California – 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

Automobiles

The week 29 topic for 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks is Automobiles. There’s no one better to tell you about than my father in law Paul Reinhart!

Paul was born in Iowa on his family farm in 1929. Living on the farm he learned to repair the machinery they owned. He told us when he ended up in Korea in 1950, he took aptitude tests for a few different jobs in camp and they put him in the Motor Pool and his experience just grew from there. After the war, Paul grudgingly went back to the farm in Iowa, but when one of his friends from the Army suggested he head out to California, he hopped on the opportunity. For the rest of his employment years, he was involved with automobiles.

One of his biggest loves was racing and his cars. His first race car was a 1957 Corvette when he entered the Southern California Corvette Association race world in 1960.

*1957 Corvette raced between 1960 and 1962*

The bright orange and purple were the official colors of Union Oil 76 where he was a partner at one of their services station/garages. If you look close, the “Big Three” refers to the station Big 3 Tire & Brake Inc.

It was while he was a rookie in 1960 that he got his first major win at Cotati (northern California) Raceway and a kiss from Jayne Mansfield! In addition, he ended the season as Rookie of the Year.

His success on the race track continued through 1961 and 1962 ending both years as the B Production SCCA Divisional Champion.

*1962 Pacific Division B Production Champion*

October 1962 began the showdown between the (Chevy) Corvette Z06 and the (Ford) Shelby Cobra. Four Z-06s were on the track again a Shelby Cobra. The Corvette won the race but it was only the start of a heated competition. Chevy and Ford were in it to win it. Paul stuck with Chevy and in October headed to St. Louis to pick up his Z06 and drive it back to California. No fancy sponsor or delivery for him! His first race in the new car was in November of 1962.

He quickly learned the Z06’s brakes and suspension were junk. Chevy sent out a crate a parts but by the beginning of the 1963 season the Z06s were in trouble. The Ford Cobras were just too hard to beat and to make matters worse, two of the stars of the Z06s, Bob Bondurant and Dave McDonald defected to Ford. By March of 1963, he decided he had had enough and sold the Z06.

But he didn’t stop there! He picked up a BMC Genie Mark 8 from Joe Huffaker because “he liked the looks of the car”. It had been built for Pedro Rodriguez but the year prior, Pedro’s brother, Ricardo, was killed in a crash and Pedro temporarily retired from racing.

*BMC Genie Mark 8 raced from 1963 to 1967*

Paul had success in the Mark 8 for a few years, but by 1965 he was racing against Mark 10s and the big names of Ken Miles, Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, and Parnelli Jones. Between that and not having any big named sponsors to pay the bills, he sold the Genie and in 1968 drove a Camaro for a friend. In his words, “After a couple of events, I realized how much I missed the thrill of racing with the greatest drivers in the world and conceded that if I couldn’t race at the top, it was time to move on to other things”.

In 1981, while browsing through the local trader paper, he came across someone selling a 1963 Z06 and it just happened to be his original car.

He bought it thinking to use it as a street car, but he missed the racing and with the blessing of my mother in law, Wanda, he began driving it in historic races along the west coast with the most notable being Laguna Seca and Sonoma Raceway. Those two locations are where I had the thrill of watching him race, and they DID race!

He raced the car from 1984 though 2000 and had so much fun, he sold the Z06 in order to go back to his roots and rebuild his first Corvette – the 1957. Although he had some parts to the original car, it became more of a re-creation of the original.

*Paul Reinhart and his “restored” 1957 corvette*

He stayed true to the Union 76 orange and purple and the Big Three theme. He raced this car from 2002 to 2013 when he sold the car, but raced it for them in 2015!

*The Z06 on the auction block 14 years after he sold it*

*A Genie MK 10B model car with Paul listed as one of the drivers!*

*1957 Corvette Paul in the original / Cody in the restored*

Both cars continue to race in vintage races on the west coast and their owners were friends and fans of Paul during and after his years of vintage racing.

In the years after racing and before he died in October of 2021, Paul was in the process of restoring a 1957 Chevrolet truck. The parts had all been painted and were stored around the house and the frame and engine were in the garage. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen and we were fortunate to find someone to purchase it at the beginning of our week of cleaning out his house (with plans to bring it all home)! How lucky we were to find that person!

As I said at the start of this, there is no one better person to talk about when I talk about Automobiles. The amount of information I have could fill a book, and there are already books either about him, mentioning him, or quoting him about other drivers. It’s a thrill to comb through the information and see how much he was revered as a driver, a person, and a Chevy man through and through.

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 Corvette Racer

We heard on the news today that 2023 is the 70th anniversary of the corvette.

It’s bittersweet because my father in law Paul Reinhart, who passed away in October of 2022, was one of the original corvette racers in California starting in the 50s.

That might be a little exaggeration but considering his track record and love for the corvette it’s not too far from the truth.

Paul racing his restored Z06 at Laguna Seca

Over the years he raced a 1957 corvette, the sixth 1963 Z06 off the line in St. Louis, a Genie MK 10B, back to his original Z06 that he found and restored, and then back to a 1957 he restored to resemble his original. He raced in vintage races until the age of 86. I will confirm all the dates and ages as I tell more about this incredible man and his racing.

After his death in California, we boxed up all his racing memorabilia and shipped it back to Connecticut and it’s now been sorted and filed until we decide what to do with it. I think his stories need to be told.

He was nominated in 2013 to the Corvette Hall of Fame in Bowling Green Kentucky but unfortunately he didn’t get in. His 1957 restored car is there though on loan from the current owner and his

He married Mark’s mother in 1963, the years Mark turned five. I met him in 1987 when I moved out to California. He listened more than talked unless it was about racing! That’s how you could draw him out.

I’d like to share his story with you. I hope you come along for the ride!