The Healing Journey

November 28, 2024

Joe drove to St. Michael Cemetery in Stratford, where his grandparents were buried. He hadn’t visited them in years, so he figured All Souls Day was a perfect time to pay his respects and say a few prayers. The gravestone was worn and weathered, but their names were still legible. Angelina and Anthony, two Italian immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island when Italians weren’t especially welcome.

Like other immigrants, they came to the United States looking for opportunity but had a rough start in a new country during 10 years of the Great Depression. Later, their sons went off to war to fight for America and the rest of Western Civilization and did so without complaining.

Maybe the Greatest Generation was willing to die for this country because of the freedom and opportunity it gave them. Have future generations been as grateful, as appreciative? Or have they taken everything for granted or worse, scorned what they’d been given?

The gravestone told his grandparents’ story. His father’s father, Anthony, died at 48, and his wife, Angelina, whose name means “little angel,” had to carry on in a strange world. In those 35 years after her husband died, she lived up to her name.

As a single mother, she raised nine children without the benefit of a safety net in a second-floor flat on the East Side of Bridgeport. They ate a lot of pasta, fruit and vegetables, long before the Mediterranean Diet was fashionable.

When her sons weren’t shining shoes to raise some money or getting into trouble, she sent them down to the harbor to pick up coal that had fallen off freighters so they could heat the apartment.

They lived on Sherman Street across from St. Mary Church, and although they had no money, they got a Catholic education from the nuns, who lived in the convent next door.

As Joe looked at his grandmother’s grave, he couldn’t help but wonder how she raised all those kids alone in an era of deprivation.

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This Thanksgiving, everyone who came from immigrant families should be thankful that someone in their past decided to come to America.

This Thanksgiving, be thankful for your ancestors, be thankful to America, and be thankful to family members who endured adversity to make a better life for those who followed. Happy Thanksgiving and God bless America.

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