Goodnight, Johnny Starr
I have put off writing this post for four weeks, because clicking "publish" on a blog post is a public announcement that one more person who loved me is gone from this world. It's selfish to grieve for that reason, but I don't care. He loved us for how we made him feel, too. And I could not possibly have felt any more loved.
On Friday, August 11th, my sweet, affectionate, hilarious grandfather ate lunch (at the rehab facility we hoped he'd soon be getting out of), closed his eyes for a nap, and did not wake up again. In the six months since our grandmother passed, he told us often that he was ready to go. That he could have suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night, slumped on the bathroom floor for who knows how long before his aide found him in the morning, just goes to show you how tough he was. At 92, for crying out loud!
On my last visit home before he died, I gave him a hand massage (when Kate and I were visiting together we'd do both hands at once) and, for the first time, asked if he'd like me to massage his feet as well. It makes me sad how embarrassed elderly people can be about the state of their toenails—who cares, right? you've been using the same pair of feet for how many decades?!—but he wanted a footrub too much to demur.
I was just about finished the first foot when his lunch arrived, and afterward he was drowsy so I let him sleep and promised I'd do his other foot the next day.
The next day, he slept all through my visit.
The day after that, I met my aunt and uncle at the rehab facility, and he napped through that visit, too, except he did this weird thing where he'd respond to people talking in the hall. "You don't mind if I sleep, do you? I'm sorry," he said at one point when he realized we were there, and we told him not to apologize, he could sleep all he wanted.
As we left I gave him a kiss on the forehead, and that was that. I never got to finish his footrub.
The two most important things to know about my grandfather were his playfulness and his devotion. Even after he retired, he always worked too hard mowing and shoveling and whatnot—he literally had a heart attack and lost consciousness in the garage one hot summer day. And when my grandmother became ill, he remembered his wedding vows. No matter what, he was not going to let her go into a nursing home. He took care of her—with help from home health aides most days—every single day for the rest of her life. My grandparents weren't up for attending Kate and Elliot's wedding back in February, but I recorded a mini-interview with them that we could play at the rehearsal dinner.
Me: What do you think of Elliot?
Grandmom: Oh, I think he's fantastic. Nobody better than him.
Me: Nobody better than him, right?
Grandmom: That's right. He's the best.
Me: The best of all men!
Grandmom: The men of all men! That's right.
Me: I know another great man. A good husband! What do you think about Elliot?
Grandpop:[through a mouthful of dinner] I think he's a very nice felshon. I'm in love with him!
I just think it is so adorable that he couldn't decide between "fellow" and "person" so he went with the portmanteau.
A post shared by Camille DeAngelis (@cometparty) on Jul 30, 2017 at 7:28am PDT
My aunt Kathy (who has done an AMAZING job of juggling finances and healthcare headaches for the past four years, bless her soul!) told me not too long ago that my grandfather's definition of success was to be able to save enough money to leave an inheritance to his children. By that measure (and others), he was absolutely a success. When I called him he sometimes used to say, "Didja make any money for me today?", which used to irritate me when I was out of print and flat-out broke, but eventually I realized I needed to lighten the hell up. So when he'd say, "Didja make any money for me today?", I'd reply, "Oh, yes. Potloads of money. Tomorrow I'm going to send you a check for a million dollars."
I've been thinking a lot about all that these past four weeks: what a good worker and saver he was, how devoted he was to the people he loved. I've been clinging to the notion that the best way to honor him right now is to work as hard as I can—and when I get paid for that work, to put a good bit of it aside for something bigger than my own keeping.
My grandfather showed me how to be a good-hearted human. So I will work hard. I will remember to laugh at myself. And I will always show my family how much I love them.
(See also: Hat for a Wise Man; Pizzelles!; The Big Sixty; In Memoriam.)
In Memoriam
Today would have been my Grandmom Kass's 89th birthday. She passed in her sleep one week after Kate and Elliot's wedding in February.
I wrote in my journal:
I thought I had done my grieving in advance, bit by bit over the past four years. Turns out that's not how grief works, at least not for me.
It took me awhile to post about her death (for reasons I won't get into), but here's what I eventually put up on Facebook:
Today we're back in New Jersey, gathering with relatives for a Mass said in her name (in lieu of a funeral, which she definitely did not want) and takeout from our favorite Italian restaurant afterward. I miss her, he says when we call, and we can hear the tears in his voice.
