A Seemingly Ordinary Life: (family and friends edition: unedited)

By Jay M. Gutierrez

This is the story of one, seemingly ordinary baby boomer. The author integrates his life story with the current events of the day, in hopes that his readers can see their own life's journey in his, and on reflection recognize how extraordinary moments are embedded in everyone's seemingly ordinary experiences. His story is informative, reflective

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: May 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638373186

Jay M. Gutierrez

Born in 1951, Jay M. Gutierrez was raised during a simpler time in New Jersey, and came of age during the more turbulent late 60s and early 70s in Washington, D.C. He practiced law for 32 years, specializing in nuclear power regulation, first in government and eventually in private practice. He and his wife of almost 50 years, Ann, raised three children. Now retired, they currently enjoy family, friends and travel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

In August of 1305 A.D., King Edward I of England ordered that Scottish patriot William Wallace be hung, and then drawn and quartered for high treason against the English crown. In response to his sentence, and just before it was carried out, Wallace allegedly shouted: All men die, not all men live.

In 399B.C., a 500 person jury of his fellow Athenians sentenced the Greek Philosopher, Socrates, to death for encouraging Athenian youth to think for themselves rather than to blindly follow the conventions of the day. Socrates became his own executioner by drinking a poisonous potion containing hemlock, and as the drink took effect, his final words allegedly were: the unexamined life is not worth living.

My intent in writing this book is neither to overthrow a government nor corrupt any minds. Rather, this book is my attempt to document the reflections on one ordinary life. In so doing, I have come to appreciate that embedded in any seemingly ordinary life, be it yours or mine, are extraordinary moments and experiences. If only we stop and reflect, any of us can uncover these moments and more fully appreciate an otherwise, seemingly ordinary life. Absent such an effort, as Socrates warned, our lives may be not worth living, or as William Wallace proclaimed, we may die without having really lived.

I have come to realize that reflecting on one’s life is a selective and subjective process, not an objective reconstruction of the past. I have strived to present a fair review and examination of my life. I am ever conscious, however, that memories are colored by our upbringing and the times in which we lived. My greatest influences have been: being raised in New Jersey in the 1950s and 1960s, as part of a tight-knit, Catholic family; coming of age in Washington, D.C. in the late 1960s and early 1970s; having married Ann in 1974; being a father; and, pursuing a career in law.

I am a Baby Boomer, a term that has taken on cultural connotations. To varying degrees, we challenged, rejected and, in some cases, redefined traditional values. During the 1950s and into the early 1960s, I felt a strong sense of security, stability, and innocence. The adults in my world appeared to be on board the same boat, rowing in the same direction. As I reached adolescence in the mid-1960s, I, like others around me, began to question and rebel against traditional values and authority. We believed that we could make the world a better place. Despite us Baby Boomers’ early rebellion, most of us, me included, eventually embraced the traditional values of our parents as we matured into adulthood, married and began to raise our own children in the 1970s and 1980s.

This book provides a chronological account of my life, from my birth on June 10, 1951, to my retirement from the practice of law on September 30, 2013. I hope the reader comes to realize how each seemingly ordinary day has built upon the prior to collectively result in an extraordinary journey for me, and as Socrates predicted, a life well worth living.

BOOK I

MY CHILDHOOD

Two old men shared a supportive and loving childhood, and now a park bench. The one man cherished and built upon his childhood experiences, while the other did neither, and that has made all the difference between the two: one content while the other anxious.

CHAPTER ONE

IN THE BEGINNING

Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but catches fire again every time a child is born. George Bernard Shaw

In 1951, Americans were experiencing a too familiar paradox: war abroad and prosperity at home. The Korean War began the previous year, and although President Harry Truman began peace talks in June of 1951, he did not sign an armistice until July of 1953. More than 36,000 Americans lost their lives during this War, while Americans back home experienced an economic boom. In 1951, the annual unemployment rate remained stable at just over 3% and the nation’s economy grew at an annual rate of just over 8%. The average American made a mere $3,100, per year; however, the cost of living was very low. For example, a gallon of gas cost 27 cents, milk costs 96 cents per gallon, and a loaf of bread cost 16 cents. Life was good for Americans at home, but not so good for the young men fighting a war abroad and waiting almost two years for old men to negotiate a peace agreement.

During this time, my parents lived in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, an inner-ring suburb, just nine miles from lower Manhattan and even closer to Jersey City, the city virtually all my relatives called home over the first half of the 20th century. In the 1940s, Hasbrouck Heights was the kind of town where city dwellers first moved their young families, in search of a better life in the expanding suburbs. For example, in 1941, after he had a string of hits, Frank Sinatra moved his young family from Jersey City to Hasbrouck Heights. In 1949, with my Mom six-months pregnant with my older brother Mark, my parents moved our young family from Jersey City to Hasbrouck Heights, and into a small cape-cod house. My Aunt Margaret already lived in the Heights with my two cousins, Danny and Terry. In 1944, however, Sinatra had already moved from the Heights to Hollywood to make movies. We were never neighbors.

In their eagerness to begin life in the suburbs, it appears to me my parents made, at least one, fundamental mistake. They moved without owning a car. Their new home was 22 miles from Newark, New Jersey, where my dad worked, and 9 miles from Jersey City, where, other than my Aunt Margaret, both sides of our family still lived. Hasbrouck Heights had no rail service, so dad depended on an undependable bus service to get to work. Mom walked everywhere. When they absolutely needed a car, they borrowed either my paternal grandfather’s 1938 Hudson or Aunt Margaret’s 1938 Hudson.

