My Father Would Have Been 100

My father and grandmother – Easter 1943

My father would have been 100 years old on Thursday.

Not my grandfather or great-grandfather; my father.

He never made it to 57. I received a phone call in the middle of a cold January night from my youngest brother with the news that Poppa had passed. I had just seen him at Christmas.

Poppa and I had our differences but we made our peace that Christmas. My wife and I were expecting our first child after ten years of marriage. Poppa would pass in less than a month and baby Daniel Jason would pass as well in June; 1973 was not a very good year.

My father Domenico was born on January 12th, 1917, the youngest of five children of Italian immigrants Francesco and Laura who arrived in this country in 1906. He was born at home in a cold water flat on Broome Place in lower Manhattan.

I never knew he was born at home until I obtained a copy of his birth certificate. I never knew his given name was Domenico. Everyone called him Danny.

Francesco previously had three children from his first marriage to Antonia in Italy. Antonia died and the widower with three children began courting my grandmother Laura while planning to go to America. Would a young woman be interested in marrying a man with three children and leaving her home and family for good for a new life and adventure?

I have no idea how Laura made her decision or indeed if she made the decision herself. They married in November 1905 and Francesco left for America with his oldest boy in January 1906. Laura followed with the other two children in March.  They never saw Italy again although Laura’s sister would follow with her husband several years later.

They had five more – my father Domenico was the youngest.

As a young man Danny was quite good looking in that Italian sort of way. Slender, muscular and dark with a pencil mustache.

Danny had only one problem. He had epilepsy.

He had been hit by a car as a child while riding his bicycle and suffered a head injury. At least that is what I have been told by people who would know. Maybe it is true. Maybe not.

Epilepsy was something one never talked about in those days.

Ever.

The general attitude of people at the time was (a) its hereditary – or worse – contagious ; (b) it was associated with “feeble mindedness” and violence and (c) many thought those with epilepsy needed to be institutionalized.   Our family always feared the state health department.

Eugenics was all the rage in America. Many states would not permit those with epilepsy to marry. Missouri was the last to repeal this law in 1980!. Blood banks wouldn’t take your blood until 1987. Employers would fire you after the first seizure on the job. General practitioner physicians had little to offer you and patients were afraid they would be reported to the health department.

Danny had to leave school after the 8th grade because of the disease. No epileptics allowed.

I was twelve years old the first time I saw my father seize. It was the first time I saw him cry because it happened in front of me.

My mother warned me not to breathe a word of it to anyone – not to my friends, not at school, not to my younger brothers.

During the depression dad joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. There was no work for an Italian with an 8th grade education. It seemed like a good idea. He was sent to California to work at Yosemite – and then sent home after a seizure.

He was of course unfit for military service when war came. I had often wondered while growing up why Poppa wasn’t in the war – seemed that eveyone’s father was in the war.

By this time he had married my mother, Mary. She had lived across the street with her 4 brothers and sisters. Her mother died and the State in it’s wisdom would not permit an Italian immigrant with no wife to raise five children. She was sent to an orphanage run by the Benedictines  in Manhattan..

When she turned 18, high school diploma in hand, she had to leave the orphanage so she returned home with her little suitcase.  She never went to church again.

Her father, my maternal grandfather had remarried and was not interested in taking his grown children in – even temporarily. My mom had a few bucks, no job and couldn’t drive. My father’s mother, Grandma Laura took her in off of the streets when she saw her sitting on the curb.

Romance blossomed between Mary and Danny..

After a few months however Laura put her foot down. Mary’s baby sister, my aunt T, still alive, bless her, tells me Laura would not have the neighbors talking about her family. Laura made it clear to Danny – marry her or Mary will have to leave the house. Laura couldn’t have a single woman living in the same apartment permanently, especially when the girl’s father lived across the street. Danny asked. Mary accepted.

So on November 25, 1941 Domenico and Mary married at St. Bernadette’s R. C. Church, where I would be baptized and eventually married myself.

