I was thinking about heroes and earth angels this morning as I was drinking my coffee. I have had the pleasure of knowing a few heroes over the course of my life. Earth angels who made us all better people. I wrote the following story years ago about one of my heroes and think it’s time to post it again.
As you read the story, think about your own earth angels and how they made you a better person. Then, go out and BE that for someone else.
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Flour Soup – The inspiring story of one woman’s rise from poverty to prosperity
By Katharine Giovanni
A while back I attended a workshop conducted by a friend of mine. Towards the end of the day, the workshop leader looked at the group and asked us all to write down who our “hero” was, and then tell the class why we chose this individual. I immediately wrote down a name without hesitation and waited while everyone else thought about it.
The name of my hero? Eleanor. My mother-in-law.
Now Eleanor may not have been financially prosperous during her life, but she was prosperous in love and life and was perhaps the richest person I have ever met.
Here is her inspiring story …
About a year before she died, my husband Ron and I took the family out to dinner as we were on our way back home to North Carolina and wanted to do something nice for his mom before we left. It was a normal evening and we chatted about this and that while waiting for our food to arrive. After our drinks were served, mom looked at me with the strangest expression on her face and told me she wanted to talk to me. For the next hour she told me the most amazing story of courage and love that I have ever heard in my life.
Eleanor was born on May 13, 1931, and was the eldest child of thirteen. The world was a different place back then. The stock market had just crashed, and America was in the throes of the great depression. Money was a commodity and many families lived in deep poverty. Eleanor came from one of those families.
As I sat there and listened, the first thing she told me was that her parents had no income. How is that possible I wondered. How can you live with no money coming in at all? I had a hard time wrapping my brain around it and asked her about it. She just shrugged and said it was simply the way it was. To survive, she said, they lived in abandoned apartment buildings in Hoboken, NJ. With no heat or hot water and little food, life was hard. They used dresser drawers as cribs for the babies that came along and stood in the long food lines for rice and potatoes. The Salvation Army had a food pantry of sorts, she explained, and her mother would go there for free donations of food and clothing.
I wondered about how they got shoes and was told the Salvation Army gave them to her family. Her mother put cardboard in the shoes when they got holes in them so more than one child could wear them. Cat baths (a bowl of cold water and a washcloth) were a daily ritual and hunger was constant.
“Did you know that my mother made us eat flour soup?” mom told me with a strange smile on her face. I immediately cringed at the very thought of it and she laughed at my reaction. It seems that a soup of flour and water was often all her mother could offer the family to eat.
“So where was your father through all of this?” I asked. She just shrugged her shoulders at me. A gambler who was rarely at home, her father used whatever money he managed to get his hands on to gamble with his friends. She suspected that he was an illegal immigrant and couldn’t work because of it. If you can believe it, her father even had a girlfriend on the side and often brought her over to the apartment for lunch. Her mother had to make a meal for the woman! I could clearly see the deep pain and anger towards her father wash over her face as she spoke of it, and a tear formed in her eyes as the memory took her back in time.
Stunned, I could only sit there and listen. I had no words and was hanging on to her every word as the story unfolded.
Eleanor quit school in the fourth grade so that she could stay home and help her mother raise all the children. At 13, she landed her first job and after working for two weeks earned her first paycheck of $20. She gave $18 of it to her mother and kept $2 for herself. She then took all her brothers and sisters to the store and bought them each a piece of candy.
Imagine, her first paycheck … possibly the first money she had ever had in her life … and she gave it all away. In fact, she continued to do this for the rest of her life whenever she had money. It is who she was.
In 1948 she married and finally moved out of the house into her own apartment. After her third child was born, however, she discovered that her husband had been cheating on her, and she swiftly kicked him out of the house. They had an on-again, off again relationship for several years until one day her sisters talked mom into giving Nick one more chance. So once more she let him come back home on a Friday, but by Monday she was fed up and kicked him out for good. To her surprise, she discovered she was pregnant with her fourth child the following month.
My husband Ron was the product of that weekend.
For the next decade, mom was on and off welfare while raising four children by herself. The money helped feed her children and keep a roof over their heads because her ex-husband gave her no financial support, and never asked to see his children. He just left. Spam and eggs were a staple in the house, and she earned money by cleaning people’s homes for $5 a day.
In 1964, the family got its first black and white television.
In 1965 she remarried again and had her fifth child. Tragically, her husband died of a heart attack when her youngest son was only a few months old.