By June of 1951, the stage was set for my birth. Nine months pregnant, mom and Aunt Margaret had agreed that when mom went into labor, she should call her sister and Aunt Margaret would drive my parents back to Jersey City to the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital, where they planned my delivery. The history of the Margaret Hague Maternity Hospital well illustrates the world my family knew prior to my arrival, and warrants some discussion to paint a picture of the world I was about to enter.

One of Jersey City’s most notorious and corrupt politicians, Mayor Frank Hague, built the hospital and dedicated it in his mother’s name. Hague was the mayor of Jersey City from 1917 to 1947. Beyond the city, he controlled the New Jersey Democratic party and its associated jobs and patronage. His reach extended to national politics by reason of his ties to Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. In fact, Hague constructed the hospital using funds he received as part of a quid pro quo with Roosevelt during the 1932 presidential race. Roosevelt needed Hague to get out the vote in largely Democratic-urban North Jersey to overtake the vote from largely Republican-rural South Jersey. Hague delivered the Democratic vote and Roosevelt provided the federal funds needed to construct the Hospital.

In 1951, the Margaret Hague was one of the world’s largest maternity hospitals, having the capacity for four hundred mothers and babies. Between 1931 and 1979, more than 350,000 babies were born at the Margaret Hague, including such diverse characters as Martha Stewart, Nathan Lane, Frank Sinatra’s first two kids, and me. Today, the Margaret Hague is no longer a hospital, but a high-end condominium for commuters into nearby New York City. Nonetheless, for a significant period of time the Margaret Hague stood as a monument to how politics worked in the first half of the last century, or at least how they worked in Jersey City.

At the time of his death in 1956, newspapers reported Hague was worth ten million dollars, even though his salary as mayor never exceeded $8,500, per year. Only a naïve person would conclude Hague was a shrewd investor as opposed to a corrupt politician. Hague was never prosecuted for his corruption because he allegedly dealt only in cash so his dealings could not be traced, and because those in a position to prosecute him were equally corrupt.

I mention Frank Hague and the hospital he built because the entire extended family I was born into spent their early lives in Jersey City. Their views of, and approach to, the world were shaped by that city. Many of them, but not all, believed that in order to get ahead, it was who you knew, not what you knew. Those same family members felt nothing was on the level. Whatever the problem, their view was that the solution could be found by someone with political influence. To them, the system was rigged, life was not a meritocracy. Although I do not embrace this view of the world, at times during my life, I, no doubt, have been influenced by it, and I suspect, at times, I have succumbed to it.

A far different perspective of the world prevailed by the time I arrived in 1951. Much of the cynicism formed during my families’ early years in Jersey City had become diluted by the boundless optimism that prevailed throughout America after World War Two. There existed a strong-healthy social compact at many levels of society after the Second World War, between, for example: employer and employee; husband and wife; parent and child; and citizen and society. This compact resulted in a very stable and secure home environment.

Against this backdrop, in the early evening of June 10, 1951, my mom’s water broke around 7pm. On such an occasion, having a car was absolutely necessary, particularly in the suburbs, no matter how close to a city. The 10th was a Sunday, and my parents had just sat down to watch The Jackie Gleason Show, but the initiation of my birth altered their plans. As Aunt Margaret had previously agreed, she arrived just after 7pm to drive mom the 9 miles to the Margaret Hague Hospital; however, they had not earlier ironed out the practical details. Aunt Margaret arrived to pick up mom, dad, and my then 16-month-old brother Mark, with her husband, Charlie, as well as with their two boys, 5-year-old Danny and 3-year-old Terry. Back then, you could easily fit seven people in a car, as there were no car seats for the kids nor seatbelts for the adults. Everyone just piled in, with kids on their parents lap, off they all went to the hospital, but not directly.

Mom and dad needed to first drop off my brother to my paternal grandparents and Aunt Margaret wanted to drop off her two boys with my maternal grandmother. As a result, the nine-mile trip from Hasbrouck Heights to the Margaret Hague took almost two hours. It was not until almost 9pm when the four adults arrived at the hospital. I arrived approximately 20 minutes later at 9:20pm. Reportedly, my birth occurred without a hitch, and I began my life as a quiet baby, who slept a lot.

As for their first official act, my parents named me Jay, which is unusual for Catholics as the church expects its parishioners to name their children after saints. The priest who baptized me advised my folks that if I ever decided to join a religious order, I should then change my name to either John or James. My parents accepted that condition. As a child I struggled a bit with this condition, the life of a priest seemed pretty attractive. Priest were leaders in a respected position within a stable institution. Other than Sunday, they also seemed to have a lot of free time. All the positives faded in the balance when I reached puberty, celibacy just seemed too great a sacrifice. I have been content to be known as Jay ever since I was thirteen.

Until I was 63, I thought my mom named me after the guy who took her to the junior prom. I can’t recall how I came to that belief nor can I recall having it confirmed by either of my parents. During my mom’s 90th birthday celebration in 2015, however, I learned the true story behind my name. She explained she wanted to name me John-Jay after the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. My mom always had been a history buff. She went on to explain that my Aunt Florence had already named my older cousin John, but everyone called him Jack. She didn’t want me to be the second Jack in the family, so she simply called me Jay. During the same conversation, I learned that my older brother, Mark, was named after my Uncle John Lepetich’s estranged brother. I can’t reconcile her thought process: how could my mom name my older brother after an estranged relative and me after the first U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice? Maturing, in part, involves accepting, if not embracing, life’s silly incongruities, including, deciding to move to the suburbs with no car and having babies in a city hospital.

Before my parent’s exposed me to the big-wide world, they introduced me to my immediate family, the subject of the next chapter.

