Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (21 page)

To Joseph, the lecture started sounding remarkably similar to the lesson about “free will” that he had learned as a child in Poland. The wisest people in the village had taught him that the most exalted form of human activity was to align one’s free will with the will of God. The medieval philosophy of Saint Thomas sounded instinctively truthful to Joseph. He stopped writing notes and set his pen down on the desk. He started watching the professor at the head of the classroom and just taking it all in. Joseph wanted the lecture to wash over him. To cleanse him. To anoint him.

“
Fourth and finally,” the professor wrote, “there is a need in society for HUMAN LAW, because humans cannot always tell the difference between right and wrong.”

“
Ain’t that the truth,” Joseph harrumphed to himself.

“
For that reason,” the professor continued, “Thomas gives us general guidelines for shaping human laws in society. On the most basic level of nature that humans share with all creatures,” the professor slowed his cadence for emphasis, “humans must preserve their existence. They must not commit suicide. They must transmit life to the next generation. They must rear and care for their young.”

“
Amen,” Joseph bowed his head and closed his eyes. At this moment, the lecture ceased to be merely an intellectual experience and transformed into an emotionally curative one.

The professor stood tall at the front of the classroom, his pulse quickening and his face reddening. He grew more passionate with each sentence, a crescendo of exhortation heralding the unsurpassed beauty of all human things when aligned with the will of God. “On the more sophisticated level of nature unique to humans, they must refine their capacities to become rational and moral beings. They must learn, and they must love! They must build harmonious, virtuous societies. And in those societies of moral beings, social and rational discourse can help humans better understand the difference between right and wrong and better govern the world according to God’s eternal law!”

Chills went down Joseph’s spine. He could see the order and hope in everything! “There are objective rights and wrongs,” he reviewed the lesson in his mind. “The difference can be discerned through reason. The legitimacy of human laws must be grounded in God’s laws, like caring for the young. Not in man’s laws, like divorce. The more that human laws can reflect God’s laws, the better a place the world can become!”

Joseph embraced Thomistic philosophy and then took it a couple steps further. Because human laws should be grounded in something more divine than an act of Congress, Joseph came to believe that it is the role of religion not merely to help
individuals
discern between right and wrong but also to help
society
enact better laws. He believed that Roman Catholicism was the truest religion and thus the best qualified religion to help shape human laws. The state needed help from the church to discern the difference between right and wrong and between good and evil in society at large.

To their credit, the Jesuits inculcated their scrupulous moral, ethical, and religious precepts of right and wrong into the minds of the budding young financial wizards—like Joseph and his classmates—in the Loyola University College of Business Administration. “The education of every man must be undergirded with spiritual insight,” wrote the dean of the business college at the time. “The function of the college is not only educating young men in how to make a living, but also in how to live.”

For Joseph and his classmates in the business college, the training they received in accounting principles echoed the training they received in moral and philosophical principles. The men learned that proper budgets, spreadsheets, and balance statements were to be infused with ethical integrity, meticulous honesty, and punctilious accuracy.

American capitalism, the men learned, would be only the better for it.

With the final exams of his first semester at Loyola University behind him, Joseph settled into his Christmas break at the end of 1948, wondering with whom he might spend the holidays. Because his cupboards were bare, he strolled over to the Jim Dandy Market located in the heart of Westchester. It was there, near the corner of Manchester Avenue and Sepulveda Boulevard, that he laid eyes upon an alluring young lady with a buoyant abundance of wavy black hair, a wide and welcoming smile, and a set of cheery eyes clearly visible behind her rimless glasses. As she emerged from the store, carrying two overflowing bags of groceries, she seemed to be having difficulty keeping everything in balance. Celery stalks were nearly toppling out of the tops of her flimsy brown bags. Joseph knew an opportunity when he saw one.

“
Excuse me, ma’am?” he inquired. “How far are you going?”

“
Home. About three-quarters of a mile that-away,” she swung her curls from the busy Sepulveda Boulevard toward the western tip of the tranquil Will Rogers Street.

“
I can help you,” nodded the gallant soldier.

“
Okay,” winked the perky, willing Ida. “Let’s go!”

Joseph, lithe and lean, carried both of her bags all the way home.

She found out that he was from Poland. That he had fought in the war for America. That he planned to remain in the Los Angeles area permanently. That he was renting a room in a house nearby. That he was a devout Catholic university student.

He found out that she was from Iowa. That she was living with family in California. That she was still getting used to the place. That she wasn’t sure how long she would stay. That she was Catholic, too, although of a less intellectual bent.

“
I try to ground my Catholic spirituality firmly in Thomistic philosophy,” he said.

“
Well, if it’s good enough for the pope, it’s good enough for me,” she replied.

When they arrived at her house, he carried the groceries into the kitchen and set them on the counter. Before bidding farewell, he conjured up the nerve to pop the question. “Ida, would you like to meet again? Perhaps Saturday night?”

“
I’ll show him,” Ida thought to herself. “I’ll make him a home-cooked Polish meal.” She smiled and cocked her head, “That sounds nice. Come by around six?”

He showed up Saturday night at six sharp, flowers in hand. Outside the door, he detected the faint but evocative aroma of simmered hamburger, rice, and onions wrapped inside a pungent cabbage leaf and stewed in a rich tomato broth. He rang the doorbell.

“
Come in!” she put the lid on her big roaster pan.

When he walked through the door, he could hardly believe the smell emanating from the kitchen. “Golabkis!” he heaved a sigh of nostalgia.

Ida served him stuffed cabbage just like his mother used to make in Poland.

They dated about once a week until summer.

