87b – Junior Goes to High School, 1957-1960: Over the bridge

Introduction

It’s very true that travelling the New York City subway system is a challenge and an adventure.  A young person must be able to maintain focus, remain alert, and be quick to memorize and recall detailed travel routes.  Successful navigation through the stations and travel throughout the citywide system also requires familiarity with alternate routes in the event the of delays or re-routing. 

Junior and Butchie were 15 years old in 1957 when they started commuting on the New York City subway each weekday to go to and from the New York School of Printing in Mid-Town Manhattan.  Both boys had used mass transit in the form of buses, trolley cars and the elevated subway lines in Brooklyn starting about the age of 12.  Taking the train into Manhattan during the school week was another milestone in their growth towards maturity. 

To capture that sense of what a big adventure going to high school was we decided to do the best we could with material currently available to recreate a what a subway trip was like when Junior and Butchie took the train and went over the Bridge into Manhattan during their weekday commute to and from school.

Relationship Notes

Sam “Junior” Serrapede – Junior was the nickname given to Sammy by his parents and friends since his name in Italian is Sabbatino, a derivative of his father’s name Sabato (a/k/a Sam).  Sammy turned 15 in November of 1957, the year his big adventure in high school began.  Junior lived with his parents, Sam and Josie Serrapede on 66^th Street between 11^th and 12^th Avenues.

Anthony “Butchie” Mormando – Like Junior, Butchie used his nickname amongst friends and family.  He was one of Junior’s close friends from Mc Kinley Junior High School.  Butchie lived on 65^th Street up from the Aievolli Funeral Parlor at the corner of 13^th Avenue and 65^th Street.

Family Story:  Over the bridge

Manhattan Bridge.  Public domain photo.  Photo taken 14 Nov 2008.  Author Gfox228.  Released to Wikimedia Commons.  See Resources for link.

Up until high school, Junior and Butchie attended elementary and junior high schools within walking distance of their homes.  Any travel they did by mass transit was not on any regular basis.  They socialized with their friends in the neighborhood and went many places on foot.  Attending high school in Mid-Town Manhattan necessitated that they become skilled at navigating not only the routes but the maze-like series of interconnecting passageways and platforms at some stations where they had to transfer to another train.

87a-Junior goes to high school 1957-1960-Choosing a school

Introduction

In early 1957, Junior (Sammy)began the process of selecting the high school he would attend in September of that year.  In this posting we will consider why Sammy decided on a trade school.  We could not find any information online that specifically focused on the educational choices made by second generation Italian Americans during the 1950s to mid-1960s.  As a result, we base our Discussion section of this posting on our own family and what we observed and remember about the community we grew up in.

Relationship Notes

Sam “Junior” Serrapede – Junior was the nickname given to Sammy by his parents and friends since his name in Italian is Sabbatino, a derivative of his father’s name Sabato (a/k/a Sam).  Sammy turned 15 in November of 1957, the year his big adventure in high school began.  Junior lived with his parents, Sam and Josie Serrapede on 66^th Street between 11^th and 12^th Avenues.

Anthony “Butchie” Mormando – Like Junior, Butchie used his nickname amongst friends and family.  He was one of Junior’s close friends from Mc Kinley Junior High School.  Butchie lived on 65^th Street up from the Aievolli Funeral Parlor at the corner of 13^th Avenue and 65^th Street.

Family Story:  Away we go!

Junior was influenced in the choice of high school by his friend and junior high school mate, Butchie Mormando.  The ability to envision full-time employment in a Blue-Collar profession right after graduation held great appeal.  What added to the appeal was the prospect of a job that offered membership in a trade union. 

Union shops offered regular working hours with a guaranteed 40 hour work week, overtime at a pay of 1 ½ times the usual hourly rate, paid sick days, paid vacation, and many other benefits that were negotiated by the union into the contract worked out with the employer. 

A Blue-Collar Job and membership in a union were respected and acknowledged by the mainstream culture as another way to achieve entry to the middle class and enjoy a good standard of living.  The United States’ economy was still based in a large part on manufacturing, with many consumer goods produced in the U.S.A.  So strong was the demand for skilled, Blue Collar labor that some unions secured a salary range for their members that was equal to or sometimes surpassed the annual earnings of a college graduate. 

Junior and Butchie applied to, and were accepted by, the New York School of Printing, located in mid-town Manhattan. 

