Last week, sadly, Peter Ingemi's mother passed away at the venerable age of 88. This is Peter's tribute to her. R.I.P., and may God take you by his side for eternity!
In November of 1924 Calvin Coolidge who
came to the White House the year earlier after the death of Warren G. Harding,
was elected in his own right to the presidency taking 35 states, 382 electoral
votes and 54% of the popular vote vs John W. Davis’ 136 Electoral votes and
28.8% popular and Progressive Robert M. La Follete who managed 16.6% of the
popular vote but carried only Wisconsin.
Despite the prosperity of the nation and
his own personal popularity Coolidge did not choose to run for president in
1928 and would retire from public life dying in 1933 at the age of 60.
Twelve days after Coolidge’s election in
the state he served as governor, a Sicilian woman named Grazia gave birth for
the seventh and final time. Grazia had
come to America shortly before the eruption of Mt. Etna and follow up
earthquake that destroyed the city where she and her future husband Antonio had
lived. He had left Sicily before her and
after a brief time in Brazil, would settle in Fitchburg Massachusetts There he
would become a barber, marry Grazia, and raise their family at the end of a
dead end street.
Two of their 4 girls and two boys did not
live to see their sister Mary born. Steven died at birth and the oldest girl
had died at age three. Mary would be
baptized at the fairly new Italian Catholic Church, St. Anthony di Padua that her
parents had been married in and would live her entire single life in the house on
Matthews street where she was born.
---------------------------------
On February 22, 1937 Congressman James Paul Buchanan of the 10th
District of Texas died. His wife was
considered a shoe in for the special election but had not yet decided to run. A congressional aide named Lyndon Johnson,
wanted the seat. He visited his father a
former three term state Rep Sam Johnson for advice. The elder Johnson as Biographer Robert Caro
put it, didn’t have to think twice.
“She’s an old woman. She’s too
old for a fight. If she knows she’s
going to have a fight she won’t run.
Announce now---before she announces.
If you do she won’t run.” Lyndon
listened to his father. Mrs. Buchanan
didn’t run and after a hard fought victory he took his first step on the road
to the White House.
In August of that year Angelina Garbarsi and
her husband came from Boston to stay with their relatives on Matthews Street
for two weeks as they did every year for the Annual two day Madonna Della Cava
festival at Saint Anthony Di Padua celebrating a 13th century Marian
Apparition in Sicily.
While Mary & her family (including older
sister Lucy, Angelina’s Goddaughter) were strong Catholics, the childless
Angelina was considered particularly devout and saintly, even for her time. She attended daily Mass and had taken the
vows of devotion in honor of the Madonna Della Cava including abstaining from meat
on Wednesdays for life. She had spoken
to Mary and her godchild Lucy about the faith often during her annual visits
and while Lucy’s devotion to prayer and her Godmother would be strong and
lifelong, that November it would be Mary who would take that same vow on her 13th birthday that Angelina
had taken the previous century. She
would never break it.
--------------------------
June 1942 was a pivotal time for America at
war. Off the Island of Midway the
American Navy under Admirals Fletcher and Sprague would win the critical battle
of Midway sinking four Japanese Aircraft Carriers and destroying the cream of
the Japanese naval air force.
That same month Mary graduated from Fitchburg
High School. Many members of the class
of 42’ would go directly to war. Some
would not come back. Mary’s older
brother Johnny was already serving in Patton’s Army and would eventually be
awarded the Silver Star for gallantry. A
cousin that Mary corresponded with regularly would be killed in action. Mary
would use her math and typing skills sharpened on a Royal Typewriter that her
father skimped to buy her to good effect as a secretary but he drew the line when
one of her friends offered her a chance to join her in the program flying
military aircraft domestically freeing up the men for combat It would be one of the biggest
disappointments of her life and she would speak of it whenever an air show came
to town.
-------------------------------------------
In
1946 Winston Churchill gave the speech coining the term “Iron Curtain” to
describe the state of countries made puppets under Soviet control at the end of
World War 2. It was a public declaration
of the new reality of the conflict between the free west and the enslaved
nations of the Communist world that would dominate life on the planet until the
end of the 20th century.
In 1946 Mary would lay out an ultimatum to
a 25 year old sailor named Dominic. They
had met through a comedy of errors a few years earlier and when that sailor,
who was a hardworking, gregarious carpenter returned from the pacific he was
anxious to marry her. Mary bluntly refused
if he remained in the navy. Dominic
wanted a future in the navy, but he wanted one with Mary more. They would marry the next year and raise five
children in their 40 years of marriage.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
1968 would begin with the Tet Offensive in
Vietnam a military disaster for the Communists but a Propaganda victory leading
to the defeat of South Vietnam and causing Lyndon Johnson to not seek
re-election. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy would be assassinated within
a few months of each other and in November Richard Nixon would win his first
term as president.