You had a good long life together, we tell him. I can't begin to imagine what it feels like to lose the person you chose to share your life with, especially when you've been inseparable for seventy years. Even if she was leaving you little by little.
But I do know one thing: it is not possible to say "I love you" too many times.
Vegan Onion Pie
After I went vegan I looked back through all the recipes I'd posted on the blog, either making a note on vegan substitutions or removing the post until I could veganize it to my satisfaction. My grandmother's onion pie recipe is one of these. For Thanksgiving I thought I'd try to veganize this simple quiche using VeganEgg from Follow Your Heart.
[Update, 2024: alas and alack, FYH has discontinued this product. I’ve made this quiche with JustEgg and it turned out great. I’ll eventually rewrite this recipe using tofu and/or chickpea flour and/or aquafaba.]
I was feeling even more sentimental than usual when baking this onion pie; my grandmother is not herself anymore, she hasn't been for a good few years now. I want to get back into making (vegan versions of) her recipes to remember all the good times, back when she was still cooking and baking and decking the whole house with hundreds of snowmen decorations at Christmas. She doesn't remember any of that now, so our family will have to remember it for her.
Here's my vegan update. For the pie filling:
4 cups sliced cubed onions (I used red and white)
1/4 cup Earth Balance butter
2 VeganEggs (4 tbsp. powder whisked with 1 cup cold water)
1/2 cup non-dairy milk + 1 tsp. arrowroot [see note]
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
2 tbsp. nutritional yeast
1 pastry shell
[NOTE: to make a liquid as thick as the evaporated milk the original recipe calls for, I took Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's suggestion in The Joy of Vegan Baking, whisking 1 tsp. arrowroot into half a cup of homemade cashew milk. Cornstarch is another thickener option.]
I haven't made the pastry recipe from A Platter of Figs since I went vegan, but it's easy enough to tweak, and I added some extra ingredients for a more flavorful "co-starring" crust:
2 cups flour
2 sticks (1 cup) vegan butter (cut into thin slices)
1 tsp. salt
1 VeganEgg (2 tbsp. powder whisked with 1/2 cup cold water)
fresh and/or dried herbs/spices (I used 1 tbsp. dried chives, 1 tbsp. black sesame seeds, and 2 tsp. coriander)
This recipe yields two 9" crusts, so freeze the second for later.
Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the VeganEgg mixture and herbs. Refrigerate dough for at least an hour.
Now to the filling instructions:
Sauté onions in Earth Balance butter with salt and pepper until tender, stirring in nutritional yeast toward the end. Pour in pastry shell. Whisk VeganEgg with water, mixing in the thickened milk. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 25 minutes or until golden brown. (I left mine in for 30 minutes and the crust is a little crispy.)
Does it approximate a traditional quiche? Not looks-wise—the baked VeganEgg is dry-looking compared to a quiche made with eggs—but taste-wise it is very good indeed!
Next time I'll add mushrooms to the filling and fresh herbs in the crust, and maybe some poppy seeds.
Fancying up that crust was a very delicious idea; when we had late-night leftovers this was the first dish I reached for.
More scrumptious holiday recipes I used at Thanksgiving this year:
The Best Vegan Stuffing Recipe
Cabernet-Cranberry Sauce with Figs
Read my post about my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary here.
Twenty Years Later
I'm remembering my beautiful grandmother today, twenty years after her passing.
Long Distance
My grandfather passed away four years ago this past week. In keeping with my promise to write more candidly on spiritual matters, I offer this.
* * *
There are three phone numbers on my Skype call-out list that I will never dial again: my grandfather's home number in New Jersey, his snow-bird line in Florida, and his cellphone, which he never used much anyway. These days reaching Grandpa Ted requires something other than a long-distance phone call.
It was just under a year after his death that my grandfather first got ahold of me. I was nearing the end of a six-week stint in India, sitting alone in a hotel restaurant in a place I didn't want to be. I'd just left the warmth and excitement of Sadhana Forest, a reforestation project and wonderful international community, and I was feeling lonely after a month of friendship and usefulness. More to the point, I had a nasty charley-horse in my calf after sleeping on an overnight bus with my legs slung over my backpack, and I didn't see how I'd be able to stand, possibly for hours, in the insanely crowded bus station across the street. The bright, independent, can-do me had vanished in a fog of pinching pain and irritable self-loathing, and I hid my face in my bandanna.
The restaurant manager approached. “Please don't cry, Miss. How can I help you?”