My father at my First Communion party – circa 1950.  I always thought he looked like Chuck Berry.  His older brother Angelo is to his right playing air guitar.  My youngest brother Nicholas in the foreground.  Everyone is long gone.

Danny now had responsibilities. The primary issue was how to make a living.

He had no education. He had no health insurance nor the money to see a neuro-specialist. Our local Italian pharmacist gave him Dilantin and Phenobarbitol without prescription which poppa took everyday. Many times as a kid I picked up his drugs. Nobody would suspect a kid.

Eventually he got a job; the only job he could get; a job as a common laborer, pushing a wheel barrow eight hours a day for an Italian owned construction company. A few months after starting work he joined the union. He carried cement and mortar from the mixers to the brick layers. Nothing but brawn and sweat. No brains required. No thinking required. Just the labor of a poor man with a wife and eventually three kids. His bosses knew he had epilepsy.

He did the work everyday his working life. He went to work rain or shine. If it rained he came home. You didn’t get paid when you didn’t work. Many weeks in Winter he had no work.

Union membership came with health benefits. He got his epilepsy under reasonable control – I only saw him have two more seizures all of his life.

When we needed a bigger apartment with the birth of my youngest brother we rented a small house. Several years later the owner wanted it for his own son. We moved.

Mom and dad in front of our house on Bay 53rd Street – circa 1957.  The ghost behind the door is me.

Poppa was able to buy us a two bedroom “bungalow” on the fringes of Coney Island – on a dirt street. I slept on a Castro Convertible in the living room while my two brothers shared a tiny bedroom in bunk beds.

Poppa paid $5,000 for the house. The former owners held the mortgage privately. It wasn’t much of a house even by standards of the day but we always had a roof over our heads and food on our table and serviceable clothes to wear. We always had the necessities of life. No vacations. No fancy car – a ’51 blue Chevy. Hand me down clothes. But we were never hungry or homeless.

Poppa never earned more than $10,000 in any year his entire life. Most years it was more like $7,000 – 8,000.

He was able to shelter, clothe and raise a family on what he was able to earn himself. Mom was always home for us. He was paid a living wage for his sweat. The owners still made plenty of money as did their competitors, the Trumps who also were building low-mid rise apartment buildings all over Brooklyn and Queens. Donald Trump’s father paid union wages and still left a fortune of $400 million to Donald and his siblings.

And he was able to make his way in the world only because he was a union man. He had a dignity and pride in his work and would point out apartment buildings and projects that he had worked on if we passed them on a Sunday drive.

He never considered his work demeaning or of no consequence – his sweat mark is still everywhere in Bensonhurst and Flushing. His work had a dignity of its own because a union wage allowed him to care for those he loved.

He never felt like a slave. He was a worker and was never ashamed of what he did or what he was. And he knew what he was. He wasn’t “middle class” or “white collar”. He had no way to make a living but to sell his labor. He knew he was a worker and in solidarity with all others who had no accumulated wealth to live on. But because he earned a living wage he had dignity.

It was all he ever wanted. A fair wage, a little house, an education and a future for his children; a comfortable old age.

He could look forward to a union pension when he retired as well as social security. He never made it. He died at 56 from emphysema – probably from all of those years breathing in cement dust.

My youngest brother passed over ten years ago. My remaining brother and I wound up bankers and Wall Streeters – but we never forgot from whence we came – and all the others now making the same journey.

A living wage gives dignity to work and to the men and women who toil at those “menial” jobs. It gives them the self respect to look you in the eye without shame, knowing they too can care for their own. If you can support your family or support yourself on what you earn, the job is no longer by definition “menial”

This nation will not live up to its ideals until all within her jurisdiction can obtain basic medical care. All within her jurisdiction receive adequate nourishment; all within her jurisdiction have shelter; all receive a quality education. And all who work full time receive a living wage.

Don’t say we don’t have the money. We know where the money is.

So happy birthday Poppa wherever you are – kiss Momma, Nickie, Daniel and Michael for me. And give the love of my life Joann a special hug.

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