Posluszny Family – Page 4 – It's All About Family

More Cousin Memories

I started my memories of my cousin Mal here and I’m going to continue the story now.

In Mal’s senior year of high school, he and 5 other young men in the state were selected by Senator Thomas Dodd to take the special examinations for an appointment to the Naval Academy. The senator “bypassed” the standard selection of principal and alternate and instead placed all of them chosen on a competitive basis and he was one of the two.

*Mal’s graduation from Notre Dame HS West Haven*

Mal headed off to Annapolis in 1960, the same year my twin and I were born, and our older sister was 2 years old – and he was our first cousin – a whole different generation.

Mal went to Annapolis with plans to play football. My Aunt Judy said he had to stop because of headaches but according to his obituary it was “an epic boxing match” that put an end to his football career.

Parents weekend freshman year

When Mal was in high school he started dating Margaret Donroe – Margie – from Hamden. My aunt would tell us how they would be on the phone and Mal would have the phone resting on his shoulder as Margie just chatted away on the phone and he would grunt occasionally to let her know he was listening. Margie was so vivacious and pretty and I just thought they were the most beautiful couple in the world!

*Margie at Bob’s Holy Trinity school graduation 1960*

Naval Academy graduation June 3, 1964

June was a busy time for the Bellafronto Family! Mal graduated from the Naval Academy on Wednesday, June 3 1964.

He and Marge were married three days later in Hamden Connecticut on Saturday, June 6th. My sisters and I were 6 and 4 and we were at the wedding but I’m not sure about the reception.

After their wedding and honeymoon, Mal and Marge headed off to his duty station in Yokosuka Japan where he would be aboard the guided missile light cruiser the USS Oklahoma City, the flagship of the 7th Fleet.

While they were in Japan, I would look out my bedroom window and watch the sun come up over the hill and I would think that on the other side of the hill was Japan and as the sun set there, it came up here! Their oldest son, Malcolm III, was born in Japan and their second son, Eric, was born in San Francisco after his tour was completed.

*Japan was going to sleep on the other side of this hill…*

Whenever they would come to the east coast, Aunt Judy made sure everyone got together to visit with them.

After Mal left the Navy, he got into the paper industry. I remember them living in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, maybe Illinois, California, and finally Oregon. It was too bad that by the time I moved to California, they had already moved!

As the years went by, we didn’t see them as often because Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal moved to Florida.

When my cousin Bill got married in Illinois in 1987, we were together with Mal and Marge (known as Maggie by then) for the first time in a long time. Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal were there too, and we’ve always had such a fun time being with them, this visit was no exception.

*Marge, Mal, Aunt Judy, Uncle Mal, and my twin Gail*, *his goddaughter*

I saw Marge one last time at their son Eric’s wedding in San Jose in 1993 or 94 when we were living in California. Sadly, she passed away in 2009 after a reoccurrence of breast cancer.

Fast forward….

In 2013, Mal’s brother Bob was hosting a family reunion at our cottage in Lebanon CT for his daughter Cathy and her family visiting from Morocco. Mal, young Mal, and Eric came out from the west coast for the party. Bob and his wife Teri brought Aunt Judy who was now 96 years old. We had a wonderful time visiting with everyone! It felt like one of the Posluszny Fourth of July parties I’ve written about. We shared hours of memories and a lot of laughter.

The following year, 2014, Mal and Mary, his partner of a few years, were heading east. Mal would be attending his 40th Naval Academy reunion. I met with Mal during the week and we took a walk around the home on Clifton Street that his mother and mine grew up in. It was in bad shape after water damage and (probably) foreclosure, but the walkway to the back of the house was still there and the odd little entry into the basement.

I also contacted the owner of the family home on Lincoln Avenue to arrange a visit there. Their parents bought the house from Aunt Judy and Uncle Mal and they bought it from their parents. It really is a great neighborhood! We both enjoyed walking through the house, seeing the changes, and seeing what stayed the same.

Mary came out the following week, we had dinner together, and they stayed at our cottage in Lebanon Ct. The cottage his family had for the majority of his years growing up was in the next town so he and Mary spent time driving around the area and visiting the former family cottage on Pickerel Lake.