86k-Emily Leatrice, 1956-The Lifestyle of one real 1950s housewife, Part 11- Tempus Fugit…Time Flies

Series Note

This posting concludes the series “Emily Leatrice:  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

Whenever she related the events of the first 6 years of her marriage to EmilyAnn, Emily Leatrice frequently referred to the motto she selected when she graduated high school:  Tempus Fugit meaning “time flies”.  Whenever Emily compared her life before and after her marriage the full meaning of the word “flight” hit her very hard.  As her in-laws continued making inroads into her marriage, Emily slowly grew and strengthened in character.  Physically, though, a weariness accompanied her maturity into an ambitious, motivated and determined woman.  The buoyant optimism of her teens was replaced with a manner given to quiet observation alternated with unexpected expressions of her true thoughts on what was happening.  Such outpourings were mostly in the privacy of her home and no reservation was shown in bringing up her response over conversations at mealtime.  In this way, Emily Leatrice was growing into as formidable a woman as her own mother, Josie.

When Josie, passed away in 1995 Emily inherited a large collection of photos of her family and relatives taken between the mid-1920s through the 1990s.  When she first brought home the brown cardboard box filled with photos stored in brown paper bags she had no idea what a rich resource these photos would become for our family history project.  During those early days, Emily shared the photos with her daughter EmilyAnn.  Each weekend, mother and daughter drew closer as time was put aside to not only review but to remember and begin the process of identifying the year, location and people in each photo.

Emily was not a person given to sentimentality or nostalgia.  She believed that these longings for times past have a potential to lead to dissatisfaction with the present.  Sentimentality and nostalgia, Emily taught EmilyAnn, result in a distortion of exactly how things were in past times.  The review of each photo with EmilyAnn was quite matter of fact and that tone will be reflected in the retelling for each photo I post here.  For some of the photos Emily could place an exact year, for others she could estimate a range of years. 

The photo that we present in this posting is very special to us.  It shows Emily as a teenager with two of her D’Agosto cousins, Martha and Emilia.  Since Emily only provided a few details, and Josie did not write any notes on the back of this photo, Uncle Sammy and I did some detective work to see if the estimated time frame of Easter 1945 or Easter 1946 which was within the range Emily thought was correct.

We think this photo distills not only Emily Leatrice’s teenage years but also shows the closeness to her cousins, which after marriage weakened.  Eventually, those relationships and the memories receeded into the past.  Emily brought them back to life by sharing them with EmilyAnn.

Relationship Notes

Emily L. Serrapede grew up in Dyker Heights Brooklyn.  She enjoyed such close relationships with her maternal and paternal cousins that they were part of the core group of her best friends from childhood to young adulthood.  Emily was born in 1931 to Sam and Josie (nee Muro) Serrapede. 

Emily was Sammy’s sister and EmilyAnn’s mother.

Emilia and Martha D’Agosto were Emily’s first cousins through her paternal line.  Martha and Emilia were born to Giuseppe and Filomena (nee Serrapede) D’Agosto in 1929 and 1930 respectively.  After the end of the Great Depression, the D’Agosto family lived in the same neighborhood as Emily’s family. 

What is the story in the Easter Sunday photo?

Easter Sunday, circa 1946. 

Left to right:  Martha D’Agosto, Emilia D’Agosto, and Emily Leatrice Serrapede.

Emily enjoyed a close relationship with her first cousin, Rita Errico as described in previous postings (see Resources for links).  She was also very close to her D’Agosto cousins, too.  The discovery of this photo meant so much because it substantiated the hints Emily shared with Emilyann from her childhood about how happy she was to have her cousins as good friends, sister figures and confidantes.  Emily kept any mention of her cousins to a minimum when the rest of the family was having meals or discussions.  She’d wait until she and Emilyann were alone.  Then she’d share the names of her favorite cousins and sometimes more details like who they married, where they worked or where they moved to after marriage.

When the photo of Emily, Martha and Emilia came out of the brown paper bag for the first time, Emily was delighted.  Right away she said the photo was most likely taken on Easter Sunday or thereabouts in 1945 or 1946.  When pressed for further details as to how she knew, Emily just said “It was before I met your father.”

Emily met her future husband Frank in 1947 and after that the only cousin she was photographed with was Rita.  After her marriage, there aren’t any more photos of her with her cousins or many of her with her extended family.  Her in-law’s attitudes about a married woman’s appropriate choice of companionship discouraged continued contact with her own cousins and relatives after marriage.  Instead, a wife was expected to socialize with her sister-in-laws and mother-in-law for the sake of the family and grandchildren.  Emily’s in-laws believed this fostered a very firm sense of identity for the grandchildren.

Uncle Sammy and I studied the photo and found the following clues that helped us check on Emily’s estimation of when the photo was taken.  Here are the details that provided leads for our focus and research: