The Felices

These are my maternal grandparents, Frank and Mary Felice in 1954 at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City celebrating their anniversary with my grandmother's brother, Tony and his wife, Jean. I've been thinking about them A LOT lately. Over the course of their lives they endured and even prospered despite unimaginable hardship. My grandfather fled an impoverished life in Italy ... the descendant of Albanian refugees fleeing the invasion of the Ottoman Empire ... and immigrated to this country as a small boy. He started as child laborer in the mines of Northeastern Pennsylvania ... became a successful entrepreneur and bank vice president.

They lived through the Spanish Flu, World War I, World War II, The Great Depression, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. They lost siblings, parents, raised a daughter (my mom) and a dependent son. They lived to see space travel, computers, and their daughter and grandchildren graduate college and two grandsons graduate law school (my grandmother). I'll confess that over the last several months ... I have often thought about them and wondered what they would think and do. At every stage and moment of his life, no matter how difficult, no matter how awful, no matter how hopeless ... my grandfather saw opportunity.

I'm trying to remember, honor, and emulate that ...