Everyone around Ida was moving on with his or her life. Mafalda married a customer from the Bozzani car dealership whose name was Bill Janswick. The trim and bespectacled Ralph, popular with the ladies because of his resemblance to jazz trombonist and bandleader Glenn Miller, spent nearly every free minute with a girl named Mary Silletto. And Valletta moved out of the house to live with her mother and brother when they, too, moved to California from Mason City. Ida’s big sister, big brother, and best friend left her all alone in the house in Westchester to fend for herself.

She couldn’t take it. She had never lived alone. She was 24 and isolated at the tail end of Will Rogers Street. It was too scary being alone at home and too far from people at work.

She found a new job, closer to home, at Jerseymaid milk products in central Los Angeles. But it was still two bus rides and a streetcar ride away, leaving her still too isolated to relax.

She thought about returning to Mason City. She felt her only other option was to find another home closer to work. At least that way she could be closer to the people with whom she spent her days. But finding another home meant that
she
had to find another home. All by herself.

It was the first time in her life that she needed to make an adult decision all on her own. On her lunch hour, she hopped on a streetcar and rode it to the end of the line in south Los Angeles. She viewed a cute one-bedroom Spanish stucco cottage for rent for $60 a month at 1041 West 104th Street. Although frightened, she forced herself to take that leap toward independence. She moved into the cottage in the summer of 1949.

She earned barely enough money to pay for rent, food, and clothing. As her discouragement grew, she kept wondering if she might as well move back to Iowa.

But she also kept dating Joseph.

He taught her the polka.

She cooked him lasagna.

He wanted to leave behind the small-mindedness of rural Poland.

She wanted to leave behind the small-mindedness of rural Iowa.

He wrote a school paper about the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the regulatory agency created in 1934 to prevent the kind of runaway capitalism that had led to the stock-market crash of 1929.

She typed the paper.

He was so honest that he refused to use a pencil if it didn’t belong to him. “He tried so hard to do everything right.” She loved him for that.

She was so genuine that she spoke her mind without hesitation, artifice, or pretense. “She was just herself.” He loved her for that.

He was an excellent planner, something she could only dream about ever being.

She had an excellent family, something he could only dream about ever having.

Ralph Di Gregorio and Mary Silletto announced their wedding day of September 18, 1949. Because the day fell in the middle of the Iowa harvest, Serafino and Maria promised to come celebrate six weeks later when they were finished with the work in the garden.

Joseph and Ida attended the wedding. Everyone around them seemed to be getting married, but neither Joseph nor Ida focused on marriage alone.

“
Would you like to have children?” he asked her at the wedding reception.

“
Sure!” she replied. “My own mother is my role model!” Ida admired the way her mother had raised, nursed, and toiled for her children, letting them know in every little deed that they were deeply loved. “What greater joy could there be in life?”

“
How many children would you want?” he held her hand across a small table.

Ida had never given the question much thought. “Oh, I guess six would be nice.” Six seemed like a good number to Ida, because lots of things came by the dozen or half dozen: eggs, ice cream bars, corn on the cob. Her mother had raised seven kids, which had always complicated everything. Maria forever had to buy more than she needed just to make sure she had enough. “I think six would be practical,” said Ida.

Joseph thought she was kidding, but he also knew plenty of folks from families that were even larger. He voiced only one concern: “If my wife has children, I wouldn’t want her to work,” meaning outside the home. “The most important thing for me is that the mother of my children always be there for them. I want my kids to have what I didn’t have.”

Ida shed a tear, finding it difficult to fathom the depths of his pain but admiring his way of dealing with it. And although she loved working outside the home, she also loved the idea of being a mom. “The most important thing for me,” she echoed, “is that my kids have what I didn’t have. Piano lessons, dance classes, dentists, bikes, Catholic schools.”

Joseph didn’t propose to Ida. Instead, in the first week of October 1949, he brought her to the campus of Loyola University to meet with a Jesuit ethics professor and former military chaplain who was teaching Joseph a course on Christian Marriage.

The Jesuit asked Joseph and Ida about their love for one another and their faith in God. Satisfied with their responses, the Jesuit turned to Joseph with these instructions: “It’s not right for her to live alone. You should marry her.”

“
Father says we should get married,” a beaming Joseph turned to Ida.

“
Oh.” She was not about to argue with a Jesuit expert on marriage.

Joseph and Ida became engaged before the eyes of a priest.

They scheduled and arranged their wedding in a hurry so that Serafino and Maria could attend while they would be visiting Los Angeles after the harvest in just a few weeks.

On the morning of October 29, 1949, a Jesuit priest from Loyola University began to celebrate Mass and the marriage of Ida Di Gregorio and Joseph Godzisz in south Los Angeles at the church of Saint Frances Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants. Ralph Di Gregorio was the best man. His wife, Mary, was the maid of honor. As the two couples stood before the priest on the altar, about 20 guests observed from the pews, including Serafino, Maria, and Elsie Di Gregorio from Mason City; Mafalda Di Gregorio Janswick; and Valletta, her mother, her brother Buddy, and his buddy.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the priest introduced the newly wed man and wife. They turned around to face those in the pews, revealing very different expressions. Joseph looked determined. Ida looked relieved.

Their wedding portrait shows Joseph with his eyes earnest, alert, and wide open, as if poised to defend himself and his bride. He raises his forehead, as if on the lookout. He cracks a smile that is subtle but firm. He is both proud and primed. The former Marine is anticipating the battle of his life. And he wants it. He doesn’t know if he can do it, but he believes in what he is doing. His model of a solid marriage comes from only a few brief encounters with an aunt and uncle in Michigan. He certainly can’t take advice from his father, who isn’t in attendance anyway. Every family member sitting in the pews is related to Ida, not him. Even his best man is her brother. Joseph isn’t sure if he can measure up. But he has rigorously reviewed his religious and moral creeds, and he is prepared to live or die by them.