That would be the last time I saw him, but I enjoyed an email exchange, infrequent but more frequent than that with other long-distance family (hint, hint).

I talked to Mary, his partner last week and we had a nice conversation about their time together and my memories of him.

Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr 1942-2014

A Cousin’s Passing

I found out earlier this month that one of my cousins passed away in Oregon on July 15th. If you know me, or read my posts, you know that I am the Keep of All Things Family so I wanted to share my memories and thoughts on him.

My cousin, Malcolm James Bellafronto Jr, was born in October of 1942. He was the son of my Aunt Judy, my mother’s next older sibling and her husband, Mal. He was nicknamed Butch (I don’t know how he got that name). They lived on North Orchard Street when he was born.

When he was a year old, my Uncle Mal went into the Navy and my Aunt Judy and Butch moved in with my grandmother, grandfather, Aunt Tootsie, and my mother. He was a big little kid! He shared a few stories with me and although he doesn’t recall much of living on Clifton Street, he did remember this story:

During the war my mother and I lived with Gram when my father was in the Navy. I don’t have any specific memories of that period. I do have some vague recollections of Grandpa P.

There was one incident that my mother told me about later. Apparently, I used to spend time out in back with Grandpa. You remember how big the garden was. There was a gate leading into the garden that you had to lift up to get in and out. Well I wandered into the house one time and everyone wanted to know how I got out of the garden. So I showed them, lifting the gate with a loud grunt. Evidently, Grandpa always grunted when he lifted the gate. Mal was 18 months old at the time of that video!

*Aunt Judy holding Butch and sister in law Millie 1944*

He was the center of attention while living on Clifton Street!

In 1945, while his dad was on leave, the three of them drove cross country to California where his ship was docked. Aunt Judy and Butch were planning on staying with her Tante Lizzie and Uncle Ben while Mal was out to sea but he got back on board ship and was told he fulfilled his service and so was done and they came back home to Connecticut.

His brother Bob was born four years later and they eventually moved around the corner from us on Lincoln Drive in a home that Uncle Mal built with help from the students in the Wilcox Tech carpentry program where he was an automotive teacher.

The majority of males in our family attended Notre Dame High School in West Haven, CT. He played football there and relayed the following story to me:

“For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started. My dad had August off and the family would stay at the lake in Moodus. I started early for football, 3 a day drills. Walk to the train station in the morning, train to New Haven then 2 buses to West Haven. We were on the field by 8 and finished up around 4. Then buses, train and walk to Gram’s. What I remember was how long her hair was and how she would brush it every night while we watched TV. And she was an absolute fanatic about wrestling, pounding the couch and yelling at the TV. For the 3 summers of my high school years I would live with Gram for the two weeks before school started”

Also – “But the main memory is of Gram’s cooking. The pastries she made on holidays. Her cheesecake was out of this world. Tootsie got the cheese part right but could never get the crust. As far as regular meals, I remember everything being overcooked and pretty well tasteless.”

He also told me that when they were building the stairs for the cottage in Colchester, he was the free labor! He said it was a lot of hard work and it kept him in shape for football.

He also told this story about staying at Gram’s house during the summer and the trains that passed along the side of the house going from the steel mill to the main railroad tracks:

“I also remember picking up coal that the engineer would throw into the yard when they stopped at the street. You remember the train tracks going to the steel mill behind the house.

I slept in the front bdrm by the tracks. I distinctly remember one night when I was staying there for football waking up in the middle of the night to the most god-awful noise and most brilliant white light filling the room. Had no idea where I was and what was happening.

When I finally came around enough to look out the window, I saw that the commotion was a very large steam engine stopping at the street with its carbon arc front light shining in the window. Scared the hell out of me.”

*Cousin Charles Jakiela, my parents, Butch at their wedding (altar boys)*

I hope you don’t mind if I end this here. After graduation from Notre Dame High School, Mal was heading to the Naval Academy in Annapolis Maryland.

To Be Continued….

