I was born at home and the youngest one was born in a hospital. I have three brothers: Robert, Richard and Raymond.

I lived in one particular apartment house in Brooklyn that was three stories high. It was a wide street. The only know the way it looked is from my pictures because I was a toddler. I had a baby carriage, you know, a doll carriage and things like that.

After my first brother was born, Bob, we moved to Glendale, Long Island. It was all on Long Island and there we lived in a two-story house. My parents rented at that time. That was a little bit more open space and we were surrounded by cemeteries and I used to play in the cemetery. We had picnics and I would walk in the cemetery. There was a Jewish cemetery right up the street from us and then there was a non-sectarian one that had a beautiful pond. So, it was a lovely place to go. Then there was another cemetery on the other side of Glendale and I used to go ice skating with a friend when I was in grade school over there in the winter time.

It was mostly German, Irish and some Italians that lived in the area. It was the Depression because my father was out of work until the war came. He worked in the produce markets in Manhattan so he traveled by subway all the way to New York. He was like a secretary for the firm. He went to secretarial school.

My mother worked, but not after she was married. She worked for Equitable Insurance and she only had two yeas of high school. She was very upset about that. My uncle; her oldest brother, was crippled and my grandmother had nine children so they had to use the money for his books in school, but he did win scholarships.

So, my mother basically, you know, during that time if she needed money she would like make coils and braided material like for closings on jackets. She’d make them by the number and she would take me with her and we’d go by bus and train to the place where she obtained that thing. I know that my father, probably, during that time maybe made $30 a week when they had three children. He came from a large family and during the Depression my uncles and aunts didn’t have jobs.

My one uncle, the one that was 92, went into the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp. He was the uncle on my father’s side; his brothers worked. He also had one brother, who was a priest, and one aunt who was married, and one aunt who never married. She always wanted to go into the convent and her mother didn’t want her to do so.

My father was a twin but the other twin died at birth. So, there was always family but my father always would bring big bags of food. Like the grey bears, he’d bring food home and feed my grandmother because she had so many children. My grandfather worked in the Navy yard for a while and then, of course, he lost his job. They had not a lot of money.

My uncle was the only college graduate in that family. In my family, I was the first college graduate and my one brother. The other two brothers just went to high school.

When I went to nursing school, my maternal grandmother didn’t want me to go to nursing school. She thought I should go out and work and help the family. But my mother insisted that I have an education and my uncle who was the attorney wanted me to.