Talented Tuesday: A Knack for Mischief

Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca

1928 - 1987

My mother, Joan Schiavon, 10 years old, at
Dixon School, Chicago, Illinois, 1938.

In her own words  (Part Seven)

My mother, Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca, was quite the storyteller all her life, a skill most likely passed down by her Irish ancestors, the Quinns, McCoys, Gaffneys, and McGinnises. Two months before her death in 1987 at the age of 59, she determined to put down on paper as many stories of her own life as she could, for the benefit of her four daughters and her future descendants.  

Although she was unable to finish her book, what she managed to write was considerable and candid, even through her constant pain.  In this excerpt from her  book, Joan Joyce Schiavon Huesca:  an Autobiography, she remembers childhood adventures with her best friend, Rosemary Reize.

"We were living in the home that my Grandfather, Thomas Eugene McGinnis, had built in Chicago, Illinois.  The address was 8336 Drexel Avenue.  I remember the house as what was then called a 'bungalow,' with a large garden and yard in back of the house.  We had a large basement, which flooded almost every year.  One time, a client of my Father gave us a pet duck, which we named after a radio comedian of the time, 'Joe Penner."  On one of the flooding occasions, there was the duck, paddling along in the water almost to the top of the stairs!  We had an attic, too!  There were two rooms in the attic.  One was a bedroom for my  Brother Tom.  The other room as a 'catch-all,' with many wonderful things stored away.  I would spend hours there, playing many wonderful things stored away.  I would spend hours there, playing 'dress-up,' or putting on little plays and charging my friends a pin to attend these fabulous productions.

"My bedroom was opposite that of my parents.  I was just remembering the other day, how unique was my closet!  There was a little window in the closet!  I spent a lot of hours there playing with my dolls.  There were twin beds in my bedroom, one which later was shared by my Grandmother Schiavone when she came to stay with us.

"I was about six or seven years old when I met my 'best friend.'  I had taken my dolls for a walk, and wandered over a block from our house, and found myself in the back of a large apartment building, and saw a little girl through a basement window.  Friendly me, called out, 'Hello!' and my 'soon-to-be-friend' proceeded to drench me with water.  Thus began many precarious adventures with Rosemary Reize, my 'best friend'!  Rosemary was a very pretty little girl, with light blonde curls, and lovely blue eyes.  I was quite the opposite.  By this time, my mother had begun to bob my hair, and I was a brunette with big brown (meat-ball) eyes.  Rosemary was the leader, and I the dutiful follower, as you will see, as I tell you of our many misadventures.

"We collected milk bottles from the back porches of the neighborhood, with the idea of collecting a deposit for them.  We walked blocks and blocks to the nearest dairy, only to find that there wasn't any deposit.

"Rosemary's Grandmother had been given a scrungy little dog who apparently had been mistreated.  We took the poor animal down to the basement, to give him a bath, and put him in the old-fashioned washing machine!  The poor thing emerged, alive, but minus all his fur.

"Rosemary lived on the third floor of the big apartment building, and decided to see how fast the dog could get down the back stairs, so she put roller skates (one for his front paws, and one for his rear paws) on the poor little dog.  Then she gave a big PUSH!  Needless to say, the dog soon died afterward.

My mother, Joan Schiavon, first row, far right.
  I do not know who the other children are -
could one of them be Rosemary Reize?

"School Days in St. Joachim's suddenly became much more exciting for Rosemary went to school there, too!  We were preparing to make our First Holy Communion, and during our religion studies, we learned all about the Poor Souls in Purgatory.  Angels that we were, we dedicated much of our time praying for those poor souls.  Then, we decided that maybe prayers really weren't enough...so we would go to church early in the morning before school began, again at lunch time, and finally after school.  Each time, we would light ALL the candles in the church, kneel down and say a prayer as we lit each candle.  Father Hanley (the pastor of the church) would come in and find the church ablaze with candlelight, altar included.  We were finally apprehended, and our parents received a bill, 'For the Poor Souls in Purgatory.'

"One day after school, we stopped off at a funeral home.  Neither of us had ever been inside such an establishment, and we noticed a crowd of people entering, so we followed.  No one seemed to  notice two little girls, so we continued to wander through one door and found ourselves in a room with a couple of dead bodies stretched out  We ran out and emerged through another door which led us into another room.  There were heavy curtains from floor to ceiling in front of us, and on one wall, a panel of buttons, which of course we decided to push to see what would happen.  We pushed all of them at one time!  Lights dimmed, the curtains began to open and shut, and music started to play, 'When the Roll is Called Up Yonder'!  We peered from behind the curtains to see a casket directly in front of us, and a multitude of mourners, in a state of shock.  We must have set a record, running out of there, for we fortunately never were caught."

