The fear of my father and the pressure from federal agents combined with the beginning of a severe drinking problem prompted my mother to find a divorce lawyer. She met a young attorney by the name of Marvin Arth. In order to explain this strange relationship it's important to offer a little bit of background on Marvin. He grew up in a small town called Great Bend, Kansas and attended Kansas University where he received his degree in journalism. He received a law degree and was set up for practice in Ohio where he and my mother were introduced. Marvin represented my mother in the divorce, which played out more like a criminal trial than a divorce proceeding. The procedure was long and drawn out and in the end, my mother lost everything. After the divorce, my mother packed us up and we fled Ohio. She was afraid and felt that we needed to go into hiding. While she never outright told me that our lives were in danger, as an adult, I realized that her fear at the time was real. She belived whole-heartedly that my father would kill us. Her natural instinct was to run and hide, which is exactly what we did. I was around 6 years old at the time and remembered the last visit I had with my father. He took my brother and I shopping for Christmas and I never saw him again. That is until I was 21 years old.

The irony here is that had my grandfather still been alive at the time, I do not believe the outcome would have been the same. Italians tend to cheerish family. This was indeed a unique set of circumstances that literally sent the lives of my mother, brother, and myself in a new direction.

The kingdom begins to crumble

With Elsa back home in Canada, my parents relocated the Cincinnati, Ohio, my mother’s birthplace. They bought a three-bedroom house in a new suburb on Dailey Rd. It was a nice neighborhood and my parents were considered the richer couple on the block. I am not sure why they chose to go to Ohio, but I am guessing it was the only place my mother felt safe at the time. By June of 1958, my mother was pregnant with my brother, Umberto Jr.

For the next year, my father did not spend a lot of time at home, I am not sure what he did or where he did it. I do know that he had taken a vow to find the killers of my grandfather. What he did to see that vow through, I do not know, nor do I want to know. My brother was born in February of 1959 and for the time being, they lived the life of a typical family in the suburbs. While they still fought a lot, my father was gone enough for my mother to deal with the situation. She became pregnant with me in May of 1960 and I was born in January of 1961.

At that time, from the outside looking in, our family appeared to be the perfect American couple. Nice house, nice cars, nice clothes, and lacking for nothing. That was just one view. On the inside, the story was entirely different. The arguments were an everyday occurrence when my father was home. They fought about everything from money to yard care. I am pretty sure though, money was never a real factor. I remember my father driving a new car every couple of month. I also remember seeing cash in the basement wrapped in aluminum foil. We would vacation in Florida and Atlantic City.

As a coping mechanism, my mother began to drink. I honestly cannot recall a time when alcohol did not play an important part in my mother’s day-to-day life when I was a young child. I also remember the escalation of the arguments. The stress level when my father was at home was thick. At the age of four I remember being in the bathtub and hearing my father scream that my brother and I were not his real children and my mother blocking the bathroom door as he threatened to kill us. My mother’s fear was growing and it would be just a matter of time before everything would collapse.

What I did not understand as a young child is that my mother was also being pressured from another source, federal agents. They harassed her to tell them what my father was doing. Not only was she afraid of my father, but she was beginning to fear for her life and the lives of my brother and I. She quietly decided to seek out an attorney.

The death of the Mafia Don

Despite the dislike of Elsa for my mother and her refusal to accept her into the family, my mother, and father got married. The marriage was rocky from the start due to the fact that my father grew up privileged attending the best schools, private tutors, and lack for nothing and my mother’s upbringing as a bastard child. The chemistry was there but the lives were completely opposite. They fought a lot and as a result, my mother and Albert grew close. It was simply unacceptable for dissolution of marriage in the fifties, especially in an Italian family. Albert would take my mother out to lunch and they would talk for hours. Hindsight tells me that the only reason my mother stayed in the family was the close relationship she had with Albert. He took the place of the father that she never had.
Over the years, my mother would talk about Albert with compassion and love. It did not matter to her what others said, he was a Saint in her eyes and would remain so until the day she died. He treated her kindly and loved her as a father would love a daughter. In essence, he fulfilled Maslow’s belongingness level in my mother’s life. Elsa, on the other hand, treated my mother with disdain and hatred. She simply had no need for a non-Italian daughter-in-law and never missed an opportunity to belittle my mother, especially in front of my father. You must remember, Albert Jr, was her baby, and no woman would ever be good enough for him. While the fights continued at home, mom stayed with my father because of Albert’s pleas to keep the family together.

