Son of Sacco

Two years after his father’s death in 1927 his mother married again. He was then 16 years old. He and his younger sister moved with their mother into the stepfather’s fourroom bungalow on one of the almost anonymous streets of Watertown, an obscure industrial suburb of Boston. During the Depression years he worked as a deliveryman, first for a local grocer then later for Filene’s, the large Boston department store. In 1939 he eloped with a girl five years younger than himself, a waitress whom he had met at the Dairy Queen ice-cream bar in an adjoining suburb. He was Italian by descent, she Swedish. To avoid any publicity they were married in the village of Friendship, Maine, 175 miles north of Boston.

The war that banished the Depression was his opportunity. He found an outlet for his natural mechanical bent as an airplane mechanic. His reserved occupation kept him out of the Armed Forces. Before the war ended he had become parts manager for the local airport in Norwood, Massachusetts. He moved to Norwood in 1947. He bought a brown six-room Dutch Colonial house with a sun porch on a maple-shaded side street where the yards run into one another, flags are displayed on public holidays, and a basketball hoop is hung above most garage doors.

FR

About the Author

Francis Russell

Featured Tags

Two years after his father’s death in 1927 his mother married again. He was then 16 years old. He and his younger sister moved with their mother into the stepfather’s fourroom bungalow on one of the almost anonymous streets of Watertown, an obscure industrial suburb of Boston. During the Depression years he worked as a deliveryman, first for a local grocer then later for Filene’s, the large Boston department store. In 1939 he eloped with a girl five years younger than himself, a waitress whom he had met at the Dairy Queen ice-cream bar in an adjoining suburb. He was Italian by descent, she Swedish. To avoid any publicity they were married in the village of Friendship, Maine, 175 miles north of Boston.

The war that banished the Depression was his opportunity. He found an outlet for his natural mechanical bent as an airplane mechanic. His reserved occupation kept him out of the Armed Forces. Before the war ended he had become parts manager for the local airport in Norwood, Massachusetts. He moved to Norwood in 1947. He bought a brown six-room Dutch Colonial house with a sun porch on a maple-shaded side street where the yards run into one another, flags are displayed on public holidays, and a basketball hoop is hung above most garage doors.