My Father

This enigmatic photo of my father, in a double-breasted suit holding a crab by the tail on a pier, has always fascinated me.  I can guess that the photo was taken at some point in the late 1940's or early 1950's but I don't know anything else about it.  The image raises a series of obvious questions, but what I love about it is the look of wonder on my father's face.  He often had that look of wonder, taking satisfaction from the small things in life, never taking anything for granted.  His gentleness is also evident from the image-this was the thing I remember most about him. Although physically a powerful man, he had a gentle and sweet disposition, rarely exhibiting anger.  He was, quite simply, the most gentle man I have ever known.

Pasquale Resti was born on July 25, 1918, in Manhattan, the third son of Andrew and Mary Resti.  The 1920 federal census shows their address as 96 Oliver Street, on the lower East Side  Although that building has been destroyed and replaced by a high-rise, neighboring buildings still exist-six-story walk-ups with storefronts on the street level. It was an Italian ghetto, with virtually all of the families living there immigrants or first-generation Italian-Americans.

 The same census document, which shows the family name as Resta, describes the family: My grandfather Andrew, 33, a driver in the paper stock industry, Mary, my grandmother, who was  23,and the three boys, Frank, 5, Joe, 4 and Patsy, 1.  Andrew, an Italian immigrant who arrived from Italy in about 1904, was born Andrea Resti in 1886.  Mary, ten years younger, was born Maria Palermo, in New York City in 1896.  She was a first-generation American, since both of her parents were born in Italy.  Curiously, she is shown in the 1920 census as an alien, notwithstanding her birth in the United States, probably due to prevailing law, which stripped American citizenship from a native-born citizen who married an alien.

This is the last mention of Mary Resti or Maria Palermo in a federal census.  By the 1930 census, Mary and my father were no longer with my grandfather.  In 1930, Andrew Resta, was living with only two of his sons, Frank and Joe, at 53 Orchard Street, still on the Lower East Side.  His age is shown as 41 and he is occupation is as a pushcart peddler.  Significantly,  his marital status is widower.  My father, by this time, was living with Vito and Columbia Longobardo at 54-68 48th Street in Maspeth.  He is shown as a step-grandson but there is no mention of Mary.

Tracking down my grandmother has been a vexing task.  I recently found a record of her marriage to my grandfather in 1913.  In fact, there were two marriages between Maria Palermo and Andrea Reste (another spelling), on 2/5/1913 and 5/17/1913, but no information as to why.  She was 16 or 17 at the time of her marriage.  Neither she nor my father were with the Longobardos in 1925 and she was not with them in 1930.  Family lore is that she was supposed to marry one of the Longobardos but that she died before they could be married and my father was raised primarily by Columbia Logobardo, his "step-grandmother.  Maria Palermo simply disappeared from public documents after 1920, another mystery that I need to uncover.


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