Man Writes Tribute to Family

(left to right, Robert Zando, Joe Zando and Pete Zando.)

Randolph Fiery often sends me photos of his garden's produce -- the showoff.

(Randolph Fiery is a regular on this website, with his spiritual passages and frequent odes to the vegetables he grows in southern Virginia. On Tuesday he sent the following :)

Can you deny, there's nothing greater
Nothing more than the traveling hands of time?
Sainte Genevieve can hold back the water
But saints don't bother with a tear-stained eye
-- Son Volt (rock band) 
 
Friends, The sun has not risen in the eastern sky. 
Yet I am awake and thinking about those “traveling hands of time……."
 
The three men in the photo are brothers: a photograph taken more than 100 years ago. Three brothers, who came through Ellis Island separately between 1910 and 1917. But on this day, they stood together in New York City to have their photograph taken. A recognition of their struggle to come to a new land. 
 
It would take another 10 years for them to earn the money, to weather the storm of World War I and bring their wives and children to this new land they called America. It is a family story. A fading story held by a few and controlled by the “traveling hands of time.”
 
They were men who could grow gardens. Tomatoes, basil, potatoes were their friends. And yes, grapes… they knew how to make wine. They knew how to cut stone, build houses, and one of them, my grandfather constructed bridges and even a building of coal. Family stories fading with age.
             
But on this day, the summer heat is moving toward the garden. It has been a good year 
​for the garden. Tomatoes, Swiss chard, peas, eggplant, peppers and cucumbers. 

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​So on this day, I want to thank you for your hard work, your struggles, and for more than you can imagine, everything that you have given to me. It seems that we never really know what impact another human can have on the life we lead. But on this morning, I am glad that you are still breathing. --Randolph Fiery
                                  ***
Several friends wrote in to ask, who is Genevieve?
I thought I knew. When I was writing the biography of Stan Musial, a gent from southern Virginia,  Randolph Fiery, contacted me to tell how Musial intersected his family’s life.

In 1939, Musial was a kid pitcher in Williamson, West Virginia. The Musial bio says:
“On Sunday mornings Musial would attend Mass, and Geneva Zando, a senior in high school, would observe how devout and handsome he was on the Communion line. Soon she would marry Howard Fiery, who lived in the house Musial had entered by mistake.”

The book explains how late one Saturday night, the boy from Donora, Pa., wandered into an identical home on a main street of the coal town.
Things could have gone wrong, but the Fiery family, knowing he was a Cardinal farmhand, directed him to the nearby house where he was staying.

As Musial became Stan the Man, one of the greatest players of his generation, or any generation, Randy often heard the story about that long-ago Saturday night. Randy says it used to frost his dad when talk turned to the nice young man who attended Mass that summer in Williamson. 

Then Randy launched into gear about his mom: 

"Sitting here now I realize that I really didn’t tell you much about my mother. Yes, she was a saint.
"I  believe that she was unusual for her day and place and time.
"My grandparents were Italian, but mom was Born in BLOODY MINGO COUNTY, West Virginia, during the deadly coal wars between the mine owners, and the young United Mine Workers union. "She was a person of science, earned a biology degree in 1942 and moved to Waukegan, Illinois,  and worked in the laboratory of a Catholic hospital. She ended up marrying my dad, a college football star at William and Mary.
"She raised five children, four boys, and a girl on three acres of land in southern West Virginia. My dad worked construction, building bridges. His jobs were in Virginia and he only came home on Saturdays and Sundays. She cooked, cleaned, challenged her children to foot races in the yard. She never cursed, never talked badly about anyone, never whipped us, and at 85 years old her arms were still like rocks. She took us to church every Sunday, but she never spoke of religion.
"She was humble, self-sacrificing and always forgiving. Kindness and compassion flowed through her veins. She was funny and a good storyteller. But mostly she did not show herself and let other people draw the attention.
"As I said, she was a good storyteller. Some stories I had a hard time believing, but it ended up that they were true. She was a cousin of Pope John Paul l, Albino Luciani.    
"The pope’s father was a stonemason in Falcade as was my grandfather and his brothers.
"I’m just babbling George. I can’t really describe a saint, but every human that knew her loved her."​

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Wedding photo: Left to right: Caterina Zando, Robert Zando, Nellie Zando, Abraham Zando, Geneva Zando, Howard Fiery, Jack Fiery, Nancy Johnson Fiery and Courtney Whipple Fiery

Geneva Zandy Fiery: D: Nov. 2011, age 90.