86b-Emily Leatrice 1953-1955-The lifestyle of one real 1950s housewife, Part 2

Series Note

This posting is part 2 of “The Lifestyle of one real 1950s housewife” based on memories and family stories my late Mom and Grandmothers shared with me when I was growing up. 

Introduction

In mid-1953 Emily and Frank moved from a cozy, garden apartment located near Shore Road in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to a small 6 room house in Dyker Heights.  After Emily gave birth to EmilyAnn in November of 1953 life took some time to resume any regularity.  Emily took care of the night feedings so that Frank could get to work during the week.  Friday and Saturday nights Frank often took care of the feeding and diaper changing during the nights.

Both Frank and Emily decided that the first thing they had to take care of was their health.  The new house did not heat up evenly when the oil burner went on after the thermostat was raised.  The living room and the master bedroom at the front of the house chilled very quickly once the heat subsided.  The middle bedroom was very comfortable, as was the kitchen.  The bedroom at the end of the hall, which became EmilyAnn’s after her sibling was born, was damp.  The oil burner was located in the basement at the back of the house.

Being cold and tired did not motivate Frank and Emily to do that much in the house except for what Blanche, Frank’s mother, called “top cleaning”.  This meant the furniture got dusted, sheets got changed and the floor got a perfunctory cleaning with a dust mop.  Blanche believed that the house needed a much more thorough cleaning after EmilyAnn came home. 

Emily and Frank preferred to focus on the rooms they thought were most important to keep clean and clutter free:  the bath, the kitchen, their bedroom and EmilyAnn’s room.  They were not ready to get involved with purchasing more furniture just yet nor out to entertain.  In this sense they were once again outside the mainstream and the neighbors on the block who all had well-furnished homes complete with very pretty window treatments.  Frank and Emily put up venetian blinds and had very simple drapes that were utilitarian rather than decorative. 

Frank’s mother Blanche wasn’t satisfied that a new baby had to live in a house that did not have deep cleaning done on a regular basis.  During a visit on a weekday, Blanche noticed how pale Emily looked.  She advised her on how to organize a schedule to take care of the entire day’s housekeeping.  Emily listened and then gave her reply.  “This schedule sounds like something I’ll try in a year or two.  Right now, I need help, badly.”

Blanche did not back down.  She promised Emily to get her just the right kind of help she needed to have not only a clean house but a beautiful one, too.

Relationship Notes

Emily Leatrice Serrapede married Frank Jesse Terry* in May 1950.  Prior to resigning from her full-time job around June of 1953 Emily worked as a legal secretary.  After the birth of EmilyAnn she had not only the adjustment to make of being a new parent, she also had to acclimate herself to owning a 6-room house after living in apartments all her life and for the first three years of her marriage.  There were some days the new house seemed a burden and other days a place to grow in.  In the early months of 1954 Emily was very challenged to pull herself and her thoughts together.  She found it an effort to get organized so that three meals were prepared every day, the laundry done, the baby cared for and somewhere in between catch a cat nap if possible!

Josie Muro Serrapede was Emily’s mother.  After hearing about Emily’s “Soup and Sandwich” menu three times a week, she decided to step in and help her daughter build up her strength and have nutritious food every Sunday and at the start of the week.  In 1953 Josie and her husband Sam were raising their 11-year-old son, Junior (a/k/a Sammy).  Since Josie and Sam were working full-time jobs the help they extended to Emily and Frank was much simpler and less involved than that offered by Blanche and Al, Emily’s in-laws.

Blanche Terry* was the daughter of Orthodox Jews from Galicia who settled in New York in the early 20th Century. In the late 1920s, Blanche’s parents bought a house in Midwood, Brooklyn, New York that they ran as a boarding house for over 10 years.  Blanche took whatever she learned from living in that setting and applied the organization of her own household like a small business.  She kept books of expenses and maintained files for all her receipts and bills.  Blanche was also in charge of the complete maintenance of the two-family house in which she, Al and their children lived.  Al was involved in finding repair people, painters, and handymen but it was Blanche who researched their reputations and interviewed them before she and Al made their choice.  Any help that Emily accepted from Blanche and Al involved discussion, consideration and agreement.  It was a fair process but since Emily was in a slump after giving birth, she sometimes was impatient with this decision making process.  Later she came to dislike herself for letting this process move away from her and into the decision making powers of her in-laws.

*Note about Surname:  Terry was the Anglicized version of Frank’s surname.  He and his father used the name professionally.  We welcome contact with the descendants of any business associates who knew Al Terry when he worked at Fleming-Joffe or at his own importing company, Al Terry & Son.

