In Their Own Words: Thanksgiving Night Tragedy

Michelina Frascone
470 Hopkins, 1932-1956

Audio Transcript

"That's Aunt Rose that lived in this house and this is Filomeno. On a Thanksgiving night, there was a real bad storm in 194[5]. They were at our house. He was called to go to work. It was a real bad night. I went down through the basement like we used to meet,and there he was changing his clothes and going to work. I begged him. '[D]on't go tonight. It's a bad night. You're at my house. You can you say weren't home. Stay with us now.' Well, he insisted. He thought he had to go when he was called to go. He was kind of a cute little humble soul. He went.

"Before you knew it, she came up and she said, 'Something happened to Filomeno.' He was sideswiped from the train. There was not a sore on him, but he was unconscious. He lasted about a week or so. That's the kind of work that they did, that they had to go do this work.

"So then Uncle Filomeno was shipped to New York and that's where he was buried. She went for about three months and she begged us to take her back.So we took care of her. Then we fixed an upstairs at 472 for her little apartment and that's where she lived until she died."