Rosemary’s Memoirs

  • Rosemary was born in Hanover Township Pennsylvania in the year1930.

    Rosey, a name that she only allowed for use by her husband Joseph, was an adventuress. He will tell you about Rosemary’s upbringing after which he will relate some of Rosemary’s escapades, which are so varied, they read like the talking about phases of the moon. At the midpoint of Rosemary’s 93d year Rosey began a new adventure, a grand journey, one whose path one may only ponder.

    Mom, Florence, was quite strict in monitoring Rosemary’s behavior and scolded Rosemary at times that she would depart with her sister Gianna to  Wilks Barre’s surrounding coal mine slag heaps for bring home a few pieces of melted iron, which they sold to the traveling junk man.

    Dad,Tony, (Anthony) was an ornamental plasterer, an artisan in the mold of those who built the Pantheon in Rome. He emigrated the American Continent at age of 19 from his home in San Daniele located in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of North Italy when he broke free his brother from prison. His brother was suffering the consequences of committing a minor crime. They crossed the border into Austria and found their way to their new home.

    Anthony was one of the few young people in San Daniele who could read. This skill allowed him to be recruited by the Carabinieri, the military police. He guarded the King Victor Emanual III but gave up this prized position to save his brother.

    Tony the border and was began to work in the building trades. He learned to decorate church interiors with formed plaster. Tony was independent. He ceased to work for contractors and went off on his own. He is remembered among other grand works for fashioning the 24 foot tall statue from clay and plaster, which was finally cast in aluminum, of Christ The King. It was designed by his friend Lawrence Russo, the architect and dominates the skyline of Wilkes Barre from the roof of King’s College. Lawrence drew and Tony modeled. Tony and Lawrence assiduously visited the saloons the construction workers in Wilkes Barre frequented.

    At Tony’s funeral the attending Priest told the tale of the images of the Apostles that adorned the church’s interior frieze. They were drawn by Lawrence and fabricated by Tony. Upon unveiling the viewers gasped since the Apostle’s faces were undraped the audience clearly perceived that they were fashioned from the group of the local well-oiled group that navigated the bar scene.

    Rosemary’s family moved to nearby Wilkes Barre when she was 12. They lived on the banks of the Susquehanna River. Rosemary recalled the many times when she was evacuated from their home because of the periodic flooding of the River. Many years later Rosemary overcompensated for her fear of rising waters and implored her husband that they should purchase land to build their home that lay near the peak of Marlborough Mountain.

    Rosemary sought more excitement than Wilkes Barre, a provincial town, offered. Sister Gianna, a stay-at-home girl, later attended Marywood College (University) but Rosemary went off to Washington D.C. a land of excitement. In 1958 Rosemary was hired by the State Department though never understood why. She was chosen for a position in the State Department, personally, by John Foster Dulles. Many of her friends understand that it was her good-looks rather than her debatable skills that attained her appointment.

    Rosemary’s work was undefined and varied. She often traveled on her bicycle to the White House to delivered Ambassadorial papers and other documents, she embossed the great seal of the United States on important official papers and delivered coffee to John, himself, and other government officials. An unverified story about Rosemary is that if she didn’t approve of an Ambassadorial appointment that she discarded it in the trash. Rosemary wanted to move on. She hoped to be stationed in Paris. But the fates, those in charge, offered her a position in the Embassy at Kuala Lumpur. Not Paris so Rosemary quit her job and traveled west.

    First to Salt Lake City ,where she worked as a librarian, then California, a few cities west of the Rockies, to Sausalito and finally to San Francisco where Rosemary waited tables.

    Upon visiting this city many years later to visit his wandering son, Alexander, Joseph discovered a review of Rosemary’s theater activity in which she acted in a play with the Diane Feinstein who later became the Senator from California. Rosemary’s review was superb, Diane’s not much so.

    Joseph always accused Rosemary as being part of the Beat Generation, which she denied. The Beats are often confused with Hippies. Not so! The Beats were a literary movement concerned with politics and literature.

    As proof of Rosemary’s involvement in the arts Joseph, upon visiting this San Francisco many years later to visit his wandering son, Alexander, he discovered a review of Rosemary’s theater activity in which she acted in a play with the Diane Feinstein who later became the Senator from California. Rosemary’s review was superb, Diane’s not much so.

    Rosemary spent much of her time at the City Lights Bookstore that was the center of the Beat generation and her association with people like Mark di Suvero, an artist now represented at storm King Art Center, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, its owner and Alan Ginsburg.

    For Rosemary’s political career. Fifty years ago Rosemary lost a kidney, probably due to the whipping by a policeman’s nightstick during her participation in a political march.

    Next took the small amount of money that she saved from her employment as a librarian, and other varied work in the west and traveled by freighter to her father’s homeland, Italy. Rosemary worked at the United Nations Information Center in Rome where she met Wendy. A year later she encountered Wendy on a New York City Street.

    Wendy introduced Rosemary to Joseph. They have been together ever since. Joseph was intrigued with Rosemary during this first meeting because Rosemary was dancing on a dining table of the Puglia, a classic Italian restaurant, located in little Italy.