Mother’s Day 2023

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, aunties, godmothers, grandmothers and the important women who love and nurture us.

We remember on this day the mothers who are with us and those who have left this world. They both carry on and live through us in memories and the influence they had on the people we are today.

–EmilyAnn Frances May

–Sam F. Serrapede, Jr.

---

Credit

Mother and two children
year: 1901
artist: Mary Cassatt
Photo: Jane023 wikimediacommons
url: https://commons . wikimedia . org/wiki/File:Mary_Cassatt_-Mother_and_two_children-_1901 . jpg

86a-Emily Leatrice 1953 to 1955 – The real life of one 1950s housewife, part 1

Series Note

This posting is Part 1 of “The Lifestyle of one real 1950s housewife” series based on memories and family stories EmilyAnn’s late Mom, Aunties and Grandmothers shared with her as she was growing up. 

Introduction

When Emily brought EmilyAnn home from the hospital, nobody could see the change that took place in her.  Everyone was focused on the baby.  Emily’s in-laws were eager to help and Emily considered their offers one-by-one as the days unfolded.  Emily was less willing to quickly agree to everything they suggested since she had, as she told EmilyAnn when discussing this phase of her life, “found her voice”.  By this Emily was learning how to assert herself in a positive way.  She was now not only a mother but a housewife, having resigned from her full-time job when 4 or 5 months pregnant with EmilyAnn.  Emily’s parents also helped her in a quieter, less noticeable manner than her in-laws.

The biggest adjustments Emily had ahead of her was getting used to being confined to the house, the very mundane aspects of a housewife’s role, getting used to living on one salary, being more dependent on Frank, her husband, and fitting in with the neighbors on the block.  She found all of that more draining, she said, than taking care of a baby. 

Emily planned to be careful in what she said and who she socialized with, if at all, in regards to the other housewives on the block.  They were all hard-working women with beautiful homes to show for their efforts.  The neighborhood women had healthy, active children they took care to see were well dressed, well fed and did not create too much of a nuisance to the other neighbors.  What Emily wanted to avoid was getting too close to someone who would gossip.  And this was a big problem a 1950s housewife had to face. 

The expectations and moral standards required that a housewife not only be a domestic dynamo in terms of her homemaking skills but also a paragon of virtue meaning a woman who abided by her marriage vows.  A married woman was expected to be practical.  At times she knew she would need to compromise when certain decisions were made for the sake of keeping the family in harmony.  She taught her children there were definite consequences for good actions and bad actions.  In terms of the wife and mother’s own development little acknowledgement of individual needs, individual wants, individual desires and individual weaknesses were considered.  Social morals were very strict and reinforced by the popular culture of the time.  The role of wife and mother was very clearly defined and women were expected to conform to it. 

It is with this in mind that I begin this series of postings based on many memories my mother shared with me.  I am offering them as a counterpoint to the nostalgia and sentiment I was surprised to find at several blogs dedicated to marriage, motherhood and parenting.  Millennial Moms are looking back on the life of a 1950s housewife with curiosity and sometimes a misplaced feeling of sentimentality and nostalgia. 

I do agree there were some aspects of the lifestyle that we can adapt today, especially gathering together for breakfast and dinner every morning and evening.  Or for a woman who chooses to be a Stay at home Mom to do so unapologetically and to share with others just what a true calling being a homemaker and mother is.  This is where studying the 1950s housewife and her scope of activities will prove fruitful.  From it we can learn that there is a science to housekeeping, meal preparation, budgeting, laundering and all the myriad details the 1950s housewife attended to.  She even was something of a technical specialist since she relied on many appliances which she had to know how to operate.  Still, there should be no nostalgia for the time and role of a 1950s housewife.  It was a very restrictive life during a period of high conformity to external rules.  Anyone who varied from the mainstream trends, even a little, was shunned.  Such a person was an outsider, someone to avoid.

We’ll take a look at some of the news reported by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle during the early 1950s that were typical of the concerns and forces in place which affected housewives.  This is followed by a guide published in 1955 advising a woman on how she could be a good wife.  It forms quite a contrast to the fantasies of the Millennial Moms about the time 1950s housewives had for shopping and romantic trysts.  In the Resources section are links to the blog posts about the imagined life of a 1950s Housewife that prompted me to offer this series on my Mom’s life as a real 1950s housewife. 

In the Discussion section Uncle Sammy and I consider the news coverage we assembled as examples of what Emily’s in-laws considered acceptable conversation for a woman when in a group setting and compare it to the open-forum-around-the-dinner-table that was the atmosphere presiding over conversations that shaded into serious discussions in the little kitchen of the Serrapede family’s apartment.

