Mary Venezia

The Things She Carried

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. As the oldest child, she had the clearest memories of nearly all their shared tragedies. 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 brutality.

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.

August 17, 2023 0

I’ve started writing

I think I’ve gone as far as I can with the research, at least for the moment. So, I figure it’s time to take all my notes and do something with all the hours and hours of time I’ve put into this over the last few years.

It’s strange. Sometimes, it feels as if something beyond me is dictating where the story is going. I could say it’s my own creativity, but that almost doesn’t feel right. Sometimes, and maybe I’m crazy, I feel like there’s another hand guiding mine. Some of the ideas I have are too vivid. I might consider a path, but then something back in the back of my mind says “No, it happened this way.”

The greatest thing about all of this is that it truly feels like I am spending time with Grandpa. In a way that transcends looking at pictures or hearing other people tell stories, I feel that, because of all the research I’ve done, I’ve gotten a much more clear picture about who he was, how he grew up, the forces that shaped his world and all the rest than I ever did before.

My goal is to finish by the end of the year so I can send it to my brother-in-law, who is an author. We’ll see how I do.

January 15, 2012 0

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 one 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.”

“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.

August 28, 2006 0

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?

August 7, 2006 0

Aunt Mary V

The closest I ever came to anyone connected with the events of this story is the fetal me, in my mom’s belly, when she visited Aunt Mary V.

That’s what everyone called Mary Venezia, who, as I now know, was born Maria Giuseppa Venezia in Pittsburgh, PA on August 5, 1905.

What my mom remembered of her was spotty. She was a tiny, tiny woman who always smelled like lavender. She lived alone the top room of a boarding house-style living facility. She died because some doctor convinced her he could help her retain her mobility (and therefore stay in this independent living arrangement). She died on the operating table in September 1977.

She was a prolific letter-writer and had pen pals from all over the world, many of them children who’d stayed at the Fresh Air Home. She wore a pink peridot ring and, at some point, someone brought her a lovely cameo back from Italy. I have them both , stored with the only baby picture we ever had of any of the Venezia children. I carried it around a lot in my childhood, and one day it went through the wash. Thank god for old paper made from rags or it would have been lost forever.

The library had a history of the Fresh Air Home, published by its benefactors. It included names of notable patients. Interestingly, it noted that, unlike many of the patients, she was a ward of Allegheny County. Most of the other children were placed there by their families. Yet, she was among them, and listed as having tuberculosis of the hip and spine. The Pittsburgh Press article I came across mentioned that Mary had been brought into the Fresh Air Home on a stretcher. She’d spent three years in a body cast.

After learning all this, I’m even more sad that I never met this fiercely independent lady. No wonder she fought so hard to stay on her feet. She figured it was better to go down swinging than become reliant on other people. I respect her even more for that decision.

April 15, 2006 0

The Carnegie Library is Awesome

That’s the title of my post because, well, it is.

I just got back from an all-day research binge in the library’s Pennsylvania Room.

I have a stack of census forms, a sheaf of photos and a whole lot of answers.

The biggest asset they have is access to ancestry.com, which I’ve been dying to join for ages.

The first thing I did was dig through their Census records. Thank goodness I’d found that will because I knew to search and verify information by everyone’s Italian name, rather than the Americanized version. Jackpot in the 1910 Census!

I now know that when my grandpa was 3, he lived with his mother, father, sister, brother and uncle Pasquale (who was listed as a boarder. Interesting.) on St. Andrews Street in East Liberty. I looked it up on Google Maps, but it doesn’t look like it exists anymore. But using Our Lady Help of Christians as a beacon, I was able to trace the boarders of his early life. The church is within walking distance of their house. Enterprise Street, where Saverina eventually moved, is only a few blocks over in the opposite direction.

This record has Francesco doing odd jobs, so I wonder if he’d been laid off. Maybe he was a Francesco was working for himself, kind of a freelance tailor?

