Joan Di Christina and Susan Di Christina

00:03 My name is Susan dichristina. I am 8:40. Today is August 12th 2009. We're in Erie Pennsylvania. And I'm interviewing my mother-in-law Joan dichristina.

00:18 And I am Joan dichristina.

00:21 I just turned 73 in July. Today's date is August 12th 2009.

00:30 And I am here in Erie Pennsylvania with my wonderful daughter-in-law who thought this would be a good idea.

00:40 Okay, so let's jump in my mother-in-law happened to be visiting us in Pennsylvania. She is from New York and that coincided with the visit of storycorps to Erie. So I thought it'd be great to bring her here and I'd like to start by having to tell me about your parents their ancestry and how they came to America your mom your dad.

01:04 I come from the ancestry of the English and the Irish and it is very interesting because they were mainly at odds in the 18000. So their marriage was quite unusual and I'm surprised there wasn't much of a commotion over it but evidently there wasn't

01:26 My father came to the United States when he was 2 years old in 19.

01:34 11

01:36 Excuse me, 19121 boat after the Titanic. I can't imagine how his mother felt getting on a boat coming across the ocean by herself to meet her husband was waiting for her and Utica.

01:54 Her husband worked and Utica where Utica New York. There's a Utica Pennsylvania and a he worked in the trunk Factory sweeping floors later. They moved to Rochester.

02:08 My mother's family are Irish. The O'Brien's the delehant. He's in the Murphy's in the o'hanlon's.

02:19 And The Story Goes that the O'Briens came from Ireland probably in the Phantom and they ended up in Canada.

02:31 At the border of the United States and I hope this is true that I'm telling it but I've heard it many many times that it one point. They were brought over into Upper New York by the Mohawk Indians and other words. They smuggled them across from there. I really can't figure out how they got to Brockport, but that's where they settled and they were firmers.

03:05 Now my great-grandparents were first cousins and they married.

03:12 So that tells a little bit of a story.

03:16 So are your family tree kind of closes two branches or one branch just closes at the end between and first cousins cousins and solutely the Irish and the English coming together at peace with one another.

03:32 Well that always is funny is a funny story because whenever anybody wants to pick on anybody else in the family and tease them they always talk about the inbred jeans on that side of the family being the cause of the craziness in the funniness of those people out and it turned out quite differently. Didn't you tell me that your father he was raised Protestant because he was from England and your mother was Irish and raised Catholic and when they got married there's some discussion about which Faith are going to pursue right? I doubt if there was any discussion Susie, it was Catholic or not, but didn't your father. So your father had to convert to Catholicism dead and he was encouraged to do so, right he was encouraged to do so by his own father because my grandfather Joe skeet

04:32 Sad that you cannot live in a home with two different religions. So he encouraged his own products and son to lie on the couch. I said forward-thinking in people as far as I know there was never any trouble over anything like that and the O'Briens it took the Skeets in and they do have picnics and parties in everything. Everything was wonderful. Okay, so tell me about Joe skeet because he has an interesting history of your grandfather. Yes, my grandfather as I said that he came to America, but before that he had been in the English army. He served in India.

05:15 And a good share of the time he served in South Africa fighting in the Boer War.

05:24 As it comes many many years later my daughter-in-law Susan and my son.

05:32 Spent a year in South Africa while Joe was working on.

05:37 Are some studies at the University of Cape Town and I think it's rather ironic that my son Joseph and it up at the same place that my grandfather Joseph was stationed at one time. And did you Joe's named after my husband's named after your grandfather? Is that correct? Answer correct? That's great. I will tell me about when they moved from Utica. They moved to Rochester right now. Okay, so joeski, they moved to Rochester. Okay about 1917 I believe and do you know why they moved to Rochester from Utica? Well a lot of their friends from England had moved to Rochester.

06:25 And I guess there was a better employment there. I'm not sure but also my grandmother told me at once that they

06:35 We're being surrounded by the Italians in Utica and the Italians would beat their wives and so they decided that they wanted to move out of Utica little bit known that their first granddaughter would marry Frank dichristina from the Bronx who was very Italian. Okay. So let's back up just a minute here. I want to make sure I get this straight your father comes over with his mother on a ship following the Titanic the first one calling the fight Titanic and they come in the name of the ship was the Baltic the Baltic. Oh can they come into Ellis Island as many generations of people did your mother's family and then he's moved up to Upstate New York where his father was already established with a job and employment. So your mom and your two year are your grandmother and your two?

