← Becoming You with Suzy Welch
Becoming You with Suzy Welch
What If a Yellow Dress, in the Pages of Vogue, Told the Story of Your Life? Part 1
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- [00:00]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:18]
Susie Welch
Let us get this really big thing over with right away. There's going to be a scream in this podcast. Yes, there's going to be a scream. And it's from my 98 year old mother when I tell her what we are talking about today on the podcast and also next week, which happens to be a yellow dress. And not just any yellow dress obviously. So let's just let the scream rip. My mother wasn't born on Susie. She's smiling in heaven. That again is my mom. Her name is Philomena Pilato Tubiolo, born 98 years ago this month and she's screaming about the topic of this little podcast series, which I don't expect you to do, but I don't know, you might cry, get misty eyed. I actually cried when I was researching and thinking about these two episodes, the one that is this week and the one that is next week. And maybe you'll have a similar reaction, I don't know. But I hope more than anything that the story of my yellow dress gets you thinking about a few things. Like your origin story for one. And what Part of that origin story stirs you up for better or for worse. And I hope this little series gets you thinking about the stuff in that story that you will not let go of. Like me and why. And finally, I hope these two episodes expand your mind and your heart when it comes to understanding your values and the complicated entangled history that formed them. That formed your values and formed your history. I think. I think because of this story, I finally understand my own. I'm Susie Welch and this is becoming youg. Welcome to the Story of my life. So I'm actually going to start this two part podcast series at the very end. End of the story it tells, which is that I wore a yellow dress to the hat luncheon in New York City this year a few weeks ago and a photo of it ended up in Vogue magazine. That is a photo of me wearing the dress appeared on vogue.com the next day. You know, you'd have to be dead for such a thing. Not to delight you. It's a very cool thing. Come on. It's Vogue magazine. That happened. Me and my dress. And with that picture, something inside me got fixed. I mean, it got healed. I got compassion. Something inside me said, I'm not mad anymore. I am grateful. I am over it. The story. I am joyful. The end. That's the end of the story. Spoiler alert. This is a very happily ever after story. I did not think it would be that way. Why? Well, I'm going to explain that. That is for the next week, two weeks, I'm going to relate the 123 year story leading up to my yellow dress showing up in the pages of Vogue. Yes, 123 year story. Because it is an incredible story and that's how long it took for it to unfold. This week I'm going to set the scene. We're going to spend our time in the present for a little while and then we're going to go travel back to my ancestral homeland of Sicily. Although it's probably not the Sicily that you imagine or, you know, where this dress story begins. And in the first episode, we will leave off in 1929 on the precipice of a gigantic, gigantic scandal that kind of explains everything about me. And I wasn't even born until 1959. Next week we're going to pick up back in 1929. We're going to live the scandal and its reverberations and work our way back to today. So get out your popcorn and let's get going. As I said, we're starting this podcast here in the here and now, in the present, and specifically at this thing I just mentioned, the Hat Luncheon. It actually has an official name and this was the 44th year of this luncheon, and it's so therefore it was officially called the 44th Annual Frederick Law Olmstead Awards Luncheon. It may sound that way, but this is no mild mannered, white glove, you know, sort of cucumber sandwich affair. The Hat Luncheon is, in certain circles of New York, it's the affair of the year. And about 1400 women show up. And they are not so much wearing hats as they are making sassy, smart, sardonic statements about how sassy, smart and sardonic New York women are. And in a way, it's the opposite of the Kentucky Derby, where the hats wear. The women at Central Park Luncheon, women wear hats that say, look how clever I am, how creative, how edgy and avant garde. For instance, this year, six women wore these spectacular, spectacular matching hats that were all mahjong tiles. Other women were wearing hats that were like skyscrapers and lampshades and animals and dolls. It's like, it is absolutely a spectacle. And not to reference myself, but what the heck, this is my podcast. So I, a few years ago, I was the chairwoman of this splendiferous event and I had a hat made for the occasion that was a replica of Central park. Okay? A huge hat that was a replica of Central Park. And all over it, it had dozens of little dog figurines because Central park is off leash before 9am and it's like doggy paradise. And if you are watching this podcast on YouTube, we will even show you a picture of this spectacular hat I had made. But the same year, I have to be honest, it wasn't even the most clever hat at the Hat Luncheon because York, the currency of the land, is not currency. Ka ching. It's intelligence and wit. And the Hat Luncheon is its high holy holiday. And there were women there who had better hats than