by Dr. Harold Geller | Aug 29, 2014 | stories
My grandparents were farmers. Not so unusual you may think. But what is unusual about the fact that my grandparents were farmers, is that my grandparents were farmers in Brooklyn, New York, a borough of New York City, the largest city in the country. The farm, on which my father grew up, was located on Sheffield Avenue in Brooklyn, not far from the intersection of Pennsylvania Avenue and Flatlands Avenue. Today, that intersection boasts a gasoline station with attached car wash. To make ends meet, as we used to say, my grandfather also worked as a tailor in New York City. My grandfather taught my father how to sew, and my father taught me how to sew. By the way, my grandfather was a member of the tailors’ union. I know it seems that today it might well be considered a burden, but my grandfather was proud to be a union member, back in the first decade of the 20th century, until the day he died in the early 1960’s. In fact, I still recall my father receiving a letter addressed to my grandfather from the union, shortly after my grandfather’s death. The union had not been told that my grandfather had died, and it was left to my dad to inform them of my grandfather’s...
by Marjorie E. Steakley | Aug 29, 2014 | stories
My mother’s mother, Estelle Barry Haesly Nielsen, worked for the IRS for decades. Typically, the males she trained would be promptly promoted & would often become her bo$$e$. Typical misogynist #0~$3$#!+. Transgenders are telling us today that nothing has changed in the...
by Justin E. Kidd | Aug 29, 2014 | stories
I have to say that my grandparents on both sides managed a middle-class lifestyle. But by “middle-class lifestyle” I mean keep food on the table, clothes and shoes on the kids, doctor bills paid, a sound roof overhead, and maybe manage to get one or two through college. During the years 1910 to 1945 that was not easy, and it required folks to accept some serious compromises of prior expectations. In neither the 1920s nor the 1930s were two-income families the social norm; my dad grew up in one. Career paths of children of Mr. Wm Edwd. Kidd of Lovingston VA (father’s people) Sons: Schooling, then college and law school for Harry Lee Kidd J.D. Schooling, then college and med school for Estes Caskie Kidd M.D. Schooling, then purchase of partnership in bank for Winfred Kidd Daughter: Schooling, then business-school training for Mildred Kidd Money from sale of land to developers, laid out for each of four children, to assure self-sufficiency and career opening at upper-middle-class level (i.e. not retail). Doctor, Lawyer, Banker, senior administrative assistant to Sec’y of Navy. COUNTRY doctor, willing to take payment in kind, cash, barter-of-service. Prospered. Two daughters, college for one. Loved and admired by town; house built to last for 2-3 generations. Dad’s father: SMALL-TOWN general-practice lawyer, serving poor clients, reluctantly settling for in-kind pay, and not making many billable hours. Wife’s pay as schoolteacher made middle-class life possible but just barely. Two sons: in-state college for one thanks to mother’s job; GI Bill college for younger boy. Disabled in late 1940s by massive stroke, left paralyzed and inarticulate until a second stroke...
by Ellen Franzen | Aug 29, 2014 | stories
My paternal grandfather, James T. H. Leiby, was born in 1884. His father died when he was 13. As the oldest in a family of five, he went to work as a newsboy selling newspapers, the Allentown Morning Call. As the years went by, he learned Morse code to take news stories off the wire. Later, in the Twenties, I think, he learned to be a telegrapher and wrote the stories himself. I may have some of this wrong, but I can’t find his obituary right now. He became the front page editor and my father remembered how every Sunday morning he would compare his front page with that of the New York Times to see if he had picked the same stories for the front page as the Times did. Usually he did, and he was always disappointed when he didn’t. He died of heart failure in 1948 and the owner and editor of the paper helped carry the...
by Mary Balderson | Aug 29, 2014 | stories
My maternal grandfather, James Alfred Persinger, born in Putnam County, West Virginia in 1898, started working in the coal mines at age 12 and retired at age 68. During his tenure as a coal miner, he fought with Mother Jones, John L. Lewis and countless other brave souls to help form the United Mine Workers of America. My parents were divorced, so my mother and I lived with my grandparents. What I remember is my grandfather (Papa to me), getting up about 3 am every morning to have coffee and a light breakfast, so he would have time to walk the 3 1/2 miles to the mines. Although other men who worked with him always offered him a ride, he would only accept if the weather was horrible. He worked 8-10 hours a day and walked home. He was a kind, gentle man who never complained about his own circumstances, but never failed to stand up for others. Helping, as he did, to help bring the union to the coal industry was something of which he was proud…but he never bragged — he only told the stories. In 1957, he lost one son to a slate fall in a mine where they both were working. I cannot imagine having the strength to go back to work in that mineshaft again, but he did, for 9 more years. He taught me the meaning of hard work, dedication, sacrifice, fearlessness and love. He taught me that regardless of what is happening in your life, life only has meaning when you stand up for and help those unable to help themselves. He...