                                                                              - Joan Huesca

***************************************

Postscript:  I will add my own memory of my mother and her friend Rosemary's escapades here.  One Saturday afternoon, when I was about four or five years old, my father packed my sisters and me into the family car, and we took my mother to Rosemary's apartment, so Rosemary (who had married and now was Rosemary Mager) could color my mother's hair. At the time, the TV show I Love Lucy was popular, and Lucille Ball's red hair appealed to my mother, who was a natural brunette but dreamed of being a gorgeous redhead, like the comedic star.

We returned a couple of hours later, everyone excited to see the results.  As we waited in the living room, I remember standing near the door to the kitchen, waiting breathlessly for my gorgeous mommy to appear.  After what seemed like an eternity, she and Rosemary emerged, beaming.  But for some reason, she was unaware that her hair was a flaming bright orange, nowhere near red.  She did not look like a movie star at all.  In fact, to me she was unrecognizable.

Frightened, I began crying, "Where is my mommy?  What have you done with my mommy?"  My father looked back and forth from her to me, grinning, his eyes wide as he tried in vain to console me that this was my mother.  But I could not be persuaded.

My mother, who had expected all of us to love her new hairdo, just stood there for a moment in shock at our reaction.  She walked over to a mirror and looked at herself, turned around and wordlessly walked back into the kitchen with Rosemary following closely behind her.  My father, chuckling by now, scooped us up and spirited us out of the apartment again.  He took us to a movie this time, probably to distract everyone from the hair-dyeing fiasco. 

When we came back for my mother the second time, my father practically had to drag me into Rosemary's kitchen to see my mother, who was sitting with Rosemary at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.  Her hair had returned more or less its natural color.  I was so relieved to see my mommy again that I hugged her tightly.  She sniffled softly, her cheeks moist, as she squeezed me back. 

Our family moved in the mid-1960s from Chicago to Mexico City and a few years after that to California.  My mother and Rosemary kept their friendship alive, exchanging letters and Christmas cards.  Rosemary phoned my mother when she learned of her illness.  They talked for over an hour, catching up on their lives and reliving memories (one of these being something about them as teens, many moons ago, freeing some horses from the county fair and then running for their lives to avoid getting caught).  When she hung up the phone, my mother said she felt like a young girl again.  After all those years, Rosemary could still make her laugh.  

                                                                                - Linda Huesca Tully

 

Copyright ©  2012  Linda Huesca Tully

Sentimental Sunday: If You Try Hard Enough, You Can Do Anything

Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca

1928 - 1987

In her own words  (Part Five)

On June 24, 1987, a couple of months before she died of lung cancer, my mother, Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca began writing the story of her life. Earlier, she described her earliest memories of life with her parents until the Great Depression cost her father his job and she had to move in with her grandmother, Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis and Mary Jane's sister, Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney and life at the family cottage at Big Blue Lake, Michigan.

In this excerpt from her book, Joan Joyce Schiavon Huesca:  an Autobiography, she recalls her first days at school, her paternal grandmother, Emanuella Sannella, and lastly, her beloved father, Ralph Schiavon:

"Grandma [Mary Jane McGinnis] and Aunt Lyle [Elizabeth Gaffney] didn't want me to go to Kindergarten, as they wanted me to stay home with them, and that was just fine with me.  I was so happy there in that home of love, they petted and praised me all the time, and I loved every minute of it!

Emmanuella (Sannella) Schiavon,
Chicago, Illinois

"Finally, though, it was time to start first grade, and I couldn't escape from that reality.  My cousins Jane and Buddy* took me to St. Dorothy's School, dutifully placed me at the end of a long line of children, then got in their respective lines, and in all the confusion of so many children in the school yard, somehow, I would manage to break away and walk home.  There I would be found sitting on the front steps waiting for Grandma to come down and let me in.  I didn't want to leave my two darlings, and school became a terrible drudge to me.

