findingphilblog

My Mom handed me a small, brown wallet, clasp tantalizingly closed as if its owner had just placed it on the nightstand.

“I figured you’d want this,” she said, “It was Aunt Mary Vee’s.”

Mary “Vee,” my great-aunt, Mary Venezia, was the last link to Grandpa Phil, Great-Uncle Joe, and their parents. She had the clearest memories of nearly all their shared tragedies as the oldest. And by the time she died at 73, she’d outlived her parents and siblings, despite a congenital hip defect and tuberculosis that settled in her bones with spine-twisting ferocity.

I say nearly because, in 1920, Mary’s destiny diverged from her brothers’. When they were pulled, sick and starving, from Pasquale’s hovel in Pittock, Phil and Joe went into Allegheny County’s rudimentary foster care system while Mary was sent to the Sewickley Fresh Air Home. A cross between Shriner’s Hospital and St. Jude’s, it provided care to children 14 and younger, mostly with polio, tuberculosis, and orthopedic complications. Someone — possibly Mary’s caseworker Camilla Barr — was looking out for her and negotiated 15-year-old Mary a place there, paid for by the county.

Despite having her family and heritage severed repeatedly, Mary saved pieces of her fragmented past with tender, orderly ferocity. She preserved the only photograph of Francesco and Severina, Francesco’s memento mori pin, and her baby picture.

With an archivist’s practiced eye, I unclipped the wallet’s slim band.

My Dad’s face, forty years younger, stared back from a pair of newspaper clippings announcing promotions at Pittsburgh National Bank, followed by two of Dad’s business cards with elegant, Palmer-script notations indicating he was her emergency contact.

Next, to my surprise, was a photo of Joe and Phil. Taken the same day as another photo in my collection, I recognize the Brenckle farm lane in the background and conclude it was most likely after they’d returned from Bellaire. Their smiles are tighter, eyes shifting slightly left as if still on guard for danger. In faded pencil, Mary’d written on its back, “Phil and Joe in working clothes.”

Next came high school graduation photos of my Aunt Mary Ann and Joe’s children, Myrtle and Wayne; my cousin, Bryce, her first great-grand-nephew, at four months old.

Then, her social security (issued in 1970), health care (Blue Cross of Western PA), and voter registration (Republican) cards.

Finally, a small collection of strangers’ babies, graduation, and wedding photos. Every image, however, was marked with names, dates, and short descriptions. It was a reminder that Mary was not only a vital part of our family’s history but a sweet memory in so many others.

The 1951 Pittsburgh Press article about the Fresh Air Home noted that after healing, she’d remained there as a kindergarten teacher and was known to sit up nights holding the hands of new arrivals who missed their families.

Those little boys and girls remembered dear Miss Mary and wrote to her by the dozens over decades. At one point, we had a large bag filled with hundreds of black and white photos, clippings, and notes former Fresh Air residents sent. Babies, graduations, enlistments, and homecomings were all shared with the woman who’d been the friend they needed. I’d uncovered it in my parents’ closet at about age 10 and sifted through it endlessly. Several boys healed enough to be drafted into World War II. One sent photos from Eagle’s Nest, Berchesgarten, and several locations mentioned in Band of Brothers.

There were also photos of Mary and her Fresh Air friends having fun. After all, she was a young woman and emerged from three years of body casts with humor and an effervescent spirit. One letter preserved in the Bellaire stash included a note from Mary to Phil mentioning playing tricks on her doctor by stuffing newspaper in his shoes. Within the Fresh Air Home’s sprawling grounds, she strummed a ukelele, hosted little girls’ tea parties, and reenacted scenes from plays. Tragically, this cache fell victim to a basement flood and couldn’t be preserved, much like the Fresh Air Home itself.

Medicine and society moved from institutionalization to community care. The home shuttered in 1952, and Fresh Air’s wealthy benefactors gave Mary one final gift — a room at Friendship House, a genteel retirement home for upper-class ladies. However, her stay was contingent upon remaining mobile and self-reliant.