07:35 You are old father came over at that point and see him then you are mother's family also settled in Upstate New York and they were smuggled across there by the Mohawk Indians We Believe, okay, and then the other side of the family my grandmother O'Brien's that side of the family or she was a Murphy and I don't know how they came to America, but many of them settled in the Finger Lakes area and they worked at Willard Psychiatric Center.

08:10 As a nurse's attendance and at one point they worked in a place called industry outside of Rochester for a delinquent boys. So I believe it's true that they say half of all people who are at living in the United States currently today have had their ancestors passed through Ellis Island. So your family is somewhat representative of many families in America coming through, you know, New York City suddenly either in the borough's around New York with a general New York vicinity in a metropolitan area or some of them then going Upstate New York and then finding employment there. How did your parents meet one another they were both now settled in Upstate New York kind of the turn of the century.

09:03 At Taylor instrument company in Rochester New York. My mother was a secretary and my father was a tool maker.

09:12 And that your debt you did have a long career Taylor was young. You work through his entire life. Yes. He did. Did he started a very low level and progressed up? What kind of education did he have said he did. I don't know a high school education and he went a couple of years to the Rochester Institute of Technology, but never went any further than that.

09:36 One interesting point about that was about 1943-44. Of course, my father was working at Taylor's and he was beginning to work long hours. In fact, he stayed some weekends. They had to stay right there. And then remember that I definitely definitely at work for a long hours. It's long hours and and in some weekends and then he would also take trips to Boston and New York and he never really told us why he was going there and I am not too sure if he knew himself while he was involved in this but after the war we were talking about World War World War II and after the war we found out that he was working on tools that were to be used in the

10:35 Making of the atomic bomb at Taylor instrument company and we do have a certificate indicating that so these were the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes. It is terrible. That's too bad because not enough history has passed for people to look at it in a different light.

11:08 That's what he was told to do and he did it well and people forget how what could have happened to me. It's hard to say, you know issues of War and Peace are very complex and you don't exactly know what would have happened had Japan.

11:27 Surrendered and absolutely who knows were two bombs necessary dropping the first one was tragic enough to do it twice, you know, it's hard to know. I mean our leaders have a lot more information and make those judge my calls and we

11:45 McKenna is the population we go along with it or we don't go along with it. But you know, sometimes we're not in charge of those decisions. Okay, tell me about your growing up your childhood where you went to school. I know you had Polio is a child so we should talk about that.

12:03 Yes, I grew up in a suburb outside of Rochester. Just walking distance over the line really from you have a brother and a sister sister younger than myself and it was a very wonderful childhood even with the war going on, which I was too young to really understand and we would play kickball hide and seek all the games. I went to a Catholic school. We walked home for lunch and then back again every day. There were no buses to take us anyplace. And then I did a 10 Catholic High School in Rochester.

12:51 Our Lady of Mercy High School

12:54 During my younger years one person was very important in my life with my aunt.

13:01 And Edith my sister my mother's sister and he was 12 years younger than myself and she was rather attached to me. She would come over and play paper dolls paper towels with a big thing at that time cutting them out chatting them up and then Senior on yes. Oh, yes, and then she introduced me to swimming and especially synchronized swimming which I took to like a duck and I thoroughly enjoyed and it led me in many directions from there.

13:48 It led me into college. I did a show. I was in a show One Summer on Long Island called Elliot Murphy's Aqua Sol. And you know, I met all kinds of people.

14:07 And I won't get into all of their personalities or where they were from or anything like that. But it was an eye-opener for me after coming from a Catholic School, which was probably pretty homogeneous and Vance Ryan up for me. Yes and stink team sport for women in the 1940s and 30s, you know, you probably didn't have softball at there today are volleyball for women to be together on a team. This was probably an Innovative way to do it. Yes. It was really the star of synchronized swimming. You know now for my goodness, I could never ever keep up with what they do now and synchronized swimming, but we had a good time and I also can you travel the damn it in in college, right he traveled with it. Well just to them that Long Island broadens your horizons and encourage use of Fame.

