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Page 117: Autobiography of Charlotte Anne (Paterno) Arcuni [1926-] Dated July, 2002
Thursday, July 1, 1926 was a great day in the lives of Charles and Annette Paterno. Ten days short of their first anniversary, I was born. A chubby baby with blond, curly hair, I weighted in a seven pounds six ounces. I was a good baby and started getting teeth at six months. I walked at one year of age. Nude baby pictures were in vogue at the time, so Mom indulged in this pastime. By the age of three, I began to display my independence and started getting in trouble. One night as Mom and Dad were entertaining friends, I got out of bed, climbed up on the windowsill of the second story apartment window. Then I dangled my legs through the iron guard rails, and talked with pedestrians in the street below. Someone rang the doorbell and told my parents of my activities. This was the first of many escapades where I surprised my family.
When I was five years old, I invited a playmate home for dinner. Mom was entertaining friends. In the early thirties, segregation was an accepted practice. Annette (Mom) was surprised and embarrassed when I walked in the door with my little black friend. I was sent to my room and my friend was sent home, never to dine with the Paterno family.
At age six, I loved to sit at the beautiful baby grand piano and pretend that I was playing it. However, when Mom arranged for piano lessons, I did not like the teacher or the lessons, so my musical education was brief. I was enrolled in a parochial school. My independence and free spirit earned me frequent raps on the knuckles by the sisters who taught in the school. One lesson that I learned that has stayed with me throughout my life was to sit up straight and keep my shoulders back.
During the summer, the family vacationed at Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey at a large, old-fashioned large house, which was rented for the summer. My sister, Lisa, and I spent many hours on the large porches, which surrounded the house. We entertained ourselves by playing Monopoly and catching turtles and frogs. Dad came up by train on weekends and frequently brought friends with him to enjoy Mom’s cooking. They decided to open a small restaurant as Mom was a very good cook and her special meals delights his friends. Although Prohibition was in effect, Dad sometimes served liquor to his friends in small coffee cups. Apparently, an inspector found out and informed the authorities. After Dad had returned to the city, several men came to the house and took Mom, Lisa, and me to jail. Mom was very angry that we all had to spend the night in jail. We were placed in a tiny cell with no privacy. After that , the restaurant enterprise was abandoned.
Around 1936, Mom and Dad rented a large, yellow brick house in Riverdale at W. 239th Street. [Per 1940 Federal Census, this house was located at 629 West 239th Street. The house has been converted into the Ohel Torah Synagogue, established 1947.] Lisa and I shared a large room with twin beds. Mom made a bedspread and matching curtains which made the room very attractive. Lisa and I used the huge walk-in closet as a playroom. The nanny shared a room with Baby Annette.
Lisa and I, along with our friends, would act in play, and sing and dance for the entertainment of family and friends. Dad installed ropes from a large tree limb and made two…
Page 118: …swings for outdoor fun. He also planted a large vegetable garden in the back yard and built a large cage for his homing pigeons. He and his friends would organize pigeon races where they would take the pigeons out in the country to release them.
We would sometimes steal potatoes to bake in a fire built on rocks in a nearby field. A small stream ran through the field, which was often filled with beautiful wild violets. Lisa and I would pick the violets for our mother. We were both enrolled in P.S. 81, and walked the two miles to school in nice weather. On other days, we caught a bus at 239th and rode to elementary school.
The disciplinarian of the family was Mom and I kept her busy. In one incident, Lisa and I were playing in the basement when I shook some red-hot coals out of one of the furnaces onto the floor. When they turned black, I asked Lisa to pick up the coal. Poor Lisa received a bad burn and I got a much-deserved spanking. I remember Mom chasing me around that huge house with a rug beater on that occasion and many more.
Mom enrolled Lisa and I in the John Robert Powers Agency in New York City. Both of us modeled for department stores and magazines. Mom would pick us up from school and escort us to our assignments. She remained on the premises with us until each assignment was finished, as she was very protective. We modeled for several years.
