As today is August 15, 2024, the fifth anniversary of my Dad's becoming an
OFFICIAL ANCESTOR, it's time we celebrate his amazing life. Of course, we can't tell Dad's story without bringing in his extraordinary wife, our mother, Dena -- we called her Dee. Mom became an OFFICIAL ANCESTOR on October 17, 2014 -- going on a decade. It doesn't make sense perhaps, but I miss her more today than ever!
Here are the famous pair, standing on the porch of their Pittsfield, MA, "retirement" house. That house -- which Dad painstakingly redecorated -- is forever seared into my memory. Close my eyes and I can see all the Rose of Sharon (pink, purple, white) that Dad planted -- it always bloomed in profusion in late summer against the back porch. Inside the house, I see the cheerful living room, with the gorgeous pink stiped wallpaper and the flowered sofa -- where we would squeeze in together on Christmas Eve -- to that blue and white kitchen, where Mom made miracles happen every day! In this photo, I choose to think that perhaps Mom and Dad are waving to us from the GREAT BEYOND!
Dad wasn't born into money or privilege, but he sure was born into a lot of love! His parents, Albina Orzo Ricci, and Angelo Ricci,
were crazy about each other -- so much so that when Grandpa Angelo's mother -- a snob named Augusta Baldini Ricci who hailed from Rome -- rejected my dear Grandma Albina (because her Orzo family was dirt poor, and worse, they hailed from Calabria in southern Italy) --
my grandparents decided in October of 1921 to ELOPE!
According to my Aunt Bette, the youngest of my grandparents' five children, Angelo and Albina were overtly affectionate with one another throughout their 66-year marriage. But Grandma Albina was given to fits of anger, especially when her "honey husband" won the cardgames they played together at night. Aunt Bette says that Grandma wasn't terrific at keeping track of the cards, while Grandpa Angelo was. Every time he laid down four aces or some other winning hand, crushing the card game, Grandma would get furious -- and sometimes she would hit my poor grandfather!
My Dad was son number two, born on July 25, 1926, in Bristol, Connecticut, two years after his older brother Bob; the two brothers fought fiercely growing up. Indeeed, Aunt Bette -- who turned 90 last May (here she is with her dad, my Grandpa Angelo)
recalls that her older brothers' fights got so physical so fast, that she was terrified they might strike her as they hit each other. So frightened was young Bette that she ran into the coat closet to hide.
"I still remember the smell of my mother's black Persian wool coat," she says. She remained in the closet until it was safe to come out. Unfortunately, the anger that ran through Dad's family -- his mother and his brother Bob had notoriously furied tempers -- sometimes landed squarely in the laps of my brother and sisters and me. As much as I adored Dad, his explosive temper could, even at the end of his life, scare the bejesus out of me.
Nonetheless, my dad's obituary -- which he composed himself in the last days before he passed -- makes a point of saying that he "grew up surrounded by a large and loving family. Ric had an idyllic and adventurous boyhood, playing in the woods behind his parents' house on Crown Street, and generally raising hell with his brother and cousins." Dad told us a few stories about precisely how he raised hell and all I can say is that it's a good thing he lived to tell them!
Despite the fact that my grandparents had a limited amount of education, Dad demonstrated his intellectual potential early. At age 14, he won first prize in an essay contest sponsored by
The Bristol Courant, a competition that provided 48 newspaper boys with a TRIP TO WASHINGTON, D.C. for FDR's third inauguration in 1941! Dad won the contest after selling a record number of new subscriptions to
The Courant! As I read his essay today, goosebumps shivered up and down my arms and tears flooded my eyes!
Entitled "The Chance of a Lifetime," Dad's essay recounted getting up at 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, January 19, 1941, "after a night of restlessness and anxiety, [as] I was ready to go on a trip to Washington, D.C. to see the Inauguration of President Roosevelt. A most historical one for never before has a President taken the oath of office for three terms."
The boys boarded buses in nearby Hartford, Connecticut, stopped briefly in New York City for church services, and then "sped through Philadelphia and Baltimore," arriving in DC on Sunday afternoon, the "realization of a dream!"
The first thing Dad did when he arrived in DC was "immediately mail cards to my folks and friends at home." The cards featured all the places he was scheduled to visit on his once-in-a-lifetime trip to the nation's capital.
