In the beginning, my mom and dad did not know each other at all. Mom grew up in Greenfield Illinois, the daughter of the local grocer, Virgil Holmes and his wife, Fanny Bernice Holmes nee Smith; very country, very middle class, very WASP. Anyone with a last name longer than 5 letters had to be a “furinner”. Catholics were not appreciated very much either. The Great Depression moved Mom and her family from middle class to poor, and Grandpa lost his store and started to drink to excess. Next he lost a job driving a truck when he had an accident with the truck while drunk. Food was at times not plentiful but they always had the ingredients to make pancakes. Mom ate so many pancakes during The Depression she hated them for the rest of her life.
Dad was the youngest child of immigrant parents. Grandma Mary came from Europe on the boat by herself when she was 13. She said all she brought with her was a box of dishes and a scarf. I have the scarf framed. Grandpa and his three brothers came over from Europe one by one by boat too. They all settled in Peoria, Ill. Grandpa Matt, worked in the coalmines setting the dynamite charges with his brothers, George, Fabian and Pete. Mary and Matt met each other at church, the Catholic Church. Dad and his family were poor even before the Depression. There was one Christmas when the only one to get a present at all was little Louie, who at age four got a big tin drum.
Dad went to kindergarten for three years. Grandma had to take in laundry to help make ends meet, so she had Dad’s two older sisters take him to kindergarten starting when he was three. It was the Catholic school and apparently the nuns did not mind. Dad took himself out of the Catholic school when he was 7. He decided the public school was probably better and enrolled there without telling anyone. Living in an immigrant enclave, it was not unusual for the children who knew more English than their parents to enroll themselves in school. It was several months before his parents found out. Dad’s sisters had covered for him with the nuns by saying little Louie was ill, but finally the nuns reached out in concern and sent a note home asking just how sick was Louie and when would he be back at school. So the jinx was up, but apparently Dad stated his case well as he was allowed to stay in the public school.
Grandma Mary took everyone out of the Catholic Church when Dad was in his early teens. She got mad because the priest told her that her husband should have given 10 % of his workman’s comp money to the church, instead of buying a car, but the Catholic Church had not raised a finger to help the family while Grandpa had not been able to work following a mining accident. Grandma then joined the Socialist Labor Party and became an atheist. By the time Mom met Dad, therefore, he was no longer Catholic, a good thing as far as the Holmes were concerned, but with a name like Starcevic he was still a “furinner”. to Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma changed her mind though, Dad was such a good son-in-law, and Grandma decided foreigners were fine after all.
Anyway, back to how Mom and Dad met. Mom wanted to go to college. She wanted to teach English Lit. However, Uncle Raymond, her brother, fell in love and got married. He had promised to help her go to college when he finished college, but with a new wife, Mom’s source of financial help was gone. Mom still wanted higher education. The least expensive higher education available at that time was nursing school. Mom’s three years of nursing school cost $90.00 and covered room and board, books and materials, and uniforms. Of course, the students had to work as aids in the hospital 6 hours a day as well as attending 6 hours of schooling, and had only one day off a month. Still, to become a Registered Nurse, the tuition was quite a bargain.
Mom went to school at St Francis Hospital in Peoria after they tossed her out of Deaconess in St. Louis for covering up for a drunken roommate. Dad was hit by a car driven by a drunk. He was getting off a bus to go practice his violin at a church where he was to play the next day when the car hit him. Luckily his violin was not with him, but his leg was broken badly. He became a patient at St. Francis. Mom had beautiful brown eyes. The rest is history.
My parents were married 9 years before I was born. They eloped. Dad joked that Mom had the longest pregnancy in the world. Most couples that eloped back then did so because they were expecting. Mom and Dad did it because St. Francis would not employ married nurses in 1937 and they did not want news of their wedding printed in the Peoria papers. They married in St. Charles Mo, on Nov 9th; only had one witness. Dad always maintained they were not legally married without two witnesses, but I think the minister that married them was counted as a witness, and they were legal. Anyway, I hope so.
At first, they could not afford to get pregnant. Then WWII interrupted. Dad was an Army Sergeant in Europe, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge while Mom was an Army Lieutenant in the South Pacific sent to Guam for the invasion of Japan, which did not happen.
Dad came home with long hair, as the barbers in Eastern Europe would not cut his “beautiful” hair. Mom came home with the darkest tan a white woman could get. Dad wanted to go to college. Mom wanted a baby. Guess who won.
I was born at 5:00 O’clock in the afternoon on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947 after 36 hours labor and the use of forceps; the first and only child of Marian Catherine Starcevic nee Holmes and Louis Joseph Starcevic.
