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In search of my grandfather's past … and maybe a book deal

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Hold my Hand

I woke up smiling, because I never expected to meet him there.

My Grandpa Phil died 14 years before I was born. Unlike my Grammy Helen, Grandpa and Grandma Krajenke, he and I had no shared experiences that might cause my sleeping subconscious to toss up a memory disguised as a dream.

Which makes what happened last night all the more magical.

I love all my grandparents. In the years since their passing, I’ve met them again in the oddest, but always joyous, moments. An unexpected whiff of Opium perfume that appeared from nowhere (Hi, Doris!); a crystal-clear, post-meditation vision of my tanned, grinning Grandpa Richard, waving from a swimming pool; Grammy sending me pennies in unexpected places and dream notes. Even my excellent Uncle Rick, who died too early in 2007, nudged me over the radio with a song by his beloved Beatles on or near the anniversary of his passing. But over the 20 years of working on “Three Rivers Home,” I’d come to understand that Grandpa Phil likely wouldn’t appear in my dreamscapes because he’d been sadly absent from my childhood.

Until last night, which coincidentally happened to be the 103rd year since the morning he awoke to the horrors of the Brenckle Farm Fire.

It was the first time, ever, that I dreamed of Grandpa Phil. In that distant kingdom, he was hale, hearty, and healthy. I’ve never heard his voice, but when he spoke, I was sure it was true — Pittsburghese, tinged with an Italian-American childhood. I don’t remember much, other than being so excited to see him. We were in the Pittsburgh of today, a modern world of autonomous vehicles on Grant Street and the PPG building ascending, in all its chrome-shining glory, to the sky. The city, compressed in that dream-like way, made the Kaufmann’s Clock intersection across the street from PPG Place.

More than anything, I wanted to bring him home, to the house he built, where, in my dream, I knew my cousins, brother, mom, dad and aunt waited with Grammy. “Let’s tell her!” the dream me said. “She’s going to be so excited.”

And then, as we prepared to cross the street, he took my hand. My last thought before waking was, “I can’t believe it! I’m holding Grandpa’s hand.”

I awoke. It was 3 a.m. I chuckled softly in the darkness, exhaling the surprised thrill I’d drawn in the dream.

This, like the Christmas letters, the photo or the dozens of little twinkling outposts of hope along the way, serves as a sign — to me, anyway — that those we love never truly leave us, even if that love transcends mortality.

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Apologia

Severina

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.

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Philip Leo, Filippo Arturo

He would have been 110 today.

There are a lot of assumptions in that sentence. That he would have made it this long. That he’d be one of those knobby-kneed Italian men, drinking wine and toasting his still-dark hair.

As it was, he got a bit more than half of that.

I watch my father with my little girl and I ache all over again for the hole in my life — and in his life, my aunt’s and Grammy’s — the combined negligence and abuse of Ottavio, Pasquale and Mike Natale created. For the bad luck of needing heart surgery just as effective modern techniques were being developed.

He had crazy strokes of good luck for so long. Luck he used to push his brother farther. His sister to more safety. His wife to a safe harbor of a loving man. To stay as long as he could for the children whose 1950s-era Baby Boom world he couldn’t understand, but loved just the same. Sometimes, I feel that luck has been passed down the way his chin has. I just wish a little had been left over for him.

But maybe, just maybe, he felt lucky to be where he was, just as he was.

I am so close to the end. I’d hoped to be done by now. I’d set a goal long ago to mark Grandpa’s 110th birth anniversary with a completed novel and open the search for an agent. But. Life gets in the way. Raising a child and working full time at a great and busy job gets in the way.

I get to thinking that I dip my toe into his world, and he lived it every day. I can take a break from it. He never did.

So. I course-correct. Re-commit to getting done, even if it means less sleep for a while. People have lived with worse.

The Bellaire chapters are hard. They are dark and angry and fraught with tension. Sometimes, I sit in front of my computer, hand to mouth, not wanting to write the next natural thought that proceeds from all the research I’ve done. There is hope, but I see, through the glass darkly, how far away it seemed.