"My Grandmother Emanuella Schiavone had come to live at my parent's home.  I remember that my parents took a trip to Cuba during these years, and when they returned, they decided that I should return home to live.  My Father had started his own business as a Tax Consultant, and was beginning to prosper once again, though we were far from being rich in those days.  I don't really remember much about my Grandma Schiavone at that time, except for one visit to my parents' home while she was there.  She was in the kitchen frying up what my Father called "ladyfingers," made of mashed potatoes rolled up, with parsley and garlic flavored.  I remember they tasted very good.  Grandma couldn't speak any English, so we really couldn't communicate very well, for I couldn't speak Italian, either.

"Let me take the time now, to tell you about my Father.  For all of my life, he has been a sort of hero to me, his early years were very humble.  He was born in a small village called San Sossio**, in Italy, just south of Rome, and north of Naples.  Through the years, Daddy would tell us a few stories about his background and his youth, and these I'll try to relate to you now.

"Daddy told us that there were records in the village church tracing his family back to the time of the early Romans.  But, he didn't seem to know where his Father, Emanuel Schiavone***, had originated from.  Grandpa turned up in San Sossio one day, and must have been a dashing figure in his day, dressed in a long black flowing cape with a gold earring in one ear!  He courted my Grandmother, who was Emanuella Sannella, and married her, and they lived their first years of marriage in San Sossio.  My Uncle Pat (Pasquale) was born, then my Father, and after his birth, since he was such a big baby, my Grandmother wasn't able to care for him, so he was sent to live with some maiden ladies, who sort of adopted him for the first few years of his life.  They were apparently very well to do, and my Father grew healthy and well fed.  He used to tell us, he especially loved goat's milk, and would go right up to the goat, for a fresh drink of it!  He even used to ride on the goat's back, until he got too big for that, and transferred to a donkey!  

Note the submarine
name, "USS South
 Carolina" inscribed
 in Ralph Schiavon's
sailor's hat.

"Daddy joined the United States Navy during World War I, and was active on a submarine.  He used to say how frightened he was, especially since he and his shipmates would be locked into a compartment when the ship was submerged.  Daddy...was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Training Station, near Chicago.  There, he met my Mother.  When they married, a few years later, Daddy got a job working in a shoe store, and he attended a night school, until finally, he received a degree to practice government tax laws.  The purpose of this long tale, is to relate to you, something which has always impressed me, with the drive and ambition of this great man who was to be my Father.  His example has been a part of my being since I can remember.  I guess I have believed, because of him, that if you try hard enough, and put your goals high enough, you can do anything.  

"Through the years, my Father prospered, and was quite well to do, but he never forgot his humble beginnings, and he had a devotion to his family, and his Mother and brothers and sisters, throughout their lifetimes...My Father adored his Mother, and his devotion to her was inspirational. Each year of his life, until her death, he would make two trips all the way from Chicago to Boston (one trip, always for Mother's Day), to spend with her."

                                                                                      - Joan Huesca

---

*     Jane and Buddy were Benita Jane and Phillip McCormick, Jr.  Their parents were Phillip and Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, and Benita was the oldest child of Thomas and Mary Jane McGinnis.

**   For reasons of accuracy, I have changed my mother's phonetic spelling of my grandfather's birthplace from "San Saucio" to  the official spelling of the village, namely, "San Sossio (Baronia)."  The village is located in the province of Avellino, Italy.
***   My mother, who never met her grandfather, believed his name to be Emmanuel Schiavone.  In fact, his name was Vito Isidoro Schiavone, and he was known as Vito.

Ralph Schiavon - Part Two: Young Immigrant in a New World

Ralph Schiavon


Young Immigrant in a New World

Ralph Schiavon, Boston, about 1910

(Second in a four-part series)


Like most newly-arrived ethnic groups during the turn of the century, Italian immigrants dreamed of becoming successful in America.  This meant owning their own home.  To the former peasants who for decades had endured la miseria - a miserable existence of innumerable indignities and hopelessness and poverty in their native land - home ownership, the ultimate definition of prosperity to the Southern Italians, represented independence, security, prosperity, and self-respect.


Vito Schiavone, who first arrived in America in 1890, had lived for a time with his brothers-in-law in a tenement house at 198 Endicott Street at the heart of Boston's North End.  Living in that crowded, dirty neighborhood had made him determined to buy his own home in another part of town so his family would not have to bear such oppressive conditions.


