I am trying to gather as many family stories about my grandmother’s childhood as possible. It’s much easier now that I see her on weekends (hopefully EOW now that things have stabilized quite a bit). One of my misconceptions I had was that she had about a dozen brothers. Not quite that many:
- Frank
- Ernie
- Anthony (the first one; he died very young)
- Charlie
- Frederick (aka Fritzie)
- Harry
- Paulie
- Anthony (the second one; he died even younger than the first one)
My grandmother was born in between Paulie and the youngest Anthony. I guess 8 brothers is quite a lot!
Fritzie was a musician, a violinist, but he died when he was 20. I hope my grandmother remembers the band leader he played with. The youngest Anthony had blond curly hair! My grandmother said we have blonds in our Italian family, although I’ve never seen a natural one.
Some of the stories my grandmother tells me of her childhood are so funny! I guess with that many boys, things got pretty rowdy. Many are sad too; several of the brothers died young. For my entire life, I remember my grandmother saying that out of all her brothers, only Frank was still alive, but Uncle Frank died last year at the age of 100. Now, it’s just my grandmother.