They lived in New Jersey until October of 1957 when my Grandfather died. His was no ordinary death; he died in an unspeakable manner. At 10:20 in the morning on Oct. 25, 1957, he stopped into the barbershop at the Park Sheraton Hotel for a shave and haircut. He frequented the establishment operated by Arthur Grasso. That morning, he sat in the fourth of twelve barber chairs and leaned back as barber Joseph Bocchino placed a hot towel on his face. Two masked gunmen burst into the shop and unloaded handguns into the 55-year-old his body. He was hit in his head, back, right hip, and left hand. Witnesses said he lunged from the chair and attacked the reflection of his attackers in the mirror in front of him before collapsing dead in a pool of blood on the floor. The killers were never caught and this began what would become a slow spiral down for my mother.

After Albert died, the family, and I mean the wife and children were confused and afraid. A small funeral was held, simple ceremony was conducted in front of an inexpensive coffin, and Elsa wept loudly and nearly collapsed. Very few people attended other than my father, mother, Elsa, Glorianna, his brother Tony, and a few very close friends. He was buried without much fanfare in a non-Catholic ceremony in New Jersey.

For the next four months, my mother and father stayed in the house in Fort Lee, along with Elsa protected by two Doberman Pincher guard dogs, one of which was still alive when I was born. They were armed and afraid. They helped Elsa back her things and while clearing out the house my mother found over $80 thousand dollars hidden in a dumb waiter. Not surprising for the times. In February 1958, Elsa left the family home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and returned to Canada. Reporters located her at a large, two-story brick house in the North End neighborhood of Toronto's North York suburb. Her decision to leave was apparently a hasty one. On March 10, 1958, a Newark, New Jersey, court dismissed her application for U.S. citizenship because she did not appear for a hearing.

Cinderella and Prince Charming - The beginning

At the end of World War II, the American culture changed. What had always been a culture of lean living and survival quickly began to transform into a culture of abundance. The housing industry began to boom and the country saw more disposable income than had ever been available before. A middle class began to emerge. For younger men and women, Hollywood created new ideas of romance and excitement and New York City was the ultimate place to live if someone wanted a life of adventure and excitement.

The New York Night Club scene was the place to be if you wanted to have the best time and experience the sophisticated supper clubs and Jazz clubs. Women went to the clubs to be noticed or discovered and maybe find Mr. Perfect, where men went to the nightclubs to have a good time. The glamorous allure of this type of living was nothing new to either my father or mother. They both took advantage of America’s new ideologies.

While I do not know the specific place they met, I do know it was in a Manhattan Hotel club. My mother was in her early twenties and my father was about a year younger than she was. He was still in the military and she was still modeling and dating to stay alive. Why they met or how they met remains a mystery, but the fact is, they did meet. My father was smitten with my mother. She was a tall, thin, and buxom bleached blonde woman of French and German decent. Her hazel green eyes were deep and her skin was beautiful. She was dressed to the hilt and every man in the room wanted to have her on his arm. My mother was taken by the handsome young Italian military man and he won the honor of being her date for the evening. The passion was unmistakable, and for the two it was the beginning of a heated romance.

For my mother, this was an adventure. For my father this was a taboo indulgence, as he knew his family would never accept my mother as a member of the family. When he did introduce her to his parents, it was obvious that Elsa would never accept her, while Albert liked her. They eventually married and the uphill struggle would begin
as the wife of the son of a Mafia Don.

Dad's side of the family - The mafia prince

My father grew up in a different environment. As with my mother’s side of the family, his parents immigrated to the U.S., only his father came from Calabria, Italy and his mother from Ontario Canada. Perhaps it’s easier to start with my grandfather. Born and raised in a small fishing village in Sicily. His last name was Anastasia, and immigrated (for lack of a better term) prior to WWI. In 1917, Umberto at 14 years of age jumped ship for fear of being sent back to Sicily. He and his brother swam to a Brooklyn dock in the dead of night, without shoes, and hiding with relatives until he could find work. He worked on the docks and became a longshoreman by the age of 16 but also a member of gang that robbed. He changed his last name to Anastasio to avoid bringing shame upon his family and being identified with them when he was mentioned in newspapers as a gangster, or so the story goes. Eventually, Albert became one of the most well known gangsters in American History. I choose not to go into the details of this history, if you want more information, do a Google search.