I asked him how much a taxi to Munnar would cost. (Munnar, by the way, was a three-and-a-half hour drive.) The manager went to call a taxi service, and when he came back he informed me that a car would run me 2,600 rupees, or just under sixty US dollars.
It was a bargain by our standards, but I was used to spending fifty cents on all-you-can-eat thali meals. “Would it cost less to take a taxi without air conditioning?” I asked. “I don't need air conditioning.”
Again the manager went to call the taxi company, and I went back to feeling sorry for myself. But the next voice I heard wasn't the manager's.
I did not hear it with my ears, and yet it was as clear as if he'd been sitting right next to me. For Chrissakes, honey, order the taxi!
My grandfather had a way of speaking when he was exasperated—his voice would strain in this very particular way. In that moment he'd been the farthest thing from my mind, which is one reason why I knew I wasn't imagining it.
He spoke again, with feeling instead of words, though it was easy enough to understand him: You're traveling on my dime, honey, so I'm telling you—order the taxi. (Just like him, too, to be dictating how I should spend my inheritance money!)
The second reason I knew I wasn't imagining the voice was my physiological reaction, which was instant and complete: my frustration and loneliness gave way to the most wonderful calm I'd ever known. I ordered the taxi along with a hearty lunch, and was rewarded for my reverse-stinginess with vista after vista of mountains swathed in the brilliant green of the tea plantations, and all from the comfort of an upholstered seat. With each new view, with each fresh breath, I thanked my grandfather for knocking some sense into me, just as he would have when he was alive.
It's easier for Grandpa Ted—or any of our departed loved ones—to communicate with feelings and images instead of speech. (Words are limiting even between mortals, and we are still less competent when listening to the dead.) You might say my grandfather and I are separated by all the vastness of time and space, and yet we get along far better than we did while he was alive. In the old days we knocked heads about a lot of things—politics, mostly—but my grandfather is no longer the man who announced in an Italian restaurant that “all Democrats are liars,” nor am I the girl who needed to be right when letting it go would have allowed us all to eat our meal in peace.
But he is still the person who read my first novel and praised it though it was blatantly anti-Republican, and he is still the person who even read it a second time without once complaining about my politics. He supported me then, and he supports me now. When the ARC for my second novel came out, I brought it to the hospice to show him. It hadn't occurred to me until that moment—the moment I held it up for him to see—that he would never have the chance to read it.
I was wrong about that, though. On one occasion, almost two years after his passing, I was feeling sad about him never getting to read the book, and I felt a sudden clarity as a picture unfolded in my mind:
A quiet, darkened room, like a university library past closing time. A green reading lamp perched over the shoulder of an imitation-leather armchair. I felt his pride and anticipation as he settled in and cracked the spine. Freed of hunger, fatigue, and the call of nature, he read the novel in a single sitting.
Most of the time when Grandpa Ted checks in it's just to tell me he's proud of me, which is something he wasn't able to say outright while he was alive. I have a friend who is a psychic-medium, and while she was communicating with my grandfather back in late 2012 she told me he wished he could have lightened up and laughed with me the way I'd always been able to laugh with my dad's dad. In my mind I went back to one afternoon when my grandmother was watching me after school, and I hid in the coat closet as Grandpa Ted pulled into the driveway after work. He opened the closet and put his coat on a hanger, and I giggled into my hand as he called to my grandmother, “Oh, Camille went home early? That's too bad. I was looking forward to seeing her.” Most of the time, what a medium has to tell you isn't remotely surprising. What more do we ever really need to say besides "I love you"?
My favorite long-distance call happened last summer. I was on a second date, and it was going very well. We were sitting at a bar talking about our Italian-American families, and as I told my date about my grandfather surviving two typhoons during World War II, the most obvious revelation all but tapped me on the shoulder.
“I'm proud of him,” I said, in awe. “I'm proud of how tough he was, how brave he was.” I had never said this to anyone—least of all to the man himself—but the physical reaction was instant and complete. I know Cupid never shot an arrow of familial love, but that's the best way I can describe it. My whole body hummed and shimmered from crown to toe. He'd been dead three years at that point, but I'd never felt so loved.
Christmas surprises
You may recall that I put this book on my wish list. I love it when my sister and/or Elliot give(s) me something I mentioned on the blog. 
I got Kate this magnet from a shop called Rhody Craft at the Providence farmers' market. Hee! 
