First Posted: 3/16/2015
Editor’s note: This Optimist column first appeared in the March 13, 1988 edition of the Sunday Dispatch. It has been edited for space.
Exeter’s Andy Petonak (of Slovak descent, I believe) was the first to ever me mention to me that Wyoming Valley is possibly the only place in the nation where the question “What are you?” automatically brings a response of a nationality.
Any place else, someone might answer “What do you mean, what am I?”
But not here. Here people say “Italian,” or “Polish,” or “Irish.” Young and old alike, we all know what we are.
Well, maybe not ALL our young.
It’s been over 30 years and I still haven’t lived down something I told the teacher in kindergarten at the Barry School in Pittston Township.
We had just moved from Hughestown to East Oak Street in Browntown. On St. Patrick’s Day, the teacher asked the kids what we were.
I wasn’t quite sure, but I heard a classmate say “half and half” and that sounded about right to me.
“Half and half,” I announced proudly when it became my turn. “Half up in Hughestown and half down here.”
“Why didn’t I leave well enough alone?” I’ve often thought. It seems someone in the family tells that story every year.
The truth, I later learned, is that I was (and still am) three-quarters and one-quarter — predominantly German ancestry with a touch (I jokingly call it my “mean” streak) of Irish.
The Ackerman side is all German. Grammy and Grampy Ackerman were children of German immigrants. They grew up in homes where German was the first language, and said things like “telewision” and “wenitian blinds.” Which, naturally, made all us grandchildren laugh. But not in front of them.
Mom was a Strubeck, a fine German name as well. But her upbringing was much different than Dad’s. You see, Esther Strubeck, Mom’s mother, was the former Esther Moran. And whether you pronounced it “Mor-AN” or “Morn,” it was as Irish as Paddy’s pig, as Dick Cosgrove might say.
Their surname might have been Strubeck, but Mom and her brothers and sisters considered themselves Irish. They were raised on ham and cabbage (when there was money for ham) on weekdays, and potatoes and pot roast (when there was money for pot roast) on Sundays.
Still, as Irish as Mom believed she was, we never celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in our house. And we all knew the reason.
Bill Strubeck, Mom’s father, died on St. Patrick’s Day in 1936. Esther, his widow, was left to raise six children herself. Mom was the oldest. She was 13.
I don’t mean to give the impression that St. Patrick’s Day was a day of mourning in our house, because it wasn’t. But it wasn’t a day for celebration either.
March 17 took on an even greater significance for us in 1972. On that St. Patrick’s Day, 36 years to the day after her husband passed away, Ester Strubeck joined him. It seemed incredible, yet somehow proper.
So, more than ever, St. Patrick’s Day in our house became a day for remembering. The green beer never flows, but the memories sure do.
In our own way, we’ve begun to celebrate on this day. Not necessarily our Irish roots, but rather the lives of my mom’s parents.
Young people in our family never knew Bill Strubeck. Mom, herself, is finding it more and more difficult to remember him. She recalls how he played the mouth-organ and befriended anyone who came to his door, friend or stranger, but not much more.
Esther Strubeck is a different story. The kids of our family called her “Nanny” and we never passed up a chance to visit her. Whether it was Sunday for dinner or a week’s vacation each summer, we always wanted to be at Nanny’s house.
St. Patrick’s Day brings back all our fond memories of Nanny. Mom will talk about the old days when, in the absence of money, Nanny raised her six kids on love. She’ll tell us how Nanny would stand on the back porch ironing and singing. There wouldn’t be a cent in the house, and she’d still fill the neighborhood with song.
And sooner or later, someone will tell another story that yours truly has been unsuccessfully trying to out-live. One Lent, when I was four or five, Nanny took me to town and decided to stop at St. John the Evangelist Church for noon Mass.
“Oh no,” my mother said after hearing about it. “Your hair must have looked a mess when she took off your hat.”
“No, it didn’t, Mom,” I answered reassuringly. “Nanny licked it.”
That one always gets a big laugh.
