Family History Part 2: Who was Tony, really?

Tony

This is another atypical post as it treats my family history, whereas I normally write about travel related matters. Nonetheless this may have some general interest for the twists and turns it brings. In my experience it was a mystery-like in slow motion.

My motherś sister Anna aka Annette was married twice, first to a fellow named Mike Rini on March 17,1928. All I know about him is that he was a pharmacist who died in 1940. Annette was a good natured woman who then met a jolly good fellow we knew as Uncle Tony, last name Nunez, and that’s about all us kids we knew about him.

They married on May 4, 1946. At some point he became a roofer. We were told had his own company. He built a lovely house in Rockville Center, Long Island NY. I have many fond memories of that house. There were many fine Italian meals and the occasional paella on the Sundays we made the two hour, 50 mile drive from Pearl River. The drive seemed interminable to me as a child of 3 or so when I first went there.

I am told Tony was very fond of me, why I do not know. Tony fed me caracoles – snails (I still like them). I recall Annette making paella, although my brother says that Tony made the paellas. The rice dish they served up included pork, chicken and seafood, peas and the roasted red peppers you buy in a small jar. Valencianos shudder at the thought of this combination of ingredients yet this is what Americans generally know as paella, if they know anything about it at all, calling it a “paella de cosas,” a paella of things.

One day at the house in Long Island everyone was preparing for a wedding. I was standing by the door leading to the cellar facing Mathew’s bedroom at the end of the hall next to the small bathroom- there was another larger one behind me. Whack! Tony opened the door, hitting me in the head with the door knob- that’s how small I was at the time. This was probably in 1953 as I doubt that before age three I have memories. I cried loudly. I remember him expressing great regret, although of course he could not have known I was there. He and my father whisked me off to the emergency room for a few of what must have been painful stitches. I think we went to the wedding right after but I have no memory of it, nor any idea who was getting married, but I remember the hospital room or doctor’s office.

I also remember when Tony died. I was in August of 1953, so I was three, going on four. I recall Annette telling me that she found him in dead in bed. She said he liked to eat bacon deep fried in olive oil, blaming this for his early death. I remember feeling sad, without really understanding anything other than he was not coming back and he ate too much bacon.

Everybody loved Tony. Every photo I saw of him showed a smiling guy, a little round and rather short. He was sorely missed.

Annette died of a stroke in 1985, as I recall. It was some time after that my mother told “us” (who exactly she told I do not know, as I was not there) that when Tony died a lawyer representing a Spanish women sent her a letter demanding money. She claimed to be Tony’s wife. My mother said that Annette cut a sizable check to settle the claim. Apparently Annette found the claim to be credible. I recall that the amount was something like $10,000, a substantial sum in those days.

That was the last development in the matter until in 2016 I received a message from someone who said she was my uncle Tony’s granddaughter.

What? Tony had a grand daughter?

Her name is Cristina. She told me that Tony’s full name was Antonio Nuñez Pazos. I had never heard the second last name and in fact I had never given the matter of his last names a second though even though I knew about Spanish naming practices since before I spent the summer of 1967 in Spain. I learned that he was born on October 16, 1903, per the interment document that she sent me.  This document records his date of birth and death. I knew his approximate death date and this appears to be him.

Cristina said that his wife’s name was Maria Samperdro Nuñez.  The three children were named  Frank, Consuelo (both deceased) and Tony, from Palmiera, Spain, which is southwest of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, part of a town called Riveira.  Their family story, like ours,  says our Tony left Spain after the civil war. Not long ago, though, I discovered that he entered Ellis Island in 1936. Cristina recounted that Tony sent money back regularly through friends or contacts who worked on the ships going between the US and Spain.  Once he entered the armed services the communication and the payments stopped. They presumed he had died in the war.

I found records of Tony landing in New York in 1936. He arrived on the SS Washington departing from Le Havre, France. We all had presumed that Tony immigrated to the US to escape the ravages of post-Civil war Spain. It made sense: Franco was murdering opponents by the hundreds of thousands during the post Civil War period. Mass graves have even been recovered in the 2000’s. However there is a record of Antonio Nuñez Pazos at Ellis Island with his birth date and place of birth, which makes me wonder if he fought in the Civil War at all. In addition he entered the US on multiple occasions. He worked on merchant ships that went from Spain to the Caribbean or Central America and then to the New York City.

Christina wrote that his oldest son Francisco (Frank) came to the US around 1950. Somehow he learned that Tony was still alive, and went to see him. That must have led to a difficult conversation, as Frank would have viewed Tony as having abandoned his family.

.Given how well loved Tony was in my family, this was quite a shock. Perhaps he had his reasons, but if so, I do not see how we will ever learn what they were. I do not think that Annette knew of Tony’s family at the time of their marriage. She was pretty straight laced and would not harm a fly. It seems just as unlikely that she learned of his family when Frank found Tony. Her learning that he was a bigamist would have caused quite the storm and provided grounds for annulment from the nearest Catholic bishop, and Anneette would likely have made a beeline to the cathedral.

Maria cared for Tony’s parents in her house until they died.  She then came to the US, I do not know when. She lived in New Jersey as did her two oldest children. Most of the family remains in NJ to this day.  Her son Frank took her to Tony’s grave, where I think Annette is buried.  Apparently Maria never saw Tony after he immigrated.  When Cristina’s father Tony came to the US in 1959 (he must have been in his 20’s) he visited the grave.  Maria died in 1988.

Where from? A story about Sicily

We’d been living in Spain for 6 or 7 years when at an ex-pat event I started talking to a fellow named Jim. Often these conversations revolve around immigration and other ex-pat issues. At some point the conversation turn to the legal basis for our residency in Spain. I explained that we are Italian citizens (dual with the US) so we can live anywhere in the EU.

“How did you get Italian citizenship,” he asked. I explained that if you can show that a grandparent or parent was born in Italy you qualify for Italian citizenship. In my case my maternal grandfather was born in Italy. “Where in Italy?” ” Sicily, ” I replied. “Really? Mine too. Where in Sicily?” “Partanna,” I told him and he said, “No kidding! Mine too!”

Well that’s quite the coincidence! Partanna is just a tiny rural village.

Then the conversation turned to various other matters and we made arrangements to meet again. “Where do you live,” I asked. He gave me the street name. “No kidding,me too!” We still live just a block apart, some five years later, and still meet from time to time at our bakery and elsewhere.