The dream was not unachievable, but it depended on great sacrifice and effort on the part of everyone in the family.  Vito pulled Ralph out of school as soon as he was old enough to work and sent him to join his brother Pat in a shoe factory in Roxbury. Child labor was commonplace at that time, and boys and girls in the shoe factories made up about seven percent of the total workforce in the Boston boot and shoe industry.


Children were given jobs that required little training, such as stitching shoe uppers or working in the shipping department.  Ralph worked in shipping, putting in 10 hours a day Monday through Friday and half a day on Saturdays, rain or shine.


Shoe leather would arrive at the factory in wooden boxes.  Once the crates were emptied, Ralph would break them down flat and load the wood into a small wagon so he could sell it.  For this he was paid about $6.43 a week, the average wage for a child laborer of the time.  (Men and women, by comparison, earned on average $15.17 and $10.39 a week, respectively.)


The long dreary hours left the boy without much time for a childhood. He never had a toy of his own and had little time for play.  Instead, money took on great importance in his young life as he worked long hours to help support his family.  Like other young boys, he learned to save at an early age and often walked the long distance home rather than take the streetcar, so he could have more money to give to his parents.


One freezing winter day on his way home, young Ralph met a man who gave him some baby chicks that were nearly dead from the cold.  He tucked them into his wool coat to keep them warm and set aside some of the wood from the shipping crates to make coops for them.


Upon entering the kitchen, he removed his coat and proudly showed his new pets to his parents.  While Emanuela cooed at the chicks, Vito flew into a rage at the thought that Ralph had lost money by bringing home the wood instead of selling it.  He rose from his chair and thrust his fist at his son.  Emanuela jumped in between them to block her husband.  Vito's fist, meant for Ralph, struck Emanuela instead, knocking out her front teeth.


Emanuela recovered and nursed the chicks with an eyedropper and a little wine and warmed them on the oven door.  Ralph never forgot his mother's loving sacrifice for him.  Needless to say, the chicks may have been pets for a time but ran the usual course that chicks do and eventually made their inevitable appearance on the dinner table.

Postcard of Wonderland Amusement Park, Revere, MA

Nicholas Schiavone, Boston, 1910

Tragedy struck the family in the spring of 1911 when eight-year-old Nicky Schiavone drowned in the marsh behind Wonderland Amusement Park, a popular Revere landmark in the early 1900s.  He and Ralph had been playing in the marsh with a young neighbor, Leo Dowling, when Leo began flailing his arms.  Nicky managed to rescue Leo but got caught in the marsh himself and began sinking into the muck.  Ralph watched in horror as the thick mud sucked his brother in deeper and deeper, until he drowned.


Some would later say that Ralph's "lucky veil," or caul, had protected him from the same fate as Nicky, but it seems that Ralph was in fact burdened by the fact that he had been spared instead of his brother.  The accident haunted him for the rest of his life, and he never forgave himself for not being able to save his little brother.  His children (my mother Joan and my Uncle Tom Schiavon), as well as my own sisters and I, heard the story over and over as we grew up, along with a coda of instructions on how to save a drowning person.


When Filomena married Tomasso Scicchitani in 1913 and Pasquale (known as "Pat") married Dora Salemme two years later, Ralph became the oldest child of those still living at home.  He took on the role of a third parent to Tony and Leo, sometimes treating them more strictly than their own parents, much to the chagrin of the younger Schiavones.  Perhaps he was overcompensating for his inability to save Nicky.  From what I have heard from my own mother, Joan Schiavon, and my cousins, he saw it it that his youngest brothers would not have to leave school as he did at a young age to work.  Even in his youth he comprehended the value of an education as a path to success, and he encouraged Tony and Leo to continue their studies, making it very clear that he expected them to graduate at the top of their class.

Ralph entered the United States Navy on August 26, 1918, and received his training in Norfolk, Virginia.


Assigned as a Seaman Second Class on the submarine USS Carolina.  The tight quarters of submarine made him feel claustrophobic, and he was relieved when he was later transferred to the battleship USS Kansas.  He was a member of a crew that traveled to Brest, France, at the end of World War I to bring many of the Special Expeditionary Forces home to America.  His jobs entailed standing various forms of watch, such as lookout and security, and his days would have consisted of learning such basic duties as being part of the gun crew; setting up and using rigs for loading fuel, ammunition, and supplies; firefighting; food cleanup; sweeping and swabbing decks; and painting and polishing equipment.


Two months after he enlisted, the Armistice Treaty was signed on November 11, 1918.


