We lived on the fifth floor of an apartment building in New York. The steps were marble; it was a beautiful building, but it was right above a movie theater. Across the street was a Puerto Rican ballroom, so I can remember going to sleep hearing gunshots from the movie theater and the Puerto Rican music cross the street.

My dad had been part owner of a candy store since before my time. All my siblings are older than me. But when I was growing up he was an elevator operator and one of the big department stores in Manhattan.

My dad grew up in an orphanage and I don’t think he had much more than a sixth-grade education. When I was in seventh grade my mother started to work. Before that, she was a homemaker.

She started working at Lenox hill hospital.

My dad never served in the military although they wanted to draft him. My mother was pregnant with me. He objected to going, and he held his ground.

I was very close to my parents. I’m full-blooded Italian and we tend to be a close-knit community.

I had a brother and I had two sisters. My brother was fifteen years older than me and my sisters are six and ten years older than me. I always figured I was a mistake, but a good mistake!

At one point my father had three jobs. He had an elevator job, he had a job on Saturdays, and he worked at an ice cream parlor.