So I turn to music to power through.

Lately, the two albums on heavy rotation have been the work of Broadway wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda. Hamilton, and the Moana soundtrack.

I choke back tears every time I hear the chorus of the closing song “Who lives, Who dies, Who Tells Your Story?” 

Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? 110 years past his birth, 53 years past his death, I am telling his story. I am making judgments about who is worthy of honor, and who fails at humanity. Are they right? Are they the same ones he would have made? I hope so. I keep remembering that these people are not characters. They were human beings, with complex lives that leave them neither damned sinners nor glorious saints. Except maybe you, Mike Natale. Except maybe you.

And then there’s Moana. The story of a girl who longs to know who she is. Who feels pulled by forces she doesn’t understand until she realizes that what she is isn’t weird. She’s exactly who she’s supposed to be. And the quest she goes on to find herself, it’s epic.

In a lot of ways, these ten years, they’ve been my quest. To fill in the missing pieces of three generations of souls. I know it’s folly to think I alone can bind wounds that were never mine to manage. Still, the words of the movie resonate. “And the call wasn’t out there at all; it’s inside me.” 

I almost don’t want all this writing and researching to end. In the movie, just when Moana is about to give up, her Grandma Tala appears. And I’m in tears again because not only does it remind me of Grammy, it makes me miss her so. I know that Phil is right there next to her. For 10 years, they’ve been right there. I got married. I had a baby. I changed jobs. There were times when I thought that what I was doing was stupid and a waste of time. That this will never see the light of day and even it if does, it won’t be good enough.

But.

I’ve spent 10 years in his company. 10 years knowing so much more about him than I did the day I put my head down on my desk in my miserable office in Pittsburgh and pulled it back up with his name ringing in my brain.

Over and over, his memory has raised my head and challenged me to live the life he started but never got to finish.

To quote another Hamilton lyric, “that would be enough.”

Because his name, Joe’s name, Mary’s name. They mean one thing. Love. I can’t speak for all families. I only know mine. But there’s a truth there. Love will come from somewhere. Family will come from somewhere. It can tear you apart, but it can also literally save your life. Phil’s blood betrayed him. A stranger held out hope and a hand. It changed the course of 10 lives and counting.

Over and over again, it’s come back to me.

Lin’s amazing, immortal pronouncement. A truth I see in 110 years of history.: Love is love is love is love.

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Eat! Eat!

Pierogies

It’s been a quiet few weeks as we adjusted to life in the aftermath of Valerie’s passing. It’s going to be a low-key Christmas, too.

Sometimes, when things are tough, it can help to keep up the traditions that bring back happy memories. For my family, it’s making pierogies.

This tradition comes from the Solvak side of my family. Grammy made them by hand every year for Christmas, Easter and anytime my dad had a special request. When circumstances kept us from coming home to Pittsburgh back in the late 1980s, my dad learned to make them.

Over the phone, my dad took down the “recipe” which was little more than a list of ingredients. Our first attempt turned out OK, if a little doughy.

But after that aberration, I was back to standing next to Grammy in her kitchen each Christmas and Easter, with my brother and cousins on “pinch patrol” to speed production. After she died, Dad and Mary Ann took over pierogi-making duties.

That worked, too, until the year my dad got sick. Someone had to make them for Easter, and I knew it had to be me.

I made them in the tiny kitchen of Jason and mine’s rented house. Now, you have to understand that I suck at cooking. The joke is I burned Cup O’Noodles because, well, I did. But when I get my hands in that sticky dough, it’s like I’m Julia Child. Or, at least, Helen Brenckle.

I’ve made them for our celebrations every year since. I’m grateful Dad’s still here to lend me a hand.

So wherever you are tonight, I hope you’re enjoying a family tradition of your own and that it brings you joy.

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Ziu Antonio

CarminaCapture
Grazia Carmina Giulia Venezia Pullano, Antonio’s daughter and first cousin to Phil, Joe and Mary. This is her wedding picture.

