Danielle Hansen and Marguerite Tumminio

[00:11] DANIELLE HANSON: Hi, my name is Danielle Hanson. I'm 43 years old. Today's date is January 30, 2024. We're in Atlanta, Georgia, and I am here with my mom, whose name is Peggy.

[00:28] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Hi, I'm Peggy or Marguerite Tamineo. I am 81 years old. Today is January 30, 2024. I am in Atlanta as well. The name of my interview partner is Danielle Hanson, and she is my daughter.

[00:47] DANIELLE HANSON: So, mom, I'm excited. We have time to chat today, and I had some questions I wanted to ask you about your life. So you were born in Brooklyn in 1942, and I'm curious about what your relationship with your parents and siblings was like growing up.

[01:05] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Growing up in Brooklyn was great fun. We did everything out in the street. Every toy was out in the street. We used roller skates that had keys and lost the keys. Relationship with my parents was very good. I adored my father. Wherever he was, I was. But he was also the disciplinarian. My mother was the one who made the rules and told him what we did wrong, but he was the one who followed up with discipline. I had an older sister and a younger brother, and then I had another brother, and I grew up very happy with all of them.

[01:42] DANIELLE HANSON: And when you say that your mom kind of made the rules, she also went back to work at some point, right?

[01:48] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, she went back to work, but not until I was in the 6th grade.

[01:52] DANIELLE HANSON: And what did she do?

[01:53] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: She made bottle caps. And she would tell you that her job was very important because she made penicillin bottle caps. That's what her machine did. And she worked from two to eleven. But by that time, and my father worked out of, in the area of the house. He was the superintendent of the buildings we lived in, so he was always available for us.

[02:17] DANIELLE HANSON: So that sounds kind of different from what we associate with men and women, especially all that time ago that, like, a mom would be home after school and would cook dinner and everything. But it sounds like your mom had this, like, my grandma had this independence streak, and she went out to work and then went with. And then, like, you were home with.

[02:38] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: My older sister and I were home. My sister was supposed to turn on whatever mom cooked and heat it up and set the table, and then I cleaned up afterwards. And the boys didn't do anything. Well, what else is new? Yeah, but we had, I think, a good life. My father, when he was growing up, had to quit school when he was 13. And from the day he quit, he said his children would go to college, and he didn't care whether they were boys or girls. But he was very adamant. We were all going to college, and I was the first with my sister on both sides of the family to get through college.

[03:20] DANIELLE HANSON: So your older sister, my aunt Nina, whose name was Ann, she started college first. But you finished college first, right?

[03:29] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, no, we both finished. She finished ahead of me. But she majored in English and got a job working in a, I think, Metlife, an insurance company.

[03:42] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[03:42] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I became a teacher two years later or three years later. And when we went to visit my grandmother, she actually introduced us as, these are my granddaughters. This one is the teacher, and that's the other one. She was not happy with my daughter, my sister's choice of job.

[04:02] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, why wasn't she happy with it?

[04:03] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Because she wasn't a teacher, a doctor, a lawyer or something.

[04:06] DANIELLE HANSON: Grandma could understand this was your mom on your. I mean, your grandma on your dad's side. You said this, okay? Cause your grandma on your mom's side didn't speak any English.

[04:16] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Hardly any English. And whatever you did, she loved you to death. It didn't matter.

[04:21] DANIELLE HANSON: Aw. So did you get into trouble a lot as a kid?

[04:26] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: The biggest trouble I got into was wherever my father was, I would be so if he was at one point working on something with a soldering iron, told me not to come. I ran in and grabbed the soldering eye and burnt my legs. That kind of trouble. I was also hit by a bus when I was seven. I had polio when I was nine. So I sort of got into trouble with my health more than my behavior.

[04:50] DANIELLE HANSON: So how did you get hit by the bus?