CHAPTER TWO

MY IMMEDIATE FAMILY

Suddenly all of my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands. Linda Hogan, Dwellings

I was born into a large, extended Catholic family. Certain family members attended my baptism, communion, confirmation, graduation from various schools, as well as my wedding. These are the people that, as a child, I considered to be my family and who I will introduce in this chapter. My immediate family consisted of my parents, Gus and Edna, and my four siblings: Mark, Gene, Ellen, and Matt. Branches from my nuclear family consisted of: my paternal and maternal grandparents; my Aunt Florence and Uncle John Lepetich, and their three kids, Jackie, Tommy, and Dolores; my Aunt Margaret and her two sons, Danny and Terry; and finally, my Aunt Grace and Uncle John Delury. Every one of these relatives had an impact on my formative years. I think it’s only right to introduce each elder family member in a few paragraphs.

My parents married in 1946, but theirs was not the first marriage between a Spanish male and an Irish female. In 1588, over one hundred ships of the Spanish Armada sailed from Spain, escorting an army intent on conquering England. A fleet of English ships, however, led by Sir Francis Drake, intercepted and defeated the Spanish Armada in the North Sea, before the Armada ever reached England. The remnants from that once great Spanish fleet, and many of its sailors, washed up on the Irish coast. Many of the sailors settled in Ireland and eventually married the local Irish girls. As the Spanish assimilated and their Irish brides gave birth, their offspring became known as Black Irish, Irishman with black hair and olive complexions, living among ginger haired and pale-faced clansmen. My mom would often tell us this tale, as she explained that we too were Black Irish, the product of the marriage between a Spanish father and Irish mother.

My parents enjoyed a sixty-year marriage, full of love and laughter; however, their romance seemed to proceed cautiously as mom wanted to marry someone like dad’s father and dad wanted to avoid marrying someone like mom’s mother. Here is why they married in their own words:

Dad explains …I knew Edna’s mother before I ever met Edna and she had all the qualities I did not like in a woman. As a result, when asked by my friend to double date - and Edna was my date - I was most reluctant. As they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. To my surprise, Edna was sweet, very feminine, and a lot of fun. Later, I determined that she was the only one who took after her father. As time went on, her honesty and just plain all-American girl personality told me that this was the person to whom I could commit the rest of my life. What most people call true love came later. In retrospect, even a computer could not have selected a person who could have been so perfect as a mother and supportive as a wife. I could not have achieved any of my accomplishments at work, school, in the community, or as a father with anyone else.

Mom counters …I came from a family of strong women and alcoholic men. So, when I met Gus at 16, I was very impressed that he was a man of decision. He knew what he wanted to do in life. I thought it was great that he would suggest all the good places to go in New York; he was a good dancer and good looking. I thought if I ever got married (which I didn’t really want to do) that he would make a good husband and father. I always thought that getting married was the end of your life (as far as freedom goes) and that it would be a lot of hard work. So, he really had to convince me! Also, I knew his mother, father, and sister quite well and was pleased to be part of his home life. I figured ours would be the same. I am not the type to fall in love at first sight (with anyone) so it was a gradual love that developed over a period of four years - seeing his behavior and his family - and I decided he was the man for me.

As their child, I always thought of my parents as an undivided couple, but over the years I have come to realize that they had strong, individual identities. My dad was exceptional and complex. He was born on August 28, 1921 in Jersey City. Coming from Spanish roots, their custom was to allow the god parents, not the parents, name the child. My dad’s god parents were his father’s aunt and uncle, Pilar and Costantino Losa, and they gave him the name of the god father, Costantino. His first language was Spanish, and he learned to speak English in the Jersey City public schools. From an early age, he worked odd jobs whenever he wasn’t at school, mostly delivering groceries to apartments and later working the cash register at the local A&P Grocery Store. He graduated from Jersey City’s Dickinson High School in 1939. As a kid, his nickname was Cossi, which in high school was anglicized to Gussi, and, when he entered the service in 1942, the Navy formally change it to simply Gus, the name he went by for the rest of his life.

After high school and before World War Two, his life seemed typical of most city kids of his generation. He worked as an electrician’s helper in New York City and later on the loading dock at Western Electric’s Kearny Works in New Jersey. He also worked nights at a Spanish restaurant and had dreams of going to college. By his own admission, during this period of his life, like so many of us, he spent too much of his free time at parties and not enough of his spare time thinking about or preparing for his future. World War Two forced him to change his approach to life.

When war seemed inevitable, he joined the Navy for two reasons. As he explained, he wanted to sleep in a bed provided by the Navy rather than the ground provided by the Army. More specifically, he hoped to work as an electrician at the Navy’s submarine base in New London, Connecticut, so he could commute home to Jersey City on the weekends. World events changed his plans with the bombing at Pearl Harbor.

In December 1942, he was already assigned to the Navy’s advanced electrician’s school at the Great Lakes Naval Base just north of Chicago. One morning a Naval officer had the enlisted electricians line up and count off by twos - one, two, one, two… The one’s left the next day for Norfolk, Virginia to serve with the Navy’s Atlantic fleet and the two’s left several days later for San Francisco, California to serve with the Pacific Fleet. As a two, my dad shipped west and served the next three years in the Pacific as a radar specialist aboard the USS St Louis, seeing action in almost every major sea- battle in the Pacific theater between 1942 and 1945.

When he returned from the war, he got his old job back at Western Electric’s Cable Division, but he had a new focus on, and appreciation for, life. He married my mom in October 1946, began night school at Newark College of Engineering (now part of New Jersey Institute of Technology), and began a family. By 1960, he was a promising mid-level manager at Western Electric, received his electrical engineering degree after 11 years at night school, had four kids, was our Cub Scout leader, a leader among the local chapter of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and contemplating a run for our town’s Board of Education. Like most men who return from war, my dad did not talk about his time at sea. He did return full of life, positive, and eager to pick up his life after its interruption by the war.

