My mother's parents were both dead by the time I was a freshman in high school...
Grandma, was first generation in her family to be born in America, her family came from County Cork in Ireland and never ever wanted to go back... She spent her childhood and uptil she was married a few years in Hoboken NJ way before it was a trendy place for yuppies to live... there are pictures I've seen of her when she was young, and she was very very stylish and very trendy.. One of her uncles was a big numbers runner in NJ...
she married pop pop when she was in her early 20s -- his family goes back to areas of NJ from the 1600s.. he always insisted that members of his family thre the rope to the mayflower when it docked ...
He worked all his life ad worked hard to support his family - he graduated from college and worked as a CPA - most notibly for Annheuser Busch -.There are pictures of him with me and my sister - being the total proud grandpa and I remember him smelling of cherry pipe smoke and being a great story teller... He died entirely too young...
When grandma and pop pop got married, their first child, Harry Jr appeared 8 months after the wedding day- It was SCANDALOUS!!!! the year was 1923 and he was premature.. but tongues wagged. and people counted ontheir fingers.. 10 years later, my mom came along and they moved out of hoboken... Harry Jr died at age 13 from complications of an burst appendix...
my father's father died when he was in high school and i know very little about him, just that he left my father's mother taken care of.. Nana, my dads mother, was always old to me - I don't ever remember her not being in a nursing home and going on sundays to take her out to lunch - I think she died when I was 8 or 9... but the stories my dad tells of her - she'd be a cool lady - she was about 4'9 and 80 pounds but ballsy as anything... didn't put up with crap from anyone...