[04:53] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Well, it was. I went to catechism that day. We used to go to catechism on Wednesday afternoon, and the school would get us there, but then your mother would pick you up that particular day. My brother was sick. My mother arranged for another mom to take me home. The other mom decided she couldn't do it, so she just told me to walk home. And there was a huge street. Utica Avenue was a very big street. And she just sent me home. And I waited, and I checked that the light was green, but I didn't realize there was a crossing space. And a bus came down, didn't see me because I was really small. Hit me, and I flew up in the air and wound up in the middle of the street. And all the cars stopped. People came to help, but I broke an arm and a leg and was in the hospital.

[05:44] DANIELLE HANSON: And there was someone in particular who I remember you telling me was really helpful when that happened. Right.

[05:51] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: This was a gentleman who parked his car in the crossroads to stop all the traffic. I still see that car. It was a blue car. And he had on a blue suit and tie. And he came right over. And I kept saying to him, don't tell anybody. I can get up. I'll go home. I'll be fine, because my father's not going to be happy. I crossed the street and got hit. But my father was right there and took very good care of me and didn't have a fit. And I felt bad today for the bus driver because I was probably not farther up enough for him to see me. The light was green, and he pulled into the bus stop, and that's probably where I was. And then the next year, I had polio. So I was in the hospital quite a bit.

[06:37] DANIELLE HANSON: What was having polio like?

[06:39] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Well, I was in the hospital both times with littler kids in the room with me. And I was more worried about them than me. I didn't see me as being all that sick, but these little children, it was heart wrenching. And so the nurses used to come in and say, oh, you're going to be a wonderful nurse. And I would say, no, I'm not going to be a nurse. I'm going to be a teacher. And I was going to be a teacher from before I even went to school. Cause my sister would come home and play school. She always had to be the teacher. So I said, I'm gonna beat her out and be the teacher. And I was the teacher.

[07:19] DANIELLE HANSON: So, wait, I wanna hear more about becoming a teacher. But I have questions about the hospital, too. So were you guys all in, like, an iron in iron lungs in the hospital, or you were just in the hospital with polio?

[07:30] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Most of us had. Polio has three types of polio. One is paralytic polio. You can't walk. Another is respiratory polio, where you can't breathe, and you're in the eye and lung.

[07:41] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[07:42] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: And the third is boba polio, which hits the brain. And with me, it paralyzed the left side of my face. So I wasn't smiling properly, I wasn't closing my eyes properly. If it wasn't caught in time, I would have died from it because the brain would have been. I don't know what they did to help me get over it, but I did get over it, and the other.

[08:05] DANIELLE HANSON: Little kids got over it.

[08:06] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: She had boba polio also, the little girl.

[08:08] DANIELLE HANSON: And she was okay?

[08:10] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes, she was. But her parents couldn't come in, and she was only about 18 months. Bailey standing up in the crib. It was very sad. And I would go over and hold her hand and chat with her. Yeah. But she got off. She left the hospital right after me.

[08:27] DANIELLE HANSON: Do you remember her name?

[08:28] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, I don't.

[08:29] DANIELLE HANSON: Aw, that's.

[08:30] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I don't know if I ever knew her name, but yeah, no, I don't.

[08:33] DANIELLE HANSON: How long were you in the hospital with her?

[08:35] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Maybe a week.

[08:36] DANIELLE HANSON: That's so funny that you spend that time in that intimate experience and don't know. But, like, our kids, too, they don't know each other. They go play on the playground.

[08:46] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: That's right.

[08:46] DANIELLE HANSON: What's that kid's name? I don't know. So tell me about why you wanted to be a teacher.

[08:53] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Well, first of all, because my sister was a teacher, and this is a good idea. I like it. When I went to school, I loved it. But as I got older and went into junior high, I realized what a health teacher was. And then I said, that's what I'm going to teach. With all these sicknesses and accidents. And I felt like I could help people not make the same mistakes. So I wanted to be a health teacher. But in those days, you had to be in health and phys ed. So I did. I majored in both when I went to college. And I was very fortunate in my journey because even though I thought I wanted certain things, I wanted a high school appointment. My first appointment was to the junior high, and I loved it. I had a very good time there, but I still wanted to be in high school. So I applied for the high school and I got it. But that summer, I broke my leg.

