AGGIE

She was born in 1898, the eighth child and third daughter out of the
ten children that would survive infancy. She grew up in a Irish
Catholic family, her father a laborer on the Boston Elevated
Railway.

In 1924 she married Edward F.White Sr. They had two
children before the third died and then Edward walked out
on them in the middle of the Great Depression, leaving Aggie
to raise the children on her own and then divorcing her.It was
hard for her. She'd had rheumatic fever as a child in a time
when it was a deadly disease and although she'd survived it
left her with a weak heart.

Somehow she did it and brought her children to adulthood,
even though it meant sometimes ducking her rebellious
son's head in the sink when he used swears and nursing her own
daughter through a case of scarlet fever. Then she had to survive
watching her son join the Navy at 18 to fight in WW2. All this
while living a life of what was shame back then: a divorced
Catholic woman whose husband had left her for another woman.

I knew her as Nanny, my grandmiother, and she lived with us
when I was a kid. My dad and her son Eddie had bought a
two family home after the war in Malden and so Aggie saw
all five of her grandchildren everyday. But she spent most of the
time with my sister and I because our parents both worked

She was a quiet woman, black haired with grey streaks and
usually wore those one piece housedresses. I recall her eating
peas by rolling them down the blade of her knife into her mouth
and looking back I think she did it to amuse me and tease my
Mom. She never yelled but I vividly remember her breaking up
a knockdown fight between the two Italian ladies who lived in the
houses to either side of ours and doing it with a slightly louder
than usual voice and a disgusted tone.

As time went by her rheumatic heart got worse and she needed
an oxygen tank in her bedroom for when her breathing was bad.
And finally, she died at age 58 on February 12th, 1957

Most of her life had been rough. I hope her last few years
helped make up for that. As one of her nephews told
me a few years ago: "Aunt Aggie was one tough woman, but
she was always a lady."