    When Joseph met Rosemary, she was living in a farmhouse, the last farmhouse in Manhattan. One entered through two wooden barn gated doors. Joseph, the innocent was thrown into a world of adventure by his encounter. When Joseph and Rosemary went for a day’s travel along came Rosemary’s friend Marion Tanner. Marion was the model for Edward Everett Tanner ‘Patrick Dennis’ Auntie Mame. Once they visited fire island and Marion enticed Joseph into breaking into a summer home so she could retrieve clothing that she left there. Joseph spent the evening in jail. Marion was one of many friends that Rosemary had that didn’t belong to the mainstream city life. Rosemary’s friends were all unusual. There was Leilani, an actress who was a puppeteer at the NY World’s Fair. Leilani carried a revolver in her hand back as she feared that she would be attacked in her Greenwich Village home. Then Priscilla. Priscilla embodied the qualities of a witch. One could not set their eyes upon her without thinking of Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

    Life calmed. Rosemary gave birth to Joseph and her children, Jules and Alexander. They lived on the Greenwich Connecticut waterfront on Steamboat Road. Next the pair purchased a home in Port Chester, NY and later moved to Wappingers Falls, NY where Joseph opened a furniture store. New York. Rosemary made the decision to return to college. Rosemary returned to college after having a start of the College learning experience at Wilkes located in her hometown and while living in Poughkeepsie earned degree in Italian Literature from Vassar College. Next Rosemary went forward to social work school and worked for social work agencies and completed her career by joining Family Services in Poughkeepsie.

    In the year 1995 Joseph and Rosemary moved to Milton, NY where they built their home. They left 18 years later for 6 years moved to a wonderful retirement community, Woodland Pond in New Paltz. After which they moved back to their home in Milton. They were again returning to Woodland Pond when Rosemary passed while spending the last days of her life being wonderfully cared for in the Woodland Pond nursing facility.

    Rosemary was active in the community. She was the president of The New York State Society of Clinical Social Work for almost 10 years, a director of Poughkeepsie’s Community Family Development organization, the vice president of the Milton Public Library, taught Italian language at Woodland Pond and other community services too numerous to mention.

    Rosemary is survived by her husband Joseph, her sons Alexander and Jules, her grandchildren Emma, Peter, Oscar, Ivy and Caleb. Rosemary’s younger sister Gianna passed on 8 years ago, Gianna’s daughter Ane Marie occasionally sends Rosemary a note on Facebook from Denmark and Rosemary’s cousin Janet along with cousin Lucy, whom she sought and found using her interest in that great tool of Social Work, the Genogram.

    That’s it! All, which remains of Rosemary’s family.

    Travel lightly, Rosemary. All of us wish to hear your stories of your latest adventure.

    Auntie Mame

                                         

    Chance Encounters of a Serious Kind: My life with Auntie Mame and how I became a social worker

                Auntie Mame arrived with Baby Sarah in her arms.  Libby found them on the 5 o’clock News program.  The Sheriff in Greenwich Village  was unloading Marion Tanner’s furniture [that’s her name] out onto the sidewalk.  The baby grew up, swallowed poison from beneath our kitchen sink, was taken in by her physician and his young family. That first morning, Marion who slept near her bed in the corner on the floor curled up in the fetal position, said as she moved bacon around in the frying pan. “The last thing I expected to do was to be a short order cook.”  She had a beautiful, unlined face without a tooth in her mouth, and had been an actress and a social worker. 

    Libby was Elizabeth Lyons, who with old Louie, who served her unfailingly, made of a brownstone, previously turned into a boarding house, with a ballroom and black and white floor tiles, a grand piano and velvet drapes on all windows, was also  a social worker, the first halfway house in  America, inhabited, by default, by young people recently discharged from psychiatric hospitals.  They were expected to find jobs and be under the care of a psychiatrist.  Stelazione and Thorazine were the tranquilizing medications of the time.  Her new home was not intended for former hospitalized patients, and parents besieged her with request for a home for their newly discharged children.  Libby had been a social worker for the military working in Germany.  She found her Castle on the Rhine” in Newburgh, once Sarah grew up, and brought to life abandoned mansions that overlooked the Hudson River.  She held group therapy sessions in the ballroom and, following one meeting, down the marble stairs came one client saying, “My therapist is having a nervous breakdown.”  Bierer House, named after Joshua Bierer, MD., who opened the first half-way house ever, in London, England.  Ours was located on 20th Street between eighth and ninth streets, and across from the Episcopal Seminary, which enveloped the entire block between 20th and 21st.   I was to manage the home while she traveled to London to meet with Dr. Bierer.  We cleaned and scrubbed and washed the toilets.  We provided Sunday dinner and breakfast each day.

    The new Fieldcrest flowered sheets and pillowcases graced each bedroom.  Mine was purple and violet in color.  I never fell asleep until Sheba lay down on my feet each night.  When I left I left Sheba behind,

    Our blue eyed cream and brown kitten, but brought with me her baby girl, Bathsheba, all black and white, who later gave birth to a baby kitten, all white. With one green and one blue eye.

