This piece is dedicated to Nona, my grandmother, who was Generation F without knowing what feminism was.
Nona and Papoo, my Greek-Jewish grandparents, sailed to America in 1903 knowing no English. When their ship docked at Ellis Island, doctors determined that Nona’s eyes were infected. Without explanation, an official put a chalk mark on the back of her coat and sent her to one line. Papoo was directed to another line. Finding an immigration worker who spoke Albanian, one of the languages he knew, Papoo learned that Nona was going to be deported. The man advised Papoo to rub the chalk off Nona’s coat and bring her to his line. Papoo put his arm around his wife, and as they walked, he moved it up and down her back, removing the chalk. In that way, they entered America together.
Papoo sewed in factories and later built small multifamily homes in Brooklyn that are still in use today. Nona sewed in the basement at home. When an inspector fined her $25 for having factory machines in a residential building, Nona went to court to ask the judge how else she could work and still take care of her children. The fine was not waived, and Nona paid it. A few days later, she received a personal check for $25 in the mail. It was from the judge.
Nona and Papoo had eight children in America. One was my mother, who became an elementary school principal. At her retirement party, the PTA president gave a speech. “When Mrs. Conan came to this school, our children did not read. Now our children read!” Another was my uncle. During WWII, he was an Air Force navigator who made quick in-flight calculations under enormous pressure, a job that today is done by computers. After the war, he became a math teacher.
My grandparents had fifteen grandchildren, all second-generation Americans. One is a family court judge. One is an economist who worked for the Federal Reserve. I am a librarian and mentor at Girls Write Now.
Though Nona and Papoo lived to their mid-nineties, it was not long enough to know all of their twenty-three great-grandchildren. These include a veterinarian, a humanitarian aid worker, the manager of a university radio station, and an engineer who did a college internship at NASA.
When Nona was in her nineties, she said to me, “Huh! They were going to send me back because of my eyes, and still I don’t wear glasses!”