Wow, it was nice to hear back from both of you. Briefly, my grandmother was born Aurelia Emma Ratto on June 27, 1890, at her parents' house in East Boston, MA. Her parents were natives of Genoa, Italy (Anna Lavezzo and Gianbatiste Ratto) who arrived in America some time in the late 1800's...Gianbatiste was the captain of a ship of some sort (not a passenger ship, probably like a merchant marine) and they had orignally intended to emigrate to Argentina, somehow ended up in America by way of San Francisco, I believe...not sure how they ended up out East here. Her father became a fruit vendor in Boston. Anyhow...she was a woman ahead of her time...went to college for a year, did not get married until she was 32 years old. She had two sons, my uncle Jack, who died suddenly in 1995 (*when she was 108 years old, very devastating) and my father, who is about to be 78 yrs. old. She did not profess to have any secrets to living long - just good genes and good luck, I guess. Two of her brothers died in the 1929 influenza epidemic, and as I mentioned, the rest of her siblings were all dead before I was born. She was literally, never sick in all the years that I knew her (she was 80 when I was born and made her first and only trip to Europe that year) - never so much as a sniffle. After my uncle's death, my father took to staying with her most of the time (likea good Italian boy), but, when her eyesight really began to fail and he became afraid of her having a fall at home, she moved to a nursing home at age 109! She was still pretty alert and aware during the last years of her life - she would sometimes call my father by his brother's or father's name, etc., but remained remarkably coherent, considering her age. The things she saw and lived through are mind-boggling...to be born in an age of gas lights and horse and carriages and to die in the age of technology we live in now - her husband fought in WWI and both sons in WWII...too much to even comprehend in over 100 years of history and the greatest and fastest changes to the world since it began, probably. I thank you so much for your interest and for the chance to tell some of her story, however abbreviated. Please feel free to ask any questions and check out the grg.org website if you are interested in learning more about what they do.
Norma