Monday, January 20, 1941 was FDR's third Inauguration Day. The boys did some sightseeing, during which Dad aimed his camera in every direction. Nothing escaped him: he even noted that the streets of Washington, D.C. were "like a wheel with the spokes representing the avenues of our states. The axis of the wheel is the nation's Capitol Building."
As the buses carrying the newspaper boys drove up Pennsylvania Avenue on Inauguration Day, crowds of people were filling the grandstands.
The Bristol Courant had reserved a bank of prime seats for their delivery boys -- and their excitement spilled over as FDR approached!
At first all they could see was President Roosevelt's official car.
"Then, at last, we could see him, the President of our country, Franklin Delano Roosevelt." FDR delivered a brief inaugural speech, and according to Dad's essay, the President addressed the woes of the nation. "A marvelous and thrilling parade soon followed, with soldiers on foot, cavalrymen on their horses army tanks and machine gunds mounted on trucks." Airplane formations "clouded the sky, adding to the display."
On the last day of the trip, the boys visited Mount Vernon on a "beautiful site facing the Potomac River. Down an old brick path off on a side of the home is the tomb where lies the Father of our country." And then the epitome of his trip: "I visited the Lincoln Memorial and with my hand I touched the most lifelike statue of
... Abraham Lincoln, sculptured by Daniel French. I had seen it in pictures many times, and now there it was before me!"
Dad concluded his winning essay in gratitude: "Many thanks to those who made such a trip possible for a 14-year old newspaper boy."
Dad retained his love of travel and adventure until the very end of his life. In July of 2017, at the age of 91, he boarded a plane at Bradley International Airport with his daughter, Karen, and Karen's husband, Dale, to fly to Denver, Colorado, for the wedding of his fourth granddaughter, my own daughter, Lindsay Ann Ricci Kirsch,
to her amazing husband, Geoffry Kaatz.
In 2016, having lost our sweet Mom less than a year before, Dad bravely flew to Los Angeles, where he proceeded to drive with my sister Karen and her husband to a wedding destination in the beautiful golden hills above Santa Barbara, California. That trip celebrated the wedding
of Dad's oldest granddaugher, my wonderful niece, Hollywood movie producer Sarah Jean Donohue, to William DiCenzo, another amazing young man.
I will never forget that balmy September night when Dad, at age 90, finally arrived at the somewhat remote wedding location near Solvang, California. I was incredibly nervous all day, worrying that Dad would disintegrate before he reached us. I got continual updates from my sisters, who accompanied dad on the long flight from Hartford to Los Angeles, and then, on the lengthy drive up to the wedding resort. It was after midnight when Dad finally emerged from my sister's rented car. He walked very slowly, without a cane, up the sidewalk to where I was waiting for him at the front door of the hotel. He was quite dishevelled; his shirt had come untucked from his pants, and he looked like a little boy who was too tired to know where he was exactly.
But Dad was smiling so brightly that he lit up the night sky. He was so thrilled and proud that he was able to join the family for Sarah and Billy's wedding. (Excuse me, but I have to stop writing for a moment, as now I am crying because I miss my adventurous Dad -- with his boundless energy and enthusiasm -- so much!)
Dad had an insatiable curiosity and a sharp mind. He was an amateur scientist, always devouring
Popular Science magazines. With zero money and no experience, Dad built the first house
I lived in -- a three-bedroom "hip roof" ranch, on Sherbrooke Street, on top of a mountain in Bristol. He built the house the year I was born, in direct defiance of his mother -- Grandma Albina -- who famously predicted that Dad was foolish to undertake the project. She told him he would fail. Not a chance! Dad financed the house relying on building loans -- the bank approved a sum of money to first pour the foundation, then inspected the work before awarding a subsequent sums of money to cover subsequent phases of building.
He wired the Sherbrooke Street house
himself and did such a good job that he ended up helping several others, including my mother's brothers in Connecticut, to wire their houses. To the end of his days, Dad was fascinated with electricity (as well as an endless number of other topics, including solar energy, electric vehicles, comets, gardening, space travel, the secrets of the Universe, and the reason why the dinosaurs went extinct.) You name it, Dad was interested.
