Mary
The family owned a store on the Lower East Side, and then moved to Flemington, New Jersey, where Stanley operated a gas station and rented rooms to families who wanted to escape the city for the summer; one memorable guest was Nina Talbot, who played a role in Hogan’s Heroes that earned her an Emmy nomination. Mary and Olga walked along the country roads to their one-room school house, a major detraction from the streets of New York; the sound of oncoming traffic replaced with that of nothing but wind.
When World War II began, gas rationing had a massive impact on the business, and so the family moved back to the Lower East Side. The economic toll that the war had on them was intense, and so Anna took up work as a dressmaker, bringing home her mistakes so that the girls could make with them whatever they wanted. These mistakes helped to get both Mary and Olga interested in fashion; Olga in a creative sense, wanting to make clothes, Mary moreso wanting simply to buy them.
Mary had also developed an affinity for music that saw her pick up many different instruments. In this clip, George lists some of those that Mary played, and discusses her early use of a tape recorder to capture both her music and the family’s conversations, that has served as a means of family archiving, potentially allowing him to hear their voices as they were nearly half of a century ago.
Transcript
Back in the city, Mary attended Washington Irving High School, taking up secretarial and book work before graduation. She then accepted a job with a marketing company as a secretary, serving also as the editor of the company newsletter. Anna and Stanley had moved to Arizona with their youngest children, George and Helen, for a few years, leaving twentysomethings Mary and Olga to themselves. They continued to live together, arguing constantly. Despite their quarrels, they were the best of friends; when they weren’t arguing, they were talking, Olga not letting Mary get a word in edge-wise. Mary was a great listener, and Olga was an impressive talker, and so they perfectly complemented one another.
When their parents returned to New York, Olga had earned a $5,000 scholarship at the Fashion Institute of Technology that the family used to put a down payment on a six-unit apartment building. Anna, Stanley, George, and Helen lived in one unit, Mary and Olga in another, while the rest were rented out.
George remembers living in the apartment as a youth, and his much older sisters; efforts to include him in the things that they did. Here, George, in explaining how close his family was, illustrates one such example of their efforts to include him in some of the things that they were doing.
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Olga got married and moved to Jackson-Heights in 1956, leaving Mary the apartment to herself. She would live there for the remainder of her life.
She was married for a short time herself, but quickly realized that she much preferred living independently. As a result, Mary began focusing more on building friendships with people and exploring the world with them. Now, with more money than when her mother would bring her her mistake cloth, She felt compelled to build a wardrobe that she felt matched her personality, becoming known for her bright, creative outfits.
She left the marketing company, and worked at an advertising firm for a decade, quitting only when the company moved its headquarters to Connecticut. Mary then took various jobs until settling in at Memorial Sloane Kettering Hospital, where she worked for 30 years until her retirement in 2000. She then spent a lot of her time volunteering in and around Astoria. In this clip, George discusses the ways in which Mary served her community.
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Olga died in 2013, and Mary’s health began to deteriorate soon after. The death of her sister, her best friend, left her feeling lost. She started experiencing symptoms of dementia. George and Kathy began to take care of her, their responsibilities evolving as time went on. George, Kathy, and Mary planned weekly outings where they would all go to restaurants. Rather than having one favorite spot, they liked to explore the infinite options before them in Astoria, although their preference belonged to the neighborhood’s Greek, Argentine, and German restaurants.
As Mary’s health worsened, travelling became difficult. In August 2017, though, she joined George and Kathy on a trip to Tennessee to watch a total solar eclipse from one of the premier spots in the country to do so. After this, they embarked on a week-long road trip. In this clip, George talks about how Mary had been a long-time traveler, and what they did on what would be her last vacation.
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After a two-week illness, unconfirmed but understood to have been COVID-19, Mary died at home on March 29th, 2020 of complications from heart failure. She was 88 years old. Unable to carry out funeral services in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary’s ashes will be interred in the family plot in Flemington at a date where the family will be able to safely gather to celebrate her life.