I came from her

Anthony and Josephine Circa 1915

My Maternal Great-Grandmother was the embodiment of resilience. She was put on a donkey in Corleone, Sicily (where the movie Godfather was set), by her Father who walked next to her the whole way to Palermo. There she was put on a sailboat and sent to America to live with a cousin.  The hopes and dreams of that entire family rested on a child of 14, who was educated and spoke perfect English.  The Mafia had taken their olive groves and forced them into one room in their home. They knew they had to leave there and make a life for themselves in America where the streets were paved in gold.

She came to America, worked, and saved.  She got papers for the whole family to join her in America. Letters back and forth carried a picture of her family that she loved and missed more than anything. That is when she saw her, this child could be no more than 3 years old. Her mother had another child but had not told her.  She was devastated. She could not get them all here to America at once. It would be in two trips. The family would have split up for over one year until the paperwork for her youngest sibling could be secured.  It would be  1910 and then 1911 when the rest of them arrived.

She worked in a cardboard factory in Long Island City, where she met Anthony who always called her Pina as her given name was Giuseppina. The rest of America called her Josephine. They married and had a brick home built on 49^th Avenue in Corona, New York which is part of Queens. The home had a second-floor apartment where her siblings would live at first when they got married, and then later some cousins.

Josephine was all business, yet she was gentle with her family. She held mortgages for people during the Depression and beyond. A true testament to her life was after her death people still came to the house and made bi-weekly payments to her children. She was a phenomenal seamstress who worked for a man who thought she worked without her husband’s knowledge.  Truth be told she told him that fib because every Summer she spent in Rockaway on the beach in a rental home with all of her siblings and their children.  She would do that for many years.

She had three children, my Nanny  Sadye (born Sozia), Connie (born Concetta), and John.  There were 2 years between the daughters and 10 years between Nanny and Johnny. Connie married Charlie and together they had 3 children.  She and her husband built a house a very short distance away. Unfortunately, after her youngest was born she got cancer. After only four years she passed away. In the interim Anthony who cried every day for the suffering he watched his daughter go through died in his sleep of a massive heart attack.  She had to have surgery to remove her palate, part of her jaw, and an eye. She was a beautiful woman and cancer was taking her beauty from her.

Josephine lost her husband and her daughter in a very short time.  Yet she persevered, she continued to find joy in her children and grandchildren. When my Grandmother Sadye(Nanny) married my Grandfather Frank Marrone (Poppy), Josephine split her huge apartment in half giving her kitchen up. Poppy built her a huge kitchen in the basement and built her storage for all of her canned goods. When Anthony passed away the apartment on 2^nd floor was cut in half and 2 apartments were made upstairs. That is how Sadye met Frank.  A couple along with their small daughter moved upstairs in one of the apartments.  The wife came from a large family on Mott Street in NYC. She had a handsome younger brother who helped her and her family move into the apartment.  The rest as they say is history.

Josephine’s youngest sibling and her husband purchased a summer home on Long Island in Rocky Point. She loved to go there. Then another sibling did the same.  She talked Nanny and Poppy into purchasing one as well. By this time my Mom, Suzanne was 15 years old.  It was an old summer cottage that Poppy spent an entire year rebuilding. At the beginning of the summer, Josephine passed away from a heart attack after being on the beach with my Mom. Although they went home and called for the doctor he did not rush over to see that she was so ill.  Instead, it was many hours before he showed up and by then it was too late.

I never met Josephine, although Nanny used to say that I was exactly like her. From the way I loved to cook, I would be intently watching Nanny as she cooked, and trying every recipe. Telling stories and talking pictures, keep memories alive for generations to come. There are no less than 30 photo albums that were Nanny’s. After all of these years, I can still tell the people and their stories just by looking at a picture. Out of those books, more than half of them are from before I was born.

Although I never met her, I knew her because Nanny never let her memory go. All of those people in those photos and their stories still live inside of me. That is who I am and where I came from. I am a storyteller and a writer.  I hope you will follow along for more stories.