What follows here is a very detailed diagram that I found just yesterday in my "Dad folder." For whatever reason, he sketched this electricty schemata
in 2011 for my parents' Pittsfield, MA, home. Heaven knows why he needed such a sketch! He was always busy building one thing or another, or planning a new project. A talented carpenter, he spent many happy hours as a "mole" (Mom's word for him) in his woodworking shop in the basement. The wooden furniture and little toys and
Christmas ornaments he created are treasured by everybody who owns them. At the end of his life, when he could no longer work with wood, he became known as the "Cardboard King" at Daybrook Village in Holyoke, MA, creating nifty boxes and other items out of Amazon packing boxes my sister Holly sent to his apartment.
Among the sweetest things that Dad did toward the end of his life was buy each of his granddaughters and his daughters tiny ceramic birds! Mine is a goldfinch, which makes sense, as that was my husband's favorite bird when he was growing up.
One more major piece of evidence that Dad would have been an extraordinary engineer: after we moved into our second home in 1960, in Pleasant Valley, New York (because Dad had taken a job as a Customer Engineer at IBM in Poughkeepside) it soon became apparent that our well wasn't deep enough to provide adequate water. We ran out of water continually -- until finally, Dad decided to design and build (with his own two hands) a CISTERN, the likes of which I've never seen except, say, as part of the Roman aqueducts!
Dad figured out how to route rainwater into the cavernous cinderblock cistern (which he buried underground.) From that point on, Mom washed all of our clothes in the cistern's water; the rainwater in the cistern also flushed the toilets in our house. Thanks to Dad's ingenuity, we never ran out of water again!
Everyone who knew Dad agreed that besides being smart and curious (and a total perfectionist) he was also an all-around charming man -- he had a great smile and was very good at making conversation even with total strangers. People frequently told him that he resembled Mario Cuomo, and he didn't mind that comparison, even though he was a lifelong Republican. Somebody once joked that Dad could talk the ear off a brass monkey -- Mom frequently reminded us of this, especially when he won an argument! He was also a wonderful writer and at one point in his career at IBM he worked as an Engineering Technical Writer, producing maintenance and repair manuals for computer systems.
Had Grandma Albina been a more sophisticated woman, Dad most certainly would have gone to college. But Grandma could see absolutely no reason for Dad to go to college; she and Grandpa Angelo worked at the Ingraham clock factory in Bristol, for decades, so why wouldn't Dad do the same thing? In the long run, what Dad did was anticipate the computer age! He went to work for IBM in 1957 as a Customer Service Engineer, helping to maintain and repair some of IBM's largest mainframes. In the mid-1980s, Dad helped us buy our first IBM personal computer.
Before he landed in his career at IBM, Dad attended electronics technical schools in Chicago and Detroit. Back in Bristol, he worked for WBIS, Bristol's new AM radio station, designing and building several pieces of specialized equipment for the station. I was always fascinated by my Dad's work at the radio station as I grew up; besides being Chief Engineer, he was also chief cook and bottle washer. During a huge flood in 1955, Dad escorted the Mayor of Bristol through town in a boat so the Mayor could survey the flood damage and broadcast messages to reassure the people of Bristol. It's no wonder that I wanted to follow in Dad's footsteps -- when I got to college in 1970, I immediately started working at the campus radio station, WBRU-FM, in Providence, Rhode Island.
Drafted into the U.S. Army in 1944, when he turned 18, Dad was part of the 94th Infantry Division, attached to General George Patton's Third Army during the Rhineland campaign in Germany. Once the war ended, Dad became a miltary policeman; ever the adventurer, he applied for security detail in northern Africa, where, sporting a thin black mustache,
he spent 23 months driving Army bigshots around in jeeps! Discharged in Casablanca, Morocco, he was assigned to security duty at an unpopulated American Army base in Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa.
In fairness to my dear Grandma Albina, what she lacked in imagination for her son's future, she made up in being an amazing and extraordinary letter writer. My sister Holly has assembled a gigantic white notebook in which she lovingly placed in plastic sleeves the countless letters that Dad and his mom wrote back-and-forth during his years in the Army. Here is one I particularly love, from Dad, dated October 30, 1946. It's from Casablanca.