Just before Christmas in 1968 Mary &
Dominic would move their five children to a much larger house built next door
to Grazia who had been widowed the year before.
It was largest home the family had ever had with 4 bedrooms three
bathrooms to be shared by the children ages 5-20. Ironically, within a few years 3 of the five
children would be married and gone.
---------------------------
In 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as a result of
the Watergate scandal, a transformative event in American political history
that is still felt today. Nixon was ill
in body and mind at the end. He would
recover physically and pols would consult him privately on serious matters but
the miracle necessary to recover his public reputation would not come in his
lifetime.
It would be a different story in 1974 for
Mary. For the second of three times the miraculous
would intervene in Mary’s devout catholic life.
This occasion was in a near empty basement chapel at St. Bernard’s
Catholic Church.
After Sunday Mass at St. Anthony’s Mary
would attend the healing services of Fr. Ralph DiOrio at St. Bernards making prayer
intentions for her ailing mother.
Mary didn’t tell Fr. DiOrio about illness that
reduced her to an all milk diet keeping her from the spicy Italian foods that
she so loved. After all she had somehow
survived a horrific gas explosion more than a decade before, her terrible burns
inexplicably healing without scaring thanks to a cream nobody heard of, purchased by her husband days before, from a
salesman nobody knew that he applied directly afterwards from a jar nobody
could find. That explosion and two unrelated
illnesses had brought her so close to death that by age 50th she had
already received the last rites three times.
Between that and a life that included some gunplay in defense of her
business & children during a long incapacitation of her husband, a limited
diet was certainly not going to elicit complaint.
But that particular Sunday after the
service ended Mary’s son approached the priest telling him of her illness and
asking him to pray for his mother. Fr.
DiOrio calling Mary over declaring:
“You’ve been coming here all these weeks and you never told me you were
sick?” When Mary deferred citing her
mother’s illness the priest insisted on praying over her. At the touch of his hand she collapsed. When she revived 15 minutes later he ordered
her to go home and eat “A good Italian meal” She went home and feasted on
Italian food. To the amazement of her
doctor who she visited that week, her illness was gone.
Later that same year she would get a job at
the Safety Fund Bank in Fitchburg. Before
the end of the year her experience from the business they owned brought her the
position of head teller. She would stay
their till her retirement.
---------------------------
1994 was a year of political change in the
country. For the first time since the
50’s the GOP controlled the House of Representatives and the country would
shortly move from deficit to surplus.
The Republican Revolution and Contract With America would mark a resurgence
of the GOP for years.
1994 would be a year of change for
Mary. Her mother had died in 1986,
Dominic died in 1987 and her final child would marry and move out the very next
year. With an empty house Mary had
thrown herself into her work but at age 70 she decided it was time to leave. Her life remained busy. She worked the polls for the city, attended
daily mass, and served the church in the senior’s group, and as a Eucharist
Minister to the sick & homebound where one final time the miraclious would
visit.
But the biggest change in her life was, for
the first time in her life she had abundant free time for her
grandchildren. Most were now teens, some
had children of their own, but the two youngest 1 & 3 would get considerable
attention from her in their formative years.
By 2006 both of them and their father would take the Madonna Della Cava
vow Mary had taken almost 60 years before.
For her it was a source of considerable pride.
-----------------------------------------
2012 was a big election year for America;
Barack Obama was re-elected and in Massachusetts Scott Brown was defeated after
winning a special election two years before.
2012 was a full year for Mary. She watched her youngest grandson graduate from
her Alma Mater 70 year after her class of 42.
Her oldest daughter watched over her living in the house Mary was born
in 88 years prior helped by a grandchild and his family. She spent the year surrounded by her
children, grandchildren and great grandchildren and her older sister Lucy still
active at 91.
She still had her New Testament, falling
apart from daily reading as two others had before. She had her pistol, but not her bullets,
unknown to most and over her objections her oldest son had taken her ammo. She never
owned a computer, a cell phone (let along a smart phone), a credit card or
cable TV and she was happy.
On Nov 6th Mary voted for Scott Brown, Two
years earlier Brown was the first member of the GOP she had ever voted for in
64 years and talked of it to Robert
Stacy McCain.
This year after voting for a Republican for
president for the only time of her life she greeted the poll workers whose tasks
she had once shared still angry her Scott Brown sign had been stolen.
10 days later on her 88th
birthday she renewed her license but a few days later took ill. She was hospitalized. Her daughters never left her side and her children
and grandchildren visited her daily.
16 days after her initial doctors visit and
five days after returning home, my mother Mary died in the house next door to
the one she was born in. She lived a
long useful eventful life full of faith and family and had positively touched
the lives of other.
Her life might seem an anachronism to
people today, I think America would be better off if they saw it as an example.
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