Joseph Rozman Memoir

Family Traits -- March 25, 2010

Recently I received friendly chastisement for not forwarding comments regarding my memories and attitudes related to the family traits, and so now allow me to join in with my recollections.  I will begin with the people outside of Pittsburgh and work my way

in.

All of our lineage goes back to the Bagdes family name so I'll start there.  I always thought that the Bagdes girls made the Bagdes family the classiest family I ever knew.  Pat was older, close to my dad’s age so my memories of  her were few.  Fabby was about the same age as Kash and Joe Waitkus and George Rozman and fit in well with them.    A coincidence is that my granddaughter Becca is in school with a Fabian Bagdes.  He must be Fabby's grandson.  I knew Fabby well.  I served the wedding mass for he and Francis.  (The Antanovich home on Warner St. was about one city block from the Rozman house on Lake Street.)

Rose Bagdes lost several children who, either at birth, shortly after birth or during the 1918 flu epidemic died long before I was born.  The remaining girls, Ann, Veronica,Teresa and Agnes were all beautiful, intelligent, classy and graceful.  Ann was probably the nicest person I ever knew. I was saddened to learn of her death some time after she had passed.   Agnes was the same age as my sister and the closest Bagdes girl my age and I thought the world of her.   Even though she was a year and a half older than me, a foot and a half taller and a decade and a half more mature, I really liked her.  .   I was extremely sorry to see the Bagdes family move to Detroit.  I believe that Rose had some Racis family relatives living there.  I didn't know Alex well.  I was eight years old when he died in 1940.  He was laid out at home and I recall the night before the funeral as the first time I was awake all night without sleeping.  As was the custom all of the mourners stayed up all night long.  I remember looking out of the window as it was turning daylight and saw the hearse was towards the house and thinking of the words to the country hymn "Can the circle be unbroken."  

When the Bagdes family moved away it was as though the sunshine was a little less bright.  Everyone would miss them.  We were proud to say that we were related to them.  (Probably at least until the husband of one of the girls bought a 1958 Edsel.)  Fabby stayed on in Western Pennsylvania.  After he left the mines, He was a motorman for the trolley company, Pittsburgh Railways.  After they took away the trolley lines, he drove a bus.  Later he ultimately moved to Florida where he lived with intermittent trips to visit or vacation until he passed away.  Of all of the Bagdes family, to me Fabby was the most memorable.  While I write this, two things stand out above all others.  The first is that once while hospitalized in Fla., Fabby took the form whereon one could indicate their preferences in food for the upcoming meals, he folded it in such a way that space was left for him to write in my name and address

and a message for the recipient and another open space for the postage stamp.  He mailed it and it was actually delivered.  The second is that  Fabby came for my father's funeral in 1983.  Fabby wore a very nice brown suit with white shirt and brown tie.  He also had long white hair and a full white beard.  He looked every bit  a mountain man.  The older and Lithuanian side of the family all knew what to expect from Fab but everyone else was shocked when this man that they could mistake for a mountain man was so well-spoken, articulate, intelligent and clever.  I can picture him standing on the back porch with people standing by him and below him in the yard, mesmerized with his oratory.  He too is missed. 

The Waitkus family lived on Dombrosky Ave. in Logan's Ferry Heights (although I

don't recall the term heights used in conversation back then), It was directly across

the street from a community water tower.  It was about one quarter mile from Dell Ave- nue and the Bagdes family home and a good mile and a half walk up the hill from the trainstop for the  train from Pittsburgh to New Kensington.  I was a very

impressionable kid and always thought of the family as being just like  the family in "How Green Was My Valley".   Similar to the movie, the family was comprised of the mother and father (Karoline and Tony) with a strong spirited daughter, Ann, and four very big and strong sons (Kash, Joe, Pete and Paul).    The movie story was told through the eyes of a the youngest son, a young child of about six years.  Paul, the youngest Waitkus was already about twelve at my earliest recollections.  Whenever

we got together (perhaps six or seven times a year) with the Waitkus family, it was always joyous and festive.  There was always food, drink, music and noise.  I"m sure, as in most families, the Waitkus family members must have had fights and disagreements but none in my recollections,  They always appeared happy, strong

and together.  

Our family visited the Waitkus family at least every quarter and more frequent  for parties, picnics, celebrations and other special events.  The first time I got drunk (if

you could call it that) was at the Waitkus house when I was eight years old.  Kash

and Agnes got married in 1940 in New York City.  They had a reception in NYC and had a big party in the cellar of  the Waitkus house in Logans Ferry a couple of months later.  I was eight and Paul was about fourteen and kept slipping me small glasses of beer.  All in all, I probably drank a total of one glass of beer but it was enough to

cause my head to start spinning and make me somewhat nauseated. 

I didn't know at the time but the reason we visited them at least every quarter

because my dad was making quarterly loan payments to Mrs. Waitkus.  Two months after my mother and dad were married, the stock market crashed.  Subsequently, like a lot of people, my dad lost his job.  My sister Dorothy was born in July 1930 which exacerbated the situation.  My grandparents had a little money in a bank on Beaver Avenue but that bank collapsed and there were no safety nets to assuage the situation.  My dad thought that he could open his own business but there was no money available to start a business,  Tony and Karoline Waitkus offered to lend my dad the money.  I imagine the loan was for less than $500 and I don't know the rate or terms but my parents borrowed the money, and they dutifully recognized their obligation and we made the trip to Logan Ferry to make the periodic payments.   I

don't know how long  this arrangement continued but say the period was five years and the amount to be repaid was $500 then the quarterly repayment amount would have been $25.  The food and drink we consumed could have very well exceeded

that amount.  Especially when my grandparents or cousins Vernie and Teddy or anyone else came along. 