My mom played the role imposed upon most moms in the 1950s. She was, however, quite exceptional. She experienced what others might consider a difficult childhood. She was the third of three daughters born to a life-long, working mother and a father who struggled with alcoholism his entire life. Her parents separated largely because of her father’s inability to stay sober and hold a job. During her formative years, the three girls lived with their mother in the basement apartment of a twenty-family apartment house in Jersey City. In exchange for receiving a reduced rent, they agreed to feed the coal furnace for the comfort of the tenants above. Rather than defeating her, this hard-scrapple early life seemed to bless her with a tremendous sense of humor and a healthy perspective on life.

She became a high school cheerleader and her classmates voted her the most popular girl in the 1942 class from Dickinson High School. All the while, she would have her friends meet her at the top of the stairs that entered their apartment complex so that they would not discover that she lived under the stairs. During the war, she started nurse’s training at the Margaret Hague, but she left to become a telephone operator in the New York City office of William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon whose life is the basis for the movie Citizen Kane. What mom remembers as his telephone operator, however, is surreptitiously listening to the many conversations Mr. Hearst had with his celebrity girlfriends. Life was not boring as a telephone operator during World War Two, if you were willing to break the rules and listen to the private conversations of the rich and famous!

In the fifties, she stayed home with us kids. She volunteered at our schools, served as class-mother, den-mother for our scout troop, and a leader in the Cranford Newcomers Club. She was both the glue that kept the family together and the lubricant that kept it running smoothly. She developed new friends for my parents to socialize with in Cranford and maintained old friendships from Jersey City, particularly with the women from her high school sorority.

The women of my mom’s high school sorority warrant a special mention because they loomed large in my childhood. Apparently, in the urban high schools of the 1930s and 1940s, it was common to have fraternities and sororities. Many of the kids graduating from big-city high schools would not go on to college, so the social bonds formed in high school were similar to what many baby boomers would later experience by joining college fraternities and sororities.

For as long as I can remember, the women of my mom’s high school sorority would meet once a month in the evening, rotating among the members’ homes. Even after they were all married and had kids of their own, they socialized as a group with sorority picnics or vacations on the New Jersey Shore. My siblings and I came to know the kids of the sorority girls and grew up with them much as we grew up with our cousins and the kids from our own neighborhood. The women met on a regular basis, right through retirement. I can recall the sense of loss felt by my parents as either a sorority sister or one of their husbands passed away. When once the sorority had more than twenty members, eventually my mom became its sole survivor. I knew she missed her life-long friends because many times she told me so.

As extraordinary as my parents were as individuals, they were also a formidable team in raising me and my four siblings. They encouraged us to pursue our individual interests. I did not feel pressure to pursue a specific career or, other than to be respectful and polite, to act in a particular manner. At the same time, they expected that whatever we decided to pursue, we try our best and aim to be exceptional. We were expected to be optimistic, to expect a good outcome, and not be overly concerned if we fell short of our goals. We were also expected to approach our challenges with a sense of humor and our victories with humility. They imparted in us self-confidence, a belief that we had the ability to attain whatever goals we defined for ourselves. They made clear, hard work was a necessary element to achieving any goal. Finally, and perhaps most important, they reinforced their expectations by living their lives consistent with the values they were trying to impart on us. I saw no disconnect between how they expected us to live and how they were living.

Reflecting now, after having been a parent, I realize that kids more closely examine and follow what adults do than what they say. Non-verbal communication, or indirect verbal communication, is far more impactful in the development of a child than direct verbal communication. Children are constantly watching and listening for hints as to how to act and what to think. Parents and other adults in their lives are the primary, but not sole, influences of a child’s development. The few occasions each day when an adult directly addresses a child on some life-lesson pales in comparison to the amount of time a child spends observing the world around him and overhearing conversations not intended for them. During my early childhood, I saw little difference between my parent’s expressed expectations and what I was hearing and seeing around me. I think this symmetry contributed to my feeling of being raised in a safe, secure environment. In short, leading by example is a far better way to raise kids than by being an eloquent hypocrite.

My mom would often recite a poem that still resonates with me: Once a task is just begun, never leave it till it’s done. Be the labor great or small, do it well or not at all. Once they took on the task of raising us kids, my parents remained vigilant, and I would like to believe did it well. They never seemed to view their task as complete, however, dad offered sage advice until his passing at 86 in 2007, and my mom tutored us with her wit and wisdom until her passing at 95 in 2020.

My paternal grandfather, German (pronounced Herman) Gutierrez, was born in 1897 in a mountain village outside of Mieres, a town in the Spanish Principality of Asturias. He was the oldest of four children born to Victoriano and Balbina Gutierrez. After Balbina died at an early age, Victoriano went on to have six more children with his second wife, Angelina. As my grandfather approached his 16th birthday, Victoriano gave him something of a Hobson’s Choice: either go to work in the deep coal mines in the mountains surrounding Mieres; enlist in the King’s army to fight in an ongoing war in Spanish-Morocco; or, take passage on a ship to America and begin a new life with Spanish relatives in Jersey City, New Jersey. He chose his third option.

In 1913, at the tender age of sixteen, he paid two dollars and forty cents for passage to America on the British vessel, the Mauretania, at the time the world’s largest passenger ship. Three years later, the Germans sank the Mauretania’s sister ship, the Lusitania, eleven miles off the Irish coast, killing more than a thousand civilians, turning world opinion against Germany, and, perhaps most importantly, drawing the United States into World War One. Before the Lusitania played its role in world events, its sister ship successfully transported my grandfather to Jersey City, where he first lived with his Aunt and Uncle, Costantino and Pilar Losa.