One night I whipped up some hot cocoa using almond milk, carob powder, cane sugar, cinnamon, and a little bit of vanilla. The next day, and the day after:
"Are you making more cocoa?"
"Why, do you want more cocoa?"
"Do youuuuuuuu want more cocoa?"
"I guess I'm making more cocoa!"
* * *
And, lastly but certainly not leastly, a Christmas surprise that wasn't under the tree: K. R. Paradis wrote a lovely piece of music inspired by the holiday "covention" chapter in Petty Magic! Honestly, it's been a week since she posted it and I still can't quite believe I have readers this awesome.
My Favorite Veteran, Captured on Paper
Today at the beginning of yoga class my teacher said, "Think of all the people who did all they did so that you could have off today."
And I cried a little.
My grandfather's shipmate sketched this portrait in 1943 (as you can see). He was twenty-three. This drawing captures him perfectly.
(I've been writing about him, actually. I'm not ready to show you yet, but I'm very excited for when the time comes.)
A Christmas Jumper
Of all the pattern books in my library, I've gotten the most use out of Rowan Vintage Knits. My dad asked for a Beau out of green tweed (it's from Donegal, of course), and here it is.
He has hardly taken it off in the four days since I gave it to him. At Christmas dinner there was much oohing and ahhing over it.
(I was working on this while I was on the farm in Vermont.)
The buttons were a gift from Deirdre (I used the rest of them for Elliot's neckwarmer last year). My dad made sure to tell everyone at dinner that the yarn and the buttons were from Ireland.
I have to say, this is one of my most successful FOs: perfect marriage of yarn and pattern, satisfactory craftsmanship, flattering color and perfect fit--not to mention a great deal of gratitude from the recipient!
Raveled here.I hope you had a very merry Christmas!
Back to London
Through the shop window at Hope & Greenwood. Diarmuid likes to think of it as the magical sweet shop that only appears once a century--which, fortunately for all us sweet-toothed non-fairy folk, is only a fancy.
And speaking of Diarmuid and fairy creatures (the author, that is), I was delighted to find this marvelous book on display in the side window at Foyle's:
Kate and I arrived around lunchtime (on March 19th), so we met up with Seanan on his break at Foyle's and then went to the National Gallery for the afternoon. The next morning (our only full day in London) we had a big yummy breakfast in view of Tower Bridge, and then did the tour at the Tower of London.
Stealth shot! Seanan hates having his picture taken, but Kate managed to capture him on film (hmm, I guess that's a figure of speech now).
Then we met up with our cousin, Kate Scherer, for dinner. Kate S.'s grandmother Mary was our grandmother Dorothy's sister (you can see a portrait of all five sisters here). We had never met in person before, and as I explained the relationship to my Kate, 'This is like your granddaughter and my granddaughter getting together for dinner.' Once I'd put it that way we were even more excited to meet her.
It was a really nice way to end the trip!
Munnar
At Sadhana, on the taxi ride to dinner one night, I overheard Diva telling someone that a certain place was her favorite in all of India. Right away I wanted to know more about the place she was speaking of, because if Diva loved it then I knew I would too. And Munnar did not disappoint!
Tea leaves. I expected they'd smell like a cuppa, but there's no scent until they're processed.I did have a bit of a rough time getting there, but I'll skip most of the details and just tell you a cool little story. My calf was hurting so it was difficult to walk, and I was contemplating taking a taxi the rest of the way there (instead of standing for who knows how long at a crowded bus station, which I knew I couldn't really handle at the moment), but I balked at the price. I was having lunch at a hotel restaurant and trying to decide what to do (it was the hotel manager who was arranging the ride for me) when suddenly I heard my grandpa Ted's voice in my head. His voice would strain in a certain way when he got exasperated (which was anytime we were talking politics, of course), and I heard him in that tone of voice I remember so well: "For Chrissakes, honey, order the taxi!"It doesn't matter if it was really him or not. That taxi ride was worth every rupee, and I felt much better in the morning.
These photos are from a glorious day trek through tea and spice plantations (established by the British in the 19th century), which we finished off with an utterly delicious vegan-apart-from-the-raita lunch prepared by one of the guys from Green View. Highly, highly recommended.
No matter how beautiful or enjoyable you can find a place on its own, it's even better when you can experience it with new friends. I tagged along with Candice and Sophie, both from England, on the plantation trek, and we got to hang out for a couple days afterward. Sophie shared her knowledge of vegan baking, and Candice gave me loads of travel tips for Turkey (August 8th!!) and elsewhere. We sat on the roof patio at Green View drinking the local teas, eating takeaway samosas and talking for hours. They made me miss Sadhana less.
