52 Ancestors Week 9: Gone Too Soon

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 9

The theme for Week 9 is "Gone Too Soon." How much time is enough? Just a little bit more...  This week is a good time to write about someone who you'd like to have a little (or a lot) more time with.

Caution: Expect Feels.

Warning: This week's blog is going to have a lot of feels. 

    If you've been reading the blog for a long time, then you know who I'm going to write about this week. When it comes to people being gone far too soon, I can only think of my grandfather, Marco Ferraiolo. I know that my second great-grandfather, Antoine Legault, also qualifies as being "gone too soon" since he passed away at the age of fifty in 1901. However, with grandpa Marco it feels more recent since his death occured within my lifetime. In a few weeks, it will have been forty years since Marco passed away and suffice it to say I have strong feelings about what he missed out on.

La famiglia di Ferraiolo

    My grandfather was born in the Calabrian town of San Pietro a Maida in 1925 and came to America in 1929 with his mother, Maria Tedesco (another family member who was gone too soon) and his sister, Nicolina. Like my grandpa Robert, he served the US armed forces in World War II. However, unlike Robert who was in the Air Force, Marco was a paratrooper.

    After the war, he met and married fellow Haverhill resident, Olympia Carrabs. The story of how they met is a bit of a mystery to me and my father since no one ever thought to ask how the two met. If I were a betting man, I'd say that they likely met at church. It's the only reasonable explanation because they lived around the corner from each other for a good number of years. Sadly, that tale is probably lost to time. My father never thought to ask his parents how they met and sadly that was one of the questions I never asked grandma Ollie. Looking back, I probably should have asked! It is what it is and you really can't dwell on "What ifs" because in the end it'll drive you crazy.

    My father was born about a year after my grandparents tied the knot. They both encouraged him to pursue academia and eventually he became a dentist. He met my mother in college and the two were married by the summer of 1971. And what an event that was! Granted weddings are normally huge events. However, this one was a vitally important one because both sets of grandparents wanted to make sure every family member from both sides were there. EVERYONE. And most people were. It was very important to both grandfathers to have family there likely because Marco's father passed away the previous year and he wanted to maintain connections to the family the same way Vincenzo did. I have pictures from the event and it's so good to put faces to the names I put on Ancestry because a lot of family members were there and their decendants are DNA matches. I wonder what would happen if I were to put the entire wedding album on Ancestry. Talk about "cousin bait".

OH! Such an adorably baby. ;)

   By 1976, my brother James was born and I was born two years later. The pic to the right is my only picture I have with my grandfather Marco and me. Not long after this picture was taken, he and my grandmother went to Stuart, Florida since they had a house there. 

    Grandma Ollie and Grandpa Marco went back and forth from Haverhill to Florida quite a bit during their marriage. I believe the term for that is called "snowbirds". They would fly down in the winter and come back up north when the weather got too warm.

  During one of those trips, a bombshell hit. My grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer brought on from years of smoking. In those days, chemotherapy was in its infancy and there was little to northing they could do to help his condition. He passed away in Stuart, Florida on March 13th, 1983 and that's when everything started to change.

    When my grandfather passed away, the connections to friends and family he knew seemed to fade away as well. The biggest connection was the Tedescos of Woburn, Mass. After he passed away, my family lost all connection with them up until a certain plucky young genealogist signed into Ancestry in 2006 and came into contact with a distant cousin named Mary Tedesco.

Jim, LOOK AT THE CAMERA!!!!

    Between 1983 and the present, life moved on because that's the only thing you can do when a family member passes away. My brother and I grew up and filling the hole our grandfather left behind was usually Grandpa Bob, Aunt Nickie and "Aunt" Mary's husband, Peter Matorian. 

    Since I was four when Marco passed away, I don't have any memories of him like my brother does. For example, he remembers the time they drank "wine" that was really water from a wine bottle. As you can tell from the picture here, he had a pretty good sense of humor. Sometimes I wonder if that's where I got it from. =) 

    When I was growing up, I often asked everyone what Grandpa Marco even sounded like because for the first couple years of my life, I couldn't hear anything. I was born deaf and I still wear hearing aids to this day. Everyone has told me that he sounded like my father. That was kind of reassuring. But, you know me. That was the first of MANY questions.

You know, those would totally be iPhones today.

    Luckily, my family always indulged my questions and I got to hear many amazing stories about him. We lived in the house he and my father built and I remember my dad feeling his presence from time to time. Grandpa Marco had a particular odor and when my father was working in the basement, he would smell him nearby. Curiously, I thought I smelled something odd the day I brought up that old box that had his and Vincenzo's things inside.

    Growing up, I heard everything and it honestly made me miss him a little bit less. Because I was born the way I was, he would constantly worry about me and my health. I was not the healthiest of children. Let's put it this way. I was Steve Rogers BEFORE the super soldier serum turned him into Captain America.

    In the end, I grew up and managed to defy all expectations put on me. I was told I would never grow beyond five feet. I'm a head shorter than Jim now and he's six feet tall. I ran cross country and track and got the coach's award for bravery. I could go on but we'd be here a while. Despite all his worries, I think I turned out okay. 

Marco and Cammy!

    All these years later I still wonder what he might think of me now since I've been doing the genealogy thing and reconnecting with family members in Europe and elsewhere. I think he would have been happy to know that I reached out to everyone he either knew or descended from someone he knew.

     Like Nicolina, he probably would have taken an AncestryDNA test and like my father, he probably would have needed help sorting through everything such as the DNA matches. I wonder if he'd have had the same reaction his sister had about his half-sister. He knew about Vincenzo's dalliance. So, chances are good he'd have understood and probably would've cursed under his breath. I don't want to put words in his mouth but if his older sister's reaction is anything to go by.....yeah he'd have done the same thing. Let's be honest here.

        I could go on for days explaining everything that my grandfather missed. In the end, it would probably upset me more than anything. A lot can happen in forty years. People grow up, lives change and families drift apart due to the passage of time. It honestly can't be helped. I'd like to think that Marco would be proud of me trying to get the band back together so to speak. He'd be happy to learn that I was digging through records in San Pietro a Maida, his home village, just like his sister was. 

    Like I said earlier, you can't dwell on "What ifs" and everything. I choose to believe he would be happy with how everything turned out. Apparently, he drew a lot and liked science fiction like my faather does. We'd have had a lot to bond over and possibly some comics. I guess in a way I'm lucky that so many people in my life remember him as a good man and was able to share good memories of him. Still, there's that part of me that wished I knew him as well as everyone else did.  But, it is what it is. So, I choose to believe he would be happy with how everything turned out for me and the future's looking pretty good as I continue to discover more connections to Italy.

See ya next time!