15:07 How to look Beyond what's immediately in front of you and your upbringing in your senior, you know cultural environment and your Geographic environment to look beyond that because it's was still unusual I think for a lot of women to launch into college at that point many women started families and got married, maybe two High School sweethearts, but they weren't really pursuing higher education in Mass if they do today. In fact, I'm glad you brought that up. I went back to my 50th anniversary from graduating from high school and I was shocked to hear about the few that had gone to college from my high school. I graduated in 1954 and many of them many of them became secretaries in practical nurses, but there are very few that have graduated.

16:02 From a four-year institution and pursued some kind of more formal professions that we think of me today. Where is nowadays? They are high school every girl that comes out of that high school goes to pass right? It's very college preparatory oriented. Well, I think that education is the seminal event of my life because had I not gone to college, you know, you put you in another experience another economic strategist changes everything about your life and me and there's nothing the same once you've become formally educated as a female and put you on par with your peers male peers. It introduces you to other like-minded male peers that you then, you know can become attached to a spouse. You know, I would have never met your son had I had I not gone to college and vice-versa for him. I never would have met your husband so we can talk about that. But before we do that, let's talk about polio is a kid because there are

17:02 How does people who contracted polio before there was immunizations for it or in a vaccinations? And there are a lot of people who lived in a disabled or died from it. So, you know, that was a big event in your life and it still affects you today.

17:19 In 1950. It was the last big break out of polio in the United States and I unfortunately contracted it and it was bulbar polio and other words it was in my throat. I couldn't swallow hardly at all I could do is to take some sips of water. I lost an awful lot of weight would I was very thin anyways is a child and I wish I was home about six months. The doctors did not put me in the hospital. There wasn't anything they could do for me. I just had to wait it out and it was a mild case.

18:03 However, I still feel today that it lingers within me and various places. I have quite a scoliosis on my left side and it gets very tired at times. I do have to rest my back as I get older here and swallowing his be careful. Yes I have to do now, you know last night we went out for dinner Susie and I'm always the last one to finish but I cannot eat rapidly or else I will choke they have to be careful with that and as you age and your muscles weaken, anyway with aging it's even greater concern people with polio who had police kid, they live with latent effects of polio that pretty pretty pretty much their whole lives that they have to manage it. I mean, you've always had scoliosis so that always causes back pain, you know your back

19:03 Never strayed. It's never in your muscles tighten around the parts that could Twisted interned but one thing I do.

19:12 Think back now is right after Polio. I went back to swimming and I think that helped me and other words I could straighten my back out as best I could.

19:28 By doing swimming that I had always done anyways, swimming through exercise for that it is yes ask you too or just mention that in the World War II generation that we see passing now in large numbers daily. We're losing them. All of our grandparents are your parents your husband's parents your father's when we talk about parents really talk about the father is my grandfather your grandfather your

19:55 My husband's grandfather all had War deferments because they were in industries that supported the war effort your dad obviously worked at Taylor instruments. It was working on war Machinery in the tips think Frank's Father Tom. Your husband's father was working in the New York City Transit System building Subways building trains. Those were critical infrastructure. They didn't send him my own grandfather. I grew up in St. Louis Missouri, and he worked in a toy factory was a machinist to fix Factory machines and they converted that toy factory to produce stuff like parachutes in different things. He needs the supplies for the soldiers and so he would had also had a deferment so, you know, we know our grandfathers and we as a result know, you know, we have a history that isn't kind of bought it out by War because they didn't either become disabled or deceased.

20:55 Fortunate in that respect that we were lucky that we had. Our grandfathers were many people today either. They don't have the grandfathers of their grandpa's or passing away now and they have a lot of War history true. I am tell me about your meeting your husband.

21:12 All right. Well I went to

21:15 Brockport State Teachers College, that's what it was called at that time. And it now it's called Suny Brockport the State University of New York.

21:24 I arrived there in 1954 and he arrived in Brockport in 1952. So he was so two years older than I and I

21:38 I didn't know him right away the first year. I I don't recall what then is the second year.