(As my friend Rich reminded me last night, life is a series of calculated risks, and this one was so worth it. You can get a better sense of the drop in this photo.)
Coming upon a bunch of guys building treehouses was another highlight. I want to live there SO BAD.
More Munnar photos soon--too many good ones to fit in one post!
A Tiger in the Kitchen (and zucchini souffle!)
Remember when I was at Yaddo last April? (Sheesh, I can't believe it's going on a year ago already.) Well, when I walked into the common room my first evening there, we were doing the usual introductions and one of my new friends said, ' Wait a minute—I've read your book!' Cheryl turned out to be the social glue the whole time I was there, always hatching plans for fun things to do in the evenings, acquiring bruises all over in the name of PIG (official rules posted here, also thanks to Cheryl), and taking wonderful pictures to remember each other by.I blog family recipes from time to time, and you all know how fond I am of my grandparents, so of course Cheryl's new memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, is right up my alley. I haven't had a chance to read it yet (it'll be waiting for me when I come home next month), but here's the book description:
After growing up in the most food-obsessed city in the world, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan left home and family at eighteen for America—proof of the rebelliousness of daughters born in the Year of the Tiger. But as a thirtysomething fashion writer in New York, she felt the Singaporean dishes that defined her childhood beginning to call her back. Was it too late to learn the secrets of her grandmothers' and aunties' kitchens, as well as the tumultuous family history that had kept them hidden before? In her quest to recreate the dishes of her native Singapore by cooking with her family, Tan learned not only cherished recipes but long-buried stories of past generations.A Tiger in the Kitchen, which includes ten authentic recipes for Singaporean classics such as pineapple tarts and Teochew braised duck, is the charming, beautifully written story of a Chinese-Singaporean ex-pat who learns to infuse her New York lifestyle with the rich lessons of the Singaporean kitchen, ultimately reconnecting with her family and herself.
Now, Cheryl has some pretty sophisticated tastebuds (as evidenced by her popular blog), but she's no 'food snob.' Recently a reader commented that her grandmother's recipe for pineapple tart was 'run of the mill', which of course annoyed anybody who ever had a grandmother. My grandmom Kass' cooking is unabashedly 'run of the mill'—simple, no-fuss recipes for good old-fashioned comfort food. So what if the zucchini soufflé recipe calls for Bisquick? I'll take my grandmother's cooking over haute cuisine any day. (Besideswhich, those pineapple tarts look pretty extraordinary to me! Bewitching bite-sized marvels, indeed.)
Ever hear that saying, 'every time an old person dies a library burns'? So far as I've observed, my grandparents' generation were and are a humble bunch, and they don't think too much about posterity or how valuable their life experiences are. Family recipes are a huge part of this trove of knowledge. Grandmom Kass learned how to cook from her aunt, because her own mother wasn't exactly Betty Crocker (we heard stories of how she used to dump sugar on the salad, and her jello always came served with a nice thick skin on top). Pumpkin soup, onion pie, creamy horseradish carrots, broccoli baked with cheese and breadcrumbs, rice pudding, depression cake...for me, my grandmother's culinary repertoire typifies mid-century blue-collar Philadelphia—nothing fancy, just good, wholesome food. (Though by 'wholesome,' I don't necessarily mean healthy. Philly is best known for cheesesteaks, pizzas, and spaghetti-meatball dinners, after all.) None of those recipes are original, but to me they are hers. She could have made up her own, of course, but I don't think it's ever occurred to her. Every cook makes her own modifications as she works, and given that she probably added a dash of this and a pinch of that without ever making a note of it, I doubt my versions of her signature dishes will ever taste as good as hers; but at least we have the recipes, and every time we make one we'll think of her.
So to celebrate the publication of A Tiger in the Kitchen, I'd like to share my grandmother's recipe for zucchini soufflé.* This one is, hands down, my favorite of everything she has ever made. It's light and delicately flavorful and I always try to snag a nice golden-crusty corner piece.
Combine in mixing bowl:
--3 cups grated zucchini--1/2 cup vegetable oil--1 cup Bisquick mix--4 eggs--1/2 cup grated parmesan--1 small onion, grated
Mix well, spoon into greased two-quart casserole dish. Bake at 325º for 50-60 minutes. Serves 6-8.