And for decades, she was. Until, one day, she wasn’t. The stately Sewickley Victorian, with her room on the top floor, was no place for a woman with severe spinal degeneration. A doctor convinced her surgery would save her mobility. Dad tried to talk her out of it, hearing chicanery’s quack a mile away. However, Mary, who’d fought valiantly for independence, decided to go down swinging. Complications predictably, fatally arrived.

Before she left this world, Mary learned my Mom was pregnant with me. She was overjoyed to know her favorite nephew, who looked so much like his father — the little brother she loved so much — would be a father himself. In a way, her precious, tiny collection of our family’s founding documents paved the way for all the research I conducted years later.

Mary, ever the teacher, also hid a final lesson in her tightly packed wallet. Its collection of family and friends reminds us that opportunities to treat others with kindness, mercy, respect, and love come to us all. Ripples of those choices reach untold generations, bearing memories that become blessings.

I owe my great-grandmother an apology.

For more than a decade, I’ve shaken my fist at her. What kind of mother makes the choices she did? How could she not know? Didn’t she see?

It took a global pandemic for me to realize that, for Severina Brescia, there were no choices. Choice implies agency and options. For Severina, there were only reactions to unfolding horrors, which, she hoped, would be the least bad thing.

Marry a neighbor? At least her children had a “father” with an income. Realize the new husband is an abusive jerk? Send the children to their uncle. At least they are with family.

She hoped all would be well, and it wasn’t. I wonder, in the agonizing month it took for her to die from “childbed fever” contracted during her fourth and final birth if she was cognizant enough to spend time on recrimination. I hope she didn’t; I’m sorry that more than 100 years later, I did.

I’ve always said that interpretations of this life-long research project would be re-evaluated in the face of new evidence. While no new facts have come to light, a broader emotional understanding has.

As COVID-19 spreads on a wave of governmental failure and fear, our family faced its own crossroads: Do my daughter and I shelter with my parents while my husband, a newspaper photojournalist, continues to serve his community?

There was no good answer.

What if we weren’t infected? Why part when we could be together, safe at home? Still, each day he returns from assignments, the 14-day exposure clock clicks over afresh.

Even worse, what if I was already infected? In leaving my house, would I infect my parents? How could I live with myself if I did that?

Finally, if I wasn’t sick and he wasn’t sick, and the wave of infections hadn’t crested, now could be the last chance for safety. At least, for Jillian and I. Maybe.

In the end, Jason’s grandfather helped us decide.

In 1911, as pogroms savaged Ukraine and Jews like Nathan Malmut were hunted down, Jason’s paternal grandfather slipped the borders and found passage on a New York-bound ship. Nathan had no way of knowing that he had just 18 months to get out of the country and bring his wife, Sarah, and their year-old son, Ben, to freedom. By 1912, they were reunited in America.

A tiny fragment of family, saved by a split-second decision in a sliver of time. The Malmuts, also had no choices — only reactions — chanced an ocean and the world that lay beyond. We like to romanticize immigration tales as if our ancestors made these leaps the same way we pick travel itineraries or pursue career moves to big cities. It’s a fallacy. As someone so succinctly put it during a more recent immigration wave: “No one puts their children in boats unless the water is safer than land.”

Invariably, the decision that saved Nathan, Sarah and Ben — and made the lives of Esther, Anna, Saul, and Jason’s dad, Bruce (born Seymour) possible — came with bitter knowledge. Between the first and second World Wars, the Jews of Kakhovka, Ukraine, bore witness to mass executions. Wikipedia offers information about blood-libel cases and expulsions before World War I here. Yad Vashem has a history of its existence during World War II here. Though we have not discovered their names, it is almost certain some of Jason’s blood relatives perished in these atrocities.

That said, a viral epidemic is not a holocaust. What we, as a nation, are being asked to do pales in comparison to what was imposed upon impoverished, hunted people in the face of war and extreme human rights violations.

Still, by drawing strength from the stories of our ancestors, our family was able to do the one thing Severina Brescia and Nathan Malmut couldn’t: Make a choice. So, for now, we live apart, hoping every day for a speedy reunion.