I’d pictured them living in a walk-up apartment. Not real big. Maybe even something like this. But the address seems to indicate a house-house, rather than an apartment building where they might share a few rooms. All of their neighbors have different house numbers. Was it possible they lived in their own home, albeit a rented one? Francesco and Saverina had been married for 6 years. She’d had three children and three live births.

It made me smile to see the five of them and their uncle together. It’s the first real mental image I’d been able to conjure of my grandfather belonging to his birth family. And in this record, they really were.

Here’s a quick run-down of my other discoveries:

Cesare and Pasquale Brescia, Saverina’s brothers, were part of a group of people known as “birds of passage.” They sailed back and forth between Italy without becoming citizens. I found records indicating that Cesare, the brother who’d come with his newlywed sister to America, would return to Italy in 1907 and 1913. He’d tried to come in 1912, but had come down with the dreaded eye disease trachoma and had been turned back. Pasquale, who’d also come in 1904, left in 1913 and returned in 1914. How and when Ottavio, the uncle from the Guardianship papers, came to the US remains a mystery
Loads and loads of pictures from the ‘Italians’ picture collection. I now have a pretty good visual idea of what it was like to walk through the streets of East Liberty, how kids and adults dressed, what types of buildings and landmarks made up Phil’s life.
Information about the Sewickley Fresh Air Home, where my great-aunt Mary lived much of her life. I’ll write a separate post about her later.
Sanborn Fire Maps. Oh my god, I’m in love with them. Big digital maps that are overlaid. You can find all the old streets, see old buildings that were torn down, who owned them. And the best part about them is you can access them outside the library.

April 15, 2006 0

My first discovery

My mind is reeling. When the man in the Register of Wills Office returned, this is what he brought. It’s a guardianship document. And it cracked open my world.

There my great-grandparents names. Francesco Venezia and Severina Brescia. Frank and Sarah were obvious Americanizations. Severina had at least three brothers. Ottavio, Cesare and Pasquale. I had contemplated her life a thousand times, but for some crazy reason, I never thought of her as part of a real family. My family. But here they were. A family of four (more?). Pasquale was dead and he’d left Ottavio, my grandfather (Phil), great-uncle (Joe) and great-uncle (Mary) $1,500 to split.

I did a quick calculation in an online calculator. That’s about $4,000 in today’s money. Not a bad chunk of change for a bunch of kids. Which explains why they were being set up with trusts.

My pal in the records office is as excited as I am. He tells me to fill out another form and he’ll see if it was paid out.

“Actually,” he says. “Check the Vs. Maybe your great-grandfather had a will, too.”

Adrenaline pumping, I flip pages. Bingo.

“He had a will?” I can feel my mouth hanging open. “My immigrant great-grandfather had a will?”

“Seems so,” he says. “Fill out another card. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Few minutes. Ha! It takes an eternity before he brings a few photocopies of Pasquale’s bequest to his family and a small, rectangular envelope. Francesco’s name is written in that perfect cursive I’d always wished I could write.

“I, Francesco Venezia, of the city of Pittsburgh and the State of Pennsylvania …” My eyes skitter over the words. “To my beloved wife .. THREE bank accounts… To my beloved daughter and beloved sons, I leave the remainder in trust…”

My eyes cloud over. He left them money. He died and he thought ahead enough to save for the day he knew he couldn’t be there. He left his wife money and enough for his children later.

“How much is 13,000 lira,” I ask to no one in particular.

My records sherpa smiles and shakes his head.

And dangitall. My phone rings. Time to go to work.

I stay long enough to get photo copies and I call my parents, breathless, on the walk back over to the courthouse.

When I get back to the newsroom I can’t resist running a quick calculation. In 1915, the year the will was drafted, 13,000 lira was about $2,000. Enough to buy a small home. I carry those pages with me all day long and a single thought has formed in my head.

“He was loved. No matter what happened after, Grandpa, Joe, Mary. They were loved.”

March 8, 2006 0

findingphilblog

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

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