y father, along with his mother and father and older siblings, Albert and Mae, lived on Woodlawn Avenue in the Bergen section of Jersey City. It was a neighborhood mostly of Irish and German immigrants.

His life was relatively uneventful until he was 14 years old. His sister Mae's house caught fire with Mae and her infant daughter, Sylvia, inside. Although Mae and her daughter escaped injury, my father's family suffered a terrible loss.

Having learned of the fire in progress, my father's mother ran out of her house to help save her daughter and grandchild. On the way, she slipped and fractured her head against a curb, lapsed into a coma and eventually died from the head injury.

Susie King Smith