They Came In Boats

The week 30 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Boats. I’m a week late, will try to get back on track!

SS Blücher from Hamburg Germany to New York. It carried 2,102 passengers; 333 first class, 169 second class, and 1,600 third class. My material grandfather, Konrad Posluszny, arrived on this ship on December 5, 1902.

SS Vaderland in 1906 from Antwerp Belgium. It was part of the Red Star Line. It carried 342 first class, 194 second class, and 626 third class passengers. My paternal grandfather, Charles Jakiela, arrived on this ship on November 17, 1906.

SS George Washington in 1910 from Bremen Germany. When it launched in 1908 it was the largest German built steam ship and third largest in the world and could carry 2,900 passengers. My paternal grandmother, Antonia Liro arrived on this ship in September of 1910.

*SS. George Washington from Bremen Germany*

These are just a few of the ships my ancestors sailed on during their immigration from the German-Austrian region called Galicia.

Second and third class passengers were divided into “messes” and cooked their own food and cleaned their own berths. These trips took approximately 11-15 days. They would usually bring a trunk of belongings which went in the hold for the duration of the trip and they would bring a bag with the essentials for their travel. I found this information here .

My grandfather Posluszny was traveling with $3 in his possession. Based on a conversation website, that is the equivalent of $109.72. Imagine traveling somewhere today with not $109.72 on you with no other options to pay for anything!

The all passed through Ellis Island on their way to New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts where they settled into their new lives.

Traveling the United States

The Week 28 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Week is Trains.

It’s fortunate that I saved my mother’s albums of photos and postcards she collected in her teens and 20s. They gave me a look at some of the trips she took.

The first extensive trip she took, along with her sister Tootsie, was to San Antonio Texas in 1943 to visit their brother Connie. Connie was stationed at Fort Sam Houston, arriving sometime in May of 1943.

It will be no surprise to anyone in our family that he was in the Quartermaster Corps of the Army, which was in charge of food and clothing, and specifically the Bakery Company. He was working at Hellman’s Bakery in Wallingford when he enlisted and after he returned, as well as owning a bakery for some years.

Betty and Toots started off in August of 1943 most likely taking the trolley to New Haven and a train to New York. I love that postcards were the mode of communication!

*“We’re off!” Postcards to parents and Connie*

They stopped in St. Louis Missouri from Thursday until their next train departed on Sunday. I wonder how much sightseeing they did!

There were in San Antonio by August 28th and visited with Connie, saw the sites of the city and met many people on the way and in San Antonio. The ladies with my mother and aunt in the picture are spouses of Connie’s friends. On the way is always more fun than the trip home, so there are no postcards from their way home, but they made it back safely.

*Connie, back middle, sitting with friends*

Betty took another trip the following year, in September 1944, to Los Angeles California to visit with her Tante Lizzie and Uncle Bernard Weiss. They had been living there since 1935. Bernard worked as a “brush painter” at a movie studio and although no occupation is listed for Elizabeth in the 1940 census, family lore says they were domestic help (maid and chauffeur) for an family. When the family was on vacation for the summer Elizabeth and Ben would either drive east to visit family or travel to Europe to visit family. My mom saved the postcards they sent as they made their way to and from California!

*Postcards from her first stop in Chicago*

It’s touching that one of her cards was specifically to her father and sad to think he would be gone 3 months later. That’s a story for another time.

The postmarks from Chicago are September 4 and it might have taken another 2 to 4 days to travel to Los Angeles. The following two postcards are dated September 13th and 18th.

My mother was so good at labeling pictures but she didn’t always provide last names of her girlfriends! I’m guessing the girl with her is her cousin, Pauline Wirth who was the same age as Betty. I know they were fairly close, although she lived in Queens with her family, and her mother Mary, was Elizabeth and Julianna’s sister so the trip would make sense.

While there, they had a visit from some neighborhood boys, Bernard Orosz and Peter Kliarsky and visited Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

Again, there are no postcards on the trip home! But they appear to have made it home safely.

I would love to take a train across the country, traveling in a sleeper car or roommate to get away from people if I need to but I also know there are usually delays and that might make me crazy.

