findingphilblog

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.

The kind volunteer researchers at the Diocese of Pittsburgh dug through their records and, sadly, they came up with very little information.

The results of my search came by email today (two weeks earlier than promised!) and all I was able to glean were the baptismal records of all three kids at Our Lady Help of Christians.

That, in itself, is somewhat interesting. The records revealed:

Maria was born Aug. 5th, 1905, and baptized May 3, 1906. Her godparents were Antonio Esposito and Giusippina Brendisi. Phil, of course, was born March 14,1907, and baptized May 12, 1907. His godparents were Francesco Scalise and Maria Barretta. And finally, Joe, was born Dec. 10, 1908, and baptized on Oct.17, 1909. His godparents were Giuseppe Balotta and Teserina Liberto.

They disappear from the records of OLHC after this. Mary’s confirmation does not show up in the records of the single Catholic church in Sewickley, St. James. They weren’t found in Millvale’s church, either.

Perhaps the most useful bit of this search is where they are not. The church searched their orphanage records. They were not at St. Paul’s, St. Anthony’s, or, as Grammy incorrectly remembered, the Toner Institute.

I’m left with the eternal question. Where did they go? Particularly between their mother’s death and their presence with Pasquale in 1920, and again between Pasquale’s death and their placement with the Brenckles, who was taking care of three preteen children?

There’s a final lever I haven’t pulled, and that’s seeking the adoption file itself. It would take a court order. Yes, even nearly 100 years after adoption, in a situation where both the biological parents are dead, the adoptive parents are dead and the adoption was NEVER a secret, you still have to get a court order to see the records.

I’ll have to think it over. I suppose, in the best light, I can view this real-life plot hole as an opportunity for liberal fiction for the book. But a part of me is sad. Not only because I can’t seem to crack this riddle, but it raises the possibility that they endured hardships beyond what I can even imagine. In an era when religious identity and ritual were community, it’s possible they were so disconnected from people who cared that no one was looking out for their religious education. That is where this story no longer becomes an intellectual puzzle. It is the life of three very real human beings, who experienced this horror with NO assurance things would come out better on the other side.

It’s almost a decade since I started unraveling this tale, and I still have a gaping hole in my timeline of events. From Severina’s death in 1917 until Mary, Phil and Joe emerge living with Pasquale in the 1920 Census, the public record on their whereabouts goes silent. And it’s silent again until Phil and Joe get caught up in the headlines concerning the Brenckle fire.

I realize, after scratching around in my paperwork, I never did get around to sending a records request to the one place that could help fill it in: The Diocese of Pittsburgh.

The Diocese has a trove of searchable records, including First Holy Communion and Confirmation records. Now, on their genealogical information page, they try to dissuade you from these records because the information they provide is extremely limited. It’s not worth the $15 search fee, they say.

Glad that they’re so honest, and it might be true if that’s where you’re beginning your search. In the case of Mary, Phil and Joe, a tiny scrap of fact could crack open a world of information. Mary would have been seven or eight at the time of her First Holy Communion. This is probably the last family event the Venezias would have experienced together.

My grandfather and Joe’s First Holy Communions would have been during a more tumultuous time, around the era of their mother’s remarriage and death. But it’s the Confirmation records that have real merit. All three Confirmations would have occurred in the period after they were orphaned, but before they came to live at the Brenckles.

The Diocesan collection offers a final tantalizing bit of possibility: Orphanage records. I have requested they search all their records for Phil and Joe, from 1920-1923. Whether they can do that legally under Pennsylvania law, I don’t know. The worst they can say is no.

In one of my old childhood diaries, I dedicated a few pages to Grandpa’s story. I interviewed Grammy (yes, I’ve been a reporter since I was, like, 9), asking for a full recounting of her memories. When I asked about the orphanage, Toner Institute is the name she came up with. It seems too specific to be wrong, but once I started researching it never made sense. While it was a home for boys, it was in Brookline, over near Mt. Lebanon, far from Pittock. What’s more, how could a child placed at an orphanage over there end up at a farm in Troy Hill? But I’ll readily admit that I don’t know the mechanics of Allegheny County’s farming out policies. More likely choices seem to be St. Anthony’s (for orphans of Italian descent, but all the way over in Oakmont), St. Paul’s Orphan Asylum (Crafton), or the orphanage it merged with, Holy Family Institute (Avalon, all the way across the Ohio River, but directly opposite Pittock). An outlier is St. Joseph’s. It’s located in Troy Hill, but seems to have catered to German orphans.

I’m putting the letter in the mail tonight, and then it will take four weeks to fulfill the request. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.