Relationship Notes

Emily Leatrice was the daughter of Sam and Josie (nee Muro) Serrapede.  She married Frank J. Terry* in 1950 when she was 19 years old.  Emily majored in commercial courses while attending Bay Ridge High School in Brooklyn, NY.  She started working as a receptionist at a law firm during her high school junior year.  Upon graduation she became a legal secretary for attorney Charles M. Graham at his Brooklyn office.  Emily and Frank moved into a house before EmilyAnn was born.

Emily Leatrice was Sammy’s older sister and EmilyAnn’s Mom.

Blanche and Al Terry* were Frank’s parents.

*Note regarding surname:  Terry was the surname Al and my Dad used professionally.  It was an Anglicized version of the Sicilian family name which was long and often misspelled and mispronounced.  By Anglicizing the name it was easier to interact with a wider variety of business prospects.  The name was never changed legally.  I use it here in the hopes that I may establish connection with the descendants of the families my Grandfather Al Terry worked with at Fleming-Joffe or socialized with.

Shared Memories:  Emily’s first months as a 1950s housewife and new mother

Mom used to tell me that the first months of my life took place during a very cold winter.  Due to lack of sleep and the bad weather, Mom was filled with dread at the thought of going out to do grocery shopping.  The snow and ice made walking difficult enough.  Added to this was the hilly street our house was located on.  Mom told me she could not navigate the hill, carrying the groceries or even pulling a shopping cart up the block given how tired she was.  This was the first aspect of her new life as a housewife where she asserted herself.  When Josie and Blanche asked her how she would avoid grocery shopping, Mom simply said, “They’ll be delivered!” 

Mom had gotten to know the owners of a fruit and vegetable store who delivered and got most of her daily items from them.  She also had a milkman who delivered the milk and cream several times a week.  There was also fresh bread, crullers, crumb cake, cup cakes and all the goodies Dad loved delivered by Dugan’s Bakery, which made the rounds of the neighborhood in a truck the bakery owned.  This left grocery shopping at the A&P down the block a very easy trip when the weather was good.  Since it was a cold winter and Mom was not up to speed yet, Dad went to the A&P down the block first thing on Saturday mornings to shop for the balance of what was needed, usually baby food, evaporated milk, meat, cold cuts, coffee and household cleaning items.  Dad got high points among the neighbors for helping Mom like this which made it easy for him to start conversations with one and all.  Still he avoided talking too much to the housewives on the block and always addressed them as Mrs. followed by their surname.

When Mom started to take me out in the carriage, around March of 1954, the first thing the neighbors did was comment on how nicely Mom took care of me and the small carriage selected based on the cost and durability.  The neighbors then asked about Dad and finally about her.  Some housewives on the block asked if Mom and Dad had plans to get an English Coach, along with all the accessories needed for a fashionable Baby.  Mom did not know what an English Coach was nor about all the fancy accessories that the other mothers on the block praised so much.  This was just one aspect of the “Keeping up with the Joneses” or display of disposable income that started to creep into Mom’s consciousness and heightened the sense of restriction she felt now that she was no longer a wage earner contributing to the family. 

The next topic that recurred as Mom walked with the carriage that Spring pertained to dieting, getting back into shape and finding the right girdle.  Many of the suggestions were well intended but Mom wanted to discuss other things but this was all that was offered.  She began to look elsewhere for the mental stimulation she was not getting, except when Dad came home and shared his thoughts with her on whatever she wanted to converse with him about.

Topics researched for this posting

• The weather during late 1953 to early 1954.
• The 1955 Guide on How to be a good Wife.
• News articles from The Brooklyn Daily Eagle – What women were in the know about—or expected to know about!
• News articles about events affecting housewives 1950-1954.

85g-Remembering our community-Dr. Ettore De Tata

Introduction

In this posting, we have pulled together as much information as we could find about Dr. Ettore De Tata.  He was the physician to the Serrapede family starting in the Great Depression and continuing until his retirement and move to New Jersey sometime in the late 1950s.  At Uncle Sammy’s prompting, I gathered together what I could from official documentation at Ancestry.  These provide facts.  The golden find in the research, though, came in the form of a chapter in an online memoir written by Jason C. Mavrovitis.  In Chapter 5 of his memoir Out of the Balkans, Jason recounts how Dr. De Tata became not only his family’s trusted physician, but a lifelong friend of the family as well.  Jason’s memoir is compelling reading because it is based not only on facts but the personal, first hand experiences of his family members which he recorded in the memoir.  There is a rough, unfinished, and magnetic forcefulness in the memoir because it is written from the heart.  A link is included here and in the Resources section to navigate you to the site where Jason’s memoir is hosted.