His uncle got him a job as a pipefitter at an oil refinery in Elizabeth, New Jersey, operated by Standard Oil of New Jersey, which later grew into Exxon-Mobile. German remained at the refinery his entire working life, until he retired in 1959. Anyone who has driven the New Jersey Turnpike should recall the piping labyrinth in the oil refineries around Exit 13 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Between 1918 and 1959, my grandfather either welded or supervised the welding of those pipes.

Aside from how he got to America and where he worked once he got here, I remember him as a kind, disciplined, and wise man. Throughout my childhood, he came to our house at least once a week for dinner, usually on Wednesdays, and never arrived without goodies from a bakery. I remember him coming up the steps of our home as he would balance a white bag filled with jelly donuts for us kids, a brown bag overflowing with fresh rolls for the evening dinner, and a white box that would contain either a fresh apple pie or just-baked cake. From my earliest recollection until his death in 1986, I never recall him coming to our home without being overloaded with goodies from a bakery.

When I was young, he called me the grasshopper because I was always jumping around, and as a young adult he called me the Professor because I believe he was proud I had been to college and became a high school teacher. He gave me advice that I now recognize as the universal advice given by all immigrants, but as a kid I understood it as his heartfelt words, and they resonated with me:

Choose carefully your dreams, you are a bright and personable young man, and in America, if you put your energies toward your dreams you will achieve them.

He also explained:

I came to this country to work with my hands, so my son could work with his mind and so his son could work with his heart.

Before IPhones and digital recordings, a new technology emerged in the early 1980s, known as Camcorders. Camcorders were hand-held electric devices that combined video cameras with video-cassette recorders. For the first time, the average person could both film and record the sights and sounds of everyday events. My dad bought a Camcorder in 1982 and filmed all significant family events throughout the 1980s, from baptisms to weddings, and everything in between, except, of course, funerals. He probably would have filmed a couple funerals if not for my mom reigning in his enthusiasm for his Camcorder.

On a particular Sunday in 1982, my dad decided to interview my grandfather, much like a late-night host would interview a celebrity about his life. I watched the interview live, and at one point he asked: Pop, my dad often called his father Pop, What is the most significant thing you have done in your life? After only a moment of reflection he clearly responded I would have to say having and raising our two children.

At the time, I recall thinking this was a modest achievement and a somewhat provincial response. Surely, my grandfather had done something more significant in his life. A lawyer might recount some great legal victory, and an architect might point to a building as a monument to his craft. As I have aged and matured, however, I have come to appreciate the wisdom behind his response. Legal decisions get overturned or are rendered moot, and buildings crumble, but surely the most significant thing one could achieve is to raise another human being to become a healthy, happy, and productive member of society, who in turn similarly raises their children. I think my grandfather accomplished this in the way in which he raised his two children, who, in turn, accomplished the same by the way in which they raised his eight grandchildren, who, in turn, reached the same milestone by the way in which they raised his sixteen great grandchildren—you get the point.

My paternal grandfather died in 1986 from Asbestosis. The pipes he worked on for so many years at Standard Oil were wrapped with asbestos and the fibers apparently found their way into his lungs. He was vigorous until just before he died, often walking across the George Washington Bridge between New York City and Fort Lee, New Jersey while well into his 80s. I do recall our last conversation when he clearly lay dying in a hospital bed, he warned me: If you don’t feel yourself, don’t wait, go to a doctor sooner rather than later.

At the time, I took this advice at face value, but now realize he was kicking himself for not going to a doctor sooner, and perhaps beating the ill effects from asbestos. I wonder how often we receive advice from someone now feeling the adverse consequences from not earlier following that same advice? It seems advice from such hard-learned lessons might be the most valuable, if we only recognize it for what it is as we receive it.

My paternal grandmother, Remedios Alonso Gutierrez, was born in 1900, also in the mountains around Mieres, Spain. Although she and my grandfather were raised only a few miles apart, they did not know each other while children in Spain. She was the oldest of five children. When her natural mother, Maria Cosio Suarez, died unexpectedly, her father married his sister-in-law, Aurora Cosio Suarez, and had another two kids with his second wife. My grandmother’s stepmother, aka Aunt, put her to work as a domestic in somewhat of a Cinderella role, caring for the younger kids and the home. Apparently, because she saw no prince charming on the horizon in Mieres, she left Spain in 1916 for the United States and Jersey City. Once in America, she found work as a seamstress, and lived with her cousin and her husband, Soledad and Ramon Valdez. She married my grandfather on January 18, 1920. My grandfather became a naturalized citizen on November 15, 1926 and my grandmother followed on December 15, 1932.

She is said to have been an excellent seamstress and cook; however, she died far too young in 1960, so I don’t have many clear memories of her. I recall she kept a couple of burlap mannequins in her attic to use in making dresses. I found them scary as a child. She took care of my brother Mark and me over weekends when my parents had plans or just needed a break from us kids. She would make us homemade waffles for breakfast, pour us milk or juice, and generally be a caring and loving guardian while we were away from our parents.

Her dressmaking is the reason, in part, my parents got together. My dad’s sister, Florence, was my mom’s best friend in high school. One day, during her junior year in high school, my mom went to the Gutierrez home for my grandmother to tailor her prom dress. My dad was four years older and didn’t pay much attention to my Aunt’s friends. However, when my mom sat in her slip in the Gutierrez parlor while waiting to try on the adjustments to her dress, my dad sat across from her pretending to read the newspaper, while actually he was stealing glances over the paper. He apparently liked what he saw. Not too long thereafter, they began to date, and when he returned from the war, they married.

