Of my mother’s four siblings, all raised solo by my grandmother Anna, one opened a grocery store, Fisher Foods in nearby Newport. One remained a butcher with a packing plant until the plant shut down. My mother Gert moved to Chicago during WWII, worked as a secretary, and just after the war met my father, Albert. Like my grandfather, my father died young. As my Polish grandmother told me just after my father died, “Jacky, your Pa sure left your Ma in a fix.” Gert worked as a secretary until she died.