21:50 He was working at the desk and he was the desk in the union. The union is a place where the students gathered for social activities etcetera, and he would always tease me as I was walking by cuz you can imagine. You know, I'm Suzy. He's a good teaser.

22:10 And he didn't answer the telephone. Do you know with plugging and unplugging in and I'm in the police are the wires away with the whole? Yeah, previously. He had been working in the cafeteria sweeping floors. And so he had moved up to a job. He was in the physical education and I also but he didn't come from wealthy family. He was working while he was there because they could barely send him to school and so he took the train up from the Bronx right to Rochester outside of Rochester to go to school. He didn't go home and holidays. He didn't go home on vacations. He stayed the entire school year he worked with and never had never been outside of New York City and to come up on the train to Brockport, which is a rural District. I can't imagine what he thought.

23:10 Do you think it would have taken him to get there on the train? So it probably took him a good?

23:17 I'd say 9 hours almost you know, which is a lot for somebody from New York City even today when you talk to people who throw it up in and around New York at your at any distance over 2 hours is really far away. Maybe I should go back to some of the things that he did a New York. He played roller hockey on the streets of New York and they would wear roller skates for sand bat the ball around just on the streets and like one car parked on the side and another car way down. That would be the limits.

23:52 He was highly involved in that in fact a couple of weeks from now. We're going to someone's 50th wedding anniversary someone he had played roller hockey with and I'm sort of the happy that we're going to be doing that very interesting neighborhood. He grew up in a few one of the few Italians and Ava and Catholic had a lot of lot of Jewish friends and sometimes the Italians would come from another neighborhood and want to pick a fight with the Jewish boys and Frank is there in the middle and Frank would say what do you want to be here for they're all my friends and then they would Sable front. What are you doing here with these guys? You know it it's amazing. It's amazing what happens in America and how he and he sided with the Jewish kids a lot of time.

24:52 And I remember he said he grew up in one of the base of the projects housing project high-rise housing projects. And if you wanted to come play some mood come down seeing in the street level and they yell up 940 Frankie if it weren't for the Jewish community that he grew up and he would have never gone to college and it wasn't in the family to do so. Nobody had been educated as mother had an eighth grade education is Father probably even less and they but they respected what the Jewish Community was able to achieve by hard work and education and they said Frank where you going to college next year in a few years and Frank is a college. Nobody in my family goes to college but they encouraged him. You should go to college Frankie. I ain't going to college and so that's he told me that was the only reason that he went was because of the pier in the positive peer pressure.

25:52 Was an absolutely true. That's how it and you've been to 50th reunions with these folks and you go down to Florida where a lot of people have now retired from New York and they many of them are Jewish and I live in kind of Jewish communities down there and they you go into the gated community. And so they say, what's your name? And you say Frank C Christine and he said we haven't seen any around here lately and sure enough he goes then and so that is still going on to be mom came from Calabria and Sicily right when you don't know much about the the background there, but they were both born in America. It's just their parents had emigrated to never like to talk about it. They wanted to get out, you know, those people they were poor my my grandfather came from England to that. They didn't talk about it. He want never wanted to go back.

26:50 They're talking about it. I remember your your husband saying that when he came Upstate New York Met you started dating you and started meeting your family. He had never spoken to any Elders of his that could speak English that my grandmother O'Brien email Brian and he could speak with her and he was amazed because all of us at grandmother's on his side of Spokane or Italian or going to his friends for him to meet at Upstate New York person in elderly person an elder who could speak English as a first language must have been a culture shock too because you're talkin New York City Early turn of the century. It's a very first generation kind of place with lots of Integrations today. It's you know, you have Latinos and Hispanics and Puerto Ricans and you have the next wave.

