My Grandmother’s Patriotism

What is Independence Day to an Italian immigrant?

In the mid 1970s, at about the time of the American Bicentennial, my Italian-American grandparents embraced the colonial revival.

We spent every Sunday afternoon at my grandparents, so the change to the living room decor was a bit shocking. One week a pink sectional sofa and a round Formica-top coffee table dominated the space. The next week the room was filled with dark pine. 

But it was the lampshades I remember the most. They were covered with drawings of bald eagles hovering over images of William Stone’s 1820s handwritten version of the Declaration of Independence. My ten-year-old self didn’t think too much about the change, but looking back now I realize that the redecorated room was screaming I am proud to be an American!

My father’s father was an Italian immigrant. He met my grandmother, the daughter of Italian immigrants, in South Orange, New Jersey. They had three kids in South Orange and by the time I came along in the mid-1960s my grandparents were enjoying their second decade in the new home they built in Parsippany, then a rural outpost in the Jersey Highlands, now a bustling New York City bedroom community. Parsippany was only about sixteen miles from South Orange, but to my grandparents, looking for their piece of the American dream, it must have seemed like another country—a magical place filled with possibility and opportunity.

Shortly after my grandmother—her Italian name was Filomena—passed away in 2002, we found a short handwritten autobiography she wrote on looseleaf paper probably about a decade or so before her death. It is a fascinating account of how this child of Italian immigrants became an American.

Filomena was born on Hester Street in New York City on January 12, 1912 to Italian immigrants—grape growers from the southern region of Lucania. As a young girl she took part in programs at settlement houses after school, where she learned to paint and do needlepoint. She even spent three weeks at a settlement house camp in upstate New York, where she fell in love with the country, its wide-open spaces, and the sound of fog horns on the Hudson River. She learned the hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Later, during the Great Depression, she made $8.00 a week sewing pillows at home.

If the influence of Protestant reformers, fields along the Hudson, and hard work were not enough to explain the Declaration of Independence lamp shades, the rest of Filomena’s autobiography explains everything.

She and Giovanni Fea (originally Fia—the name was Anglicized at some point between his arrival at Ellis Island and his wedding) married in 1937. My grandfather was pursuing his own American experience, working as a laborer for a construction company and a chauffeur until eventually he landed a job (and the promise of a pension, thanks to the Teamsters) driving trucks for Newark breweries. He worked hard enough to buy my grandmother an engagement ring—no small feat during the Depression.

They spent their honeymoon in Washington D.C. Filomena described the experience with the same spirit of patriotism with which she would describe her colonial revival living room. She was quick to point out that she and Giovanni stayed in a hotel near the White House. They visited Arlington National Cemetery, where they were present for an Armistice Day ceremony during which Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed a wreath over the tomb of the unknown soldier. “It was a great thrill to see President Franklin Roosevelt,” Filomena wrote. Both my grandmother and grandfather were lifelong Democrats. As my grandfather used to tell me, “I’m a Democrat because FDR fought for the working man.”

Filomena also wrote about her experiences with capitalism, portraying herself as a savvy consumer who was nevertheless shaped by the pursuits of happiness the marketplace offered the children of immigrants. For example, shortly before her wedding she found a coat she wanted to buy at a Bamberger’s department store. The tag on the coat said $49.00 but when she brought it to the counter the salesperson said that it was wrongly priced; the actual price was $89.00. Filomena argued for the cheaper price—it was not her fault that the tag was wrong. After she made her case to the manager of the store she eventually got to purchase the coat for $49.00. In my grandmother’s mind the lesson was simple, and uniquely American: “I was proud of myself for sticking up for my rights.” Ralph Nader, that great twentieth-century champion of consumer rights, would have been proud of her that day.

During World War II my grandfather started working for Krueger Beer and began raising chickens. My grandmother saved money by sewing clothes for their new baby daughter—my Aunt Carmine—and their twin boys, John and Joseph (the latter, she said, was named after Yankees centerfielder Joe DiMaggio). She deposited fifty cents a week in the “Christmas Club” at her local bank in order to buy holiday presents for the kids. My grandmother was a proud consumer, but she also wanted to let readers of her autobiography know that she embodied another great American virtue: frugality.

In 1945, Filomena and Giovanni bought their tract of land in Parsippany, twelve acres that included a small pond. My grandmother’s sisters and their husbands bought smaller adjacent lots—the Italian quest for the American Dream always took place in the context of extended networks of kinship. It was not until 1952 that my grandparents saved enough money to start building a house on the tract. They did the work themselves, most of it on weekends. 

Sometime before the house was finished they built a small cabin (20’x 20’) on the pond and added a dock for swimming. They dug a well, added an outhouse, built a bocce alley, and constructed an outdoor kitchen with a wood stove. Friends from South Orange who came up to Parsippany to help with the labor on the main house worked during the day and partied at night. Filomena writes: “One weekend we had fifty people up. We cooked twelve pounds of macaroni and gravy. Our friends brought a 25lb cooked turkey and fruit and cakes.” 

And then the autobiography comes to an end with the line, “We all had a good time.”

When I first read that last line I was disappointed that my grandmother ended her life story so abruptly. There was nothing about the lives of my father, aunt, and uncle. There was nothing about the move into the new house and the Fourth of July picnics I remembered as a kid. There was nothing about my parents’ marriage or about Filomena’s grandkids, including me!

I don’t know why Filomena ended her autobiography the way she did. Perhaps she just never got around to finishing it. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the phrase We all had a good time was a perfect ending to this immigrant story. My grandparents were landowners and homeowners. They scratched and saved to achieve this marker of the American dream and, as they used to tell me when I was kid, such a story was only possible in the United States. Sure there was more to tell. But my grandmother’s decision to end her autobiography in 1952 with a story of friends and good Italian food on the piece of land where they would live together for the next fifty years was enough.

As I look back on Filomena’’s story this Fourth of July weekend, I am reminded once again of the tangible show of patriotism I saw in her living room that Sunday afternoon in the mid-1970s. I am also reminded that I want to live in a country where my grandmother’s story can be the story of all men and women who seek to make a life in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Happy Independence Day!

John Fea is Executive Editor of Current.