[09:50] DANIELLE HANSON: Wait, so how did you break your leg?

[09:52] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I was in a car accident where the friend was driving, and she panicked in the bad weather, and the car spun into a tree and I broke my female.

[10:03] DANIELLE HANSON: You make this sound so like you were just out a few miles from your house, but you weren't. You were with your friend, whose name.

[10:10] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Was Blossom, and we were traveling to California together.

[10:15] DANIELLE HANSON: So you and Blossom Orange were on this cross country adventure in the year.

[10:20] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, I don't know, 68, 67.

[10:23] DANIELLE HANSON: Do you remember what kind of car it was?

[10:25] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, it was a small car. One of the small cars that came out. I don't remember. It was one of the cars that had the engine in the back. It was a chevrolet.

[10:34] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay. And so then blossom, it's raining out. Blossom hits a tree and blossom is fine.

[10:40] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: And you are with a broken fema in three places in what state? Wisconsin.

[10:47] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay, so you're in Wisconsin. So then you come back eventually. How long are you in Wisconsin?

[10:53] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Probably three weeks in traction. And I came home on crutches.

[10:57] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[10:58] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: And now it's time to go for my high school appointment. I go, and the supervisors, it was a brand new school. They didn't have a gym yet. There was no reason she couldn't let me be there. Nope, you're on crutches. You can't come here. So I went home. When I got home a couple of days later, a colleague called and said, I recommended you for a job in a school close to your home. And so I went to that school. It was a high school, and I was happy to be there, and the supervisor was happy to have me. And I taught five health classes, which I was delighted to do. And that supervisor filed for a grant for me, my buddy teacher at Columbia. There was a grant to take nine credits in family life and sex education over the summer, and she made it possible for us to win that grant. The two of us went. We were good friends, but she was a fabulous buddy teacher. She was smart, she was sharp, she knew her stuff. And the two of us went. And the years went by, she became the first woman director of health and physical education for the city of New York. My friend Sylvia Schechter. And I was at home with my little girl, and I was not planning to work at all. And she called and said, I need you because the mayor wants a kindergarten to 12th grade curriculum for family life sex education. He wants to educate parents, school boards, teachers, and then children. And I need you to write the curriculum. And I said to her, Im not working. I have six months home with my daughter. Thats what Im doing. She said, you can work from home. Do whatever you want. Just bring it. I did. And once it was brought, I was then hired to help implement this program. And eventually I became the assistant director of health and phys ed for the city of New York. And when I did that, I really did health. And we trained school boards. First we trained school boards. If they liked the program, we trained parents, they liked the program. We trained teachers. And then everybody sat down and decided what was right for their particular students and classes. And then the teachers taught to. And I think it was a fabulous program. It included AIDS education. It was 1981, and I think it was an important thing for the time.

[13:33] DANIELLE HANSON: And you really wrote that first AIDS curriculum?

[13:37] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I wrote for the city of high school family life sex ed curriculum and oversaw the AIDS curriculum. I helped write it, but there was a, we hired someone to do that. After we wrote the other one.

[13:52] DANIELLE HANSON: And Sylvia, you met back in your first teaching job, and then she became the director.

[14:00] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Right? My first high school teacher.

[14:02] DANIELLE HANSON: Your first high school teaching job, which was at Wingate High School, which is also where you met my dad.

[14:07] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Right?

[14:07] DANIELLE HANSON: Your husband.

[14:08] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes. Yes.

[14:09] DANIELLE HANSON: So lots of good things happen at Wingate. And so then you got the job at the board of education. I remember sometimes coming to do the trainings with you. I would, like, sit in the back, but I don't really remember what you. I remember once you were teaching, I don't know, maybe about healthy food or something, and you did like, oh, we did a nutrition.

[14:28] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I wrote a grant for a million dollars for nutrition as well.

[14:31] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, well, I remember celery with peanut butter and, like, the ants. The ants on a log. I remember learning to make that so. And then I also remember someone in that office who used to pick me up and put me on top of lockers. And I thought it was Joey Abelson.

