Happy Groundhog Day Everyone!
If my paternal Grandmother was still alive she'd be 112 years old today.
Here she is with my oldest brother when he was a couple weeks old in December of 1951. This is one of the oldest photos of have a her and she is 42 year old in it.
I sure wish I had some photos of her when she was younger. She must have been a "looker" then to have attracted her first husband, my paternal Grandfather.
Born in Cambridge Massachusetts to Irish immigrants, she survived the Spanish flu Pandemic as a child, World War I, was a flapper in the 1920's outside of Boston and then in Manhattan, married for the first time in 1928(and she didn't invite her own father to the wedding), had my father in 1931, then my only aunt in 1934.
Her husband went out for a pack of cigarettes in 1941 and never returned leaving her destitute with a 10 year old and a 6 year old to support and raise in Brooklyn, NY.
She moved to Norfolk Virginia in the late 1940s after World War II, found a new husband and married him in North Carolina in 1949 at 40 years old. He was 7 years older than her and worked for a tug boat company in Norfolk. My Step Grandfather Dave, died of a heart attack on board a ship waiting to pass through the Suez Canal in 1966 after 17 years of marriage, leaving Granny a widow at the age of 57.
Christmas in 1962 with Granny at our house in Norfolk,
Granny soldiered on, selling their brick home in Virginia Beach and moving across the street from my family and then into a duplex down the street from us at the end of the street in the Portlock section of South Norfolk(now Chesapeake), VA.
Granny eventually moved back to Massachusetts to be near her daughter(my Aunt)and my Aunt's children, 2 of whom were younger than me and my older brothers. She got a job working for Wang Laboratories one of the early computer labs, making word processor parts in Tewksbury MA. We didn't see her often after she moved, only for special occasions like when my brother's graduated from High School. The last time I saw Granny was in 1979 when I worked in Summer Stock in Maine, my Aunt picked me up at a bus station in Boston and took me to her apartment for a visit before she drove me onward to my destination in Maine.
Granny retired in the 1970's and died the Fall after I graduated from college in 1981 at the age of 72. I so grateful I was home from college and was living in Virginia Beach with my mom so I got to attend the funeral. Granny is buried in Virginia Beach, VA next to her husband Dave Paul and most every trip back to the area I pay a visit to them both at the cemetery.
She taught me what it was to be a strong woman, who didn't take crap from anyone. No nonsense and she spoke her mind without much of a filter(so that's where I get THAT from!). lol One of her favorite sayings(one of the few that I can repeat here since she swore like a sailor at times)was she would ask you, "Have you got a hat? Her reply was always, Then go shit in it!"
She loved her kids and grandkids(and you knew it)but she wasn't much for coddling any of us because she knew life was hard and you had to be tough to survive.
She loved her Pall Mall cigarettes, her Pepsi Cola(never Coke!), Mrs. Fanning's Bread and Butter Pickles with her sandwich at lunch, Coffee, JFK(she had a Kennedy ashtray and a JFK commemorative trash can), and playing Bingo almost every night of the week when I was very small at various venues-- Catholic, Jewish, Protestant or Non-Denominational, it didn't matter your religious affiliation when it came to Bingo. She babysat me often so I learned my numbers and alphabet in part from those evenings in the bingo hall with her.
Thanks Granny for having a positive influence on my life!
Happy Birthday!
Sluggy