"Yes, Mom, I'm finally coming home after two years of wandering. And to be truthful, I can't wait." Dad goes on to tell his mother that he's been writing "a lot of hooey" to her in recent letters; the truth was he had "gotten fed up with" his job in Dakar and left and he was now headed for Paris where he figured "it will take me a good month or more just to get out" because so many soldiers were trying to get home. "What I may do is go to Bremerhaven, Germany, and catch a boat. Either way, is at government expense." He told her to expect him back in Connecticut within six weeks; he warned her that this would be his last letter to her from abroad, "So until you hear from me again, don't fret if I don't write."
As I reflect back, it occurs to me now that I definitely inherited what Mom always called my "long leg," or in Italian, "samba longa," that is, my wanderlust, from Dad. At one point, Mom told me she had, count them, 21 different addresses for me, in all kinds of places I lived, from Rhode Island, Maine, Boston, Oslo, Norway, California and Chicago.
Among the things Mom and Dad left for me were letters that I wrote to them when Rich and I were travelling for two months in 1978. I am so incredibly grateful that they saved the onionskin sheafs from England and Italy and especially, from Israel. As I reread these letters I'd written 45 years ago, I was delighted to relive those adventures.
Dad brought home some gorgeous souvenirs from Africa, including money from Morocco,
-- as well as two beautiful leather purses, both of which he promptly gave to my mom after he met her a few years later. Dad always said that "the best and most important decision he ever made was to ask the 'love of his life,' Dena Rotondo, to marry him in 1949." Mom was an extraordinary woman, a homemaker, and later a wonderful stained glass artist. Unequaled as a cook, she made pot roast that was so tender and delicious you didn't need a knife. Her homemade breads and cinnamon buns and all kinds of desserts were legendary: I still dream about her apple and blueberry pies and try as I might, I can't reproduce them. My husband still talks about her cream puffs, which she made at Easter. My dad claimed that he fell in love with Mom's cream puffs (at a church bazaar) before he met her!
Dad was devastated when Mom passed quite suddenly on October 17, 2015, only a week after she received a deadly diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. He missed her warmth and loving companionship terribly, and he was further saddened by the realization that we children -- my brother Rick, me, and my sisters Karen and Holly -- had overnight lost our supremely loving and devoted mother. Dad sold their Pittsfield house a few months later and moved into an assisted living facility in Holyoke, MA, near my sister Karen, who as an RN attended to all of Dad's health care needs (until late September of 2018 when she suffered a terrible stroke.)
My sister's stroke broke my Dad's heart. Even though Karen has regained much of her mobility and virtually all of her speech, Dad had lost his caretaker. He was devastated, and angry at a world that would do something so cruel to his beloved daughter Karen. Within a few months after her stroke, Dad began to decline, basically because he had started to lose his will to live. It was awfully sad for us kids. Dad entered the Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst, MA early in August of 2019. The Fisher Home was such a peaceful facility and Dad received great care.
I took my last photo of Dad on the day that my granddaughter, Dani Marcella Guggenheim, was born: August 6, 2019. I pointed the camera at him and said, “Dad, I’m going to take your photo now, so pretend you’re holding our darling little Dani in your arms.” Which he did; half sitting up in bed, he cradled his well-weathered hands together.
On August 9th, 2019, three days after Dani came roaring into the world (her mother, our daughter Jocelyn, was only in the hospital 18 minutes!) my husband and I drove to Boston to meet our sweet little Dee, who was named for my mom, Dena. From the moment little Dee was born, we treasured her. Leaving Boston that evening, we stopped at the hospice in Amherst. Later that night, in my journal, I wrote: "I just saw Dad; the skin of his face is pulled tight and parched. His cheek was cool to my hand. I leaned over and kissed him and said, "Dad, I love you very much," and he whispered back, "That's very sweet of you." Maybe he called me "Sparky," his favorite knickname for me, but perhaps I just imagined that!
"I shook Dad gently and tried to show him the first photos of Dani that I had taken only a few hours earlier in Boston. Sadly, Dad started to get upset; he actually began to cry and the nurse said that often happens when patients are close to the end. I suppose it makes sense; there was Dad, all of his energy poised on leaving the world, and there I was, trying to interest him in photos that pointed to the future, to his second great grandchild. (Dani's older brother, Ronen Dante Guggenheim, was born on February 12, 2014.)
The next thing I remember is that I leaned over and, bawling, I said, 'Dad I love you and I forgive you for everything you ever did to me!"