[14:44] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: She wrote the AIDS.

[14:46] DANIELLE HANSON: Excellent. So I remember some of that. So then I know you did that. But then you also had this, like, side life teaching college courses at Brooklyn College.

[14:56] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes.

[14:56] DANIELLE HANSON: And you taught some really interesting students there, including, like, orthodox jewish girls. And so, like, what was that like, teaching there?

[15:07] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I am a Brooklyn College graduate, went to Brooklyn College free. I will always be indebted to them. It was $25 a semester. And then I came back to teach basic health ed. Of course, there were regular students of all faiths who came to the class with no problem. But there were, I would say on three or four occasions, one or two young women from the very, very, very orthodox community would be in my class. And in the class, we would discuss healthy decisions and how to make decisions. And we did discuss sex ed and things of all natures. And these young women had very challenging lives because they didn't always want to do what their families wanted them to do, and invariably would come up and ask me, you know, how do I get out of this? Or how do I redo this? And I would direct them to counseling because this is very difficult. You know, they love their parents, but they didn't want the same lifestyle. And that's really hard. But the fact that their parents let them come to Brooklyn College was saying something for the parents as well. And so it was challenging for those young women, but I tried my best to direct them in the right way.

[16:36] DANIELLE HANSON: Did you enjoy teaching those students?

[16:38] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, I love teaching. All of my students, all levels. I love teaching.

[16:43] DANIELLE HANSON: And then when you were at Brooklyn College, you also worked with Doctor Ruth, right?

[16:47] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, yes, I did. I met Doctor Ruth.

[16:50] DANIELLE HANSON: Tell me a bit about that.

[16:51] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I'm trying to remember how I actually met Doctor Ruth. But she was my buddy teacher at Brooklyn College. Now, I had already taught two or three years there. I was an adjunct. I was not a full time. I would teach there twice a week or once a week. And Doctor Ruth came and they assigned her as my buddy teacher. And we got along really, really well. And many years went by, and they did her life story in a play in Connecticut. And my husband and I went with two french friends and learned her life story. She was fascinating human being who worked against World War Two in both in Israel and in France.

[17:37] DANIELLE HANSON: And did you see her that day?

[17:38] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes, we saw her that day, actually. And she helped me. My husband was handicapped at that time. She came and helped me bring him to the car. And she was very lovely and still is very lovely.

[17:50] DANIELLE HANSON: So she remembered you?

[17:51] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes, she did. At one point, you had her at a meeting at Yale and brought me up, and I said, oh, she won't remember me. But she did.

[18:02] DANIELLE HANSON: Yeah. She took one look at you and was like, peggy, it was very sweet. Aw. So you mentioned my dad, your husband of many, many years. So how did you know he was the one?

[18:16] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, well, we met because in those days, if your name ended in an o, that meant you were italian. And if there was another person with an a or an o or an I, everybody was trying to hook you up. So we. We met, and we actually met because the teachers at Windgate were adamant that we should meet. So the dance teacher asked me to take her dance class to Lincoln center, which in those days, we got free tickets, so I would go. And then the english department had Greg bring his class, and they managed to seat us. So Greg was in front of me, and I was right behind him. And then four teachers came and introduced us. And at half time, Greg bought me a glass of wine, but I didn't drink wine, so I gave him the second glass of wine, and he said it was love at first sight.

[19:18] DANIELLE HANSON: Did you think it was love at first sight?

[19:20] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, I thought he was nice, and that was fine. And then I said, you know, I had my car that day, and he lived five blocks from me. So I asked him if he wanted a ride home, and he was thrilled to death. So I drove him home, and then I didn't hear from him for maybe a week or two, but he wound up calling the house when I was baptizing my godson Robert, and my mom told him I wasn't home, but he could call back another time. And he did. I saw him the next Monday. And he said, I thought we could go to a movie. But of course, I wasn't there. So the next Saturday we did, and we went to see the Bible. And that's what we did. So that was our first date, and that's how we met.

[20:03] DANIELLE HANSON: Wait, what's the Bible?

