110 years ago today my grandmother was born in Union Springs, NY. She did not have an easy life. Her family was challenged by a number of issues: it appears her dad liked to drink, her mom suffered and died when she was three, and she spent some rather difficult years in an orphanage. Eventually she and her siblings moved out, and she met the man of her dreams, my grandfather.
Neither of them went beyond 8th grade. Gramps was 26, “Non” (Grandma) was 17, and they were married on June 30, 1924. Family lore has her quite close to her in-laws, which is interesting to ponder. She for sure didn’t speak much German, and they did not speak much English. Yet as far as I can tell, Gramps’ mom taught her to cook, both of her in-laws lived with her in their dying years, in short, they were close.
Somehow Non convinced Gramps to move away from the farm, certainly a major opus, as Gramps loved farming and the family homestead in Henrietta. They moved to Mt. Vernon Ave., into St. Boniface, the parish were many from Fulda, Germany (also the home town of her in-laws), had settled, and Gramps began working in construction. From the few surviving pictures from that time, they were very happy, Rochester was growing, and their future looked bright.
It was about 11º F and there was snow on the ground on Tuesday, January 11, 1927, and Gramps left the house to work in Irondequoit. I remember Gramps talking about that day. Apparently he was setting blasting caps, someone didn’t call a warning, and the blast was set off. What he didn’t share a lot about is how he and Non put their lives together afterwards.
My grandmother carefully built an elaborate ecosystem around first her husband and later her daughter to both ease daily life and surround them with as many people as possible that knew them as friends and members of a close-knit community. This is a bit hard to explain in today’s world…
The area surrounding Gregory Street, and achored by St. Boniface Church, was a working class nieghborhood orginally built by German immigrants but rapidly expanding to include Irish and other working class groups. It is hard to explain how tightly knit neighborhoods were back then. People lived in the same place for far longer than today. They knew each other very well (sometimes this caused problems), yet the sense of community and belonging is difficult to find today.
Non found a home where her family was safe and comfortable, owned by people that she nurtured a careful friendship with for the rest of her lives, people we knew as Uncle Clem and Auntie Jo (Josephine), and there were significant family and friends within walking distance, including Gramps’ siblings (Aunt Fran and Aunt Rosie), lifelong friends from the area, store and shop owners, it was all within walking distance.
My mother and grandfather were, in other words, “homies.” While the rest of the world saw a blind man and his (blind) daughter as handicapped, out of the norm, and somewhat stigmatized, around St. Boniface, they were known and accepted as a normal part of everyday life. Sighted people spoke to Gramps so he knew were they were and could recognize their voices. Neighbors, priests, nuns, local entrepreneurs, did not think of them as anything other than part of that neighborhood’s life. They belonged. This ecosystem, this community, was my grandmother’s magnum opus. She turned tragedy into something that worked, into something seen as natural, and she made it seem effortless, though as I grow older I strongly suspect it was not as effortless as it seemed.
On March 8, 1965, Dylan released The Times They Are A-Changin.’ Indeed they were. The summer before that song, July of 1964, race riots changed Rochester forever, starting a process of white flight and urban decay that seriously wounded the neighborhood St. Boniface once anchored. The vets returning from Vietnam and, with them, the heroin and drug trade, added to the deterioration. On November 19, 1965, ten days after the Great Northeast Blackout, doctors told our grandmother she had cancer, and she left us on on November 9, 1966.
Happy Birthday, Non, may you rest in peace, and may we never forget your magnum opus.