27:50 Immigrants which I think is interesting because his family went from tenement housing in lower Manhattan to the Bronx which was then country basically, right and then from there to White Plains on Westchester and then out from their upstater out west or wherever but all of them have left but your children have I mean I'll mention his his family at him from his family. So each successive wave of generation gets some kind of economic advantage that the previous generation didn't have until they go from Lower Manhattan tenement housing eight eight Families how many people lived in a room and there were seven and seven in the family seven children and the parents and they went back they lived in Brooklyn after they moved out of the tenants. Well when they live in the tenements they hatch

28:50 Share a bathroom in the hall with other family. Okay, that was this year and they the girls were not allowed to go to the bathroom unless they were escorted by either their brother or their father. Right? And there's a museum in lower Manhattan wonderful Museum the tenement Museum and we have taken our three oldest grandchildren there for them to see just what it was like and I hope it made an impression on me. Any impression. I don't know. Okay, so you meet Frank at school you get married. I mean shortly afterward right after I graduated in 58 both of you want to become teachers and I'd like to tell a little story about

29:40 How we really got together and he played football and he

29:50 Was always going on football trips on Saturdays and he missed his time for music class. And he failed it. He failed music music two years after that. I was taking music class and he was put into that class so that he could take it and graduate and then he

30:18 He would say he sat near me and he was always bothering me. I want to I want to borrow your book Joan. I don't want to buy a book. He just didn't he didn't like whatever by a bucket and then he was always sending me these little notes and they were not written out entirely and I had to guess what the words were. Oh my word. You know who's courting you?

30:48 So you met your family tie for dinner and two different kinds of pie and she said Frank what kind of pie would you like chocolate meringue pie or lemon meringue pie and he said, oh, I don't know and she says well I'll give you both and he said that clinched it.

31:21 Okay. See you get married after you graduate which is 2 years later. And then how did you end up settling in the community you've lived in for the last fifty plus years now, that's where he was working cuz he graduated two years ahead of and he took a job right out of a job right out of college and he taught physical education and then I came and I got a job in the same school district as physical education and got pregnant immediately. So that was the end of that besides. I didn't like physical education. I just

31:57 Didn't I just did not want to teach a full-time so you went and started a family that you're in Chittenango New York, which is outside of Syracuse New York from the small town. You move their Frank has a job. They're teaching physical education coaching. You start your family. You have how many children I have Full Ahead for boys in 5 years time.

32:22 Thomas Daniel, Michael and Joseph

32:26 And I can't I was young your first son born in 1959. You're my husband born in 1964. He's the youngest. Yeah, that's right. Cuz I stay home with my four-year-old son Frank in my two-year-old daughter Eleanor and I always Marvel at the fact that you missed the 60s because you had four children starting in 98. Did they know there was a damn legs know they had no idea that there was the Cuban Missile Crisis. You knew very little about the Vietnam War the Civil Rights Movement The Beatles Coming To America that Whole Decade is when they were lost and you know that the Seminole decade in our culture and when I tell people my mother-in-law missed it and let until you stay at home with children full time 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You don't really fully appreciate how much you miss it Miss of the world. I don't watch the news. I don't turn on the TV. I get my news on the radio. I listen to NPR, but without that I virtually would not know what's going.

33:26 I'm in the world because children take so much of your dad chance. What happens will tell me about you going back to work after you start raising your your son's you decide to go back to work when I will I was taking courses when the boys were little I've received 36 hours towards a master's degree, which I never really fulfilled but I had fulfilled the agreement with the education department to do 36 hours 30 hours, which was the Masters equivalent in the ashes at prevalent, + but I never really received the manager. So you ended up going back into teaching through substituting write me a lot of substituting and

34:10 And then I would take on jobs in two different school districts where teachers were home having a baby or another reason and I would stay the year and then I would have to go to another grade level and then a kindergarten through 7th throughout that all of the grades all of the grades. I taught y'all just leave right now this leads to what I think is your legacy in your community and you know, besides having your children and raising a family which is important and having successful. Happy children who contribute is the most important thing that any parent does but beyond that once your children grow up cuz you had them young and now you're 40 mid 40s early 50s with a whole new career and a lot of time ahead of you talk about how teaching let into your current passion, which I think will be your legacy long after you're gone. That's nice of you to say that Susie.

35:12 Yes, I was teaching 4th grade and I had a little girl in my class whose stepfather was a police officer in our town and he was involved in finding an historic site on the old Erie Canal.

35:31 It was buried and he knew by coming into my classroom that I liked history and I ain't no I didn't quite a few activities with the children involving history. And so he started to talk to me about the buried drydocks on the old Erie Canal in our town that runs through our town and it still does I didn't even know what a dried-up was. So one thing led to another I became involved with this and it has led to a very significant Historic Site in our for our nation. The Erie Canal took people Westward.