Unfortunately, what I remember most clearly about my paternal grandmother is her wake in 1960. I was nine and had never before seen a dead person. In those days, most Catholics waked the dead in an open coffin for two days. No place for little, impressionable kids. As the adults grieved, and I saw for the first time my dad and grandfather cry, I sat shocked and scared. I also sat staring at the open coffin. Lesson Learned—don’t bring a young child to a wake with an open coffin.

Within a couple of years, my grandfather married his second wife, my step-grandmother, Olvido. She spoke little English and I spoke even less Spanish, so we never really developed any sort of relationship. If the truth be told, she never really developed a relationship with any family member. Nonetheless, from 1964 until my grandfather’s death in 1986, she attended every significant family gathering. She appeared to suffer through these events, rather than truly enjoy them. As warm and family oriented as was my grandfather, Olvido was just as cold and distant.

Olvido and my grandfather lived above my Aunt Florence and Uncle John Lepetich, in a two-family house in Fort Lee, New Jersey. After my grandfather died, Olvido continued to live above my Aunt and Uncle against their wishes. The second-floor apartment was ideal for my cousin Tom and his wife and their young child. Eventually, my aunt and uncle had to confront this dilemma: Olvido had become something of a squatter in the very apartment ideal for my cousin Tom’s young family. But how do you evict a family member, even one by marriage who no one particularly liked?

As family legend has it, Olvido did not respect the privacy between the first and second floors. She would routinely come down and just walk into my aunt and uncle’s home. After many polite requests that she not come down unannounced, my Uncle John, a man of few words but of clear action, simply began to hang out in his living room either in his underwear or in less. On one such occasion, Olvido came down the stairs, saw him almost naked and clearly got the message not to enter the first floor unannounced. I am not sure if seeing my uncle in the near buff was the triggering event, or if it even occurred, but in any event, Olvido soon returned to a small apartment in Jersey City. At about this time, I recall my Uncle John, whose family had its roots in Yugoslavia, telling me: For many years I thought it was me, but I have finally realized that these Spaniards are crazy!

Although I had no further direct contact with her, I understand through other relatives that she eventually returned to Spain and lived well into her 90s. I remain unclear whether she died in Spain or Jersey City.

My maternal grandparents were Irish. My maternal grandmother, Margaret Maggie Barden-Geerin, was born in 1897 in Brooklyn and was the undisputed matriarch of the Irish side of my family. I did not know my maternal grandfather, Matthew, as he struggled throughout his life with alcohol and died shortly after getting hit by a bus on Journal Square in Jersey City in 1948. I understand he was gregarious and well liked, but simply succumbed to the drink rather than provide for his family. He apparently was not too agile either, at least not on Journal Square in 1948.

They married in Jersey City in 1918, and I understand that from the start they had a very good life. They operated a tavern after the First World War, and during the Roaring Twenties, they had great times: drinking, dancing, partying, and with no worries for the future. They also made no plans for the future, so at the end of Prohibition, and when the stock market crashed in 1929, they lost everything and my maternal grandfather’s drinking increased.

My maternal grandmother’s circumstances forced her to be strong and a bit single-minded. As the breadwinner for her three daughters, she did what she needed to do, but in the course of time, became somewhat hardened. For her, the world was a cold place, where she would either hold an advantage or be taken advantage of—get them before they get you, she would say. She learned well from her environment in Jersey City that getting ahead was the product of who you know, not what you know. Despite this worldview, she also had a great sense of humor and took the time to raise three daughters, all of whom succeeded in life on their merits. She attended all our family gatherings. Although she clearly loved us kids and had an interest in our development, she was not overly loving toward us.

Ironically, the first wedding I ever attended was that of my maternal grandmother to Frank, or Uncle Frank as my mom knew him, as he was the widower of my grandmother’s deceased sister, Helen. This arrangement might seem odd today, but in the past, it was common, and at various times, either encouraged or prohibited. It is known as a Levirate marriage and was a common practice among societies with a strong clan structure. In times past, when women often died in childbirth or young men died in battle, it was common for the surviving spouse to seek comfort and eventually marry a sibling of their deceased spouse. The term Levirate is derived from the Latin term levir, meaning husband’s brother. The practice served to keep the clan close and to preserve family land rights. This may explain why my Great Grandfather, Antonio Alonso Gonzalez, married his deceased wife’s sister, but we will never know.

The practice was nonetheless banned for a time in Victorian England, when people considered the practice analogous to incest. The prohibition was lifted by The Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Marriage Act of 1907, which allowed a man to marry his dead wife’s sister. Although interesting, I suspect none of this history gave either my maternal grandmother or Uncle Frank a moment of hesitation before deciding to get married in 1955.

I recall attending their wedding when I was 4 years old. The wedding took place at St John’s Church in Jersey City. The men dressed in suits and the women wore formal dresses and big hats, the kind you still see today during royal weddings in England. One of my grandmother’s girlfriends had the task of watching us kids at the church. After the ceremony, we all boarded a cruise ship in the Hudson River for a reception. As the sun went down and the ship whistle blew, those of us not taking the cruise had to disembark. And so, we all saw off my grandmother and Uncle Frank on their honeymoon cruise to Bermuda—wherever that was.

Over the next 20 years my mom’s Uncle Frank would play the role as my maternal grandfather, and he played it well. He was a retired Jersey City police officer, and had a warehouse full of colorful stories from his days on the force, and equally important he knew how to tell them in an entertaining way. He also shared my grandmother’s worldview and sense of humor. The two retired to a small ranch style home on the Jersey shore, as they often reminded us, It never rains in Beachwood!

Over the next ten years, my dad and maternal grandmother engaged in the Go-Go and Jo-Jo wars. My maternal grandmother was the only member among our family who owned dogs. Go-Go and Jo-Jo were miniature schnauzers, given to my grandmother by my Aunt Grace, after she concluded that she could not care for them in her Greenwich Village apartment.