One of the most fun parts of writing the book has been connecting to relatives that I didn’t know I had. The Brescia brothers are an interesting lot to be sure, but I’m thrilled to have found the Venezia siblings, too.

My great-grandfather was one of three apparent children. Antonio was the oldest. Then came Teresa Sebastina. And, in what seems to be somewhat of a “surprise!” pregnancy, Francesco came along.

I owe this great bit of information to the incomparable Dina, who routinely goes to Sorbo’s main record halls to photograph records and managed to find the Venezias.

I also learned that it was very common for the folks from Sorbo San Basile to use their middle names, rather than their given first name. This most likely had to do with the Italian naming convention of male children being named for their grandfathers and female children for their grandmothers. It would get confusing after a while, I’m sure. All you have to do is remember the scene from ‘Goodfellas’ where Ray Liotta’s character is at his wedding and introducing his wife to all the cousins. So Antonio was, in reality, Giuseppe Antonio. And Francesco’s real name is Michele Francesco.

I can’t help but see that Saverina happened to marry a man who had the same first name as her deceased husband. Maybe that was her first mistake — to think the same name would equal the same type of person. Not all Michaels — or Laras or Philips or Jasons for that matter — are created equal.

And I also have come to find out why Antonio disappeared from the U.S. record. Antonio followed his little brother to America. He left behind a wife and five kids (yes — real Venezia relatives!!) to come to America. While here, he lived two doors down from Francesco and Saverina.

Antonio himself, sadly, would not live much longer than his brother. He died in 1918 back in Sorbo and is buried there. Of the five children, I have records for just two — the oldest and the youngest daughters. Each of them went on to have enormous families. Nearly 20 children between them.

I see so much of my grandfather’s story echoed in his father and uncle’s. Phil and Joe never lived more than a few miles apart, with the majority of their lives lived on the same street. As much as they could, Francesco and Antonio did, too. Because he was so much older, I imagine Antonio as perpetually amused by his little brother, but liberally dropping the “big brother” card if he had to. Perhaps this is far, far from the truth. But as I said before, I’ve taken a lot of liberties and fiction lets me. So why not consider Antonio from that angle, and hope that at least for a little while, Phil had more than one adult male he could look to for support?

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Questions answered

PhilandJoeonthefarmI just got back from the Brenckle Family Reunion. And oh boy, did I once again hit the motherlode.

So, to answer your question, yes, there’s a significant faction within the family that believes Howard Lager did get away with murder. And there were other concerns, as you can imagine, as well. Particularly with the female members of the family. No one had a definitive answer, though.  A few people thought they heard that Howard had gotten Marion pregnant and that was what the fight on the night of the fire was about.

There was also a rift, apparently, among the Brenckle siblings over the use of these farmed out children. A certain part of the family thought it was unethical and it got pretty heated.

But no one could say anything for certain, and because of that, I’m still wary of pinning criminal labels on anyone — even though you can’t defame the dead.

I shared all the stories I had, and also the research I’d done on the Brenckle family itself. I had copies of Raymond and Myrtle’s marriage license, census records for branches of the Brenckle family and a few odds and ends.

After dinner, we went down to the basement because they had a surprise for me.

“I thought you should have them,” they said as they handed over two envelopes of pictures.

If I was shocked by seeing my grandpa on the front page of the newspaper, these two envelopes shocked me even more.

The picture at the top of the page is Phil (right) and Joe (left) the summer after they came to the farm. This is the youngest I have ever seen either boy. Unless I stumble on a trove of baby pictures by a forgotten Venezia relative, it maybe as young as I get.

I look at their faces and I can see that they are happy. It makes my heart soar. They look like they are having a terrific time. After all they’ve been through, they’re in the summer sunshine, together, with clothes and shoes. Grandpa looks a little silly. I’ve seen my brother make that same face when he’s being goofy and someone’s trying to take his picture.

PhilonthefarmThis next one is just Phil with another one of the farmhands. It might even be Howard Lager. I think it kind of looks like him.