36:20 Coming from from Europe and settling the Midwestern states. The object was to keep England out. They did not want to have England invade again after the war of 1812. So they built the Erie Canal to get people out into the Midwest and I will go there with linking New York City where you had ports up and you couldn't go across the central part of the Atlantic because it's so mountainous to Pennsylvania and West Virginia and United States. You can go across the Atlantic midsection and our country. So they went George Washington Long decided ago that you should go through Upstate New York, which is flat so they established a canal system that would link New York City to Lake Erie and buffalo and therefore all the way out west through the chain of length. That is our Great Lakes system. And on the canal there had to be these places called dry docks where the bolts would be repaired.

37:20 And where boats would be built and so you've uncovered your dry docks in your local town, which was you know a place where vote building and boat repair was done during the canal era. Which spanned from what year to what year Well 18:9 1819 until 1920. Okay. So that's a fairly large significant development of our country that span of time and you had this one station one Canal site where you would repair and build boats and you've in your town through volunteer work exclusively have uncovered this and if created a local Museum, they are called the Chittenango Landing canal boat Museum, which is now part of the Erie Canal Corridor, which is now part of the National Park Service along with the other historic sites along the Erie Canal and you've built a interpretive Center. You've built classrooms. You have Elder hostels. There you have basically uncovered

38:20 Interpretive Center. We have a a boat exhibit a walk-on boat exhibit showing how the boats were built at the site and we are yes as you say with in the Erie canalway National Heritage Corridor, and I'm very proud of that. We were designated as a spot for National Park passports to be

38:54 To be sold and an important part for people looking on the website of the National Park to find our specific site. And what's important I think about the Erie Canal is that people who live don't live in the Erie Canal Corridor area don't fully appreciate the development of the country in the places that they grew up in the center and West I mean, none of that happens without the Erie Canal developing. Obviously. Your son doesn't come Westward to meet his wife me in Missouri without the development of the Erie Canal. I grew up in Missouri with a lack of appreciation probably for the Erie Canal because you know, that's not part of our local history. Our local has no we didn't we actually started our local history with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, but I grew up in St Louis which is a river town. So we really didn't need the Erie Canal to get around people are coming up from Baton Rouge, Louisiana and through New Orleans. And so that was its own Miss.

39:54 Roses on Waterway, but and obviously lied the development of my town but there's a lot of places that their entire wealth and being now made New York the Empire State and it created the New York Stock Exchange because of the extreme overwhelming economic development that took place during that time. Raw materials being sent by boats pulled by mules to New York City manufactured goods coming up the Hudson across the Erie to Buffalo and then out into the Midwest and it makes America superpower and economic military intellectual beginning to realize it now they didn't realize it I don't think until about almost 30 years ago. It wasn't something you talked about because basically it was operated.

40:54 Buy a very very low class of people.

40:59 The Irish the Italians. Okay, all these people coming in to find work very poor working-class and educated people having their families living on Canal boats having people pull them with mules. I mean this was this was grunt work, but now I dare say that every other person coming in the door to our Visitor Center has to tell me that there great-great-grandfather was a mule driver on the canal know it's okay. They have succeeded in life. So now it's okay to say acknowledge your roots which were humble and modest of us, which is the roots of most Americans really at humble and modest true. That's right. We are one example to talk to you today. Thank you for sharing what I consider to be a representative story of a good

41:59 Bank of America not necessarily all of America but a certain age of America a certain region of America, you know the east coast and I know you're most proud of what your own education in your own hard work of immigrants has built which is you know, your greatest success which you believe is your and I greatest success is my son's I never dreamed in a million years that my son's would turn out to be what they are. My oldest son Tom is a microbiology researcher professor at Georgia Tech. My second son is an orthopedic surgeon in Syracuse New York. My third son is president of facts at a

42:46 Computer research and research systems and Anthony operation in Greenwich, Connecticut Greenwich, Connecticut, and my 4th son's Susie's husband is dean of students at Allegheny College here in Pennsylvania. I think I have been blessed with wonderful children and wonderful daughter-in-laws. What was fun to talk today? And I hope that you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you very much and I felt very comfortable. This is fine. Thank you.