TBT: Back to 1956

The last of the three photos sent to me by my cousin. I added a sepia filter, straightened and cropped this one but left it with the trio centered. That was the standard way photos were taken back then, making sure to get your subject centered in the photo. At least nothing is 'growing' out of any of their heads.

My Nana on the left was 58 years old then. She had been a widow for nine years and despite Social Security legislation being passed in 1935, she had virtually no income. With a 4th grade education, she had only worked in a silk mill for a few years before her marriage at age 18. My coal-miner grandfather never received a pension when he died of MS and Black Lung.  She only had health benefits when Medicare was passed in 1965. Nana was totally dependent on the good will of her daughters and daughter in law. She lived with one or the other from 1947 until she died in 1972.

Without family, I wonder what happened to other women like her.

TBT: Summer 1956

Another one of the photos sent to me by my cousin Joe. This is the house in MD where I spent most of my growing  up years until I was married. The tall man is my father and he was 6'4 and 36 years old here. How funny it is to think how I thought they were all so old when I was 12. But that's a child's perspective.




The man to his left is my maternal grandmother's brother Peter who moved from PA to NYC, probably to avoid a life spent in the PA coal mines. At some point he met his wife Victoria who is seated on the porch. She already had a son and came from an Italian family so it was quite a change from the Lithuanian and Irish people who seemed to fill most of the town in PA.

It was after WWII that more people moved away from their hometowns and married spouses of different ethnic backgrounds. Those moves allowed a lot of economic growth but at the same time, family connections were often lost. Life is full of choices.