Guest Book

The compact 5 by seven-inch pink book with the gold scroll and four gold lines framing the border says Guest Book. Another of the relics from my grandmother’s life. The grandchildren all called her Nanny and this is Nanny’s Guest Book from Villa Rosa, the home where Nanny lived in the last 2 and ½ years of her life. On the first page is the first entry is from Halloween 1971. At that time, I had already graduated high school but still living at home and Nanny was living in what we would now call an assisted living facility.

Villa Rosa was a nursing home run by Catholic nuns and associated with Holy Rosary Church, aka “The Italian Church” on 3^rd Street in NW, Washington DC.

Nanny’s sister Bombi and her brother-in-law Pete with whom she was very close had visited at 11am on Halloween ‘71. The address Bombi and Pete entered was not the house they lived in for decades, but an apartment in Northeast, DC. I remember going to the apartment maybe once or twice. I don’t remember when they sold their house, but I remember it was on a corner lot in the city and in the kitchen way up high near the ceiling there was a tiny shelf with tiny coffee cups and saucers that surrounded the kitchen walls. These little cups so fascinated me. The house had a large dining room table that we would all squeeze around for amazing lasagna dinners with so many aunts, uncles, and cousins, I could not keep them straight.  And it was the house where Uncle Tony, a widowed brother-in-law of Nanny’s, lived in the back room which I now realize was probably a closed-in back porch, and he gave my brother and I silver half dollars whenever we visited. To us they were treasures which made us think of Long John Silver in Robert Lewis Stevenson’s Treasure Island.  It was a dark crowded house that felt like a warm and very safe place.

Nanny’s other 2 living siblings had also visited those first few weeks in the nursing home and their names appear on the first page of the Guest Book.

Marietta and her husband, the other Uncle Tony, are the second entry in the book. The tall quiet Tony with the white hair that went straight up and who was always smiling. He would give you the occasional wink to let you know that amongst all this activity and noise when the family gathered, we were all in this together. Marietta and Bombi, Nanny’s two remaining sisters were a force together. Loud, opinionated, loving, amazing cooks and they filled a room with their laughter and their presence. Strong women all.

After the sisters reported in, there was the baby and the only boy, Salvatore who everyone called Savy. His address was then Florida. He had married a non-Italian woman, Helen, late in life and moved south to live in the sunshine state. He and Helen lived in a mobile home and he always invited us to visit, and dad would always talk about how we should. Unfortunately, Savy died in 1972 of a heart attack, before we ever made it down there. Savy worked in a special printing unit of the US Government printing office that was whispered to print documents for what would become the CIA. He was in the Army in WWII, but never went overseas. He was the fun uncle, always smiling, joking and clowning around. He actually was a clown, who loved to put on his clown nose, clown makeup and oversized shoes and the hat with the squirting flower. He participated in the local parades in Colonial Beach, VA where he maintained a summer cottage. Colonial Beach was a tourist destination known for its slot machines as much as the small amusement park with the carousel or the beach on the Chesapeake Bay. Savy’s little cottage with the outhouse was up on a hill and we would have to navigate down a narrow path to the beach where we could wade into the shallow bay water. This was all before he was married, when he was what they called at the time a confirmed bachelor. At the beach everyone called him Uncle Savy, and that made me jealous as he really was my uncle.

Savy’s entry to my grandmother’s Guest Book was on November 11, 1971 at 11am. This was Nanny’s birthday as well as Armistice Day, later renamed Veterans Day. In the last column of his entry he wrote, “Happy Birthday, Sister”. Savy of course didn’t know that in just over 6 months on Memorial Day 1972 he would pass away in Florida of a heart attack.

Villa Rosa was also the last residence of my other 2 grandparents who in this book are listed as guests, visiting Nanny. They last visited Nanny in April 1974 with my parents, less than a month before Nanny died.

You can also glimpse stories through comments written in the book by my father…things like, “She is bright eyed today,” to “She is trying to talk today” or “She gave us a nice smile.” Towards the end of the book, the comments just say: “No recognition today – Not a word,” “Deep sleep 1:20pm,” “Sleeping 2:30pm.”  “Got a little Fever,” and then the very last comment written in the book written by my father:

“Mom died on 5/5/1974 at Prince Georges County Hospital.

She went to Hospital on 4/30/1974.”

Discovering stories, finding ways of remembering through artifacts from family now gone, and preserving something to pass on to those who follow, giving them a glimpse from where they have come from.

_{© 2022 Tom Campagnoli}