[20:04] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: It was a movie called the Bible.

[20:05] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, okay.

[20:06] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yeah.

[20:07] DANIELLE HANSON: So how did dad propose to you?

[20:10] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, well, he really didn't propose. In those days, you didn't sleep together, live together, or travel together. He wanted to go to Europe in the summer, and he wanted me to come with him. So he kept saying, talking about it, but he never said, let's get married. Then one day he said, you're not doing anything a bride should do. I said, what are you talking about? Don't you think we should be planning a wedding? We want to go away in July. I said, we do. He said, yeah, we do. I want to go here. I want to go there. Will, the U of T flights are reasonable. We can go to five places at a reasonable amount of money. You can pick three. I'll pick two, whatever. So he thought we should plan a wedding. That's how he proposed. So I said, well, I think he is the right person, and. Okay, let's do this.

[21:00] DANIELLE HANSON: So. And the u of t flights, that's a united federation of teachers. And they arrange discounted flights?

[21:06] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes. So we owned the whole flight. It was a flight full of teachers.

[21:10] DANIELLE HANSON: Like a charter flight. So he thought that when he asked you to go on this trip, he was proposing. And you thought he was just asking you to go on a trip, which you were willing to do, breaking all the rules, even though.

[21:22] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, no, I wasn't breaking any rules.

[21:24] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, so you.

[21:25] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I wasn't going with him unless we were married. And he knew that.

[21:29] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[21:29] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: That's why he said, you're not doing anything a bride should do. But he never said quite, let's get married. This is it.

[21:37] DANIELLE HANSON: So he thought you were going on a trip. You thought you weren't going on a trip.

[21:40] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Right.

[21:41] DANIELLE HANSON: Got it. So basically, he wanted to get married for a trip. And you didn't even know that?

[21:47] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Right.

[21:47] DANIELLE HANSON: Got it. Okay, great. What a great start.

[21:50] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: So, good motivation, huh?

[21:52] DANIELLE HANSON: So, what are your. You have three grandchildren. Annie, Chip and Daphne, whose full names are Miranda, Andrew and Daphne. And what are your hopes for your grandchildren?

[22:08] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I would love to see them live in a peaceful world where everybody loves everybody. But that's not going to happen. We tried. I really feel like, as an educator, that was one of the most important things we tried, my generation to teach that we're all equal, that we're all smart, that we all can achieve. You should never judge someone. I just hope they have a happy life and that they can fulfill their dreams and hopes in a reasonable way and that they will accept, and I think they will accept everyone the way everyone should be accepted. And they should realize that even though their first hope, like me being in high school, isn't always a closed door, that I wasn't. I had to be in Wingate. And if I hadn't been appointed that at junior high, I would never have been appointed to Wingate. So sometimes we want a dream that's not the right dream, and we just have to keep working for it. And I hope they'll work to do things like that. But I hope the world will be a better place for them. I would love to see it be more peaceful, more accepting of each other, more loving of each other.

[23:31] DANIELLE HANSON: And then for your grandchildren and people who might listen to this years from now. Is there any wisdom you want to pass on to them or anything you'd like them to know?

[23:42] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Well, I think the first, the thing I just said is very important. Don't close doors to yourself because you decided this is the way it should be. Try your best to do whatever that dream is, move on to the next dream. Dont close doors and be accepting of all the people around you. Someone who seems like theyre not the right person sometimes has a different gift, and that might be the gift that helps you and helps them. So being accepting of the way the world is being positive and helping make the world a better place.

[24:23] DANIELLE HANSON: So I have one more question that I didn't write down, but I was just thinking of as we were talking, which is you've had, like, a lot of experience of injury and challenge. So you had the bus accident, polio. You're a two time cancer survivor. You had a double mastectomy. You had your hip replaced. When I was like ten, maybe. And then you had a knee replaced in around 2008 or so. And then just the other day you were saying that you had this episode of being thrown out of a car window in the UK that Eric and I didn't even know had happened.

[25:03] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, through a call window. We weren't thrown out. I broke the window.