*From The Best of the Zucchini Recipes Cookbook, compiled by Helen and Emil Dandar and published locally in 1988; this recipe was submitted by Antonette Biasotto of Newark, Delaware.
Happy Pub Day, Cheryl!
(Note: A veganized recipe is forthcoming.)
Little Witch
I was going to save this for the 31st, but it's Kate's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Snookie!
Halloween, 1984. Kate is two weeks old. (Who knows why the long face...maybe I was thinking I'd have to split my candy with her.)
The Big Sixty
Today is my grandparents' sixtieth wedding anniversary. We threw them a surprise party on Labor Day weekend at their favorite restaurant, and my dad made a nice little speech about how they'd met while working at a dairy, and the unlikeliness of the daughter of Irish immigrants and the son of Italian immigrants getting together.
But my grandfather had decided very early on that she was the one for him, and kept asking her out until she relented. They dated for three years, and towards the end of that time my grandmother's father was dying in the hospital. My grandfather used to shave him. Maybe she knew before that she wanted to marry him, but that kindness really sealed it for her.
I can't imagine being with somebody for sixty years, but I hope someday I'll be lucky enough to find out.
Memorial Day
Memorial Day means more to me this year.
The Navy Hymn is printed on the reverse.Gosh, do I miss him.(Home is the Sailor, part 1; Home is the Sailor, part 2.)
Home is the Sailor, part 2
We were really tickled when a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer wanted to do a write-up on my grandfather and his accomplishments. The article is online, but in case the article gets taken down at any point, I'm going to repost it. [Edit, 2013: no longer online, sure enough.]
* * *
Published May 22, 2010.
Theodore Colangelo, 90, defense-mapping official
By Claudia Vargas
Inquirer Staff Writer
Theodore Colangelo, 90, of Cinnaminson, a sailor during World War II who went on to be director of the Defense Mapping Agency distribution center in Philadelphia, died of prostate cancer and multiple system atrophy Monday, May 17, at the Masonic Home of New Jersey.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred from a Defense Mapping Agency office in New York state to the Philadelphia distribution center in 1959, he was a supply clerk. By the mid-1970s, he had risen to director, managing more than 120 employees, said former colleague Gerald Bonner of Cinnaminson.
Mr. Colangelo was known as a firm leader whom employees respected for his openness to new ideas, such as having an evaluation panel for promotions. But his biggest accomplishment was coordinating the military branches working within the distribution center.
When Mr. Colangelo first arrived, Bonner said, the Air Force and Navy foremen "were all trying to operate in their own ways."
Bonner, who was hired in 1975 as the personnel officer, found himself dealing with minor issues. Mr. Colangelo reorganized the joint operation to flow smoothly, he said.
"It was humming. I got bored," he said, adding that he left in 1980.
Mr. Colangelo retired in the early 1990s after 45 years of working with military mapping systems and distribution.
Mr. Colangelo had come to the United States as a 10-year-old from his native city of Pietragalla, Italy, with his seven siblings and widower father. Arriving in 1930, Mr. Colangelo and his family settled in Schenectady, N.Y.
When he was 16, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and a year later the Navy, where he was a seaman aboard the Erie.
After serving for three years, he returned to Schenectady. But a year later, Pearl Harbor was attacked, and he rushed back to the Navy, his daughter Eileen DiLullo said.
As a machinist mate on the Samuel N. Moore, Mr. Colangelo, during at least one typhoon, worked frantically to keep the destroyer's engines running, his daughter said.
Shortly before being discharged in 1947, Mr. Colangelo was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. While recovering at the VA Medical Center in Brooklyn, he fell in love with Dorothy Smelz, a social worker assigned to him. Six months later, they married.
Mr. Colangelo started working for the Defense Mapping Agency in 1948.
When Mr. Colangelo was transferred to Philadelphia in 1959, he wanted a single-family home, so he settled in Cinnaminson, where he lived in the same house until he died.
He aimed to always be home by 5 p.m. to be with his family, his daughter said. But Mr. Colangelo sometimes had to work 20-hour days - and that's when Dorothy Colangelo knew something unusual was going on in the world.
In the days leading up to President John F. Kennedy's public announcement of the Cuban missile crisis, Mr. Colangelo had been holed up in the distribution center for many hours, his daughter said.