me, even with my spectacular hat. So, yes, 1400 women do this. And why? Why do they do it? The stated reason is to raise money for Central park, which is, if you're not from New York, it's this incredible, beautiful swath of 823 acres that makes New York City actually possible to live in. It's our collective backyard, our safety valve. I like to think of it like during the pandemic, I thought, this is escape room. I mean, it's a beautiful oasis of humanity. You walk through Central Park. You see people holding hands. You see families having barbecues. You see friends laughing. You see people playing Frisbee. You see families with their children. It's just incredible. Beautiful asset to New York. And it also happens to be very expensive to run this beautiful 823 acre oasis. It's got an annual budget of $70 million a year of upkeep. And guess what? That's almost entirely funded by donations. I bet you did not know that. I did not know it for many years, but it's true. The New York City government does not pay for the park. It only pays a little, tiny fraction of it. Regular citizens pay for it. In fact, for more history of Central park, which I for some reason know a lot about, Central park was actually about to die in utter disrepair in the 1970s. In 1970s, the city of New York was going bankrupt. And it was so bad at Central park that it was too dangerous for anybody but criminals and drug addicts. It was a disaster. And at the last moment in 1979, a group of about 100 New Yorkers, wealthy New Yorkers, stepped in and they saved Central park with very large donations. And look, it was not to their personal benefit. It's not like these people were using the park to have barbecues, okay? They did that out in the Hamptons. They did it to save the heart of the city for its regular residents, and they did it. And I think about actually these people all the time when I walk around the park, which I do because I have three dogs, and I think, oh, my God, almost all of this beauty was almost lost to all of us. I'm so grateful for those citizens who stepped forward. Anyway, in 1982, the hat luncheon was launched to help the park. It was a way for the women of New York to get together, celebrate the rescue of the park, and to raise more money for it. So, for instance, the hat Luncheon this year raised $5.4 million, which is serious bank. Okay? But please. The hat luncheon also happens because it's fun. I mean, it's so blowy. It's such a show starts at 11:30, and you go down these GR stairs. There's, there's, there's always these sort of gentlemen there to walk you down the stairs because women are wearing their, like, fantastic heels along with their fabulous hats. And then you go to the bottom of the stairs and you're entering the conservancy gardens and you stand there, literally, and you watch all the women walk in. And of course, there's lots of Paparazzi outside. It's just such an incredible event. It's a very specific show that shows that you have arrived in a city where anyone can arrive if they have enough moxie. You know, another word for the hat Luncheon is iconic. And that is actually the word that my friend Gretchen Rubin. Yes, that Gretchen Rubin. The famous Gretchen Rubin. I'm sure you listened to her podcast. She's the author of the Happiness Project. She used that word to describe the Hat Luncheon this year, which I happen to know because she was one of my fabulous table guests. And of course she was because she has so much moxie. Anyway, I want to say some women who are at the the Hat Luncheon each year, you know, they were born to attend. They are old money. New York. It exists. It does. You saw it, you've seen it on tv, and it's real. I mean, New York has wealth and it has generations of people who have been born into it. And there are women who are at the Hat Luncheon each year who started attending the Hat Luncheon, you know, as teenagers wearing matching hats with their mothers and grandmothers. And I can recognize these women at 10 paces because they just have a certain air. And unlike me, they don't ever appear to be surprised to be at the Hat Luncheon. They were born with an invitation in their little tiny baby hands. Now, also attending the hat Luncheon are the denizens of New York's new money set. These are women whose husbands usually, you know, they're the ones who run Wall Street. And I want to say, to be clear, some of these women work themselves. They're very smart themselves. They have their own lives and careers, but generally these are the wives of the kind of hedge fund set. And they do often do very charitable things with their lives, but whatever. They are also the usual suspects at this affair, and they also do not appear surprised to be there. But the hat luncheon is also filled with creatives and entrepreneurs and writer and artists, filled with gals like me. The granddaughter of a divorced, fierce, striving Sicilian immigrant who sold hand knit silk ribbon dresses in Rochester, New York, to survive. And not just to survive, but to punch the world in the face with her fist. A woman, Francesca Palado, whose whole life is the narrative of a person who did not do what she was told to do and did not color inside the lines and refused to conform, and then went on to make so much money to spite them all and say, how do you like me now? That was my grandmother. You would not expect her granddaughter to be at this party, right? With that history. And the truth is, I never