The Story Teller

The topic for Week 25 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is The Story Teller.

I’ll tell you how and why I started researching and writing about my ancestors.

American history was one of my favorite subjects in school. How the United States was created, and the people involved. The first biography I read was on Abigail Adams in elementary school. I loved the Little House on the Prarie books imagining what life was like in those days.

I noticed in my 20s that I asked many questions about people – where they came from, their families, education – and I loved hearing stories about them and their lives.

Everyone on my maternal side of the family lived nearby so I knew their names, I knew the names of my maternal great-grandparents because their pictures were hanging on the wall at my grandmother’s house (just their faces – it was a little strange!). On the left in the background of the picture below are my grandmother Julianna and grandfather Konrad. On the right is my maternal great-grandmother Gertrude and great-grandfather Ludwig.

Uncle Connie, Aunt Tootsie, and Aunt Judy 1960

My paternal side was similar but different. Out of 5 siblings, 3 lived in the Wallingford. One, Uncle Eddie, lived in Meriden with his wife and two sons. I have no memory of meeting Aunt Ann or his sons although we went to a son’s wedding when I was 9 or 10. Uncle Walt was in the Navy and lived primarily in California and Louisianna with his wife and two sons.

So what prompted my Ancestry search and storytelling?

The ancestry part came about on our move from California to Connecticut. We stopped in Meeker Oklahoma to visit with my husband’s family. We met with his sister Linda and Cody and I met his Aunt Katherine and Great-Aunt Mildred. Aunt Mildred was her family researcher. She had family sheets for her and her husband Jesse and all of Jesse’s siblings, at least 10 that lived to adulthood including my husband’s grandmother Virgia Cleo.

While reading through the family sheets and various notes, it was exciting to think about the place in history this family held. It made me curious about mine.

Between 1995 and 2000, I used Family Tree Maker software for my work. In 2000, Ancestry created its website to help people share their family trees and information. I still had to mail requests for documents but this was a good start. Once documents started coming and people added more information, it was easier to piece information together. The stronger Ancestry has become the more family there is and the DNA connections made it even stronger. My Heritage is another site I joined because it is a better tool for Eastern European records.

From there, I started asking questions of my older family members like my dad and his siblings and my mother’s two sisters. They were all full of information and of course, Aunt Tootsie had all the family pictures. The stories they told were usually stand-alone but sometimes a comment would be a clue to help something else suddenly make sense or confirm what someone else had said. I remember how crazy it was to discover my half-aunt Joanne through DNA when we couldn’t figure out how we were related or to hear about my grandmother taking in her cousin’s infant daughter and then seeing the documents where she had to give her up for adoption because of her own growing family.

I’m always excited when I find new ancestors or learn the dates and locations where they lived. It helps to piece together their lives and the stories are created from there. Some people left us far too soon. By telling their stories, someone will realize they got those woodworking skills from their dad, grandfather, AND great-grandfather. Or that fierceness comes from their great-grandmother. Telling their stories keeps the connections to the past alive.

How’s Your Health

The Topic for Week 23 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is HEALTH.

When I think about my parents’ and their siblings and parents health, I take into consideration the time period they all lived. Although foods would have been fresher, they also smoked unfiltered cigarettes, drank and didn’t have a fitness regime like we do today!

In looking at the lives of my mother and father and their siblings and parents, the ages they died are all over the place. It doesn’t really reflect what their health was like. For example, my mother was in decent health aside from her arthritis in her hips but then along came the unexpected brain cancer when she was 64. Or my dad, who rode his bike all over the shoreline on the weeks and golfed during the week, still ended up with congestive heart failure, a triple bypass, and vascular disease leading to a leg amputation when he was 78. Although he survived it all and died at 86, I really wish he’d gone to a doctor when he was feeling poorly!

Is it the luck of the draw? My mother’s two sisters, Tootsie and Judy, lived until ages 101 and 99! But her two brother, Connie and Lou, died at 71 from a heart attack, and 70 from lung cancer.