Severina faced widowhood with a deceased mother, a father a continent away and three brothers, each as hapless as the next. It was her, 2,000 bucks and a lifetime of decisions for which she was not equipped emotionally, legally or economically.

So, Severina, across the ages, I am sorry. Sorry I judged you so bitterly. Sorry I couldn’t see through my own privilege. I am staring into history myself. My husband and I are making choices we hope are the right ones. We pray they can save our family. I hope, wherever you are, you can forgive me.

When you live in a house with two artists, crazy ideas routinely unfurl. That’s when one of us turns to the other and shrugs: “You can’t wrestle if you don’t weigh in.”

Well, after almost 13 years of research and five years of writing, it was time. Heart in my throat and Hamilton‘s “My Shot” roaring in my ears, I took Grandpa’s story to the annual Pennwriters convention. It was, in all places, Pittsburgh. On the same weekend I’d already booked an Italian genealogy course at Heinz History Center. A course led by — gasp — a man named Rich Venezia (who was wonderful and, sadly, no relation.) Surely, fate was on my side.

And it seemed, for a moment, like it was. I pitched two agents. Both enthusiastically asked for pages. A lot of them. This was it, I thought. All those years of work, and I’ll bang it out the same way I did Jeopardy! — nailing the audition on the very first try.

To quote the marvelous Julia Sweeney — God said Ha.

A pitch, a swing and a miss. The first agent said no thanks. The concept was fascinating. There was the little problem, however, of not having developed it well enough. She was sweet and wonderful and absolutely professional in every way. She invited me to re-pitch if I reworked it. This is more than generous.

The two-page critique at the conference, and then a critique group a month later all coalesced to a single truth: I was not as ready as I thought. I’m not going to reach out to the second agent until I am.

Oddly enough, it was Jillian who convinced me not to. When I told her things hadn’t worked out, I asked her “What do you think, baby? Should mommy send her story, or wait and make it better.”

With guileless eyes, she stared into my soul and said “make it better, Mommy.” Who can argue with that? Plus, if this adventure taught me anything, it’s that slowing down can sometimes make everything move faster a bit later. So, now it’s time to take my time — something that is never easy.

Speaking of easy, Jason likes to remind me of another truth. If it was easy, everyone would do it.

So instead of reaching Everest, I’ve tumbled all the way back to the Kathmandu airport, pack in hand, wondering if I’m nuts to even try such a thing.

So, I do what I always do. I buy more books.

Fix Your Story. The 2019 Writer’s Market. Pull out the books on self-editing I borrowed from Valerie years ago. Because I made the cardinal mistake many new, aspiring authors do — thinking that a great true story and mastery of other styles translates to literary success. It very, very rarely does. Like letting go of all my journalism hang-ups so I could learn to write for business, I’m reaching for a new editorial horizon. 

Sometimes, the questions seem insurmountable. I could take the story this way. Or that. What is right? No one can tell me. It is trial and error upon error upon error. It is not for the faint of heart.

But my heart’s pretty good. It stands in the place of Phil’s broken one.

At the very least, I’m always telling Jillian it’s the effort that matters. In the words of one her favorite songs (from the movie Trolls) “if you knock/knock/me over/I will get back up again.” What’s true for a five-year-old is surely true for her 41-year-old mom, right?

Still writing, still revising. But in the meantime, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has given me a beautiful gift — a glimpse inside the now-abandoned Our Lady Help of Christians. It’s sad to see something that was such a vital part of the community come to ruin like that. But the photography here shows how grand the church must have been. It’s even easier to imagine, now, what it was like when my great-grandparents walked under those arches. How my grandfather and his siblings must have strained their necks to look at the stained glass windows or follow the shadow of the sun across the pillars.

Miss Kitty sez: why u re-research this stuff? U been reading these articles for years! Why ur book no done?   

It was the last thing we opened.

Cast carelessly next to our fireplace, it was tied with a simple red and white ribbon. The pair of scrapbooks had nearly been overlooked; but then I picked them up.

“What’s this?” I asked.

My Aunt Mary Ann stood up.