These pictures make me think again — if you’ve got dozens of kids passing through your farm just to do work, why take their picture? Why treat them like members of the family if you were just going to cast them out when the season was over? That wasn’t going to be my grandfather’s and great-uncle’s fate, it seems.

Joe's weddingThis next one cracks me up. Joe, even though he was the baby brother, was the first Venezia boy to get married. In 1932, he married Ruth Broglie. Joe, looking almost like a movie star, is on the left. Phil, on the right, was his best man. Awwwww.

I laugh because my dad looks like that in a tux. He stands the same way, with his hand at his side, fingers curled almost the same way. They look so Godfather. I’m not sure who the little girl or the maid-of-honor are. I’m also shocked to see how much both boys look like their parents. Joe is Francesco with Saverina’s eyes and forehead smoothed over the sharp edges. Phil is his mother, with his father’s thin face pulling what could be too round into a squarish-oval. Two more generations, and my face is what my Grammy always admiringly called “the perfect oval.” I never thought so, but I guess that meant something back in the day. 🙂

I’m full of good food and good memories now. I may not have concrete answers, but I have ideas. And as I think about writing the book, those ideas will surely guide my imagination.

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For Grammy

WeddingPicsGrammy Helen would have been 95 today. I am missing her something fierce because I wish I could share all these amazing discoveries with her.

So, instead, I’m posting this. When Jason and I got married, I carried my bouquet. But all the way into the church, I carried these. A picture of Grammy and Grandpa on their wedding day, along with a picture of my mom’s parents, Doris and Richard Krajenke. They were married on the fly in California just before my grandpa shipped out for World War II, so that picture is the closest we have.

The picture of Helen and Phil came from Mary Ann, along with a necklace. The necklace was made out of the only piece of Grammy’s trousseau to survive — a faux pearl earring. It was one of the best and most meaningful gifts I’d ever gotten in my life. And you can imagine the tears of two dozen women when I read the sweet note she included out loud at my bridal shower. It was awesome.

Before she was Mom or Grammy, she was Helen Dorothy Spock, born in Uniontown, Fayette County, to Slovak parents. Her father, John Spock, ran a general store that was a popular destination for recent immigrants. Her mother, Mary, raised the kids and sometimes worked the meat counter.

Helen was the middle of seven children. She never said so, but in the subsequent years I’ve learned her childhood was not exactly a happy one. But she was extremely smart. She graduated the valedictorian of her class in Uniontown.

She came to Allegheny County because her parents refused to send her any sort of secondary schooling. So she moved to Dormont to live with one of her sisters, who was already married. She found work at Donahoe’s Market as a checkout and stockgirl.

And guess who was working the produce section.

Funny story. Apparently, Grandpa used to like to tease Grammy before he got the courage to ask her out. The story goes that Grammy hated overripe bananas. She loved almost-green ones. So, on her break, Grammy used to go back to produce and Phil would give her a banana. “I saved the old ones for you. Just like you like,” he’d always say. And she’d get so mad because she’d had told him over and over that she didn’t.

And of course, he totally did remember. He just liked to see her get feisty and then have a chance to make up to her.

They got married in October of 1943.

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Answers

The long-awaited family reunion was a huge success.

Last weekend, my parents, Mary Ann and her husband Mike, Kristin, Bryce, me, Philip and Jason all made our way out to Hadley, PA, where Arnetta lives. Arnetta is the daughter of Anna Mae Brenckle, Raymond and Myrtle’s daughter.

It was funny for me because I looked at the Brenckles, who weren’t really all that different looking than all the rest of us (lots of dark hair, brown eyes, hearty appetites). But you could also see how the branch that belonged to “the Italian boys” (that’s how so many people remembered them, as “the Italian boys”)  was so different.

I met (or re-met) Brenckles of all ages. That was great, because I had several direct connections to people with clear memories of my grandfather — including Arnetta’s older sister.

As I sat with the two of them, another memory of the type of person my grandfather was floated up.