[25:07] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay, you broke the window. So anyway, and Eric and I were like, how did we not know this? It's like this afterthought. Because you've had so many other things. Why would this have been notable? Whereas for us, it would be the notable thing because it would be the only thing. So having experienced all these things, and then my dad, your husband, was also sick for a really long time with Lou Gehrig's disease. So you've been a caretaker. You've had a lot of these experiences of challenge, but you also navigate them like, we're talking about doing your knee replacement in a couple of weeks, and you're like, oh, like, I'm so prepared to take this on. Like, so how do you take on these challenges with so much patience and, like, graciousness as you do?

[25:57] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Well, thank you. I don't know. I think you just have to accept what life brings to you. And there are challenges, and sometimes I things arent quite the way we want them to be. But when we accept that challenge, whether it be a health issue or it be a job issue or a marriage issue, we need to step forward and put our best foot forward and try to make things work. And the more we try to make things work, the more flexible we are, the better it becomes. We always can improve the situation ourselves, even though the world is not doing a great job. And I think that thats what happens. So I think when I was hit by the bus, and my dad said, he came to the hospital, and he said, you just listen to the doctors and nurses, and youre going to be fine. Everybody will take good care of you. He was right. He gave me good advice, and they did take good care of me. And then when I had polio, it was the same thing. They'll take good care of you. It'll be all right. And I looked at that little baby, and I felt like, that's much worse. Her mommy can't even come in the room. So I think if you realize you're not a victim all the time, there's somebody a lot worse off, it makes it easier to handle.

[27:29] DANIELLE HANSON: Well, it was really fun to have this time with you and get to chat and just hear your stories and, yeah, have a chance to have this conversation. So thanks for chatting with me, mom.

[27:41] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: You're welcome. And I would like to add that the best part of my life, the best job, was raising you.

[27:48] DANIELLE HANSON: Aw, thank you.

[27:50] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: That was fun.

[27:51] DANIELLE HANSON: Well, it's great to have you as a mom.

[27:52] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Okay, we have a little bit of.

[27:54] DANIELLE HANSON: Time left, so, Peggy, would you mind just telling your daughter more about this cross country drive? Why did you and Blossom decide to.

[28:01] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Drive across the country?

[28:03] DANIELLE HANSON: Just look at her what you tell.

[28:04] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Okay. We decided to go cross country just as a vacation. We wanted to go to California. I remember my dad saying, why don't you just fly? And I said, no, no, we want to see the country along the way. That day, we were driving. We were driving to. We had gone through Chicago, so we wanted to see states along the way. And I thought she really could drive, but it was obvious that she had a driver's license, but she really couldn't drive.

[28:38] DANIELLE HANSON: Well, is that something that, like, a lot of young women your age would have done? It sounds like such an edgy thing to do in 1961.

[28:52] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: 767.

[28:54] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[28:55] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: 66. 67. Yeah, it was okay. My father was really strict, so the fact that he was letting me go without making a fuss. I was working. It was the end of my first year of working. We wanted to see the country, so we had planned to stop in Chicago, which we did. Get Chicago Pizza, which we did. And then the next night, we were somewhere else. We were headed for the president's on the mountain.

[29:25] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, Mount Rushmore.

[29:26] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Mount Rushmore, yeah. And we wanted to see that that day. And so we had a plan to do things along the way. And the interesting thing was, I was in the hospital a long time, and my mom took her first plane ride to come and be with me, and she came with a little suitcase on the plane. That was the first time she was on a plane.

[29:48] DANIELLE HANSON: What did she think of the plane?

[29:49] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, she was excited about it, I think. And I think she really liked the idea. She was with me in blossom on a vacation, away from everybody else. No cooking, no cleaning, and she would walk in the halls of the hospital. There were a lot of young men there in very bad shape for motorcycles in Wisconsin. And she would come and talk to me in the room and say, they are a mess. You know, she would sit and read to them. It was very interesting how she saw their problems as well.

[30:22] DANIELLE HANSON: So she would just go into the stranger's room and start talking.

[30:24] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yeah. That's amazing. If I took a nap, she'd go chat with the young men.

