Those Who Came Before Us

So Don't Be a Putz

Under the quick intro, “So don’t be a putz,” this meme popped up on my LinkedIn feed this morning:

It got me to thinking thoughts I’ve had many times before. This, I think, is because I am the granddaughter of two sets of immigrant parents — one set from Ireland (maternal) and the other from Hungary (paternal). Of course, lawful immigrants…

In fact, my grandfather sailed to America, leaving his very poor town of Fethard, Tipperary, with his Aunt Johanna. Destination Ellis Island for “processing.”

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie, “Brooklyn,” you’ll be familiar with the scene right before landing at Ellis Island. The protagonist, Eilis, whose name means “Pledged to God,” has met an older woman during the Atlantic crossing, a woman wise to the world.

As they prepare to dock, the older woman grabs Eilis and begins to apply color to her face and lips. Eilis is shocked. Makeup? Only those kind of women wear makeup…Eilis resists, but relents when her friend tells her that if Eilis wants to get through processing, she’d better have some color in her face. Especially the Irish, you know…riddled with TB they were rumored to be. So. Makeup it is — just to be sure.

Next, wait in line and prepare to have a processor — up close and real personal — make sure you looked well enough to enter the country…

When my grandfather docked with his young Aunt Johanna, he made it through. Johanna? Her “exam” did not go so well. She did not make it through processing. Not thought to look well enough…She was separated from her nephew, put in a pen (essentially) overnight, and put on the first boat back to Ireland — without ever having set foot — really — in America.

My grandfather. A young man. With sponsors, but all alone. This was his entrée to America.

My grandmother had it a little easier, which isn’t saying too much, but she landed at Ellis Island and got through processing. Who was there to meet her, I cannot say. I only know she ended up living in Brooklyn for a time before moving to the Upper East Side of Manhattan to live and work as a maid. Somehow she met my grandfather (after he returned from serving as a medic in the U.S. Army during WWI) and they married. My grandmother moved back to Brooklyn with her new husband.

Meanwhile, my Hungarian grandfather is already here, also in Brooklyn. He’s married, but by himself. He had to leave his young wife and first child back in Budapest. Apprenticed out of his home at age 13 to a hat maker, my grandfather found work in Brooklyn doing similar work. Eventually, he was able to save enough to send for my grandmother, Catherine, and my Aunt Helen.

My Hungarian grandmother, barely speaking a word of English, packed whatever little she had and traveled across Europe by herself with her little girl. However long that took, she then managed to get herself and her little one on a ship to cross the Atlantic. Imagine that? By yourself — a woman with a little girl — risking so much for the promise of a new life. Getting pitched and tossed across the Wild Atlantic…

She too got “processed” at Ellis Island, along with my Aunt Helen. Both “passed” inspection and Grandmother Catherine reunited with her husband. She would later give birth to 15 more children…Eleven made it to adulthood. Imagine giving birth that many times — and losing five. My father was the last to survive…

Here is a picture taken of my Hungarian grandparents before they left Hungary. I do not know who the man is standing in the back. My (maternal/paternal?) great grandfather? Grandfather Joseph seated, Grandmother Catherine standing, holding Aunt Helen…

This picture is a picture taken by my brother of the original. The original picture, donated by my cousin (Aunt Helen’s daughter), now hangs in the Ellis Island Museum.

The courage of them all…

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Back in 2009, I found out that as the grandchild of an Irish immigrant, I was eligible for Irish citizenship. I began a research project, focused on my Irish grandfather about whom I knew very little. (He passed away in 1944 in the Bronx Veterans Hospital.) Getting the hang of how to uncover information, I also began researching my grandmother’s family. Long story short, I actually found children of my grandmother’s siblings and their children living in County Cork. My cousins! That I never knew I had.

One of them, my grandmother’s grand nephew, inherited the farm where my grandmother grew up. I got to know this cousin of mine through his wife who was beside herself thrilled that I’d found them. Hubs and I made a trip to Ireland and wended our through the lush southern Irish countryside to my grandmother’s farm.

My Grandmother’s Farm

That’s my cousin, Christie, (Christian) on the left, my beloved in the middle, and my other cousin, Frank (Francis) on the right. They’re looking west at sunset. In the middle of far background comes a tractor, run by Christie’s son. I took this picture.

Behind me is a barn where a small single room stone cottage once stood. That stone cottage with only a couple of windows, no heat or running water, housed ten people — my grandmother and her seven siblings and her parents. A new modern house across the way is my cousin’s home…

So my point in all of this? As an inheritor of this history and a descendant of these people, would crapping my pants over the chance of getting a respiratory infection ever occur to me? Would it? Would it to any self-respecting person who took a second to do the “ancestral mathematics” shown above? Not for a New York second…

Would tossing overboard basic freedom find any quarter with me? Would sympathy and understanding bubble up for those crapping their pants and demanding that others do so? Demanding that others sacrifice their freedoms, their lives, their livelihoods because they’re crapping their pants? Because elected and unelected doofusses — liars and losers all with rare exception — told them to??? Not for a New York second…

Those I’ve described above — and both of my parents, gone now for decades, sadly — lived the kind of lives that were truly American. They came here for it. My father and his brothers (allegedly) fought for it. My mother’s brother, who’d turned 20 the month before, was killed in December 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge for it.

So. If across the Comments section of Substack and in my own newsletter you hear disdain or if you recoil when I use the word “disgrace” to describe the conduct of people these last fours years, it is because every single freaking day I do my “ancestral mathematics.”

Every day I think of the sacrifices of all those down my line who contributed to my life today. Toss it? The heritage they left me? The freedom they believed in, sought for themselves and others. Over a story about a respiratory infection? In other words, act like a putz? Not on your life. EVER.