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SHE WANTED TO BE A MOM
MOM WANTED TO GET MARRIED as soon as possible; by the 1940s she had passed her mid-twenties, and she worried that time was running out for her to start a family.
But those were the days of World War II and Dad was stationed on the island of New Guinea, where Japanese fighting was intense, so there were no long leaves before he was discharged in December 1945. Sixty-four days later, at 8:00 a.m. on March 3, 1946, they were married by Dad’s brother, Father Paul, a catholic priest, in Holy Apostles Church on Lyell Avenue in Rochester. Mom wore a navy-blue suit. Dad wore gray.
Exactly thirteen months later, I was born. Mom and Dad were living with his widowed father in the home where he had grown up. Even then, he was around o