I have come to realize, people who own a dog and those who don’t, have a fundamentally different view of the world. For a dog owner, the dog becomes not only a part of the family, but an extension of them. The owner’s hopes and dreams become wrapped up in their dog. The owner views the dog as if it is their child. The dog sits on the owner’s sofa, sleeps on, or at the foot of, the owner’s bed, and, perhaps most disgusting for us non- dog owners, eats the owner’s food, sometimes from the same plate. The non-dog-owner, in contrast, is willing to tolerate the dog, as long as the dog does not sit on their sofa, sleep in their bed or eat in the same room as the non-dog-owner. To the non-dog-owner, these seem like reasonable rules, but the dog owner asks: Would you place those same restrictions on your child, especially one who is totally dependent on you and gives you unqualified love? With such passion, the dog owner usually prevails, but not when the two people involved are as controlling and stubborn as my dad and grandmother.

As the Dog-Wars raged on, the dogs were first allowed to stay with us, but needed to stay in the garage. Then the dogs could stay in the house, but only in the laundry room. Then my parents would go out for the evening and my grandmother would watch us, and just like that, both dogs were on the sofa, watching T.V. with us kids and being called to our table for dinner. I mention this because it illustrates a battle I have seen played out many times between dog owners and non-dog-owners, and it almost always ends the same way. Dog owners prevail.

I did enjoy talking to my step-grandfather, Uncle Frank. I remember him telling me with all sincerity Nothing is on the level kid, not even the Battle of Bunker Hill. He may have unintentionally been on to something, as I later learned that reports from the British and Colonial forces on the Battle of Bunker Hill were confusing and self-serving. The British claimed victory as they retained control of the Hill, while the Colonials also claimed victory as more British than Colonials had been killed. Both sides twisted reports from that day to serve their own strategic objectives, probably not unlike the folks who my maternal grandparents had to deal with in Jersey City. Like so many bits of urban advice, Uncle Frank’s tips had an element of truth. After a lifetime in Jersey City they retired to the Jersey Shore, but Uncle Frank would repeatedly advise: If I was a young man today, I’d move to Australia.

He was as frugal as he was entertaining. A life-long smoker of unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarettes, he quit Cold-Turkey around 1960, when the price of a pack rose to 25 cents. I don’t think that the ill-effects from smoking played any role in his quitting. Although studies began to emerge in the late 1950s, linking cigarette smoking to cancer, it seemed nobody believed them as most adults continued to smoke, at least into the late 1960s, when some began connecting cigarette smoking with poor health.

Uncle Frank was not only frugal but also a creature of habit. His breakfast always consisted of three powdered donuts from a box of twelve. Without saying so, it was clear to all that he did not want to share his donuts with anyone. Once, I surreptitiously took a single unauthorized donut. For most of that morning, he investigated with all the skills he had developed over 20 years on the police force. I maintained my innocence and silence. I suspect this bothered him up to his death, as one of his few, unsolved crimes.

By 1975, the Lucky Strikes and lung cancer caught up with him as he died in February of that year. He maintained his sense of humor until the end of his life. I visited with him about one month before he died, and I can still recall his parting-flippant good-bye: I’m slowing down, but going fast!

We held a traditional Irish wake for Uncle Frank, in an old fashion funeral parlor in Jersey City. I can recall the funeral director asking my parents, at least twice, if they could get the crowd to quiet down a bit, as there were other wakes going on, as well. I also remember three Jersey City police officers showing up during the wake, attempting to settle pension rights with my grandmother. To his credit, I recall my father ushering the three out of the funeral home and agreeing to address the issue of her pension rights at a later time. Perhaps most disturbing, was my grandmother’s accusation against my wife, Ann, during the wake. As we sat in silence across from my grandmother and her two girlfriends, she pointed out Ann to them, and, in a stage whisper, said See that one over there? That is Jay’s wife, she is only here for the money.

First, there was no money; and, second, as you might expect, Ann’s only purpose in attending was to pay her respects and support me. I did not love my grandmother any less for her callous comment. I understood it as coming from someone who, by reason of her hard life, did not easily see the good in people, and rather learned to expect the worst from people. The comment did impact Ann, however, and from then on, I don’t think she felt she could ever let down her guard in front of my grandmother.

My maternal grandmother survived Uncle Frank for the next three years, but she grew increasingly fragile, living alone in their small ranch on the New Jersey shore. She had a life-long, love-hate relationship with my dad. She loved that he was a good provider to mom and us kids, but she hated that he was as strong willed as she and that she could not control him the way she controlled most of her other family relationships. In 1977, when checking out of a hospital after suffering a series of mild strokes, and faced with the prospect of having to live with my parents while she convalesced, she fell from the scale where she was being weighed as part of the hospital check-out protocol and dropped dead. For the rest of their time together, my mom would remind my dad, half joking but half serious, that her mother would rather drop dead than live with him. This episode also caused my parents to repeat a phrase I often heard around our house, Relatives around the house are like fish, after three days they both stink.

As for my aunts and uncles, my Aunt Florence and her husband, my Uncle John Lepetich, were first among equals. She was my dad’s only sister and my mom’s best friend from high school. She had all the qualities of my paternal grandfather: she was kind, loving, and wise. She brought a certain tenderness to our family that rubbed off on others around her. My dad was most kind and gentle when around his sister. I understand she was voted Most Respected in her high school yearbook and that does not surprise me. She had qualities which were not obvious to me as a child, but that I have grown to appreciate as an adult. She saw the good in people. Whoever she met, or whoever the family was discussing around the Sunday dinner table, she had something kind to say. She was not naïve nor Pollyannaish; rather, her opinions were grounded in giving someone the benefit of the doubt and not immediately thinking the worst about someone or of their motives. At least in New Jersey, these traits were rare and ones that I well remember in my aunt and ones that I still strive to emulate.