thought I would attend the hat luncheon either. Never. My grandmother's legacy had a ripple effect of making her children, including my mother and then my whole family kind of like permanent outsiders. We were not people who went where the proper people went. That was kind of in my DNA. When I arrived in New York to live in, it was like 2002 or so. We kind of were moving back and forth, but that's when we kind of landed here. At that time in my life, I had never heard of the hat luncheon. But then one day, one fateful day, I saw it. It was a beautiful May day. It's always in May. And I somehow must have been on Fifth Avenue just as it was starting. And I saw all these gorgeous women in huge hats flocking into the park. It was like a magical sight. It was like a mirage. They were laughing and chatting and they looked so self confident and alive. This was the innest of the in crowds. And I remember thinking, we're wherever they are going, I want to go too. And I was so overtaken by their aura that I was. I literally ran up to a policeman who was on a horse watching the procession. And I asked him, what is happening here? Who are these women? And he looked down at me and he laughed and he said, this is the hat luncheon lady. You gotta pay to get in. And I was like, okay. Because it didn't seem true. It seemed like their invitations came from a higher power, like the higher power of the gods of New York City. Well, time passed. That was like 2002. And as life would have it, I did become part of the in crowd. I grew up as a human being, for one thing. I. I kind of grew up and I thought, I don't want this outsider status for myself. It's not who I am. I don't like it. And I, at that period was developing a really great career. And I. I didn't need to be defiant. And then there was the fact that I was married to the king of insiders. Okay? I was. I got married to Jack Welch. He was the CEO of General Electric. And at that time, this was the largest company in the world. And he was the CEO of it. And there was not a party he wasn't invited to. There wasn't a club he wasn't a member of. When I was with him, we always belonged. Every restaurant we walked into, I mean, every little bit of outsider. You don't belong here. DNA, it was just washed out. Of my blood system hanging out with him. I want to say it wasn't why I married him. You know, I married him because he was the kindest, smartest, funniest, best human being I'd ever met in my life. I married him because I loved him desperately. But I'm sure his insider status certainly didn't repel me. I mean, I loved it about him. I liked it about him. He wasn't angry at the world. He liked being a part of the world. He wasn't an outsider. He was in love with the world. And that felt more like me. So I think that it was a few years later, Probably, I'm guessing 2006, that I was invited to the Hat Luncheon by the very great Elaine Langone. I have to just stop and tell you something about her. Elaine Langone. Her husband, Ken Langone was my husband's best friend. He's the founder of Home Depot and she is actually one of New York's greatest philanthropists. There is a cancer treatment center at the Animal Medical Center. It's like the most world class cancer treatment center for dogs because of Elaine. And I remember when we were at its dedication, she turned to me and she said, this can maybe get a dog another six years of life. And if you've ever loved a dog, six months really matters. And she paid for the whole thing. But that's a drop in the bucket for what she has done with her generosity. She's one of the most generous charitable people and also funny and smart and great close friend. Anyway, I met her in 2001 and a few years later she said to me, let's go to the hat Luncheon. We went and afterwards she said to me, okay, Susie, I have a table and I invite people each year. It's time for you to buy a table yourself. I got it entirely. I was enough of enough self confidence at that point that I thought, I'm going to get a table every day, single year, and I've never not gotten one. Except for the hat luncheon occurred on the very day that was the book launch of becoming you, my book. And I had to go on the Today show. And that was a hard call, but it was the right one. Anyway, I will never miss the hat luncheon again. Although, listen up. I will never ever, ever wear to the hat Luncheon as good a dress as I did this year. I love this dress. Guess what? My grandmother made it. It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. It's art. It's absolutely. No, it's Amazing. Thank you. You look gorgeous. Fabulous. Everything had to toe. Oh my gosh. What is it? It's like. It's silk ribbon. Silk ribbon. Can you believe it? She likes knitted it. She knitted it. She knitted it and she gave it. Yes, I'll take that pink stuff. It's very good. And for you. Come on, get drunk, Hollis. Of course, one thing that happens at the hat luncheon is the women talk a lot about their outfits. And that is me discussing my fabulous dress with the fabulous Hollis Heimbeck, who's the publisher of Harper Business. And technically she's my publisher, like kind of my boss. Except for that she's mainly my. My friend. And she has been since 1995. She was in fact the first friend that I told that I had fallen in love with Jack. And she's been my friend through thick and thin for good Lord, 40 years. Anyway, as you could hear, she loved my dress. That dress. So let's get to it at last.
