Ashes to Ashes

As a genealogist, I tend to focus on researching/identifying ancestors who dwell in the deep, dark recesses of history — long before I was born. I attribute that inclination to a primeval calling to discover the earliest origins of who I am. As an African American, my ancestral roots lay in slavery; a research path shrouded in mystery.

But recently (probably in response to my mother’s birthday (May 28), I started thinking about contemporary ancestors = family members who lived and died within my own lifetime.

I am fortunate to not have experienced many deaths of immediate family members during the time in which I have lived (which is beginning to be a long time indeed). As I calculate the demise of my loved ones, I realize their deaths have been spaced over long periods of time. In my 60+ years, only seven really close family members have departed this world. (That number doesn’t include aunts, uncles and cousins, only the closest of close — the people who bore and raised me.) The result averages out to one loss per seven years, a period of time that should allow room for healing from profound grief that, no matter how many years pass, never goes away.

The first one to go was my paternal great grandmother; the woman who first inspired my interest in genealogy. Her name was Rhoda Reeves LESLIE (1850-1954). Born into slavery, she died at age of 104 when I was three years old. I can only remember seeing her but not talking to her. I knew nothing about her history until I was an adult and my father (after much resistance) finally told me some of her story, the essence of which propelled me on a genealogical journey that continues to this day.

Nine years later, in 1963, I lost my mother’s mother — Jeanette Waymoth NICHOLSON (1902-1963). Maw Maw dropped dead (at age 60) right before my 12 year old eyes. After drinking a refreshing glass of tap water from the sink in front of a kitchen window, she remarked “What a lovely day” and dropped to  the floor, dead of a massive heart attack. After my mother and aunt carried her to a nearby bed, we all heard her last gasp of breath, which made us think she was still with us. She was not.

The next year (1973) my father’s father, Robert LESLIE (1893-1973) died at age 79. I never knew him well because my mother kept me away from my father’s people. Yet, when I attended Mr. Gentleman’s funeral, I cried inconsolably for the man I didn’t know, bruised to the core because I wasn’t even mentioned in his obituary with his other grandchildren.

The next year (1974), my mother’s father, Louis Bell NICHOLSON (1895-1974) died of old age at age 80. His heart just STOPPED. The rock of my existence, I remember changing Paw Paw’s diapers before the task became so overwhelming that my mother was forced to admit him to a nursing home.

In 1983 (nine years later), my father’s step (hate that word) grandmother, Mama Dora (Antonia Dora FEDERICO, 1902-1983) passed away at age 80. I refused to visit her in hospital for weeks because I knew she was waiting for me in order to be released. Once I overcame my fear, went to the hospital, held her hand and whispered “I love you” into her ear, she passed away peacefully. I shall forever regret my callous selfishness in not wanting to live in world without her. 

Traumatized by the loss of my most beloved, I eschewed attending funerals. I could not bear the pain of loss — either my own family members or those of friends. At every funeral invitation, my mind turned to how I had to be restrained from throwing myself into my grandfather’s grave and carried from the funeral service to my grandmother’s home, where I slept in her bed, crying in agony for days.

Eighteen years beyond that vow, my father died in 2001 (age 87); my mother in 2005 (age 76). When my father passed, I was living in Paris. Friends potted up the money to buy me a ticket home so I (his only child) could attend to his last rites (which I heralded with a display of Easter lilies). I returned home from Paris in 2003 and had the good fortune of spending the last two years of my mother’s life with her living in my home — a place I organized for the specific purpose of caring for her.

Where does all of this history lead me?

I have concluded that I don’t want to remember people in death… I prefer to recall them in LIFE…. AND I have no doubt whatsoever that their spirits continue to exist in another realm where they await me with open arms. 

My mother’s ashes are preserved in an urn that I keep on a bookshelf. My father is on another shelf — just above hers. (She told me before she died that they couldn’t be on the same shelf unless I wanted to find ashes spewed all over the floor

When I recently introduced my two young grandchildren to their great grandparents, they marvelled at the idea of the temporal body v. the everlasting life of the spirit.

I have no idea when my time will come, but I know it won’t be that much longer before it does. My only prayer is that someone will remember my name.

Mama Dora

Dora & Robert LESLIE

I spent most of my day yesterday watching the 40th anniversary marathon of The Godfather saga on television. It is one of my all-time favorite films that has not lost one iota of relevance in the passage of time. As I watched, I could not help but think about my family history and the fascination with gangsters I share with so many others.

My interest in mafia movies (and other things Italian) is inspired by my beloved grandmother — Antonia Dora FEDERICHO. She is but one of the people in my family tree with connections to Italy, not merely as a birthplace but because of their service to Al Capone.

One relative (Joe JENNINGS) worked at Capone’s Marion Hotel in Chicago and was friendly with “the boss,” who once rewarded him with the promise of a Vicuna coat from his personal wardrobe. The police, on a hunt for Big Al, found the coat (sans Capone) with Joe’s name and address in the pocket. They arrested Joe and interrogated him about Capone’s whereabouts. A police captain came to Joe’s aid and authorized his release. Another relative (Robert GAVIN) took a kidnapping rap for Capone, a magnanimous (?) act that resulted in 16 years of incarceration at Pontiac State Prison in Illinois.

Then, there were my grandparents.

In 1922, when my grandfather (Robert LESLIE) married Antonia Dora FEDERICHO, he married into a family with connections. Dora’s mother (Filomena MAGLIONICA FEDERICHO) came from the same village in Italy as Capone’s mother Teresina and they were lifelong friends. Filomena owned a grocery store on Chicago’s Southside. Her husband (Antonio FEDERICHO) operated ice trucks, which their oldest son (John) drove. During Prohibition, these “hooch friendly” business enterprises had ties to the Capone organization. Dora and Bob sold hooch (which Dora attributed as the cause of my grandfather’s alcoholism and the associated violence that led to their divorce).

When Bob and Dora married, the 20 year old Dora was fresh from a stint in the House of the Good Shephard, a Catholic industrial school for girls. She soon adopted my seven year old father and his two brothers, who had been orphaned when their biological mother died in 1921. Dora was the only mother they ever knew. My middle name is an honorific to her, I spent my childhood summers in her care and, when she died in 1983, I locked myself in her bedroom for days, crying my eyes out.

My father told me that, when Dora’s family first met Bob, they thought he was a “dark Dago.” They were no doubt surprised when Bob’s darker skinned children arrived in Chicago, however, the LESLIE boys were accepted and grew up into the family business. I never met any of Dora’s relatives until her funeral, but was pleased to learn that they knew about me and how special I was to her.

There is whole lot more I could say about Dora, but I will let her rest. The intriguing historical angle is that my genealogical research into her family led me to some truly unexpected information about the history of Italians in America. Italians were never slaves, but suffered extreme prejudice and violence at the hands of white Anglo Saxon Protestants. They were restricted to low-income, low-class jobs and attacked for their Catholicism by the Ku Klux Klan. In 1891, eleven Italians were lynched in New Orleans in one of the largest mass lynchings in American history. Five shopkeepers were lynched in 1899 for giving equal status to black customers in Tallulah, Louisiana. During World War II, Italians thought to be loyal to Italy were incarcerated in internment camps, just like the Japanese.

When Dora’s father immigrated to the United States in 1878, his greatest wish was to become an American. That dream was accomplished in 1897, when he filed his petition for citizenship at Mount Vernon, New York. Like Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Antonio worked his way up from being a stone cutter in New York to being a businessman in Chicago. He died of unknown causes in 1914.

Now that I have connected with Dora’s ancestral spirits, I wonder if I can consider myself a “made” woman?!!