KEY OF HEAVEN

Hollywood’s Silent Film Babies - Mama's Memories

Susie, did you know your maternal grandmother, Agnes Williams?

No, she’s a bit of a mystery. Agnes died so young, at 32. It wasn’t until my own mother was dying, and cried out in the night for HER grandma, that I realized… “Mommy didn’t know her mommy either.”

Was there an inheritance?

No; they were so hungry, the girls were picking up grains of government rice off the street. It was the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, still a neighborhood where food relief is a station on the same street where they lived. Signs on the merchant doors read: “No Dogs, No Indians, No Irish.”

Eventually they all moved to Hunters Point Shipyard communities of San Francisco during WWII, where Irish and other beleaguered immigrants could find work. My grandmother died before that day came, sadly.