- [17:05]
Commercial Narrator
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- [18:22]
Susie Welch
now the story of the dress actually begins in Calta necesseta, Sicily in 1903. That's where and when my grandmother Francesca was born. Calta set of Sicily. Well, let me just say this about that. Banish your thoughts of gorgeous, sexy landscapes of Sicily that you saw in White Lotus, where, you know, fabulous Italianate hotels hover over these like crystal blue waters and waiters and tuxedos go to ing and froing with champagne on silver trays. This is not Caltanaceta, Sicily. Caltanaceta is a gritty, industrial fortress town in the dead center of the island of Sicily. No waterfront. And for hundreds of years it was kind of the financial engine of the country. Why? Because it sat on top of sulfur mines. And sulfur was like for century, it was needed, necessary for two things, fertilizer and gunpowder. I mean, if you wanted to grow anything in the world, you needed the output of Calta Naceta. And if you wanted to wage war, which people did all the time, you needed the output of Caltanesseta, this sulfur. In other words, everyone all around the world needed what was coming out of that village in the middle of Sicily. I think an analogy for it is like Pittsburgh in the 1950s when it was in 60s, when it was making all the steel for everyone all around the world. That was Calta necessetta from about 1800 to 1920. Except, and this is a very big except, okay? In a country that was run by elite industrialists and their mafia overlord enforcers. So these two populations, the elite and the mafia enforcers, you know, they lived very, very well. I've been to Sicily, I've seen their homes. They lived on the villas on the coast, but in the city of Calta Niceta, that's where the workers lived. And to extract the sulfur there under the mountains, the owners of the mines sent thousands of workers into the center of the earth every day, seven days a week. It was bone breaking, lung destroying labor, insanely dangerous labor, where people died constantly in fires and mine collapses, and from lung disease and tuberculosis and cancer. And it got to the point in the 1830s that to keep the mines running full time, the overlords started sending boys as young as seven into the tunnels. They called them the karusi, which is derived from the word little deers. These little boys, seven years old. And to get a load of this, these kids would carry sacks of sulfur weighing 40 to 60 pounds on their back through these narrow steep tunnels, working alongside the adult workers who were called the piccuneri. I don't speak Italian. I'm trying. And if this is not horrible enough and uncomfortable enough, one historical unfun fact is that the workers in the mines Frequently actually worked naked or semi naked due to the fact that it was so hot in there where the temperatures were up to 116 degrees. And they would sometimes do this for 16 hours a day. How could this happen? Well, it happened because families to survive, often sold their children into this labor via a debt based system called Socorro Motto dead Aid, where the parents received a cash advance that bound the child to the mine until the debt was paid. This was a system of just forced labor where the laborers were children as young, little boys as young as seven and their fathers. This, my dear listeners, this is the history of my family on my mother's side. And here's the thing. I had no idea that it was my sisters and ID and I, we had no idea. We had no idea that this is what happened in Calta Niceta, Sicily, before they came to the United States. Because, well, my family is nuts. I mean, well, okay, my mom's family and my. I don't know, maybe your family is nutty in some way too. Every family is crazy in some way. Welcome to the family crazy family club. There are a lot of members of. And of course, every family is crazy in its own way. But my family was crazy in the form of secrecy. You know, families do strange things to cope. And my family's way of coping, I guess, was to never talk about Calta Nasata. And in fact, when I went back and saw the village or the city with my own eyes in 2018, I had actually no idea that it sat on a sulfur mine where my family lived and died generation after generation. No, the story I heard, when I heard anything at all, is that my family, like when we were growing up, that the family was vaguely aristocratic, very fancy, they were special people. And my great grandfather said was an exporter of olive oil. But for some reason, the history of my family in Calta Naseta was very, very hush hush. And there was another hush hush story which was that someone, and again, maybe it was my grandfather had tried to organize some workers, maybe the sulfur mine workers putting it together. But he was shot at and almost killed. And again, as this story was told, it was never mentioned that he was a miner. In fact, it was never mentioned that mining happened in Caltanaseta. I'm gonna actually recall this with my sister Della. She went through this with me. I'm give her a call. She lives in the Boston area. My memory is that shrouded in secrecy, shrouded in street secrecy. The whole kind of story of is just absolutely like, why did they not speak Plainly about what happened in Calton de Seta. It was like, all very cloaked in mystery.
