Ancestry Magazine

Do you have a hero in your family? Recently, as I was having lunch with Dr. Rudy Vecoli, professor of history at the University of Minnesota, and Beau Sharbrough, president of GENTECH, the conversation turned to the events of September 11th and the heroes whose actions have come to light since that tragic day. We agreed that much of what those heroes did will be preserved and published. And it should be that way. But we also decided that there are far too many quiet heroes whose deeds will not be remembered simply because we don’t take the time to tell or record their stories.

Rudy spoke of his mother, Settima, as the most courageous person he has known. She endured much with great dignity and a sense of humor. She had been orphaned at the age of seven; shortly thereafter her eldest brother was killed. Of necessity, she became a servant with a landed family. After her fiance died during World War I, she accepted an arranged marriage with an immigrant from her village, because she did not want to remain a servant all her life. Crossing the Atlantic, she hoped to find a better life in America. It was not to be. She suffered one sorrow after another, an abusive husband, a sickly child, an invalid daughter, the tragic death of a grandson. She had reason for fear and despair, but she carried on because of her love for her children. Rudy reminded us that without fear and hardship, there is no need for courage.

Beau designated his Uncle Bill and Uncle Red a s heroes. He said, “Uncle Bill carried a rifle from Sicily, through Anzio to Berlin so we would all be free to do the stupid things we do.” His Uncle Red tried unsuccessfully to get into the army, but he was too young. In his zeal to serve, he ended up joining the “tree army.” I had to confess ignorance to the “tree army,” and Beau explained that those who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps planted trees.

Beau believes, “You get courage by facing fear and the most courageous are not necessarily those who rush into danger, but those who take the risk to fail to accomplish what they believe in.”

My Aunt Madelon, the woman who raised me, is one of my heroes. She was twelve years old when her mother died, placing her at her father’s side to raise four younger siblings. That she did a good job in this undesired maternal role is evidenced in the stories that survive her. Something that happened when she was just a girl illustrates the resolve she demonstrated throughout her life. She and her siblings were doing the wash when a sister’s hand got caught in the “new fangled” electric clothes wringer. She later chastened her sisters, one for fainting at the sight, the other for screaming and running instead of staying with her and helping to free the hand before it became mangled in the machine.

As a bride, Madelon left the comforts of family, friends, and the conveniences of city life in New York to move to a rugged mining camp in Mexico to be with her husband. Under the harshest conditions, she gave birth to and raised four children in a country where she had to struggle to learn the language and a new culture. When it was time to put her children in school, she made yet another courageous move, this time to Texas. It meant that she had to leave her beloved husband for nine months of every year, while he remained in Mexico to earn a living for the family as a mining engineer.

Madelon’s life is full of e xamples of strength that I want future generations to know about. One of the biggest risks she took, and certainly the most life-altering for me, was bringing me into her home when I was an infant. She had raised her children by then and surely could have chosen an easier life by saying no to that option. But she embraced me as though I were her own child. I remember well the tales she used to tell me of her childhood and her life in a frontier territory. From the details of how a city girl learned to kill and clean a chicken, to her experiences with floods, a volcano, and nursing her son through a life-threatening case of meningitis, she became to me a “profile of courage.”

All of us have heroes in our families and it’s up to us to see that their quiet, yet memorable acts of courage are preserved and disseminated so that future generations can take strength from them.

—Loretto (Lou) Dennis Szucs, Executive Editor