My dad, Charles Vincent Paterno, left the home at 270 Seaman Avenue near 207th Street on November 14, 1940 after we went to sleep. He was never heard from again. I had been very close to him and was simply devastated by his departure. I repeatedly blamed my mother for driving him away with her constant nagging. Each time the issue came up, Mom told me to mind my own business. She was very closed mouthed about his reason for leaving and didn’t discuss the incident with us. Mom was so upset that she would not buy a Christmas tree that year. Lisa and I found the Christmas decorations and decided to decorate without the tree. We hung garland from wall to wall in the living room and decorated it with ornaments. While we were very proud of our efforts, Mom disapproved. Regardless, it was a very sad Christmas.
When I was fourteen and Lisa was twelve, we were sent to Thevenet Hall boarding school in Highland Mills, New York. The dress code required that the girls wear stockings. Since I despised wearing stockings, I would draw lines down the bak of my bare legs with an eyebrow pencil so that the nuns would think that I was conforming to the requirement. I got away with this practice for months but one day a sister walking up the stairs behind me felt my leg and realized that I was not dressed according to the rules. Two boarding schools later, I was at St. Claire’s Academy on Staten Island. I was still a rebel.
The year 1940 was an eventful one for me. I lost my father, was sent to a boarding school and met the love of my life in that year. While visiting a Silvestri cousin, I was introduced to Joseph (Joe) Arcuni. Several months later, Joe invited me to his sixteenth birthday party but I was not allowed to go. My grandmother, Angela Silvestri thought it was inappropriate for me to go to a boy’s party.
I graduated from Yonkers High school in 1942. After graduation, I worked as a receptionist for McGraw Hill Publishing Company and also at RKO [perhaps RKO Radio Pictures, Inc.,]. As a patriotic gesture, I quit my job and enrolled in a welding school in Yonkers. Then I worked in a plant that made gun turrets. During…
Page 119: …this time, I sent a Christmas card to Joe Arcuni who was stationed at Camp Patrick Henry in Newport News Virginia. We corresponded for some time and dated when Joe came back to town.
Joe and I spent most of his leave time together and on his second leave he asked me to marry him and I said yes. His parents and my Mom thought we were too young and that it was not good to get married in wartime so we decided to elope. Getting blood tests and a marriage license was quite a task with out letting our families know about it. Since the legal age in New York to marry without parental consent was twenty-one, we had to change Jose’s date of birth on his leave papers. On the 21st of November 1944, we drove to Yonkers, New York and were married in the home of Judge Booth. On our arrival, we discovered that the Judge was slightly under the influence, but he managed to say the right words and to issue a marriage certificate to us. We left Yonkers in the pouring rain and stopped at a little cafe to celebrate with friends who had been our witnesses. Since hotels were too expensive, we each went home to our own homes. The next day, Joe came over and together we told Mom that we had gotten married. Needless to say she was quite upset. She said at first that she would have the marriage annulled, but then she went to speak to the priest and arranged a church wedding on November 25th.
Our first home was a small attic apartment in Newport News, Virginia. After three months, Joe was transferred to New Orleans, Louisiana. Then he was transferred to Japan in June of 1945. When he arrived in Hawaii, the war in Japan ended. Joe was stationed in Wakayama, Japan. In March 1946, he was discharged and met his four month old son, Louis Charles Arcuni for the first time.
Joe and I lived with Mom until our son Louis was about a year old and then moved to an apartment in downtown New York. Our daughter Toni Lynn was born while we lived at 600 W. 178th Street in New York. Joe went back into the service, enlisting in the United States Air Force. We spent a year and a half at Mitchell Field, Long Island. Joe was transferred to Bordeaux, France where we stayed until he was transferred to Germany where we lived in a seventeen-room home. The main, gardener and all the amenities spoiled us.
We came back to the States in 1968 and lived in San Antonio, Texas until Joe retired from the Air Force. In 1969, we moved to Cape Coral, Florida where we built a duplex and started a ceramic business. I taught ceramics for eighteen years. After our son Louis was killed in an automobile accident, I retired. We sold the building and most fo the ceramic molds. Joe and I then built a home where I continued ceramics as a hobby and liked to swim in our back yard pool. In addition to ceramics, I enjoyed volunteering in hospitals and at my church as well as spending time with my children and grandchildren.
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