- [24:08]
Della (Susie's Sister)
Yes, everything was cloaked in mystery, Susie. I mean, it was all. Yeah, it was all a big secret.
- [24:14]
Susie Welch
I know.
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Della (Susie's Sister)
You know, but, you know, I don't know if they even knew the truth themselves.
- [24:19]
Susie Welch
Really. Yeah.
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Della (Susie's Sister)
Because I think they lied to each other. They lied to themselves, and they lied to each other.
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Susie Welch
It's crazy. We didn't really have words for it. I think in many ways, I don't think we had words for it until we went back to Sicily. You and me and Ellen and Sophia. It was 2018, I think, when we went back. Right.
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Della (Susie's Sister)
And that was a great trip where
- [24:39]
Susie Welch
we had hired a historian. I know you're laughing, but, like, my audience doesn't know why you're laughing. Just hold on there. I had hired a historian to help us find our family history back there. And we went to go look at the house that. That our family had lived in. And we were confronted for the first time in our lives with the truth, which was they were not royal, regal, aristocratic people, and that what the hush hush was all about was that they were really poor.
- [25:09]
Della (Susie's Sister)
They were really poor. They said. I remember Nana, Nana, our Sicilian grandmother, saying we had a chapel in the house. And during the big earthquake, everybody ran to the church, but we went to our own chapel. And then the church collapsed.
- [25:23]
Susie Welch
Yes. And then we saw that house they lived in which had a hole in the ground.
- [25:27]
Della (Susie's Sister)
They probably had dirt floors.
- [25:28]
Susie Welch
That did have dirt floors. We went into it, had dirt floors and with a hole in the ground for them to do their business. Okay. And then we had the epic experience of going to the graveyard. And we walked by all the really big crypts and tombs where the fancy rich people, the owners of the mines, were buried. And the historian kept on walking us, saying, it's a little bit further. And the graves got. Got smaller and smaller, and we finally found our family's. Our family's burial area with the. Basically with the poppers, you know, and it was like, yeah, yeah.
- [25:59]
Della (Susie's Sister)
They were barefoot and illiterate.
- [26:01]
Susie Welch
Yep. Y. It was. I remember. I was not. I think that's.
- [26:06]
Della (Susie's Sister)
I think that's a fascinating story.
- [26:07]
Susie Welch
It is.
- [26:08]
Della (Susie's Sister)
Frankly, I think it's much better than coming from aristocrats.
- [26:11]
Susie Welch
I totally do. And I mean, I remember standing over the little gravestones, which might have been little, you know, children in the mines were in our family's area, thinking, oh, my God, I'm so joyful about what we did with our lives. They would be so Proud, you know, look, look, you were standing there was like. It was so over. Emotionally overwhelming, the distance that they had traveled. And yet, Della, we were nearly 60 when we found out the truth about our family. Right. It was never spoken of.
- [26:45]
Della (Susie's Sister)
No, but it wasn't a huge surprise, was it?
- [26:48]
Susie Welch
No, I was not. Was surprised to somebody who was there, who shall remain nameless at this. Mom, Another relative was surprised. But we. I. I knew from around 7 or 8 years old that the hush, hush, secrecy and the fact that the family was kind of special was BS because if everybody was so special, like, why was our uncle, great uncle, a barber? And, you know, there was just. There was no. There was no. There was no evidence that they were anything but Italian immigrants, Sicilian immigrants. Yeah.
- [27:18]
Della (Susie's Sister)
And. Which is something to be proud of. I know, but there was a lot of lying, I think, that went on. It was more than just being secretive. I mean, I think there were outlay, outright mistruths being told to us.
- [27:32]
Susie Welch
Right. And it was sort of. It was such a burden to be living in this. But I actually have this other thought, Della, which is that part of this secrecy and hush, hush, denial, lying, part of it was a kind of defiant outsider status. Like, we were not like other people. We were different. We were not part of the crowd. And I think this was a crazy kind of environment in which to grow up with this sort of like, we are outsiders. And then there was no kind of truth going on. And our own mother was not about fitting in. It was not about.