[30:29] DANIELLE HANSON: And so. Because she always. She always was more of a guys for, like, she liked the boys.

[30:34] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Definitely. Yes.

[30:36] DANIELLE HANSON: So. And then you said you had pizza in Chicago, and I know you've told me you had pizza in Wisconsin in the hospital. That was, like, not good.

[30:44] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Not good.

[30:45] DANIELLE HANSON: Yeah. So what did you think of the pizza in Chicago?

[30:48] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: It was good. It was a deep dish pizza, but it was good.

[30:50] DANIELLE HANSON: You liked it?

[30:51] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yeah.

[30:52] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay. And then what did grandma think?

[30:54] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Of course, New York pizza was the best, right? Grandma wasn't in Chicago, so she didn't get it.

[31:00] DANIELLE HANSON: But what did she think of the Wisconsin pizza?

[31:02] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, it wasn't good. Nobody liked the Wisconsin pizza.

[31:05] DANIELLE HANSON: And I remember you telling me about that time in the hospital and saying that it was very. That people thought it was strange. There was someone like a Brooklyn New Yorker there. Italian Brooklyn New Yorker.

[31:18] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: And everybody there had blue eyes. Everybody. And I'm hearing a nurse talk outside the room and she said to another nurse, just go in there. She'll open them up and you'll see their gorgeous brown eyes. I could not believe anybody would think brown eyes were gorgeous when all these people had green and blue eyes. They were coming in to see my eyes. I couldn't believe it, but, yeah.

[31:43] DANIELLE HANSON: And did blossom feel bad about the accident?

[31:45] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, yeah. She felt terrible.

[31:47] DANIELLE HANSON: And she stayed the whole time.

[31:48] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: She did stay the whole time in a hotel that she paid for. And you only stayed with her and.

[31:54] DANIELLE HANSON: Then did you drive back?

[31:55] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, no, no, we flew back.

[31:56] DANIELLE HANSON: Oh, because the car was destroyed.

[31:57] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yeah, we flew back. The car was totaled.

[32:00] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[32:01] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: That was that. Who was Blossom and how did you all meet? Oh, Blossom was a class. Blossom was a Brooklyn college classmate of mine. And we just studied together occasionally. Not even much, because she was a year ahead of me. But somehow or other, we got into this. Let's do this together. Neither one of us were dating anybody, so it was a good time to do it. My other friends were all getting married, so they all had boyfriends. And so Blossom and I were both single. And we thought this would be a good way to. We were planning on spending three or four weeks away.

[32:44] DANIELLE HANSON: I always thought that the story was so funny because you don't strike me as, like an edgy, risk taking person. But this story about you and Blossom going cross country always seemed very out of character for you.

[32:58] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I don't know. We thought it was so simple. But the other thing was, we didn't plan it the way daddy would. We just went. And when we got there. Okay, this is. It's time to stop. Let's get a hotel. We didn't book anything in advance except the California hotel. I don't know. We didn't know what we were doing.

[33:18] DANIELLE HANSON: Where were you gonna stay in California?

[33:20] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I forget. It was near a friend of hers or mine.

[33:22] DANIELLE HANSON: Okay.

[33:23] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I don't remember.

[33:23] DANIELLE HANSON: Like, in Los Angeles.

[33:25] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yeah, we were going into Los Angeles and it wasn't the busy part of Los Angeles. I can't remember who we knew there. I think someone who had graduated the year ahead of us or her in her class. So we wanted to see the Pacific Ocean and stuff like that. And then we were driving back the southern route, but we never drove back the southern route.

[33:54] DANIELLE HANSON: One last question.

[33:55] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: That's good. Would you look at your daughter and.

[33:57] DANIELLE HANSON: Tell her you had, you said you were pretty much a daddy's girl. You always kind of with him when you were smaller?

[34:03] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh, I was with him everywhere, yeah.

[34:05] DANIELLE HANSON: Did you maybe think of like one special time, just one day, what was. And just that time of being with him and just kind of tell her that. That story?