“I have to tell you the story,” she began. Hasn’t it always, in the 10 years of this quest to uncover my Grandpa Phil’s life, begun that way?

A few months ago, Nancy, Anna Mae’s oldest daughter, was cleaning out her home in Hatfield. Nancy was our host at the summer gathering that reunited the Brenckle and Brenckle/Venezia branches all those years ago. As she dug through her attic, she uncovered a packet of letters.

They were letters from my Grandpa Phil, and letters addressed to him. There were letters from Aunt Mary to her brothers.

They were, Mary Ann said, the answer to so many mysteries.

Thousands of hours of research could have never uncovered what was hiding in Nancy’s attic all these years. And now here they were — in the two purple-covered scrapbooks. They were mine (and my dad’s) because, well, they just had to come back home.

As Mary Ann unspooled her tale, I stared — open-mouthed and wide-eyed. I hadn’t realized how hard I’d hugged the books until I saw the groves in my arms. All I knew was that I felt, for a minute, as if I was hugging Grandpa, too.

When I opened the pages, the past was finally revealed. The letters, about a dozen in all, begin in April 1923 — just a short four months after the Brenckle fire and the trial surrounding it — and end just after the holidays in 1924.

The very first letter provides the answer to a thousand questions. Postmarked from Bellaire, Ohio, it is definitive proof that the boys were sent to live with their uncle, Ottavio — aka, the Uncle in Ohio, aka The Evil Uncle. The subsequent letters reveal him as the uncle who abused them and denied them basic love, affection and possibly food. Pasquale may have had problems, but the person who failed was undeniably Ottavio.

The first letter, addressed “Dear Mother” to Myrtle Brenckle, twists my heart in its earnestness. Phil speaks fondly of his memories of the farm and all the people there. He asks for the family (who had a farm in Hartville not too far from Bellaire) to come to visit. And, tantalizingly, there is this line: “I am glad you told Marion what I said.” There’s no indication in any of the other letters what that message was, but the way it’s written — just pushes me to believe that the conclusions I’ve drawn about her are accurate. And he closes it with two rows of Xs (hugs) for Anna Mae and Buddy.

The rest of the letters detail an amazing set of circumstances that, given their sheer incredibility, are leaving me wondering if I should include them in my book. I’ll just say that the many, many thoughts I had about how Grandpa’s life unfolded in the months after the fire are accurate.

The letters also give a peek into the relationship among the siblings. I’m tickled to see how accurately I’ve portrayed it. In one letter, Mary razzes her brothers for their less-than-stellar penmanship suggesting that she give them Palmer Method lessons as she does the little children she teaches at the Fresh Air Home.

“You won’t be afraid to write me now,” she asks. And closes the letter by asking “I haven’t hurt your feelings, have I?”

She advises Joe against running away (though I’m not sure if it’s from the Brenckles or their uncle). She thanks Phil for sending money and, over and over, wishes that they would visit and write more often. Phil’s letters to others give a small hint that the issue was not that he was unwilling, but that he lived with a guardian who refused to perform the most basic functions of family.

By the one-year anniversary of the devastating fire, the boys are safely ensconced as Brenckles, having been formally adopted in October of 1923.

As I wrote the first draft of my book, I felt as if there were times I wasn’t writing fiction so much as letting the truth filter through me. Well, these letters have me believing even more strongly that the forces that guided my pen weren’t just my over-active imagination.

Some might say that it’s just logical hypotheses, based on thorough research. But for me? I think it was a whole lot more than that.

I’ve been down in the dumps a bit, thinking how I could never get this manuscript to where I need it to be.

But these letters, they’re a sign. One more little nudge from Grandpa asking me to please keep going. This story matters. HIS story matters. And it matters to so many more people than just the dozen gathered around our Christmas tree.

So thank you, Aunt Mary Ann, for a gift that has no price but uncountable value. Thank you, Nancy, for pausing long enough to wonder if we would like to have these letters.

And, of course, thank you, Grandpa, for reaching out to once again take my hand and remind me family is the greatest gift of all.

I miss you. I miss Grammy something fierce. But I know you are together, and that you are with us all still.