An American Life

Ernest Boniface

Description

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Sujets

• América
• Achievement
• Biography
• Challenge
• Succès (homonymie)
• Challenge Hebdo
• American
• Autobiography
• Life

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669860068
• Langue: English

Extrait

AN AMERICAN LIFE
Challenge and Achievement
 
 
 
 
Ernest Boniface
Copyright © 2009 by Ernest Boniface.
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-4415-7422-0

Softcover
978-1-4415-7421-3

eBook
978-1-6698-6006-8
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Rev. date: 12/17/2022
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
583728
CONTENT
Prologue
Background and Youth
In the Navy
Coming Home and Beginning Again
Courtship and Marriage
Building a New Home
Advancing in the Union
Starting Our Own Company
On My Own: Growing The Business
A Speech in Hawaii
 
 
 
 
 
TO MARGIE
For a lifetime of labor and of love that I could never adequately thank her for.
PROLOGUE
Someone once said that “memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” That’s why I seriously regretted not having spent more time with my father and mother, before they passed away, asking them about their early lives: about life in Italy before they emigrated; about their difficult voyages across the Atlantic; about their first impressions of America; about their meeting and marrying; about the challenge of raising a growing family during the Great Depression; and much, much more. They both had rich memories that I wish I had tried more often to explore even though both of my parents were intuitively reserved about such matters. But I think it’s important to learn as much as we can about our forebearers, because the more we learn and understand them, the more we come to understand ourselves.
When reflecting on these thoughts at one point, I realized I didn’t want this kind of void to exist in my own case. So I decided shortly after that to try to set down on paper some of the major events and influences in my own life, a life that from early years seemed filled with eventful challenges and to reflect on how I responded to those challenges. I wanted to record some of my own memories so that perhaps years from now if some family member from a later generation wondered why his father or grandfather acted in a particular way, the questioner might find the answer in these pages and maybe the answers to other questions as well.
Initially I dictated almost all of this material randomly into a small tape recorder. I asked my brother-in-law, Carroll McGuire who had earned his living as an editor, to take these tapes and transform them into an organized manuscript. I’m most grateful to him for all his help. And I’m grateful, too, to his daughter, Patricia Jemaa, and granddaughter, Annie Quinn, for all the typing and for their patience in turning out several drafts. I also want to thank my brother Peter for carefully reading the manuscript and offering several helpful comments which were eventually incorporated into the text and especially for urging me from the beginning to take on this whole project.
This is the outline of one man’s life in America in the second two thirds of the 20 th Century and the early years of the 21 st Century. I hope in future years that someone may read the story here and find it interesting and, perhaps even instructive. I am thankful to have been able to live this story and to have lived it fully with energy and enthusiasm—and I hope, a touch of humility as well.
 
