A Trip Back in Time

00:01 Hello, I'm Jared Eberhardt and today I'm interviewing my grandpa from my mom's side, Michael Graziano So why I chose him was because he was in the army, and he's one of the oldest in my family. And the first question that I wanted to ask him is, where did you grow up and what was it like?

00:24 I grew up in the East New York section of Brooklyn in the 1940s, and it was. It was an interesting place. I had a lot of friends and went to school, went to grammar school there.

00:47 Okay. So I also wanted to ask, what were you like as a kid?

00:53 Well, I was an only child, so I had no siblings, but I had a lot of friends. And we played outside most of the time because there wasn't all the devices and things that children have now. So we basically played outside all the time. We played ball. We played in the street. Sometimes we went to the park to play ball. But that was about it. It was lots of fun.

01:26 Okay, that's good. And I wanted to ask, in school, what type of student were you like?

01:34 Well, I was pretty good in mathematics. I was a pretty good student. I wasn't an A student, but I wasn't a bad student. It was kind of in between. I liked math. I liked science. I liked music. I never cared for history too much when I went in social studies, but I got to like that as I grew older. I got to like those things, too.

02:02 All right, that's good. Did you ever get into trouble?

02:08 Yes, I did, just like all the other kids. I had a bad day here and there. I like to talk to my friends, and sometimes the teacher would get mad if we were talking too much or. But, you know, I wasn't the worst kid. I wasn't the best kid. It was. Okay.

02:30 Okay. And in school, your friends, do you still know any of them to this day or, like, hang out with them?

02:38 Well, I know a couple of them. I still know a couple of them from junior high school, the seventh, eighth, ninth grade. And I also have several friends that I went to college with.

02:56 Okay, and when you had to raise mom and Uncle Michael what was it like to do that?

03:06 Well, I guess it was a little scary at first when. When we had children. Course, it's. It's all new and it's all exciting. We. We were married for about a year when our daughter Christine came along, which is your mom. And then when she was four years old, we had Uncle Michael And, you know, there were difficult times in raising kids. You're never sure what to do. But I think we had a nice family life in those days. We moved. We lived in Queens, New York, and then we moved to Long island when Your mother was 8 years old and your uncle was 4 years old.

03:59 Okay. I knew you were in the army, so I wanted to ask, when were you drafted or when did you enlist to it?

04:11 I was drafted into the army in 1965, which was a year after I graduated college, and I spent two years in the service. I never went overseas. I stayed in the United States. I was a medic and I was a pharmacy specialist. So I worked in a dispensary with some doctors, and they would write the prescriptions out, and I would fill the prescriptions and also filled the prescriptions for military people that lived in the area where the dispensary was. And I got those prescriptions from regular doctors that were out, that were not in the service.

05:05 Okay, and when you were drafted, was it before or after you had had Uncle Michael or mom?

05:15 Oh, it was before. I wasn't married then. That was right after college for two years. And I didn't meet grandma until about a year after I was out of the service. I met her, and then we were married the year after that. Two years after I was out of the service.

05:37 What was the basic training like there?

05:40 Oh, boy, it was kind of tough. I wasn't in very good shape when I went into the army. I was overweight and there was a lot of physical activity, and I lost quite a bit of weight while I was there. At the beginning, I wasn't able to do some of the things with the running and the exercising. But as I went through that eight or nine week period, I got much better at it because I was losing weight and I was getting physically fit. But it was not easy. They woke us up real early in the morning and made us run around a lot and do a lot of stuff. And then you had to get the barracks in shape at night, and you didn't get very much sleep in those days. And then you went out on what they call bivouac. We were out for a whole week in the field. You had to live in a tent. And the week that we were out there, it was raining. And I wound up getting walking, what they call walking pneumonia. I had pneumonia and I didn't even realize it. So.

06:50 I also wanted to ask, did you have any friends in the army and did you still know them to this day?

06:58 Yes, I had a number of friends. You get close to the guys you work with, and one of the fellows was my. Was my very close friend and I'm still friendly with him. He lives in Spokane, Washington, which is 3,000 miles from here. But we still correspond. We still write to each other and send emails and things like that. He was a really nice guy and really enjoyed his company.

07:29 So did you ever have something crazy happen to you in your life?

07:36 Crazy? Well, I guess the biggest thing in my life was the fact that I worked in the World Trade center and when the terrorists came over, I was still working at the Trade Center. And fortunately for me, that day I went to work late because I had to go for a blood test that morning. So I wasn't in the building yet when the terrorism happened. But I did work on the upper floors. I worked on the 103rd floor and we had a lot of floors up in that area and we lost a couple of hundred people that day. So it was very tragic and very hard part of my life. But that's the most memorable thing I think that I can think of.

08:38 And with Grammy, what was like the best moment that you had with him?

08:44 I guess when we had our children, when we had Christine and then when we had Uncle Michael I think that was part of the best moments in our lives. Then later on we began to travel and we went to different places we really enjoyed, like we went to Italy a couple of times and we took a cruise in Europe that went to Belgium and Amsterdam and places like that. We enjoyed that kind of stuff.

09:19 Okay, what were your parents like?

09:26 Well, my parents were, I guess, first generation in the United States. Their parents came from Italy, both of them, and they spoke two languages, they spoke Italian, they spoke English. Unfortunately, I never really learned to speak Italian. I wish I had. So I only learned a few words and I couldn't really discuss things with my grandparents because they only spoke Italian. So we didn't understand each other. But I wish I had learned that. And they were good parents. We didn't have a lot, but what we had we shared. And my father worked in construction and my mother was a stay at home mother. That's about it.

10:32 What about your grandparents?

10:34 Oh, well, I already mentioned them. They came over to the United States, I guess I would say, in the early 1900s. They were young when they came over and I think they got married in this country and they had seven children. So they had a big family. I didn't know that, but most of them, all of them are gone now, that generation, that's about it.

11:15 All right, well, thank you for letting me interview you and I love you. And I had a really great time because I learned some things I didn't know and.

11:26 Yeah, Good. I'm glad you did. I love you. And whenever you have more questions, I'm here, and you can always ask me, okay? Okay. Thank you.