The ones I was most familiar with were Kash and Joe.  To me, Kash was like the

elder son in How Green Was My Valley.  Once my sister Dorothy, cousin Teddy and I were taken by Ann Bagdes to New Kensington on a Saturday to watch the big Fireman's Parade (it seemed like five hours of Fire Trucks driving past us).  Then we were to spend the week sleeping over at different relatives houses.  I was about nine which would have placed Dodo and Teddie both at somewhere around eleven.  We were to spend two nights each at Joe and Frances' Logans Ferry house, John and 

Ann Hicks' house in Renton and Kash and Agnes' house in Unity.   I think Dodo was homesick and lasted only one or two nights and someone got her back to Pittsburgh.  I I remember the big vegetable garden in Logans Ferry and young John taking me up

to see the strip mine (it was like a moonscape with nothing but dirt and rocks without any vegetation at all).  At that time I think Kash had left the mines, was working in industry and was starting a nursery.  They had chickens, rabbits and a goat.  (How impressive that was to a boy with a concrete back yard).

The Solosky family members that I knew were sisters Vernie and Nettie.  Vernie's daughter Teddie Ingold Nahm called me a couple weeks ago for my annual birthday phone call.  During our conversation I told Teddie that Nettie was downright beautiful but I never gave Vernie recognition for being as pretty as she was only because I

knew her first as Teddie’s mother.  Once one starts thinking along those lines, that's

all you think of her.  From photos you can recognize how beautiful she also was.  Teddy and I were very close growing up.  I know that Nettie married Art George and they owned The Burro Cafe on West Liberty Avenue in Dormont.  That was so long ago that I don't even know what's in that building today. 

At Vernie’s wake,  I got there so early that I was the first and only one there.  The funeral director told me where to park and I went in to pay my respects.  I was the

only one there and I looked  at Vernie's body and thought about what a hard life she had but I knew that all of our family elders had hard lives but they protected all of us as children from being too openly exposed to it.  God bless them all.   

The Rozman's  in my memory were always associated with 1325 Lake Street.  There were other residences before that but they were never explained to me.  My father came to this country with his mother in 1911.  My father was four years old.  We tried looking them up on the Ellis Island website with no luck and then subsequently

learned that they came through Baltimore. I remember my grandmother as the sweetest, kindest, most gentle and nicest person imaginable.  She was very devout and went to mass everyday of her life until she moved away from Manchester.  I remember a missionary came to our church from Lithuania and stayed for about two weeks.  He said a daily mass at 7 am and I was asked to serve at those masses.  At each mass there was the priest, me, my grandmother and occasionally perhaps three other people.  I never knew my grandmother to miss mass when a church was within walking distance.  

At home she was always busy doing her household chores and singing.  Her singing was something like a blend of singing, humming and simply la-la-la.  Her singing

voice was very high and pleasant.  At Sunday mass when the church was crowded two voices stood out above all others; one was the high pitched voice of Anna Rozman and the other was a deep unidentified (at least to me) male voice.  At the house there was always something on the stove and to this day every once in a while a certain melody or an aroma will carry me back to those days on Lake Street with beautiful, pleasant memories. 

Whenever she was at any place near a wooded area she would go and gather plants and herbs.  These were kept in jars in her pantry and she had used them as a remedy to cure all ailments.  They seemed to always work.  (Maybe that's where George became fond of chemistry).   I have very fond memories of my grandmother.  

In the past, in conversations with John Hicks and also Patti Kaufman I've said "its

hard to imagine that my grandmother and their grandmother, Karoline Waitkus, were sisters mainly because Mrs. Waitkus was frightening.  In retrospect, that is so very unfair to Mrs. Waitkus.  She never did anything to me to appear frightening.  I think it was because of her stature.  She was fairly large and had a commanding presence.  That plus the fact that she had a husband, daughter and four big sons and to all, she was the boss.   I never dreamed of calling her anything other than Mrs Waitkus.  Her presence called for it. 

My grandfather died at Allegheny General Hospital during an operation in 1942 when

I was ten.  I was at the house on Lake Street when my grandmother and Georgie came into the house crying.  George came to me and said, "Go home and tell your

dad that his father died."  Three times I've had to deliver that news, face to face, to people about a loved one and its one thing that never gets easier.  My memories of my grandfather are therefore not as extensive as those of my grandmother.  Physically, he was short, only a couple inches taller than my grandmother.  When you would see the two of them walking together they made a charming couple.  Walking arm in arm and being similar in size and both with white hair they looked as if they just stepped out of a photograph. My grandfather had a beautiful white curl that frequently fell down onto  the middle of his forehead.   My dad told me that he was quite a jokester and told of some of the pranks he pulled.  The only thing that he did to me was, once when we were having the egg breaking contest at Easter, he slipped in a decorated but raw egg.  It made quite a mess and left a lasting memory on me. 

In Lithuanian, the family name was pronounced Rozminas.  I don’t know exactly when they dropped the “as” or “is” from the name.  My son Steve has a pocket watch that was awarded to my Grandfather by some company in Chicago.  Rozminas is the spelling on the watch but when my father was Naturalized, they used the spelling Rozman.  My grandfather worked at National Casket Company.  I remember Mr. Wenslovas, the funeral director, telling us at my grandfather's wake that my grandfather's job required that he work on virtually every casket and it was fairly certain that he worked on his own casket.