In our discussion, Uncle Sammy shares his memories of Dr. De Tata to complete our tribute to this dedicated man who was motivated by a spirit of service to humanity and his country. 

Relationship Notes

Josie and Sam Serrapede were born in Agropoli, Italy in the early 20th Century.  Josie’s family immigrated to America in the 1910s.  Sam came later, in the late 1920s.  They married in 1930 and settled in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, NY.  The Serrapede family lived in different apartment houses throughout the 1930s through 1950s with most being situated within the neighborhood of 65th Street between 11th to 13th Avenues. 

Josie and Sam’s children featured in our posting:  Emily Leatrice, Gerald and Sammy.  In the early 1940s the Serrapede family moved to 1168 65th Street.

Dr. Ettore Joseph De Tata practiced medicine in the community of Dyker Heights with his office located in his parent’s house at 1147 65th Street.

Beginning our search for Dr. De Tata

During our initial discussions about Dr. De Tata all Uncle Sammy and I had was his last name and the street where his office was located.  At first the name searches were tricky because we had to use Detata, De Tata, de Tata and other variations.  The 1950 Brooklyn Telephone Directory gave us the correct spelling and confirmed the address:  1147 65th Street.  Now that the address was confirmed we could proceed to review Federal and New York State Census records with confidence and know we had the right family.

Meet Dr. De Tata’s parents, Raphael and Anna

The following overview of Dr. De Tata’s family is derived from the Federal Census for 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940.  For 1925 the New York State Census was used.

Raphael De Tata was born in Italy c. 1871 and came to the U.S. in the early 20th Century, prior to 1910.  Circa 1900, in Italy, he married Elisa.  In different census years, Elisa appears as Lizzie or Elizabeth.  No information about Elisa’s parentage was available on other De Tata family trees at Ancestry.  We also are not in a position to verify any information about Raphael’s lineage.  So we focused on the family after they came to America. 

In 1910, the Raphael and Anna lived in an apartment at 10 Broome Street in Lower Manhattan.  Raphael was a tailor by trade but had been out of work for 14 weeks.  He continued to work as a tailor and by 1920 was employed at a coat shop.  At this time the family was living at 329 Broome Street.  Life changed within the next 5 years when Raphael and Anna joined the wave of immigrants leaving Manhattan for a better quality of life in the boroughs.  For them the move proved a good one because they went to the community of Dyker Heights which had a solid working class and middle class demographic.  The family lived at 1147 65th Street as recorded in the 1925 New York State Census.  Raphael continued to work as a tailor.

According to the 1930 Federal Census, the De Tata family had achieved a milestone in living the American Dream:  they owned the two family home at 1147 65th Street which was valued at $1,200.  Raphael continued to work as a tailor. 

Elisa and Raphael’s first two children, Susan and Ettore were born in Italy.  Their other children were born in New York City before the family moved to Brooklyn according to the census records we found.  They were:

Susan (Assunta), b. 1891
Ettore, 1904-1987
Edward, b. 1905
Elsie, b. 1908
Esther, b. 1909
Olga, b. 1919

By 1940 only Elsie and Olga lived at home with Raphael and Elisa.  Both daughters worked as Drapers for a dress manufacturer.  Drapers are skilled patternmakers who use cloth to create fashion patterns, rather than drafting on paper.  Draping is not only a form of patternmaking but an art that requires great sensitivity and dexterity plus a solid knowledge of textiles.  In their work as drapers Elsie and Olga created the first pattern using fabric directly on the form, pinning and shaping it until it took the form the designer envisioned and provided in a sketch. 

In 1941 Elisa passed away.  The family continued to live at 1147 65th Street where Ettore lived in after he married Anna Nesi on June 11, 1932.

Meet Anna Nesi, wife of Dr. De Tata

The information about Anna’s family comes from the 1930 Federal Census.

Anna Nessi was born on June 19, 1904 in New York City to Italian immigrant parents, Archimedes John and Assunta (nee Trotta) Nesi. Archimedes immigrated to the U.S. in 1900 and earned his living as a barber.   The family moved from Manhattan to Brooklyn and as of 1930 were living in a rented apartment at 1520 75th Street. Anna’s siblings were:

Catherine, 1906
Alice 1907-2006
Olga, 1910
Romeo, 1913
Linda, 1917
Albert Peter 1919-2012

Prior to her marriage to Dr. De Tata, Anna worked as a milliner in a hat shop.