And that was it. I left the hospice in Amherst and my husband and I drove home; I was feeling a crazy mixture of ecstasy over Dani's birth, and crushing sadness over Dad's looming death.
He was up and down over the next week. In my journal I wrote:
"August 10, 2019, 6:25 p.m. Dad asked for pizza. He rallied and is in a good mood. Glad that daughter Lindsay gets to see him that way. I wonder why there are such ups and downs in Dad's appetite and moods. I guess dying is a gradual process." Yes, indeed, dying can take what feels like forever.
"August 11, 2019, 10:31 a.m. A gorgeous morning. I am staying PRESENT. Rich and I will canoe today and we plan to see Dani again on Tuesday, August 13th, for her naming ceremony. Doing yoga in the garden this morning, I see all the day lilies are past and most of the bee balm too. I see clearly that everything in the world is fleeting. But moments that are still feel timeless and eternal. 10:34 a.m."
"August 15, 2019, Dad passed about 1:15 a.m. Holly called me right away; she was so incredibly calm. She had left Dad's room a few minutes before but she returned just in time! She told me, 'I stepped back in the room just as everything started to quicken.'"
"Oh Dad, may you rest in peace with Mom and all of our ancestors. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!"
One last thing: the night Dad passed, Holly phoned me just before 1:30 in the morning. I woke up right away and I was staring out the dark window at the brightest and fullest white moon imaginable!
Holly told me that she felt an extraordinary number of "presences" in the room when Dad passed. As if the ancestors were all there waiting to greet him! I sure hope so.
Note: In this photo of the Baldini family above, my Grandpa Angelo is sitting on the floor at the left hand side. His fearsome-looking mother, Augusta Baldini Ricci, is at the very center of the photograph, with a white scarf around her neck. The Baldini women in this photo are wearing rather sophisticated satin dresses and jewelry; yes, they do look well-off. My dear Aunt Bette told me that Augusta Baldini's family owned a cheese store; the Ricci family was in some other business, meaning they too were fairly well off, at least compared to my Grandma Albina's family, who came from the starkly poor region of Calabria in southern Italy. One very curious thing about this photo: my Grandpa Angelo's father, Giovanni Ricci, is nowhere to be seen. I sure do wonder why!
ADDITIONAL FAMILY PHOTOS!
My niece Lauren Marie Donohue's marriage to the terrific Jay Scott, September 20, 2015
Lauren and Jay made my parents' day! And they were such a handsome couple!!
Dad and I had more than our share of arguments over the years, mostly about politics, starting when I was 12 years old, in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for President. Dad and I subsequently bashed heads over Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. Oh and naturally, we did intense battle over the War in Vietnam and later, the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill mess. But when Dad turned 85, in 2011, I called a truce; I told him, "Dad, I refuse to argue with you anymore, I love you and I just want to enjoy your company from here on!" I remember so clearly, we were sitting in Mom's immaculate kitchen, at the little breakfast table, he on one side of me, Mom on the other. Dad was shocked. He didn't challenge me but he was clearly very disappointed, because he was still brimming with intellectual fervor, and well, he just loved to do verbal battle. I include this photo to show the other side of Dad, how deeply he loved his family. I also want to recall that when I was studying for my doctoral degree in English (creative writing) from SUNY Albany in the mid-1990s, Dad (and Mom) were super supportive; Dad in particular loved to hear me pontificate over narrative theory, even though it was FEMINIST narrative theory that I was feeding him. Dad and Mom gave me a set of Oxford English dictionaries when I earned my Ph.D. and these huge books hold a treasured place on my bookshelf.
He sure enjoyed his grandson, Noah Jon Ricci Kirsch
We celebrated Dad's 75th birthday in July, 2001, at our farmhouse in Austerlitz, NY. Dad never knew this, but our naughty dog, a "chowbrador" named Bear, tore into Dad's gorgeous chocolate birthday cake when no one was looking! Thank God that my mother-in-law, ABIGAIL KIRSCH, was a guest -- she picked up a knife and smiling serenely, quickly "reconfigured" the cake -- no one ever knew (until now :)!
The amazing family that Mom and Dad spawned gathered in July, 2022, in my sister Holly's backyard in Easthampton, MA, where we have so many great barbecues in the summer, with S'MORES galore. And on Christmas Eve, we come to Holly's for a feast!