Ernest Boniface
September, 2009
BACKGROUND AND YOUTH
I was born June 27, 1925; my parents were Ida Ossi Boniface and Peter Boniface (Bonifacio). The little I know about my ancestors I learned from a few handwritten notes my mother put together in 1977. This is a summary of those notes.
The Ossis
My mother’s grandfather, Matteo Ossi, married a women named Teresa Zanetti who was from Borca and was one of several children. Matteo himself was a memorable character, an enthusiastic hunter of chamois and a celebrated mountain climber who was the first person to climb the daunting 10,000 foot Antelao in the Dolomite Alps. As a result, his picture hangs in the San Vito Municipal Building.
Matteo and his wife had 10 children, the sixth of whom was Ida’s father Arcangelo Michele. As an aside, the 10 th child, Angelo, who my mother described as “tall, blond, and fearless” migrated to America to seek his fortune. However, on his way home from work in a Pennsylvania mine one day he was brutally murdered and his empty money belt discovered beside his lifeless body. A terrible blow to the family. My mother noted that only two of the 10 children remained in San Vito, Giovanni and Caterina who died rather young leaving two small children. The rest of the family eventually moved down from their cold mountain area where their ancestors had lived for centuries, having been one of the earliest settlers in San Vito. The family home in San Vito, built in 1550, is still there. And my mother noted that the Ossis “may have been there since 1200 or even before.” She also mentioned the fact that a number of her ancestors had been prominent people: teachers, a notary, a military officer responsible for the defense of the Veneto, many priests, and a missionary bishop. She added, “Their coat of arms, which goes back to the 13 th century is a simple field with three bones across encircled by the letter O”
Now my mother’s father, Arcangelo, married a women named Teresa Palatini, and they, too, had 10 children of which Ida was the seventh. Arcangelo at one point decided to sell his belongings in San Vito and buy a farm down in the milder plains area. My mother felt that he made the move in all probability at the urging of his wife Teresa who was born and raised in Vittorio Veneto in a family “of easy circumstances” even though that family originally came from San Vito as well. Teresa apparently did not like the hard life and frigid climate of San Vito, so in 1898 when my mother’s sister Maria was just 40 days old, the family moved to a farm in the Scomigo section of Conigliano where in 1901 my mother was born. Two years later, in 1903, Arcangelo sold this farm because he deemed it inadequate for his growing family, and bought a more desirable place in San Giacomo di Veglia which is still owned by family members. My mother came to this country on November 1, 1920 at the age of 19 aboard a ship called the Regina Italia out of Genoa.
The Bonifaces
Now my father’s grandfather Angelo Bonifacio, married a woman named Margarita Lorenzini. Angelo and Margarita, in turn, had a son also named Angelo, who lived between 1867 and 1929. He married a woman named Luigia Cazzetta who lived to the age of 70 and passed away in 1930. Angelo and Luigia had four children: a daughter Margarita, and three sons, Matthew, August, and Peter.
Angelo decided in 1892 to leave the small mountain village of Pescul in the province of Selva di Cadore and took a long and arduous journey to the United States before my father was born. Angelo arrived in America on April 11, 1892 aboard the liner La Gascogne out of Le Harve, France. He became an American citizen in 1899. The rest of the family remained in Pescul, until after grandmother Margharita died. Then on November 5, 1902, they all came to the United States, including my dad on a ship called La Champagne. My father first saw his father at this time, when he was 10 years old.
My mother mentioned in her notes that the commune di Selva lacked old records because of a destructive fire at one time. But the name Bonifacio appeared in a deed over two hundred years old, from the time they were mining iron in Pescul. The Cazzetta family also settled there before records were available. My mother wrote that the Bonifacio house in Pescul “was destroyed by time and neglect.” But when she saw the crumbling foundation back in the mid 70’s it looked to her practiced eyes as though it had exsisted for 500 years or more. “It was built in the shadow of Mont Pelmo, and I say that because in the middle of the winter the sun did not reach their house,” she wrote.
The early years in America, too, proved hard ones for my dad. At one time in later life he wrote a brief summary of his early work history. In 1905 at the age of 13, my dad went to work full time as a mill hand in the Waldrich Bleachery in Clifton, New Jersey for $4.00 a week. After working at several different low-level jobs, a few years later he applied for a job at the Falstrom Co. which at that time was looking for someone to take care of a horse and serve as an apprentice sheet metal worker. This incident started the Boniface family in the sheet-metal industry.
Sometime after that he did sheet metal work in the maintenance department of the Ford Motor Company in Highland Park, Michigan for $20.00 a week. The next year, 1918, as war raged in Europe, my dad entered the United States Army. Eventually, he served on the battle front in France and was wounded at Thiaucourt on September 26, 1918 in an enemy poison gas attack while stringing barbed wire in the aptly labeled “no man’s land.” In June 1919 he was honorably discharged. That same month he was hired as a sheet metal worker in the maintenance department of the Ford Motor Company in Kearny, New Jersey. He spent six years there and his salary rose from $30.00 to $48.00 per