On my dad’s side, Helen lived until 95. Now that one makes sense because she walked everywhere! I think she also watched what she ate and stayed fit, but she had health problems in her last few years.

My dad was a great example to us growing up for staying active. On Sundays, he would take us, and other kids in the neighborhood if they wanted to, on bike rides around town or on walks. He played tag in the snow with us and took us sledding at the country club.

My generation knows so much more and we have so much available to us to stay healthy longer than our ancestors. We have to take advantage of it!

Creativity

The topic for Week 22 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Creativity!

I feel like I have shared so much over these 21 weeks of the creative talents in my family with my grandmother Julianna Ingram Posluzny and her plants and needlework and dressmaking, my Aunt Tootsie with her knitting and sewing talents, and my dad with his carpentry and picture framing skills.

But there are additional creative people in my family tree and as usual, I’m not going to go very far up the limbs because I pretty much only know 3 generations back, counting my own! The definition of creative says: “Relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.”

First up – my husband Mark. Besides being an awesome carpenter/designer, my husband likes to paint. He “dabbles” in it, and I try to get him to do a little more, but he won’t listen to me. Here are a few of his pictures that I have taken from the pile of canvases in the basement.

Next is my sister Gail who has such a talent for words and writing poems! I don’t know if she does anymore but she wrote some wonderful ones while we were growing up, including one about being twins.

Besides picture framing, my dad had a really artistic side. As I was thinking about this post, I remembered he would make dried-flower pictures and frame them with beautiful mats and frames. It was the 70s and that was really in.

Remember the Currier & Ives calendars? He received them at the paint store and he would take a picture and make a shadow box! For example, with this picture, he would paint the sides to extend the scenery, and add little people to look like they were standing on the shore, there might even be a boat or two! He loved making them and all the grandkids got one when they were young.

Culinary creativity runs in the family too! My dad’s brother Steve Jakiela was a butcher extraordinaire for over 40 years at Caplan’s Market in Wallingford. He learned on the job and could likely carve up a carcass with his eyes closed!

My mother’s brother Conrad Posluszny was a talented baker who started out with “Old Mr. Heilman” at his bakery, was a baker at Choate School in the early 50s, owned Connie’s Bake Shop at 96 Quinnipiac Street in Wallingford, currently the location of something called “The Shop”. He met Auntie Anne (Martineck Yasensky), who he would marry in 1962 while he owned the bakery. In the late 50s, he went to work as the baker at Masonic Home and was there, working overnight to prepare delicious desserts and breads until he passed away while at work in November of 1981.

My cousin Judy Posluszny Behme inherited that culinary creativity gene and could whip up anything you asked her too. Uncle Connie probably made her wedding cake in 1959 and she made MY wedding cake in 1988. We loved going to her house for holidays.

I think everyone in my family has a creative streak in them and if I didn’t include you here please forgive me! Share it with us in the comments, or in the Facebook comments.

Nicknames

The topic for week 21 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is – Nicknames.

Where do they start? Is it a shortening of someone’s name? Something someone said, something they did? In my family, it’s a little bit of everything!

In my mother’s family, there were some simple nicknames – Elizabeth was known as Betty and Conrad was called Connie. But Antoinette became Tootsie! In my head I can hear her being called T and maybe that turned into Toot and from there – Tootsie. I don’t think we ever heard the story of her nickname.

In my father’s family, their nicknames may have been more the version of their names. Steve was called Stas in a letter from their uncle. Walt was known as Vots, Helen was Helchie, and my dad John was called Yunk and Yunkie all his life.

When I was growing up we were told the names my sisters and I were given, Janice, Gail, and Nancy, were so people couldn’t make nicknames out of them! Of course, we are called Janny, Gaily, Nan or Nanner, so that theory went right out the window! Maybe my mother didn’t enjoy being called Betty instead of Elizabeth so she tried to prevent something like that.

In high school, my twin Gail and I were called JakTwin 1 and JakTwin 2. Eventually for me, it was shortened to Jak and is a name some friends still call me today. A few have said they didn’t know my first name was really Nancy!

