Nana Biography

But they’re all dead now. I never really had much contact with any of them. They were handsome, good looking ne’er-do-wells.  One of them drank too much, one of them ran around with other women, and this was all from a wonderful family. Somehow there was no, there was nothing – it was not because the father didn’t want to be nice to them, it was just giving and never expecting. Maybe, I don’t know, I think so.

Do you know what the mother was like? Did you see these people, these grandparents?

Yes, I knew my grandfather. But only when I was a child of five. I remember him. My grandmother died before I was born, so I never knew her, my mother’s mother. She died when my mother was about 18 years old. So, it was a good family, it was respected in the community, and all the streets were named for everybody there, you know, in the family and all that.

Did you go back to Wilkesbury?

Yes, I had a first cousin that lived there that we liked, and I used to visit, and I thought it was a terrible town, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, a very uninteresting town.

I don’t know it.

It’s a mining town, kind of, but there are some very wealthy people there. There’s a big bunch of rich people and a big bunch of poor people.

Your mother’s folks would be in the…

Rich.  Right.  And the family home was one of those great big houses with the tower, and now it’s a funeral home, I understand. A great big thing.

So did they come to visit you ever?

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