52 Ancestors Week 42: Proud

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 42's theme is "Proud." Who is an ancestor that you are proud of? What about an ancestor who did something they should have been proud of? Maybe a discovery that you're proud you made because it was so hard to find?

Pride gets you a participation trophy! KUDOS!

Pride is a very interesting emotion. Too much of it and it counts as one of the seven deadly sins. Not enough and people wonder if you're ever happy about anything. The trick, like most things in life, is to find a healthy balance between one extreme or the other. In genealogy, though, I've been proud of many things I've found and even prouder of certain ancestors of mine. I'm actually proud of all of them. But, there are two special ones who I am definitely proud of!

Who is that adorable baby? ;)

 My paternal grandparents, Marco Ferraiolo and Olympia Carrabs are the ones I'm really, truly proud of. I'm not saying I'm not proud of the others. I am. But, let me explain why those two stand out among the rest. 

We start with my grandpa Marco. I've already talked about how he was born in San Pietro a Maida, Italy in 1925 to Vincenzo Ferraiolo and Maria Tedesco. In 1929, his father sent for his wife and two children who were living there to come live with him in Haverhill, Massachusetts. 

At four years old, Marco traveled across the Atlantic with his mother and six year old sister and once he came to America the family made a life for themselves in the city.

It couldn't have been easy. As a child, he had to learn English quickly and adapt to the American way of life. He likely had to face discrimination because there were a lot of anti-Italian sentiment in the first half of the twentieth century.  I'm not sure how prevalent it was in Haverhill at the time. It still had to have been rough for him and his parents. Upon further research, I've found that overall Italians were not considered white until the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Italians and immigrants in general had a very hard time dealing with discrimination and prejudice.

In the end, Marco ended up doing very well. He grew up and enlisted as a paratrooper in the second world war. In the letters he wrote back to his sister, he explained what being a paratrooper was like. I mentioned this before several times. He was scared. But, he didn't let the fear control him and I'm proud of him for that. He even earned a Purple Heart. He left the service as a private and that's still something to be proud of. He served in Italy. So, you could say he was attempting to free his birth country from the clutches of Benito Mussolini! HAH! I found a loophole! You can't take that away from me! 

Marco also made it possible for his son, my father, to go to college. Since that was something he never did. He got to see his son become a dentist, get married and have two grandsons. Pretty sweet deal.  My father ended up being a first generation Italian-American as his father was born in Italy and his mother was born in Massachusetts as the daughter of two Italian immigrants. 

Grandma Ollie, glass ceiling smasher

Olympia Carrabs, like her husband Marco, was the offspring of Italian immigrants who lived in Haverhill. However, there were several key differences. Her parents, Giuseppe Carrabs and Clementina Forgione were born in Gesualdo, Italy. That town is far from San Pietro as it's in Campania with 344 kilometers between the towns!

I'm proud of my grandmother because she was a working mother at a time when most women were expected to be stay-at-home housewives. She and her husband worked very hard to make a great life for their son.

Grandma Ollie worked for AT & T as a supervisor and was a member of the Pioneers of AT & T and graduated high school in the late 1930s. 

During that time period, it was unusual for women to be away from home and learning about various things in school. But, like my other grandmother, she stuck with school and graduated. Not bad, huh?

After my grandfather's death in 1983, she still managed to be both grandmother AND grandfather to my brother and I. She lived by herself in her own house until the day she died. But, she never seemed to let loneliness get to her. She always had a smile and was always happy to see us and tell us stories. We lived not to far from her so we frequently visited her and her sisters also stopped by very frequently. She was never alone and had great stories to tell. Not to mention great cooking. 

My grandparents make me proud of my Italian heritage. I've learned about their struggles and while it definitely wasn't easy growing up in a New England town, you can bet that they made the best of any situation because they had family with them. It isn't just a saying that "family is everything". It's actually very true. 

See ya next time!