In 1967 she finally got her first telephone, and got a job being a superintendent for an apartment building in exchange for free rent. She shoveled coal into huge furnaces every day, shoveled snow and debris from the sidewalks, and cleaned the halls. Still, through all of this she carried on with dignity, courage and love for her family. She never once complained and gave everything she had, often at the expense of herself.
Love was abundant and she served it to the family daily.
Around 1970, she found work at a local college fraternity house in Hoboken. Since the frat boys couldn’t afford to pay her, they would give her the leftovers from dinner to take home in lieu of money. She worked through the years whenever and wherever she could. She took her children to museums and the park and gave them large doses of love. She even made them all learn how to swim because she was terrified of the water and didn’t want her children to be like her in that respect. She sent them to the YMCA in the summer when she could, and to the fire escape for picnics when she couldn’t. Then, when some grandchildren came along unexpectedly, she simply rolled up her sleeves, opened her heart and welcomed them all in.
My husband told me he often caught her crying in the kitchen at night as she wondered where she was going to find food for them all in the morning. Her sisters and brothers would help her out over the years, and her children in her later years.
I sat at that table completely stunned as she told her story. I couldn’t speak and tears formed in my eyes as I listened. She never got angry, nor did she blame anyone. She did take a bite of food now and then as she spoke, and she kept putting her hand on my arm with an urgent look in her eyes. Knowing I was a writer, it was as if she was silently asking me to please write all of this down. When she was finished I gave her the biggest hug I could manage and went to the ladies room to dry my eyes and try and compose myself.
Here was a woman who survived the great depression, helped raise 12 brothers and sisters, raised 5 children of her own by herself, and never asked anything from anyone. She turned a childhood filled with poverty, famine and fear into a life of love, dignity, respect and generosity. In fact, her dignity, strength, and inspiring courage can still be found today in her children and grandchildren. All of them are warm, loving, intelligent and generous people who would give you the shirt off their back if you asked them to. I have never met a more incredible family.
Eleanor was a woman who could have been angry, but was not.
She could have sunk in despair, but never did.
She could have given up, but never did.
Eleanor might not have had money, but she did have an incredible abundance of love that came from deep inside her soul and surrounded her like an extraordinary white light. The love came out of every part of her body and washed over you when she put her arms around you. The twinkle in her eyes, the laugh from her heart, and the warmth of her words were all extraordinary, especially when you knew her story.
She was a proud woman who never asked anyone for anything, and never wanted to be a bother. In fact, she often walked herself to the hospital when she was ill because she didn’t want to “bother” anyone – a completely selfless act. What she didn’t realize is that she was never a bother because we all loved her with every fiber of our being.
After many years of being sick with a host of illnesses too numerous to mention, Eleanor tragically died on June 1, 2004. It took the wind out of all our sails and I felt like I did when I had lost my own mother 14 years before. I found comfort in knowing that she died the way she lived – courageously.
On the day of her funeral, a good friend of my husband arranged for a police escort to take us to the cemetery. A fitting end for such an incredible woman and she absolutely deserved the respect. All who knew her loved her.
At her funeral, my husband Ron was talking quietly with his best friend Richie. At one point, Ron looked him in the eye and said…
“You know, my mom was a good lady.”
Ritchie put his arm around his old friend and replied, “No you’re wrong, she was a GREAT lady.”
I think that just about says it all.
As I sat at my sister-in-law’s kitchen table after the funeral was all over, I looked at her death certificate and noticed that it listed her occupation as homemaker. I actually think they got it wrong … I think they should have written “hero” instead.
Eleanor was the world’s lighthouse. She was a shining example of how to do it right, and everyone who knew her loved her. She turned a world of serious negativity into a positive love-filled one. In fact, most of us would have folded under the pressure of it all. Not Eleanor. She had this incredible habit of picking herself up when life threw her down. So she not only survived it, but also raised five children (and helped raise three grandchildren). Eleanor taught me lessons about love and humanity that will carry me to the end of my days.
She was perhaps the greatest teacher of them all.
Quite simply, Eleanor is my hero. Her quiet dignity and strength will serve as my personal lighthouse for the rest of my days, and when life gets me down I will remember her courage and will carry on with my head held up high.
What did Eleanor do when the days got dark? She held her head up high, put some love in her heart, and kept on walking. She would carry on. I can do no less.
I’ll see you again Mom.
Copyright © 2004-2021 by Katharine Giovanni. All Rights Reserved.