My husband Mark, for much of his adult life was called Rocky. You might think it was because he was big and strong like Rocky Balboa. Unfortunately, no. It was for Rocket J. Squirrel, the pal of Bullwinkle because he was “flighty”. Friends said he would say one thing and do another.

Do you have a nickname? How do you feel about it?

Preserving Family History

The Week 19 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is: PRESERVE. Today I’ll share my story.

I don’t know where my enthusiasm for researching and writing about family history came from. I do remember on our move from California to Connecticut, we stopped in Oklahoma to visit my husband’s family. His Great-Aunt Mildred Galloway had all the family census sheets and we had copies made to take with us. Maybe that’s what made me think about my family but a few years passed before I started anything.

I love finding the names and places, and I love having my DNA results to see the matches, but more than that, I love discovering the stories.

In the early days of my research, there was very little online, but I am fortunate to live in the same town that my parents’ families moved to in the mid-1920s. It was easy back then to visit the Town Clerk’s office for records. Over the years, I’ve received amazing photos and stories from my cousin Joan and her siblings and I’ve reached out with a little success for stories from my maternal cousins. It was through my cousin Judy’s files (and DNA) that led me to my half-Aunt Joanne.

I think most importantly for me is that my sisters and I grew up with only my grandmother alive and that was only until we were 7 and 9. My maternal grandfather died in 1944. My paternal grandparents died in 1927 and 1935! For our kids, my mother died before any of them were born. Now we have another generation in the family, these stories can get passed down to and through them.

*Gram with her 3 youngest grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren Christmas 1966*

Love and Marriage

🎵 Love and Marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage….🎵

The topic for week 18 in 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is: Love and Marriage.

I don’t know anything about the love lives of my ancestors, but there are two couples who had long married lives.

The first would be my great-uncle Walter Bonk and his wife Beatrice. I knew them as Uncle Walt and Aunt Bea. He was my grandfather’s half brother, born during my great grandmother’s second marriage. I only saw them once a year at the Pickerel Lake 4th of July parties along with their adult children and grandchildren and they always brought Great Aunt Mary, my grandfather’s sister.

Walter was born in 1903 in Wildenthal, in the Galician area of Austria. He and my great-grandmother, her husband John, and Walt’s half sisters Mary and Elizabeth came to the United States in 1907. They went from Yonkers, to New Jersey, to finally Wallingford.

Walter met Beatrice and they were married in 1925 in New Haven. They lived in New Haven until his father’s second wife Viola died in 1937 and they inherited the home on East Street. They had four children, Ann, LaVerne, Joan, and Henry who all grew up in Wallingford.

Uncle Walt died in 1998 at the age of 94. At that time they were married for Seventy-Three Years. 73! That was longer than my mother was alive! Aunt Bea lived until the age of 98 and she died in 2003.

The second couple with a long, happy, married life was my mother’s sister, Judy, and her husband Mal. I wrote about their marriage here. They were married in 1939 and were together until Uncle Mal’s death in 2002 at the age of 89. They lived down the road from us in Wallingford for many years until they moved to Florida. They were together for 63 years. Aunt Judy lived for another 14 years until she died in 2016 at 99 years old.

*Aunt Judy and Uncle May – 50th Anniversary and 1939 wedding*

Now, I wouldn’t want you to think that it takes being married to live a long happy life because my Aunt Tootsie is the exception to that!

Aunt Tootsie dated Uncle Lester for a number of years while they were both taking care of ailing mothers. They finally married in November of 1960 and lived in Wallingford with my grandmother. Uncle Lester died of a heart attack short of three years later in August of 1963. Gram died in 1967 and Aunt Tootsie lived alone in the house on Clifton Street.

Aunt Tootsie found love again with someone she and Uncle Lester had known for a number of years. She and Andy were married in November of 1978 and lived on Clifton Street but, unfortunately, Andy died short of three years later in August of 1981. Weird right?

Aunt Tootsie continued to live in the house on Clifton Street until she moved to an apartment in the Judd Square apartments and then to Westfield Nursing home. She died in September 2010 at the age of 101.