In 1919, Ralph was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station, near Chicago, Illinois.  One day while on leave he met Benita McGinnis, a young artist and member of the Chicago Movie Censorship Board.  After dating her briefly, he was invited to her home, where he noticed her younger sister, a lively, 26-year-old redhead named Alice.  He was smitten immediately by her laughter and sense of adventure and soon began courting her instead of Benita.


Although we do not know for certain how it happened, it seems that the McGinnises did not know Ralph was Italian when they first met him.  He may have deliberately dropped the "e" at the end of Schiavone, which would have put the accent on the last syllable and made it sound French, or maybe it happened some other way.  (In later years he would say that the U.S. Navy had dropped the "e" from his name to make it sound more American.  His service record and his naturalization petition, however, do not show this to be so.)  He apparently was afraid of being found out as Italian and said nothing to change Alice's impression that she was in love with a Frenchman.

Speaking the language of
the Axis powers during
World War II was
considered "Un-American,"
as shown in this poster.

His fear was not unfounded.  For years, Italians, in particular those from the south, had been perceived as gangsters, womanizers, and lower class members of society.  They had been subjected to ethnic jokes and racial slurs such as "goombah," "wop," and "dago."  During both World Wars, Italians were viewed with suspicion and often regarded as Fascists.  Italy being an enemy nation during World War II, the six thousand Italian aliens then living in the United States were required by law to register as "enemy aliens."  This included Ralph's mother, Emanuela, who had never changed her citizenship.  In a lesser-known incident, several hundred Italian-Americans on the West Coast were rounded up and interned in detention camps from 1941-1943, not because of anything they had done but simply because they were Italian.


In later years, Ralph himself would be mistaken for Benito Mussolini, the Italian dictator, as well as for the infamous mobster Al Capone.  In the latter case of mistaken identity, the Chicago police actually stopped him for a short time, releasing him only after verifying his identification.


Considering that Italians were at the bottom of the ethnic ladder in those days, it must have been a difficult decision for Ralph to change his last name to something that sounded less Italian.  Some of his family were hurt by this action and believed that he had been disloyal to his heritage.  They may have had valid reasons to feel that way, as they, too, had faced the same prejudice and discrimination - perhaps even more so because they kept their family name.


But the truth is that Ralph was not alone.  Many of his countrymen changed their names to avoid bigotry and discrimination, sometimes even translating their surnames into English.  Ralph was proud to be Italian and would never dishonored his origins, but he, as any other human being, had a right to be treated with dignity and respect.  Though we may never know the depth of the inner struggle he must have experienced over this decision, we can be certain that ultimately he did what he felt he had to do in the climate of the time.


Ralph was granted U.S. citizenship on May 12, 1919, two weeks before he was discharged from the service at Great Lakes Naval Station.  He returned to his parent's home on Eastern Avenue in Revere and began a long-distance correspondence with Alice that would span nearly four years.

Ralph Schiavon, second window from rear,
Cologne, Germany, early 1920s

He found a job selling shoes at a store in Revere.  He soon discovered that he enjoyed working with numbers and solving problems more than selling shoes, and he began taking night school classes in accounting.  He also seems to have returned to Europe after World War I, as the photo above shows.


Alice McGinnis accepted his proposal sometime in early 1923, setting off a short personal crisis for Ralph as he realized that "the jig was up."  He knew it was time to honest about his nationality, even if it meant losing the woman he loved.


He wrote Alice a passionate letter that spring.  In it, he confessed his Italian nationality and apologized for having deceived her, explaining that he had not wanted to lose her. He went on to tell Alice how much he loved her and that he dreamed of opening a small general store in Chicago so he could always take care of her and she would never have to work.  He closed by adding that he would understand if she decided to break off the engagement.


Alice McGinnis was not one to reject someone on the basis of his origins.  She understood prejudice only too well, as she and her family had experienced it first-hand as Irish-Americans.  It had not been that long ago that her grandfather, father, and brothers had been excluded from jobs whose ads warned that "Irish need not apply."  


She wrote back to Ralph right away and forgave him.  The couple were married on June 18, 1923, at Saint Joachim's Church in Chicago and honeymooned at Starved Rock Park, a popular campground not far from Chicago.


Copyright (C) 2011  Linda Huesca Tully




Next:  Part Three - Halcyon Days


Did you know, or are you a member of the Schiavon/Schiavone, Sannella, Schiccitani, or McGinnis families?  If so, share your own stories and comments below.