Who Were My Italian Relatives and How Did They Influence Me?

Palma DiTommaso, Rosemary DiTommaso and Mary DiTommaso, married James King Evans and Thomas Muhlenberg and George Yeager, respectively and lost their last Italian name, but that's all they lost when they married men who weren't Italian. Palma, my grandmother married James K because in 1941, you got married when you became pregnant. Rosemary married Tom because she was in love with him, an older man who gave her stability. But they never lost their Italian roots because they had their mom, Rosa and their dad Guisseppe to remind them that Italy and its customs were always right there.

I grew up with Palma, affectionately named Pippa by myself and my sister. I'm not sure why that name came to be her grandmother nickname, but it stuck. Our grandfather Jim was Poppa. It just stuck that way and they were always known as Pippa and Poppa.

Pippa was always cooking and entertaining. People over and visiting; she and Rosie were the quintessential hosts. Palma also talked about her mother Rosa frequently when I was a child. She loved her and it showed in how she referred to her and spoke about her.

Rosa came to the United States a few months after Guisseppe, even though they were married to each other when they left Naples. They married in 1898 and immigrated to the states in 1920 and 1921 with Palma being born in 1922, the first generation American.

Rosa didn't become a citizen until right before Guisseppe died in 1950. Guisseppe arrived in 1920 and almost immediately submitted his petition for citizenship. He gained his citizenship in 1930. Palma spoke so much about her mother and almost nothing about her father. My mom, Pam, Guiseppes grand daughter, said that he 'wasn't home much', working and doing what men did in the 20's, 30's and 40's, I suppose. He did have a skilled job at the local steel mill and he was proud of that job. Rosa was a housewife in the States, but worked as a seamstress in Italy. She was 21 when she married Guisseppe.

Guisseppe and Rosa left Italy because of the political climate and because they were (most likely) very poor. Most of the Italian immigrants that left southern Italy were poor and there were not many avenues for any kind of prosperity. Never having met Guisseppe, I'm not too sure what the reasoning, but it seems that most Italian immigrants intended to return 'home' at some point in their lives. From what I'm deducting with Guisseppes and Rosas immigration applications, I would surmise that Rosa was planning on going back to Italy because she did not apply for citizenship until the early 1950s and Guisseppe was not ever planning on going back because he applied for his citizenship almost immediately after he arrived in the States.

Their immigration was also during the reign of King Victor Emmanuel and right before Mussolini was appointed by King Victor Emmanuel. I can't say that he knew that something was going to go very awry or it was just 'time to leave', but they did. In the application for citizenship, the last paragraph says 'I renounce King Victor Emmanuel...'

There are so many things that I could talk about with Palma, Rosemary and Mary, but I think the person that always dominated the sibling conversation was Phil, or Uncle Phil. He was the only boy and the apple of everyone's eye. Pippa and Rosie adored him and his family. Palma was notorious for working herself into a tizzy when the 'DiTommasos were coming to visit'. Truth be told, I made myself scarce when he and his family were visiting. A backstory about Phil, he stayed in Italy when Rosa came to the States, and looking at her petition, he would have been three months old when she left for the States. I'm guessing that she left him in the care of her mother and father because he may have been too young to travel on a ship for a few weeks. I'm not sure of this aspect.

Phil eventually made it to the States when he was old enough to travel - I'm not sure how he made it there, but he did. He received his citizenship and entered the United States Navy after high school, went to college and later became a diplomat for the American Government. I know much of this information because in the past year, I've become friends with one of his daughters and she told me a bunch of cool stories about her dad.

At any rate Uncle Phil - Palma, Rosemary and Mary's big brother was educated and well travelled. They adored him for all of that and that he lived in Italy after he retired from the Diplomatic Corps and he had Italian children that were multi-lingual.