankees had lots of physical requirements, one of which was height. Unfortunately, Tony was one inch (just one tiny inch!) below the minimum height requirement for the team. The offices of The New York Yankees sent Tony a letter stating exactly that, and Uncle Tony kept that letter forever, taking it out of the "strong box" from time to time to show his sons and his nieces and nephews.
One of my Uncle Tony's greatest treasures was a wooden baseball bat that he used when he was a young player. He kept that bat polished and cleaned and he intended to pass it on to his sons. His only mistake with that bat was that he stored it in the third-floor attic storage room in Grandma's house. The family joke was that once something was put either into the family safe or into the storage room of the attic, it stayed there forever. (Aunt Dolly was in charge of such things, and she didn't like to disturb anything once it was in a safe place.)
When Uncle Tony moved to Long Island, that bat stayed up in the attic. Years later, when he moved across the country, the bat still stayed tucked away in that attic. When I brought my dad to visit his brother in Arizona, he and Uncle Tony talked about that bat, wondering just where in the attic it was stored, and if they could get it out of that attic without Dolly knowing about it. (That never happened.) A couple of years later, my husband and I flew out to Arizona to visit Uncle Tony and his family, and of course, he got to talking about his bat "up in the attic," and he showed us the letter from the New York Yankees. Before we left Arizona, one of my cousins drove me to a sporting goods store and I bought the best New York Yankees wooden bat that I could find and gave it to my Uncle Tony as a surprise. I can still see him now, sitting in his chair with tears in his eyes, holding onto that Yankee bat and just speechless with gratitude.
During World War II, Uncle Tony was in the Marines. My grandmother cried when he joined, because her other sons explained to her that the Marines were" the first called in and the last called out." He was the youngest son, and my grandparents worried about him the most. Uncle Tony fought against the Japanese in the South Pacific during the war. He didn't talk much about his own war stories, and the fact that he was responsible for the death of enemy soldiers didn't make him proud. "I just did what I had to do.... I did what they told me.... and then I kissed the ground in New York when I got home all in one piece." My grandmother had begun lighting candles and saying extra prayers when her four sons were soldiers during World War II, and she didn't stop when the war ended because one of her sons never made it home.
Uncle Tony fell in love with and married "an Irish girl," as Grandma called my Aunt M. "She's an Irish girl who can cook, who can keep house, and who can keep my son happy." And that she did..... Aunt M and Uncle Tony were married for 64 years before Tony passed away in 2011. They were the happiest couple, always smiling, always laughing. Aunt M always said "Tony makes me laugh.... he's always so positive and so happy."
"Happy" does not even begin to describe the bond of love Tony and M shared during their long and successful marriage. Every other marriage of my grandparents' children ended in divorce. Not so with Tony and M. One reason for that, according to my dad: "Tony and M never let anything or anyone come between them, not even the family."
Aunt M once told me a story about their first house out on Long Island.... my grandmother, along with Aunt Edie, Aunt Jaye, and Aunt Dolly, drove out there for a visit. They arrived unannounced, before lunch time, while Uncle Tony was at work. Aunt M was surprised, but of course greeted them graciously... they had driven a lot of miles from Queens and she wanted to make her husband's family feel 'at home.'
While Aunt M was in the kitchen fixing lunch for all of them, her sisters-in-law were indeed making themselves at home and very comfortable in the living room. They had re-arranged M's furniture, her lamps, her knick-knacks... and when Aunt M walked back into her living room, they told her "Doesn't it all look better this way?"
It was at that point that Uncle Tony walked in the door..... and after he said hello to his mother and his sisters, Aunt M asked him to come into the kitchen. Without making a loud fuss, Aunt M firmly told her husband to "Get in that living room and tell your sisters to put my living room back the way it was." And Uncle Tony did exactly that.... and his sisters moved everything back to their original positions..... and Aunt M set the kitchen table for lunch and then smilingly told everyone "Lunch is served!"
Uncle Tony and Aunt M had two sons, my cousins T and D. When we were all kids, we would have holiday dinners at the "children's table" in the kitchen, with me and T being in charge of the younger kids, because we were the two oldest in that generation of cousins. When we all played games in the indoor front porch at my grandparents' house, it was T who would turn out the porch light and tell ghost stories, scaring all of us just enough so that we were sitting on the edge of our seats, but not frightening us to the point that we wanted to run out of the porch.
In the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, cousin T joined the Marines..... and just as the family worried about his father serving in the Marines during World War II, my grandmother began lighting candles and saying prayers again for her grandson. I can still remember cousin T walking into Grandma's kitchen in his Marine uniform for the first time..... my grandmother sat down and cried, and my grandfather said "You look just like your father did in The Big War."
My grandfather's dream was to have a home filled with sons who would go into the family business of house-building, concrete, brick-work. Uncle Tony was the only son who even came close... he was an expert carpenter and could make anything out of wood. If you wanted something built in your house, you called Tony to do it..... my aunts would just explain what they wanted and then walk away, confident that the finished job would be right, would be perfect. Uncle Tony always said "Do it once, and do it right, or don't even do it at all." He was so proud of everything that he designed and built, and he had a sense of respect for fine wood.
Uncle Tony was always "the fun uncle." He believed that if you didn't have fun in this life, then what was the point of living in the first place. Tony played ball with his sons, went to all of their sports games, watched baseball and football on television, and he was a champion bowler on a prize-winning team. It was either in the 1960s or the 1970s that Uncle Tony won a brand new Chevrolet when he bowled a perfect 300 game, and he was so very proud of that accomplishment. Uncle Tony bowled for years, and stayed a team member until it was clear to him that he couldn't bowl as well as he used to because of his age. "When your score starts to hurt the team, it's time to quit," he told us.
Just as Uncle Tony was the first of my grandparents' children to move out of Queens (all the way out to Islip, Long Island), he was also the first of the family to move out of New York state. When Uncle Tony and Aunt M retired from their jobs, their plan was to move west, to Arizona. The rest of the family didn't believe him. "You're not going anywhere!"--- that's what they kept telling him. Even when Tony and M arranged for the moving van, the family still didn't believe they would go through with the move. The family told him: "You were born in New York... you need to stay in New York." Uncle Tony asked the family to show him the book where that rule was written down, and then he said "Where my wife goes, I go. Period."
Tony and M did indeed move to Arizona, and within a few years, their two sons and their families were also living out west. Their very close-knit family unit was back together under the Arizona sun, and the rest of the family back in Queens and on Long Island were shaking their heads in disbelief.
My aunts and uncles (those who never left New York) don't get on planes very often, if at all. Uncle Tony kept asking everyone to come out and visit them in Arizona. Except for my dad, who flew out there once with me, not one of Tony's other brothers or sisters ever made the trip.
Uncle Tony and his family thrived out in Arizona. Their two sons have children, and those children now have children, making my cousins T and D grandfathers. I still shake my head in wonder that most of my generation of cousins who once sat at Grandma's "children's table" are now grandparents.
My Uncle Tony passed away in 2011... he was in his mid-80s, and my Aunt M misses him every day, every day. When Uncle Tony died, his plan was not to have a long and sad "Italian wake." He wanted his family to be happy, to go out for dinner, to remember all the good times and not be sad over his passing. Of course, everyone was sad over his passing, but we all certainly remembered the good times we had with him. Uncle Tony loved dogs and cats, and his pets over the years were very much loved and pampered. Instead of sending flowers when Uncle Tony died, I went to the local supermarket and bought as many bags and cans of dog food and cat food that would fit into the trunk of my car. I drove straight to the local animal shelter in town and donated it all, in my Uncle's name. I know that would have made him smile.
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