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Daniel; daughters Susan D. Grant and Mary Ann McWilliams; four grandchildren; and a sister. His wife died in 1996.
A funeral was held Friday, May 21, at Snover/Givnish Funeral Home, Cinnaminson. Interment was at Lakeview Memorial Park, Cinnaminson.
* * *
Grandpa would have been so pleased to see this in the paper. I knew next to nothing about his career at the Defense Mapping Agency, and it was strange (in a good way) to be hearing about it for the first time in the newspaper.
Thanks to everyone who left kind messages on the blog, Facebook, or by email (I'm sitting down with a cup of coffee to catch up on my correspondence right now). I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging topics soon, I promise. It's just that I feel odd writing about anything else right now, you know?
'Home is the sailor, home from the sea.'
My grandpa Ted passed away this afternoon. He was ninety, and hadn't been well in quite awhile, but it still came as a bit of a shock. You know how, when you're little, you think your parents are invincible? That's how I'd always felt about Grandpa Ted.
(With his father and four of his six sisters. Thanks to our cousin Paula for this picture.)During the war my grandfather was a petty officer aboard a destroyer in the South Pacific. He went for more than a year without setting foot on land, and that was the easy part--he'd survived kamikazes and two typhoons, during which the temperature in the engine room reached 180º F. When he got back to the States, he spent nearly a year convalescing in naval hospitals; for the rest of his life he dealt with some serious medical problems as a result of war-related injuries, and yet he always seemed to defy everybody's expectations. (Just to give you an idea, today he received Last Rites for the fifth time.) He never thought he'd live to see ninety; I sometimes joked he'd outlive us all.
(Summer 2005. This is how I want to remember him--robust, striding around the block in his Abercrombie & Fitch ballcap and t-shirt.)
(At the Mary Modern launch party with Grandpa Ted, Grandmom Kass, and Grandpop Mike, July 2007.)We didn't always agree--heck, that feels like an understatement, given our diametrical political beliefs--but he was a good man, and I loved him very much.
(Two pics from summer '06, with kids and grandkids.)I want to tell you the story of how my grandparents met. At the naval hospital in San Diego, they told him they were sending him home to New York for his big operation, and gave him a choice between hospitals in Queens (St. Albans) and Brooklyn. He knew that St. Albans was the newer hospital, and naturally he wanted to be treated at the best facility available. He opened his mouth fully intending to say "St. Albans," but "Brooklyn" is what came out. If he'd chosen the hospital in Queens he would never have met my grandmother.She was a lovely 23-year-old volunteer social worker, midway through an M.S.W. she would never complete. Sitting up in bed, he'd strain for a glimpse of her as she passed by his room. So he could speak to her, he kept asking for another pack of playing cards, and she asked him tartly how he could possibly lose so many decks. He wore her down, of course, and they married seven months later.I've always been fascinated with this story for that one inexplicable slip of the tongue. Thank you, thank you, thank you for choosing Brooklyn, Nonno.(What's even more uncanny is that she wasn't supposed to be in Brooklyn either--she'd been assigned to a hospital in Trenton, but another volunteer, who'd been assigned to Brooklyn, asked my grandmother to switch so she could be close to her family. My grandmother agreed, even though Trenton offered free housing and Brooklyn did not. She was that nice.)
I'm so glad I got the chance to sit down with Grandpa Ted while he was still in good health and ask him about his childhood in Italy and his life during the war. I've been meaning to edit the raw audio and put all the stories on CD. Now would be a good time, eh?
(Outside the Brooklyn Naval Hospital, sometime in 1947.)Home is the sailor, home from the sea. (I think I like the A.E. Housman version better than Stevenson's.)[Note on 19th May: I have made a few edits to the above for historical accuracy--after talking to my aunt Eileen and listening to the stories we recorded in 2007, I realized I'd made a few mistakes.]
We pray for those we have loved, and see no more.
While I was in Rye I entered St. Mary's Church during the daily service, and decided to sit down in the back and pay attention just for curiosity's sake (I'd never been to an Anglican service before). This line from the prayers of the faithful has stuck with me--we pray for those we have loved, and see no more.Today would have been my grandmother's 87th birthday. She's been gone nearly fourteen years but I still miss her every day, and every time I pass the cemetery I think about the day they bought the plot, how she told my parents they could wave whenever they drove by on Route 130. Then, according to my dad, she started laughing hysterically, which kind of weirded him out; but if I'd been there, I know I would have laughed too.