[34:13] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Oh.

[34:13] DANIELLE HANSON: Or like the. Like the picture that we saw.

[34:17] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: He would play cards. My, my dad would play cards with the uncles, and there would be all four or five of them there, all the men. And I'd go in and stand right next to him or sit on his lap or. I just pestered him everywhere. My father, to me, was really a hero in my life. Young girls, particularly young italian girls, did not go to college. My mother was not keen on college. She was the first to graduate high school in her family, and she thought that was important. But if it were up to her, I dont think she would have encouraged us to go to college. But my dad was very, very supportive. We were going to college. That was it. I remember one day I came home, I had a 99 on the geometry regents, and I came down, dad, I got a 99 on the geometry regents. And he said, what happened to the other point?

[35:18] DANIELLE HANSON: Was it like a joke or was it.

[35:19] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No, he was serious. Did you find out what happened to the other point? And to this day, I believe there was no point off. I want to know. I should have asked, but he did so many things with me. I couldnt drive a car until I learned to change the burp. The battery charge. The battery burp, the carburetor. He showed me all the stuff to change a flat tire because he did not want me stuck in a car and having to have some strange man come and help me. So he helped me with all of those things. Not too many of the tools at home, but definitely when I wanted to drive, he taught me to drive. And he was a fabulous driver and taught all of us to drive.

[36:11] DANIELLE HANSON: And so when you were saying that your mom wasn't so keen on you going to college, why do you think that was?

[36:19] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Because girls don't go to college. They should finish high school and learn how to crochet and knit and sew and wash the dishes and cook and get married.

[36:32] DANIELLE HANSON: And did you learn how to do any of those things?

[36:34] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Probably not. Not the way. I mean, a friend's mother taught me how to crochet. My mother had no patience for me because I did not learn easily. So I never quite learned to knit, even though she was a spectacular knitter. I didn't love to cook the way she did, but I cooked. My sister was the cook, and I did the dishes, and that's just the way it was.

[37:02] DANIELLE HANSON: And your dad, when he would do the card games with all the guys, were they speaking English, Italian? Were they drinking? Were they smoking?

[37:11] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Actually, they did not drink at all. My father did not drink at all. Not even on New Year's Eve. No one in my family did. But they did smoke. They all smoked. And he would sit me on his lap and let me play.

[37:25] DANIELLE HANSON: Were you any good?

[37:27] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: No. I was little. I didn't even know what the cards were. But he would say, shh, don't tell them what's here. Don't tell them what's here. But he would sit me on his lap and be patient with me.

[37:38] DANIELLE HANSON: Was he any good?

[37:39] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: I think they all played, you know, they weren't playing for money, and they just enjoyed each other, the Mendez. That was the way they got along. But no one in the family really drank, even on New Year's Eve. There were just a few drinks, and that was it.

[37:58] DANIELLE HANSON: So what sorts of things would you guys eat then, like, if you were eating snacks? Okay.

[38:07] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: You know, I don't know. Because they. The family always cooked good food. There was always a pasta dish. There was always. I remember one year, my mother made homemade ravioli, and she made them and would put them on a sheet, clean sheet, on the bed so they would dry a little before you boiled them. And then she put another sheet over them so they didn't get dusty or anything. And my little brother didn't know what was there, and he ran and jumped on the bed and smashed all the ravioli, and that was the end of that. My mother said, she's never making them again. And we went to the store and bought them, and everybody said, oh, they're just as good. And that was not a good thing to say to her. So that was the end of ravioli. Yeah. My mother was a good cook, a very good cook. But I didn't follow suit that way.

[39:02] DANIELLE HANSON: Well, I remember your mom making gnocchi. Yes, and meatballs and all sorts of things. But I would try to get her to make the ravioli, and that was a hard no.

[39:10] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: She was not ever making them again. No.

[39:13] DANIELLE HANSON: And that was your littlestead brother who jumped on them because he was a bit of a jumper. Bit mischievous?

[39:20] MARGUERITE TAMINEO: Yes. Not like me. Well, I would never have jumped on the bit.