Queenie. It was a family title my grandmother wielded until her death at the age of 89. If it were up to her, I doubt that there would have achieved anything notable in my life. She railed against my going to college and not working to support my mother who, true to her promise to my father on his death bed, saw to it that both her sons went to college.
Teresa Coloiani was born circa1896 in Bari, Italy. Her father supposedly ran a major department store until bankruptcy and the break up of the family. At the age of 16 she took her younger siblings and headed for the US to recapture the magic of her once elegant and affluent existence. This may be all sanitized hearsay.
Being alone and unmarried was not acceptable in Italian immigrant circles. So she quickly tied the knot with an older master craftsman, Frank Monti, from Sicily. Grandpa was an artistic plasterer and whenever I drove him through Manhattan he would point out buildings where he had worked. The Monti brothers were stone masons specializing in marble. The black marbled lobby of the Chrysler Building was their masterpiece. Later all of them, except for Frank, headed to Detroit where they married sisters and went on to California.
The actual sequence of events is unclear. But Teresa, who worked in the garment factories, became active in the union and soon was organizing workers to strike. She was so effective that the union soon wanted her in DC, but Frank, asserting himself as head of household said no way.
For one brief period the family settled into domestic normalcy, Teresa and Frank parenting three kids - Angela, Frances and Tom. Grandma Teresa, who had a beautiful singing voice, began to fancy a theatrical career for herself. She frequented cultural venues and soon her home was a magnet for musicians and singers. Enrico Caruso was a frequent guest at the pasta table. Faced with Frank’s indifference, Teresa took off with one of the vocalists for a few months. Impulsive decisions are rarely terminal and soon she was back in the home and daily commute into the garment district.
When my mother, Frances, had a shot at childhood movie stardom, vicarious grandma was all in. Grandpa stood opposed and only the death of the Director settled the outcome. It wasn’t long after that grandpa returned home from work to a house devoid of furniture and a family enroute to Chicago.
She pulled the same stunt years later on her daughter Angela who was then manager of Richters Jewelry on Fifth Avenue (second only to Tiffany). Aunt Angela came home to an empty house to find that grandma, the furniture and all the clothes were on the way to Miami along with their joint bank account. So Angela relocated and soon was managing the top Jewelry store on Collins Ave.
Grandma’s life was a series of impulsive and risky moves that included various ventures in Baltimore, Chicago, Miami (Coral Gables) and New York. At one point she and my mother had a dress store on Flatbush Ave. in Brooklyn, which they sold, and Grandma parlayed the profits into renovating Brooklyn brownstones into rooming houses and turning them over at a big profit.
I relate all this to show that the family had a spotty domestic history that makes it easy to understand how I and my brother could be stashed away in boarding schools K thru 12. I also see the seeds of an entrepreneurial spirit that was evident in all my institutional jobs - including starting a mall antiques shop (Country Roads) with my first wife (Linda) while I was Director of PR and Development at Bronx Community College. I am now in the 20th year of a business started while I was teaching at Loyola - ieiMedia LLC. In between marriages I put invisible cash in my pockets partnering with my friend, Arthur Jurgrau, at various flea markets.
There is no doubt that the Grandma Factor contributed to the restlessness that had me changing jobs on a dime and being able to take the risks necessary for success in any field. I see these qualities in my own children, now grown, Terri and David.
Deprived of the “normalcy” I often saw depicted in celluloid lives, I wonder what my life and marriages could have been like had my experiences been more domestic. Norman Rockwell images always danced in my head and I once thought of anglicizing my last name. I feared the loneliness of Hopper’s urban late night diner counter.
And so marriage seemed like the only way to break the cycle. Wrong.
GRANDMA
FRANCES and ANGELA