Anyway, every so often doesn't it feel good to celebrate the people who have helped make us who we are? My grandmother was kind and smart and patient and wise. She was selfless to a fault. She made the best meatloaf (and I say that as someone who hasn't eaten meat in almost ten years). She was one of the few adults who would play games with us--Old Maid, Go Fish, Trouble, and swimming races. She always let me win.And she was, of course, a voracious reader.
Now this portrait looks over my writing desk.
Olivia's Birthday Cardi, take 2
This child is destined to become a knitter, don't you think?Knitting sweaters for kids is tricky. Ideally you want the garment to fit them for more than one winter, but you don't want to knit too big a size either.I wanted to make a cardigan for my niece's third birthday, decided on a pattern--Alice Starmore's Secret Garden--and got halfway through knitting the 4/5-year-old size before I realized that, lovely as it is, it would truly look like a big purple sack on her. But if I'd knit the 2/3-year-old size, it would have been quite a bit of work for something she won't fit into this time next year. So I decided to finish the Secret Garden cardi for her fourth birthday, and knit her something quick in time for her party.Which leads me to the other tricky thing about knitting for kids: there aren't enough patterns out there! I guess I'm just used to having tons of choices when knitting for myself or another adult. I had it in my head that she'd like a top-down garter-yoke cardigan (she's very fashionable, for a toddler), but I couldn't find anything to suit the yarn I had in my stash. So I winged it.
It's basically a downsized version of Melissa LaBarre's Garter Yoke Cardigan from Knitscene Fall '08, although I substituted the short-row instructions from the Sweetheart Cardigan by Laura Brown. I'd originally bought this Knit Picks Swish DK to make me some witches' britches, but I can always buy more when I eventually get around to knitting them. Or not, because the quality of this yarn is ridiculous--at several points it frayed to a hair's thickness, and I had to cut the yarn and start the ball again from the beginning of the row. (I've used Swish Worsted on several projects, and I like it, so I don't know what the deal is with the DK.)
I used buttons from my grandparents' tin--not the cutest option, but cute enough given that I had the right number. I have a half dozen heart-shaped buttons, but I'd rather save them for a project where I can use all six.
(Olivia's birthday was back in November, but I only got a chance to snap some photos just before Christmas, and when I went to Ireland and England I left my camera cable at home.)Raveled here.
Hat for a Wise Man
This is one of my favorite pictures of my grandfather--it conveys his personality so perfectly. He is playful and loving and unself-consciously wise; my favorite expressions of his are Don't take no wooden nickels! and What God's got in store for you ain't gonna pass you by.
Pattern: a mash-up of the Norwegian Star Earflap Hat and Sally Pointer's Owls and Flowers chart (both Ravelry links); I changed the earflap shaping though, and added the chin-strap and buttons.Yarn: Cascade 220 Heathers, one skein each of galaxy, turtle, and strawNeedles: #6s for the strap and #7s for the hat itself.Gauge: 24 sts and 32 rows over 4" on #6s; 20 sts on #7s.Raveled here.
(No, he is not having a convulsive fit.)Grandpop to Grandmom: Turn off the damn light!Kate: You two are cursing up a storm tonight.Grandpop: That's married life for you. Now hand me that shoehorn.
Onion Pie, mmm mmm!
[Update, 2016: check out the vegan version!]
My sister and I are doing some of the cooking for Thanksgiving this year, and today I baked this simple-but-delicious savory pie for the first time. My grandmother used to make it for family dinners.
3 cups sliced cubed onions
3 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon pepper
1 pastry shell
My favorite pastry recipe is from David Tanis' A Platter of Figs, which yields two crusts and is equally great for sweet and savory:
2 cups flour
2 sticks of butter (cut into thin slices)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 egg, beaten, and enough cold water to make 1/2 cup
Mix the flour, butter, and salt, then add the egg and water. It'll be a little sloppy, so you'll need to throw in a bit of extra flour to make the whole thing come together. This dough needs refrigerating for an hour.
Anyway, back to the filling instructions:
Sauté onions in butter until tender. Pour in pastry shell. Beat eggs slightly then add milk, salt and pepper. Pour mixture over onions. Bake at 425º F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.
Some notes:
This recipe makes a 9" pie.
I added some cumin and fresh basil to the basic recipe.
I used both yellow and red onions.
The two pies were in the oven for just about half an hour.
(I'd rather not use disposable pie pans, but I am making six.)