In 1937, Albert married Elsa Bargnesi where they settled in New York and then New Jersey. Elsa Bargneti, and Italian woman born in Ontario, Canada, in 1914, entered the United States through Detroit in 1934 and made her way to Brooklyn. She and Anastasia were married two years later, when he was 36 and she was 24. Together they lived the normal life of a Mafia Don and his family. As a family, they attended church, went to movies, and spent quality time together. Elsa bore Albert two children, a son (Albert Jr. , my father), and a daughter, Glorianna.

My grandfather did make an attempt to live an honest life. The beginning of American involvement in the Second World War provided Anastasia with a means to vanish from New York for a while and simultaneously improve his image. He enlisted in the armed forces on May 18, 1942. With his experience on the Brooklyn docks, he proved valuable to the military as an instructor. He was made a technical sergeant and assigned to the education of military longshoremen at Indiana Gap. Pennsylvania. This actually lead to U.S. citizenship.He took advantage of a special act of Congress, which granted speedy naturalization to aliens serving in the American armed forces, to become a citizen on June 29, 1943. He didn't mention any of his previous run-ins with the law on his citizenship application.At the end of the following year, the army discharged him because he was overage. He was nearly 43 at the time.

For the most part, the two children grew up privileged and attended the best schools money could buy. My grand parents built a new, 35-room, 5-bathroom house, valued at more than $75,000 at #75 Bluff Road in Fort Lee. The property was put in the name of Albert and Elsa Bargneti. The hillside mansion overlooked rolling hills and the Hudson River. It was never clear if my father was expected to join the family business, but as the children of first generation Italian immigrants, my father and his sister were expected to marry properly. In those days, it was still common to arrange marriages. From what my mother told me before her death, my father was supposed to marry Anna Maria Albergetti. However, this would never happen when my father and mother met in a New York nightclub.

While I do not have all the details of my Father's life I do know the following:

Completed High School and College
Served in the Military
Met my mother in a New York Nightclub

Mom's Side of the Family The Bastard Child in the Early 20th Century

During the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth century’s, thousands of German immigrants settled in the Midwest regions including Ohio. This was the case of my mother’s side of the family the Dessauer's. My Mother, Margaret, born in 1934 was the product of an unwed mother, which in those days was simply unacceptable. For the first couple of years of her life, Margaret was placed in an orphanage while a suitable husband was found for my grandmother. Once she was wed, Margaret was removed from the orphanage and taken to the family home in Cincinnati Ohio, where she lived most of the time with her own grandparents. When she was with her grandparents, my mother was a happy child showered with love.

The family lived in a big house on the top of a hill on the end of a block. The front yard had dozens of whitewashed trees and woods in the back. My mother loved the times she spent with her grandparents. She would explore the woods, climb the trees, and spent every moment she could playing outside in the wilderness. Her grandma and grandpa loved her dearly and treated her like their own daughter. She would spend hours listening to her grandfather tell stories of the old country and she never wanted to leave the saftey and comfort of grandparents home. Her great grandmother also lived in the family home and my mother would tell me story after story of this amazing woman. How she divorced her husband at a time when divorce was unheard of. How she would bang the pots and pans in the kitchen when she wanted to make a point. And how she was so independent at a time when most women were still considered chattel. These memoried where the ones that kept my mother growing. However, when her parents were in the picture, life took a darker turn.

Her parents spent a lot of time traveling and did not take my mother with them. Her stepfather was considered a great man for being willing to marry my Grandma. What no one knew was that from the time her daughter Margaret was a young girl her stepfather had his way with her. When he was not molesting her, she was the target of physical abuse, while her own mother stepped aside and let the actions continue. She never questioned him even when he still insisted on bathing Margaret at the age of 13. Her own shame kept her from intervening to help my mother. I remember the turmoil my mother suffered from the rest of her life because of this abuse. This lasted until Margaret made her way out of the home at the age of 18 to find a better place in life. The day she left, her stepfather told her never to come back. It was many years before she did return.

It's not real clear what my mother did for the next few years, but based on our conversations before her death, this is what it looks like.

Age 18 leaves Ohio and sets out for New York.
Finds a place to sleep in a small New York apartment with several roommates.
Works part time as a cheesecake model and professional escort to survive.
Spends most of her time in the nightclubs.
Meets my father sometime in her early twenties.