    Libby loved little Sarah and dressed her in red velvet dress and black ones with white lace collars. She herself was tall and gangly with red hair and the ivory complexion one sees with red hair.  Her top front teeth protruded a bit but she would say that one day she would lose them happily enough. She and Marion would finish cleaning up the kitchen and soon afterward each made a peanut butter sandwich every day for lunch.

    Marion’s friends would come to pick her up.  Will Geer was then well known on television.  Her women friends, elegantly dressed and heavily made up with rouge and mascara, would say to her.  “Drop the baby, Mame, and let’s get going”!  Marion would leave the house with them dressed in her heavy green woolen winter coat that covered her from neck to floor.  Evidently, she never had dentures to replace her own.  She would say to no one in particular, “He [her nephew, Edward Everett Tanner, whom she raised as a little boy, who wrote the memoir and then the musical theatre play, titled Auntie Mame.

    She would say in a huff, “He thinks Rosalind Russel is his Aunt!”  He withdrew support from her when she began taking in the homeless, and it was said, found Sarah and her family living under the formal dining room table.  I believe he predeceased her or he did not live to her old age, when she saved the nursing home in Greenwich Village from closing down with funds collected through her personal fame as the real Auntie Mame spread throughout the community.  She was a serene and tranquil person who went to meetings of the theosophical society.  She read books, I suspect, written by Madame Blavatsky.

    Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was a Russian occultist, spirit medium, and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875.   I spoke with now grown up Sarah who had come from her home in Florida to the Cathedral of St John the Divine to attend Marion’s memorial service.

    Libby was there, too, but I learned little about Sarah’s life now, for we could only speak of Marion and Sarah did not remember me, I having moved away while she was still a tot.

    One Sunday evening, as I mopped the kitchen floor, a handsome young man, a new resident of Bierer House came through the kitchen, probably to take out the trash.  He walked out the kitchen door; I remember someone else was with him or outside the door.  [Could he have been alone; if he had been, would I have locked the door behind him?] It was still daylight and summer outside.  I, playfully I thought, locked the kitchen door. He appeared shaken and stricken to my surprise, and struggled to open the door. I immediately opened it.  He died soon after, a self chosen death—was it days or weeks I do not know.  I never saw him after the incident.  His mother

    continued to write to ask Libby how he was doing, although she was informed of his death. 

    I imagine now that he was too vulnerable, too fragile, to interpret a locked door other than

    A locked door.  Perhaps he did not know I locked it?  If not, then perhaps he did not interpret it as malign.

    A Dream

    How old could I have been then in my dream

    It started out in a restaurant.  Who was this restaurateur—a woman.  She may have been ‘colored’ or Afro or looked like Lisa here, who treats me so graciously and kindly.  I began assisting her in the kitchen.  At the end of the evening, it came to me, this idea.  I had just arrived in town, it seemed.  Would she hire me as a cook?  Surely after so many years, I know how to cook!  She agreed.  I can support myself now in my own hometown.  I walked toward Scott Street.  Where was our home now?  People directed me. I must have passed it.  I didn’t recognize it.  Was No. 37?  [That was our first home that I remembered.] I turned around.  There was Mother with a group of women I saw through an enormous glass plate window.   The room was sunny yellow, and the women were dressed in color—brightly colored greens and yellows and gold.  Like Joseph’s garden here at Woodland Pond.  He had said to me last night that finally he was ‘home’ [here at  Woodland Pond, he told me, after four years of dreaming about returning to our Milton home. Today in 2019 we may be able to sell it.  But I was dreaming of a long-lost home.]

    Mother in my dream had pulled herself together and was entertaining the ladies.  She is managing very well without me.

    Mother opened the door.  I think I overheard her saying to her group of women. “That must be Rosemary” or “That must be my daughter now.”  “Did iyou have to come so late at night?”, she said to me.  I was surprised at her words, but knew it was my mother speaking to me, hiding her feelings or not recognizing them.  I told the women I graduated from Wilkes College, where I had attended classes, and not the truth about Vassar College.  I have work now.  I was independent.  I will see Daddy tomorrow.

    Jane had to be alive still—way off in Denmark.  My fault.  She had come to meet me in San Francisco, like she had when I worked in Washington D. C.—just for the summer.  She met and married Peter Dau, her handsome Dane, and brought him back to his hometown on the Island of Fyn.  She never returned to Wilkes Barre.  We all three left and never returned except for annual visits; she and I, more often.

    Now that I’ve awakened to my age and my Woodland Pond apartment, I see that I returned ‘home’  in my dream this morning.  Jane is gone; Ronnie is drifting and I know not where exactly.  There is still Christina his no longer wife, but I can always reach out to her.  There are our good sons and precious daughters-in-law, and our four lovely grandchildren and a baby on-the-way.  And we may be able to sell our Milton home today.  Our beautiful, faithful and loving cats are all gone, mostly buried in Milton, where together we used to run up and down the hills among the apple trees.  Goodbye to all.  Love, Mom