Search Results for: Madeline

Madeline was sitting in the Activity Room when I came in with Red this afternoon, I said hello and she asked me and Maria if we wanted to hear her story. I said we did, and Maria and I both pulled up a chair and sat across from her. I can tell you that Madeline’s story is true, it is archived online and in old newspaper stories, often on the front page.

She is a strong presence at the Mansion, she is always meticulously dressed and quick with a joke or wisecrack. She tells me every time she sees Red that his collar is too tight, and I always agree and remove it while we are there. When I return, she tells me his collar is too tight.

We turned down the boombox in the corner of the room – you good people bought it – and the room quieted. The day Activity Director had just left, the residents had painted for much of the afternoon.

Madeline said the story took place in the Bronx, in the late 1920’s, she lived in an apartment with her brother, Mother and father, who was a successful businessman, but was also a vicious alcoholic.

Madeline said her father repeatedly threatened her, her mother, and her older brother, who was 18 at the time. He beat all of them often, and their lives were filled with terror.

One day, her father came home drunk, and came into the apartment with an ax.

He said he was going to kill Madeline and her mother, and he raised the ax over his head as if preparing to strike. Her mother grabbed Madeline and both of them screamed for help, and her brother pulled out his pocket knife – it was large for a pocket knife – and stabbed his father once in the heart before her father gasped and fell down backwards.

He never got up.

Madeline’s mother called for the police and an ambulance, and her father was taken to a local hospital where he died shortly after his arrival. Her brother was arrested and charged with patricide, but was released three weeks later when a judge ruled the killing was justifiable and in self-defense.

He had killed his father to protect his sister and mother.

Madeline was four at the time of her father’s killing, she said, but she remembers every minute of that day, even as she often forgets other things in her life. She is 92, and has been at the Mansion less than a year.

A year after her father’s death, her mother died of a heart attack and since her brother was not able to care for her, she was sent to an orphanage in the Bronx, where she spent the next decade.

When Madeline spoke, the room was quiet, the residents still. I asked her if she loved her father, and she thought awhile about the question. “I’m not sure I was able to love anybody,” she said.

I thanked her for her story, and she said she was grateful to me for listening. I said our stories are important, they are who we are. She leaned over to pat Red and told me his collar was too tight.

When Madeline was about eleven years old she lived in an orphanage in the Bronx Borough of New York City with thirty other children. The kids were four to eighteen years old and at the other end of her building were sixty senior citizens.

“One of the things I remember is that some of them would come to entertain us. One group was four men who spoke German and had white whiskered bears and handlebar moustaches. They sang as a quartet in German. Their serious faces and hand gestures were what was so funny as they sang.

Their curled pressed lips and dramatic delivery was enough to make anyone cry. During the performance of all of the kids we would stay cool, calm and collected.

But afterwards we would return to our dormitories and would act out their singing and imitate them in the washroom. We would say to each other “you sing Base Dis Time, I Sang Base Last Time.” Some of us were very good at the acting, and what fun we had. We would laugh so hard that sometimes I wet my pants.”

The story readings were special, so was the July Fourth Celebration. Everyone had something made for them or addressed to them and an angel from the Army Of Good bought $200 worth of cookies that were much enjoyed. Others sent flowers and Fourth of July gift bags.

I was conscious as I watched the residents listen carefully to one another’s stories that our elected officials are debating cutting back the Medicaid payments that pay for their care at the Mansion. I hope this never happens to them.

Thanks for supporting the Mansion stories, I will get to work getting these stories published. Thanks to the Army Of Good for another great victory. It is better to do good than argue about what is good.

Madeline is 94, she is a former painter and artist and dancer. She grew up in a Bronx orphanage and was a military spouse for many years. We all thought her potato stamp portrait was especially inventive, it isn’t easy to make art out of pieces of potatoes. She won a book.

Madeline was raised in an orphanage in the Bronx, she says in some ways, the Mansion feels like an orphanage on the other side of life, she says the staff are a lot nicer than the nuns who ruled her orphanage. When we were hanging a donated painting by the artist Rachel Barlow in her room, I saw New York Times crossword puzzles all over the place.

It was no big deal to find two books of puzzles, Madeline was surprised and delighted, she tried to pay me for them, but I said no. She said she loves puzzles. Madeline has added a great deal to the Mansion, she is in her mid-90’s but active, cheerful and non-complaining.

I was present on here first day there, she seems very much at home. She has the New Yorker’s feistiness and wit, and a dry but sharp sense of humor. She devours these puzzles, she says they keep her mind sharp, and her mind is quite sharp. I handed her the books, and when I left she had her pencil out and was already filling in the squares. If you wish, you can write to Madeline, c/oMadeline, The Mansion, 11 S. Union Avenue, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

Madeline is 93, she has been at the Mansion a month or so, she is a lot of fun, her friend Brother Pete says she has a lot of the angel, and a lot of the devil in her. She was raised in an orphanage in the Bronx, and  has a thick New York accident. Although she is Italian, the orphanage was Jewish, she knows all of the Jewish prayers and songs, she says she is thinking of hosting a seder next Passover.

She married a soldier, an engineer in the Army and lived all over the country.. When she talked to Maria last week, she volunteered to go to India with her to help the victims of sex trafficking. I am getting to know some of the residents well, our visits are longer and we talk more, I think on all sides, we are more relaxed.

I love the life stories of the Mansion residents, they are rich and touching and always close at hand.

Red knows the Mansion well and is completely at ease there. He makes the rounds, knowing where to go and not to go somehow. Every time I see Madeline, she tells me Red’s collar is too tight. When I got to the Mansion, I loosen it. I admire Madeline’s spirit. She is intensely engaged  with the world, and embraces precisely where she is in life. She lived for a long time in Cypress Hills,  Brooklyn, she considers herself a New Yorker and has the feisty and engaging attitude of a New Yorker.

She is always moving about the Mansion, talking to the residents, greeting visitors. She has enormous energy, and the snappy of a Brooklynite.

Madeline would greatly enjoy your letters and messages, she reads them all and replies to them, they stimulate and engage her. You can write her at this address: Madeline, c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816.

(If you wish, you can send Valentine’s Day cards and messages to the residents of the Mansion.  Valentine’s Day is Tuesday, February 14. The first names of the residents are Jean A., Mary, Gerry, Sylvie, Diane, Alice, Jean G., Madeline, Joan, Allan, Carl (Bob), John K., Aileen, Christie, Helen, Connie, Alanna, Barbara, Peggie, Dennis, John R., Bruce, John Z.)