Maslow, life, and the Energizer Bunny

Ok, so who am I? This will be one of those blogs that may seem unbelievable at first, but I can assure you that every post is true. The methodology I plan to take is temporal, meaning that I will start at the very beginning and move forward through the different phases of my lives. This is one of those stories that doesn't make sense because the odds were never meant to be in my favor. However, with enough ambition and drive, it appears that one can make most things happen.

It's a bit like Maslow's heirarchy of needs (yes, I know I alread mentioned him). Ole Abraham was what we call a humanist. This means that he believed in the potential of people to push through the hard times to reach higher levels of understanding and comfort in life. Perhaps Maslow is the best way to describe the several lives I have lived in this one life time.

Picture a pyramid divided into to five levels.

Level 1: At the very bottom of the pyramid would like the most basic needs or what he called the physiological needs. These are our most instinctive needs. At this level we are in survival mode. We fight to have food, water, shelter, and the very basic elements of a constant body temperature and oxygen. Think about it. When you are thirsty, you drink. When you are hungry, you eat. When you are cold, you put on warmer clothing, and when you are hot you put on cooler clothing. We all have experienced this level at one time or another.

Level 2. The next level in Maslow's pyramid is called the need for safety. At this level we seek out comfort and protection from the world around us. A safe car to drive. A safe place to sleep. We want to be safe from the demons in the environment that may hurt us. Most of the time, we don't even realize that we are satisfying this need. But think about it like this. When a baby is scared she cries for mom or dad. One of them picks her up and holds her to reassure her that everything is ok. It's the need for this type of warm fuzzy that we are trying to satisfy at this level.

Level 3 of the pyramid is the need for love, friendship, and belonginess. While we may have a signifcant other at any level of the heirarchy, at this level we are looking for a sense of community. Social interaction. Acceptance by our peers, and yes, romance. It's kind of like when we were children and wanted to be included in the game. No one wants to be picked last, so we work to fit in so we are one of the first team members chosen. We may never be first, but we sure don't want to be last.

Level 4 of Maslow's pyramid takes us to a place where we seek to satisfy our need for respect or self-esteem. We not only want to be respected by those around us, but we want to have respect for ourselves. We want to feel good about our place in life. We want a bit of dignity. So if someone asks us what we do, we can answer the question proudly. Sometimes we even beef up our actual roles in life to make them sound more important. This would be that inherent need to be respected by those around us.

Level 5 is the very top of Maslow's heirarch or pryamid. This is called self-actualization. So what does that mean? Well, in layman's terms, it simply means that we want to do what we were born to day. Artists draw and paint. Musicians make music. Academics yearn to learn. Some people travel. Others volunteer. At this level we are doing the things that make us feel the very best.

There have been many people that have tweaked Maslow's concepts along the way, but for me, as a teacher and academic, I feel the basic elements of his theory fit the best. Keep in mind, that the climb up the pyramid is never one way. At any given time, we can topple back down when new needs present themselves.

So why use Maslow? This is one of those theories that stands the test of time. It's like the energizer bunny, it just keeps going. As you read through the posts, you can see the uphill and downhill flow of the pyramid that we all experience.

Taking a Breather from Life

Have you ever stayed at home for 3 or 4 days and done nothing? I think we need a break from life periodically. So once or twice a year, I rent a stack of movies, sit around the house and do nothing. It's a great way to cleanse the brain of stress and get caught up in make believe for a little while. No worries about the bills, the kids, the employees, or the world. Yes, eventually it does end, but at least we took a short breather from life.

Why do we expect so much from our grown children?

Maybe it's the fact that we spent years raising them and teaching them. Then they grow up, get married, and have kids. They have their own lives, but for some reason we feel that they are obligated to us because of the years we have invested in them.

Members of the animal world bare and raise offspring, but do they require thanks when the babies grow up? Not that I'm aware of. We humans are so needy. Rather than working on our own levels of satisfaction, we rely on others to satisfy our needs. Maybe Maslow is wrong. Rather thank an a continuous climb towards actualization, we spend so much time seeking out others to get us there, that we lose track of our own abilities.

Whatever the reason, it's time for us to lift our lazy buts of the millions of pitty pots and start dong something, anything. Our children owe us no more than we owe them or anyone else. It's part of the cycle of life, so move on.