- [28:05]
Della (Susie's Sister)
We were never about fitting in.
- [28:06]
Susie Welch
Never about fitting in. Well, we're going there with the podcast. All right, I. Thank you for. Thank you for talking.
- [28:11]
Commercial Narrator
Ooh.
- [28:13]
Susie Welch
Okay, bye. All right, bye. You know, I was thinking after that call with my sister, there was all this deception, all these lies, all this cover up. The only true thing that my grandmother ever told me about coming to America. I asked her all the time, was it hard to come to the America? Was it hard to leave Italy? Was it hard to leave? I mean, I probed, I tried desperately to find out the truth. And the only thing that she ever said to me that felt vaguely real was that when she left Sicily, Caltanaceta, Sicily, when she was nine years old, is that she left her dog Bella behind with her best friend. And she told me that she cried about leaving her dog every night for 10 years. And I remember thinking, well, there's one true story. Anyway, just to ground us here a little bit. My grandmother left Sicily for America in 1912, right after World War I. They were not of course, the only ones. There was a huge migration of Sicilian immigrants to the U.S. in this period because Italy was devastated by the war and America was the land of promise. The thought was that maybe my family would go to Argentina. I heard that from a couple of relatives. But that would have ended quite differently for me, I guess. But they didn't. And they decided to go from Calteceta to General Pleas, Rochester, N.Y. now Rochester. It was a better life. It was safe, it had jobs. So the people of Calteseta, they left to buy their lives back. My family left to do that. I'm in awe of their courage. I am. How could you not be? How could you not be? This fight for freedom and for self determination, by the way, is a value. I mean, it's a value of agency, this desire to own your life. When I teach the value of agency in my class, when I teach my students at NYU Stern all about the values and I talk about the value of agency, I throw up the video of Leslie Gore singing you don't own me. And I won't sing more of that because then you'll hit the stop button. But I mean that idea, no one will own me. That's agency. So they came to the United States so that no one would literally own their children. But why did they go to Rochester? I mean, of all places I get not going to Argentina. But I mean, America was the great hope. They could have gone anywhere where the weather was better, right? They could have gone to North Carolina or Atlanta. Even Baltimore had better weather. No. Rochester's average seasonal Snowfall is about 100 inches a year. And it has been as high as 160 inches in a single winter. You know, that's 13ft of snow.
- [30:40]
Commercial Narrator
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- [31:43]
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- [32:13]
Susie Welch
So here's my theory, and it's based on immigration theory, so it's not original here. It just had to be that the first family from Calton de Ceta came to Rochester because they had relatives there. And then family after family continued to go there to find their community and to speak the same language and have some of the same memories. So they went to Rochester because it had factories and work, but they went to Rochester for this, for a sense of belonging. And that's a value, by the way. Also, it's the value of community. You know, this value of community, I have to have a little aside here. It's the top value of a friend of mine, let's just call her Julie. She's a psychometrician. When you create scientifically validated assessments like the values bridge for a living, as I do to, you end up having friends who are psychometricians. Okay. Anyway, Julie's top value is this belonging, this the value of community. It's unusual. Only 11 of the population has it. And she was telling me the other day that the moment that she walks into the bar where she and her fiance go every night and everyone literally shouts out her name, she says that is the best moment of her day. And I'm not sure, but I think that she actually one time literally said to me, I would buy a gun to defend that bar. And this is a psychometrician speaking, mind you. Anyway, I think my relatives, from everything I heard, would have taken up arms to defend Rochester. My God, they. They love that city so much. I was raised hearing stories about Rochester that would make you feel like its streets were, like, paved with gold. There was East Avenue had its mansions, and there was this street, Oxford Street. There was Corn Hill. And you would have thought it was the garden of Even. But I think the reason, what they loved about Rochester was that it gave my Sicilian immigrant family, which was large, decent, middle class jobs. And small, lovely homes. And a sense of safety and community. They owned their lives at last. How free they must have felt. So when the Pilatos landed in Rochester, my great grandfather got a job at a canning factory. And my grandmother and her three brothers were enrolled in school. Where they all learned English. And apparently the kids all acclimated very quickly. It was a big deal in my family that my grandmother learned English so well. She never had an accident accent. And my great uncle Mike was apparently very, very good at violin. And he joined the school orchestra, that kind of thing. And then they all eventually graduated from high school. And got good middle class jobs in