“I remember one time hearing a story from my mother,” Arnetta said. “From right after your grandparents got married. Your Grammy, bless her heart, she was so wonderful. But she didn’t know anything about running a house. Oh, none of us do when we get married. But she served dinner to your grandfather. And he said to her ‘Helen, look in my ear.’ All concerned, she starts looking in Phil’s ear and asking what’s the matter. ‘Do you see a noodle in there?’ he asks totally straight-faced. ‘No, Phil. I don’t.’ she says, totally serious. ‘Well, look again, because that’s the fourth time we’ve had chicken soup this week and I think the noodles are starting to come out of my ears.'”

I can feel the grin split my face. It’s nothing, really. No grand historic import to this story. But it’s an absolute lock on what kind of person my Grandpa Phil was. This was a man who grew up in an era, and possibly around people, who’d have knocked the pot out of Grammy’s hands and no one — not even her — would have thought it was wrong. But not only did he not treat her like that, his gentle humor made her not feel bad about herself. I wanted to hug him so bad. Heck. I wanted to hug Grammy again and laugh with her over the sweet memory she’d never seemed to find all those times I’d asked.

“Do you want me to bring down some pictures?” Arnetta asked.

I practically raced to the attic myself. The box held a bunch of loose photos and old frames. There were a lot of pictures we’d already had. The dapper picture of Grandpa in his 20s, straw boater in hand, dressed in a sharp gray suit. It’s a strange feeling, seeing “your” family picture in someone else’s house. But, obviously, they were family, too.

There were many others I hadn’t seen. Myrtle sitting on an upturned vegetable box at the stand on Smallman Street. Grandpa and Joe in coveralls, standing in front of a greenhouse they’d built. Promotional photos of the Brenckle farm trucks.

And onBrencklese picture that twisted my heart when I saw it. Phil and Joe in obviously-new suits, standing next to 8-year-old Anna Mae and 4-year-old Buddy, the Brenckles’ biological son.

“It must have been taken right after the adoption was finalized,” Arnetta said. Sure enough, another photo, of all the kids in the same clothes, standing in front of a large, black car on the Brenckle farm, seemed to verify it.

There were pictures of the old Brenckle farmhouse and the new. The old one burned down, but they rebuilt. One of the guys I met tonight lives there now.

“You know, guys, there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to know. Why?” I asked. “Why them?”

Arnetta and her sister explained that the Brenckles took in a lot of kids for farm work. They took in a lot of adults, too. It’s likely that their being as young, but as old, as they were at the time they came to the farm made them perfect candidates to watch Anna Mae and Buddy.

“Oh,” I said. It sounded like a work arrangement.

“But there was something about your grandfather and his brother,” Arnetta said. “They were special. They had good senses of humor. They were hard workers.”

BeforePic“They were helpful and handy?” I said.

Remember, Ray and Myrtle adopted them, they said. They didn’t have to. They could have just let them live on the farm, because there were a few other kids and older guys that did. They made them family, and that had to mean something.

It wasn’t the grand, movie-ending I’d hoped for. “You’re the missing piece of our family” and all that. Emotions, I suppose, weren’t the same in 1922 as they are now.

And I learned one more thing. Mary was always welcome. She was never adopted, but she was still a large part of the family. It seems cruel, but for a working farm, her disability would have been difficult; and again, feelings about those types of things were very different from today. Raymond, in fact, used to drive over to the Fresh Air Home, pick Mary up and bring her for the weekend. She’d sit in the kitchen and snap green beans or dry dishes. And after all the work was done, the three siblings could spend time together.

That, I imagine, had to mean everything.

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Cry Uncle

Over the weekend, I decided to take my new Ancestry membership out for a spin.

I’d gone back over the guardianship documents, including the two other pages I’d not really examined carefully until now and I realized I’d circled in on a new fact. I could place Phil with his family in 1910. Both of his parents were dead by 1917. By 1922, according to the trust documents, Phil and Joe been placed with the Brenckles and Mary was living at the Fresh Air Home. So, there were four missing years. Where did the three kids go?

