Every week, genealogist Amy Johnson Crow encourages participants in the 2024 "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" project to explore family history through the lens of a weekly theme. This week, the theme is Love and Marriage. I am writing today about my maternal grandparents, Norma Tomassoni and Ralph DeRicci.
My grandparents, Norma Tomassoni and Ralph DeRicci. The first photo, taken at Coney Island in the 1930s, may have been at the time of their elopement in 1937. The second photo was taken at their home in Pennsylvania in 1960, the day that my parents were married.
My grandparents both grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania in Italian immigrant families. They met at a dance at the local dance hall, and soon wanted to marry. Unfortunately, their parents were against the match. In particular, his mother, Rose Ambrosini DeRiggi, did not approve of the marriage. My impression of his father, John, is that he mostly stayed in the background and followed his wife's lead on most issues. I don't know anything about how her mother and stepfather reacted, except that they were against it, too.
I don't know why my grandfather's mother objected to the marriage. It might be that she simply thought the couple was too young. Maybe she believed nobody would be good enough for her son. It's also possible that her only problem with my grandmother was that she herself had not chosen her for him. By most accounts, my great-grandmother was a formidable person who always wanted to be in control. My grandfather, who never got along with his mother, described her as "tough" and "a real piece of work."
In any case, true love did not wait for permission. In 1937, at the ages of 22 and 21 years old, Ralph and Norma eloped.
I have not yet found records of their marriage. I speculate that they avoided the wrath of Rose by leaving town, and maybe the state, to marry elsewhere. I recently discovered the above photo of them, hidden in a picture frame behind another old photo. From various hints in the photo, I eventually pinpointed the location as the boardwalk at Coney Island. This appears to have been taken in the mid- to late 1930s. But it had to be taken before 1938; she became pregnant shortly after they married, and would have been showing by then. So I can't know for sure that this is their wedding picture. But I like to imagine that they boarded a train to Coney Island to get married and had an idyllic day or two there before heading home to face their families.
My great-grandmother is smiling here, sort of. But on hearing that my grandfather got married against her wishes, she chased the newlyweds out of the house with a broom.
His mother, predictably, was not pleased. In fact, when they arrived at the DeRiggi house, found her in the kitchen, and told her they'd gotten married, she grabbed a broom and tried to hit them with it, chasing the newlyweds out of the house.
With little money and nowhere else to go, they actually lived there with her and the rest of the family for the first few months of their marriage. That must have been awkward. But love found a way.
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