She was also a good listener, even when listening to us kids. I grew up in an era when children were expected to be seen, not heard. Adults talked among themselves and occasionally would ask us kids a direct question or give a direct order, but there was not a lot of casual conversation among the different generations when I was young. My Aunt Florence was an exception in this regard. I recall, when she spoke to you, she looked you in the eye. She listened to what you had to say, appeared to give it some thought before responding. I experienced two-way communication with her, something I did not experience a lot of with other adults beyond my parents.

My Uncle John Lepetich was a hard -working and mild-mannered guy. Throughout most of my childhood, he worked two jobs. During the day, he worked as a longshoreman on the docks in Hoboken and at night he worked as a bartender at his uncle’s bar. Until 1960, he lived with my aunt and my three cousins over the bar, in a three-bedroom apartment that the family also shared with his mother. He became a longshoreman before container-shipping, when the shipyards needed many strong men to load and unload the ships coming into the port of New York. My Uncle John was such a man.

If you ever saw the 1954 Marlon Brando film, On the Waterfront, the atmosphere in that film captures my early memories of my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Hoboken. In the film, Hoboken dockworker Terry Malloy, played by Brando, had been an up and coming fighter until a powerful local mob boss had him throw a fight. In his famous line, Brando explains his regret to his brother You don’t understand, I coulda had class, I coulda been a contender, I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum…. Not surprisingly, the studios filmed the movie in Hoboken, and my mom and Aunt Florence followed the film crews around. My mom later explained to me that my Aunt Florence had a crush on Marlon Brando, but I could not help but think, maybe they both did.

Their apartment was at the corner of 8th and Garden Streets in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was a cramped but colorful life. We would visit on most holidays and at least one Sunday a month for our mid-day dinner. More often than not, my uncle was tending bar downstairs, but up above, we had all the old records from the jukebox below and a black and white TV the size of a toaster. I recall many Sundays after church, when we would drive into Hoboken for our mid-day dinner, play the cast-off records from the jukebox and return to Cranford in the evening for a pizza and to watch The Ed Sullivan Show. By 1961, my aunt and uncle moved to what my cousins described as the sticks, Fort Lee, New Jersey, the town on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge. They moved into a three-bedroom two family house, with my grandfather living upstairs with Olvido.

In the early 1950s, my uncle built a second home on the New Jersey Shore, where Aunt Florence and my cousins would escape from the summers in Hoboken. My uncle would join them on the weekends. Their home was in Bayshore or Breezy Point, New Jersey. It is an unincorporated neighborhood just where the Barnegat Bay meets the Toms River. From their home, you could see the bridge that crosses the bay and into Seaside Heights, New Jersey. At night, in the distance over the water, you could see all the rides brightly lit on the boardwalk at Seaside. It was magical.

My aunt and uncle’s beach house was a single-story, two family house. As you looked at their lot from the street, their unit was to the right and my uncle had built an identical unit to the left. Until my parents bought their own beach house in 1972 in Chadwick Beach, New Jersey, our family would vacation for two weeks every summer in Bayshore. Most often, we were in the second unit on the left while my cousins were in their unit on the right. Sometimes, we would take their unit and either the family of another sorority sister or other friend would rent the unit on the left. The house was across from the bay, and there was a vacant sandlot between the street and the bay. This meant that the adults had an unobstructed view of the water and we had a 50x100 foot sand lot in which to spend the entire day playing. We could swim right in front of the house, in clear view of our parents. As toddlers, we would dig in the sand and as we grew up, the lot became the perfect size for whiffle ball games or for setting off firecrackers around the fourth of July. From that small patch of beach, we would paddle out on the bay with my uncle’s kayak and later his rowboat. Still later, they got a Boston Whaler and either my uncle or cousins would take us out and we would try to water ski.

In the evenings, after dinner, we would all pile in a single car and go to the boardwalk at Seaside Heights. Our parents dropped us off about 7:00 p.m., usually gave us three dollars, and we all agreed to meet at a designated spot on the boardwalk at 10:00 p.m. The three dollars was enough to get us on three or four rides, gamble at a couple wheels of chance, and get an ice cream. More than all that, however, our three hours of freedom, roaming on the boardwalk was free and priceless. Sometimes we would bump into kids we knew from back home, sometimes we would meet new kids, other times we would just take in the sights—fat people, usually entire families, eating too much sausage, pizza and sweets; skinny people in muscle-shirts, trying to look tough; groups of prepubescents, like us, roaming the boards hoping to meet someone before they had to meet their parents, but never having success; and teenagers who seemed to have greater success in the mating rituals being practiced by us prepubescents.

Years later, Seaside Heights would become the setting for the reality TV show, Jersey Shore. The Show depicts a bunch of over-sexed, under-dressed Italian kids, pumping iron by day and downing too many drinks by night, a virtual Sodom and Gomorrah on the ocean. I have always been bothered by the fact that the cast of Jersey Shore does not depict the Seaside I knew and that most of the crew is from either Staten Island or elsewhere in New York. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Seaside was a family-friendly amusement area on the boardwalk, and one where I have the best memories.

My aunt and uncle both died too soon in their mid-70s but left behind a legacy of three great people: my cousins Jack, Tom, and Dolores. Their parents would be proud of the people they grew to become. They embody that old adage, The apple does not fall far from the tree.

My Aunt Margaret was the oldest of my mom’s two sisters. Like my Aunt Florence, as a child I remember her as being kind and fun-loving. But unlike my Aunt Florence, she was burdened by the pressures and responsibility of being a single mom.