factories. Except of course for my grandmother. Because girls didn't do that in 1920. And also because her father, my great grandfather, had gotten very ill. No one knows, no one could remember what made him ill. But it fell to her to care for him at home for many years with her mother. Which she did apparently very dutifully. Until one day one of her brothers showed up to the house with an older friend. It was a guy named Justin Tubiolo. And the story goes, he was very tall and very dark and handsome. And he was also a widower who had three young boys. His wife had died of cancer at age 22 after having her kid. And the children were being raised by her parents. So Justin Tubiola was essentially a very dapper bachelor. He owned a car. This was a big story. And before you know it, my grandmother and Justin started passing each other secret notes. Why? Because her father, even though he was sick upstairs, was incredibly protective of her. In fact, the story is that she could sit on the front porch. But only if her rocking chair faced backwards. So no one could see her. But she had a friend named Angela. And using Angela as the go between my grandmother, she actually wrote like a very bold note to Justin saying basically, I want to meet you. And he wrote back saying, I want to meet you too. And they started sneaking off for ice cream and little walks with each other. That's the story. It's very hard for me to believe that that was all that was happening with them. But whatever, I don't know. I mean, lust, teenage lust, is a real thing. Although he was not a teenager, she was. And the story is with these little secret meetings arranged by her friend Angela. And sort of covered by this friend Angela. That the two of them, with their 11 year age difference that they fell madly, madly in love. They didn't say a lot about anything in my family as I think I've made the point. But there was never any holding back when they talked about the love between my grandmother and, and Justin Tubiolo. Now there is this kind of code of silence that falls upon their wedding story. It gets kind of very murky. But here's what I got. In 1924, right after Francesca, my grandmother, turned 20, she and Justin snuck to the courthouse in Rochester, New York and they eloped. I mean they got married by a guy in the courthouse. These are two Catholic Sicilian people. By the way, why did they elope? I. No surprise. I have no freaking idea. I asked my mother why did they elope? And she said, oh Susie. There were terrible, terrible class differences and I mean, what terrible class differences. They were both immigrants, but apparently his father was a farmer. And this was like some gigantic difference between like being a factory foreman. I mean it makes no sense whatsoever. I wonder, Was it the 11 year age difference? I mean he was gainfully employed as a guy in a factory and he was also a car salesman and he was a working person with friends. He was friends with her brothers. This is one of the 1 million things in my life that does not make sense. That they had to court in total secrecy and then they went and eloped. Getting married. I mean if you just look at the facts, they were both sort of of striving Italian immigrants and they had mutual friends. But I guess it happened. And apparently they met each other's families afterwards and pretty soon everyone apparently got over it. Justin and Francesca bought a little house a few blocks from her parents. Her father was still ill. And over the next few years my grandmother did what women did in those days. She had four children. She had my aunt Lucille, then she had my uncle Joey. She had my mother. She named after her own mother. She named her Philomena. But it was quickly Americanized to Phyllis and then my aunt Justine. And from all accounting life went on. Justin had a couple of jobs. He was again in a factory. He also became a police officer along the way. And the money was apparently okay. I seen a picture of the house and the families all got along. There was this little period where they tried to add Justin's sons from his first marriage back into the mix. But they missed their grandparents and they went back to the grandparents house. From everything I've heard and again, you know, with secrecy that was going around, it was just an American story unfolding as it was supposed to. It was a dream. It was the American dream. That is until my grandmother Francesca blew the whole thing up. I mean she like TNT, she blew it up. Age 26. What a scandal she created. A scandal which shook her world, of course, and it shook the world of Rochester and it shook my mom's world and her siblings world and my world my whole life long. And actually it shook things up in a way that ended up with that dress, that yellow one appearing in Vogue magazine. It could not have happened any other way. And so we will continue with that story and what it taught me and hopefully what it might help you understand about yourself in next week's episode. I'm Susie Welch. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.
- [39:57]
Commercial Narrator
Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now? Really? I can get super specific with dealer
- [40:02]
Susie Welch
listings and see cars based on my budget.
- [40:04]
Commercial Narrator
You can really have it delivered or pick it up.
- [40:07]
Susie Welch
I think kid is walking up the slide.
- [40:09]
Commercial Narrator
Really?
- [40:09]
Susie Welch
Autotrader, buy your car online?
- [40:11]
Commercial Narrator
Really?