Daily Archives: September 4, 2012

On September 4, 1912, a baby girl named Anna Rosalia Maria was born in a house next to a funeral parlor on a street that no longer exists in the city of Saint Louis. She was the first girl and the second oldest of a family of ten children.

She would become my mom.

Leo was her first and only boyfriend. They met by accident. Her father was the owner and manager of a local amateur baseball team  and one of her brothers had brought a friend who brought a friend to play with the team.  The friend of a friend was my father. He was 19-years old and he worked as a clerk in a store. My mother was 21 at the time, and when she met my father he lied and said that he was 21, too.

After dating for several years, she married Leo on September 8, 1938.

They moved into the second floor flat of a turn of the century red brick house. Recently I discovered the payment book for the furniture they purchased before they were married.

My mom never threw away any paperwork. And the bedroom suite is still here too ….

 I guess they would all be considered antiques now.

Anyway, today would have been mom’s 100th birthday. Out of the blue one evening when she was 92, she asked me, “Do you think I could live to be a hundred? I think I’d like to do that.”  She missed that goal by six years, and today she is missed by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, she always knew she was two years older than my father.