Again, a fragment of a fragment set my direction. There were two things I remembered Grammy telling me about how Grandpa had come to live with the Brenckles.

“They lived with an uncle who was terrible to them. He was a drunk. He wanted them just for the money,” she’d said. I had always presumed that meant the money people get for taking in foster kids. But maybe it meant their father’s money.

When I’d asked if they’d ever lived in an orphanage, she said she remembered Toner Institute. I always thought it sounded ominous.

I started with the uncle. The next Census would have been in 1920, so I pulled up Ancestry and started searching there.I now had at least four different uncles to pick from. Who would it be?

“Patsy Ritonda?”

Patsy. Patsy. Duh. Patsy is short for Pasquale. How the Census-taker got Ritonda from Brescia I’ll never know. But I did note the taker’s name was German. I pictured two men with thick accents trying to understand each other — neither one caring much how questions were answered.

I found the siblings simply enough, though their names were again misspelled. If it’s one thing all this research has taught me, it’s that misspellings are just as important as correct ones — if the other material adds up. There’s a margin of error every time you look for someone. A birthday that’s a day or two off. A name spelled close, but not exact. I’ve learned that our vital information really wasn’t standardized until after World War II, when a lot of returning GIs leaned on their war records as official documents.

So, anyway, there they were, living on 41 Fleming Park Avenue in a place called Pittock, Stowe Township. When I found it on the map of Allegheny County, tucked between McKees Rocks and Kennedy Township, I realized that I had been there at least two dozen times. Grammy liked to go to the tiny Catholic Church in Pittock — instead of her usual St. Malachy’s — every once in a while.

I called my dad.

“Did your dad ever say anything about living in Pittock?”

“Yeah.” I could hear his voice catching the thread of memory. “He did. I remember one or two times, when we were driving into the Rocks, we’d go past the bridge and he’d say he used to live over there. I didn’t put it together until now. Why? You said he lived in East Liberty.”

“Because I think I found ‘the uncle.’ You know, the one who mistreated them? His name is here in the census as Patsy Ritonda.”

“Patsy Ritonda? Never heard of him.”

“It’s Pasquale, Dad. Your grandmother’s brother. The guy who left them the 1500 bucks. I think he’s the guy. They were living with him.”

We were both quiet. The thing is, more than “simple” hardship came out of the siblings’ time with their uncle. Grammy had told us it was during that time that Grandpa had contracted the strep throat that ended up weakening his heart. The heart that would eventually kill him long before his time, and just a year or so removed from the invention of life-saving valve replacement surgery that would have given him so many more years.

Joe, who was known his whole adult life by the extremely un-PC nickname of Crip (as in cripple, because he walked with a limp. oh boy), had fallen off a horse and broken his ankle. It had gone untreated. And Mary had contracted the tuberculosis that twisted her bones and stunted her growth.Three years in a body cast.

“That guy sucks,” I finally said.

As we hung up, something at the top of the third paper caught my eye. I shuffled back and forth between the computer screen and the paper.

The guardianship papers had Pasquale’s date of death as November 29, 1920 at Woodville State Hospital. A quick cross-reference (thanks again, Google!) revealed that Woodville was a home for the insane (gulp). But they also took a fair amount of tuberculosis patients. That was more likely, and it explained Mary’s exposure. If she had somehow managed to fight it off when her father was sick, being exposed by Pasquale was surely too much.

The census had been taken in January of that year. By the time that census taker reached their door, the siblings were living on borrowed time.  I searched for Pasquale again, using a variety of misspellings, and pulled up a World War I draft card, filled out June 5, 1917 — five months after Saverina died.

It was requesting an exemption to the draft because he was “sole support of three nieces (sic).”

The address was the same. The job was the same. And so was the place of birth.

I had my man.

But beyond that, I had a real timeline now, and an apparent chain of custody. From both parents to their mother to Pasquale to the county.

But my mind flipped back to good old Mike Natale. He was their stepfather, for pete’s sake. Why didn’t he keep them and their half-sibling together?

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