Chapter 6. The Family is Uprooted and Forced to Move from Race Street

In the Fall of 1927, father, along with all the other heads of the households in our tenement, received a notice from the rental office advising that our building was one of 1000 buildings in the area that had to be vacated and torn down to make way for the building of the new railroad tracks that were to be brought into the new Union Terminal that was being built at the south westerly quadrangle of the Public Square. The notice required that all tenants of the block would have to vacate the premises by January 1, 1928. Shock waves of grief and despair engulfed every family in the block. Father was now suddenly faced with the prospect of seeking and finding another place to live and to make plans to move as ordered by January 1 of the New Year! This was a traumatic turn of events for father. He now found himself and his family being uprooted arbitrarily from his first home in America. Fate stepped in when Philomena Lavigna, wife of Rocco Lavigna, grandpa Romanelli’s good friend, proposed that father rent a six room upstairs suite in their new, recently purchased double house located at 3048 East 116th Street in the Buckeye Road area.

Father, at first, found it very difficult to reconcile himself to accepting the Lavigna offer to rent their upstairs suite for two reasons. First, because he was not sure that we would be able to absorb the rent increase. By that time, our monthly- rent in the block on Race Street had only been increased to a mere ten dollars. The Lavigna proposal required forty dollars a month! Father kept saying, “How on earth will we be able to manage an increase of thirty dollars?” Second, he worried about being so far from the source of his work. For years, he had become used to the convenience of being within walking distance of the shop. The distance from our home in the block to the shop was only a matter of minutes. Moving out to East 116 Street and Buckeye Road to him seemed to be at land’s end. In addition, it would mean the added expense of street car fare to downtown Cleveland! Mother, on the other hand, was thrilled at the prospect of moving into a brand new home, with a bathroom, a luxury we did not have in the block. In those days, we tenement dwellers in the old Hay Market District were still regular users of the Public Bath House on Orange Street, which was a good twenty minute walk from home and, where for the great sum of five cents, we had our weekly shower, as was the custom at the time.

After some cajoling, mother was able to convince father. We moved to 3048 East 116th Street at the end of 192 7, with father saying, “Let us pray that the Lord will help us come up with the rent increase.” I too found the move difficult because I had been elected Student Council President at Brownell Junior High School in October 192 7, a commitment I kept as a commuter student until the end of the school year and graduation at the end of January, 1928.

The Lord did provide! A short time after I had graduated from Brownell Junior High School, I was chatting with Millie, one of the Lavigna daughters about my desire to find work as a page in a library, because I missed the part-time job I had at the Brownell School, which I had to give up when we moved out of the area. She contacted Theresa Frankino, who was Head of the Circulation Desk at the Harvey Rice Branch of the Cleveland Public Library at the time and set up an appointment for me to meet her. The branch library, located at 2820 East 116h Street was within walking distance of our new home, so I hoped and prayed that I would be able to get a job there, so that I would be able to help pay the rent! The Lord was with me! Miss Frankino’ introduced me to Miss Charlotte Fairchild, the Branch Librarian, who must have been favorably impressed when she interviewed me. After I was able to show her that I could do the job shelving books speedily, she put me to the test. I was hired to work after school part-time at eighteen cents an hour, two cents more than I had earned at the Brownell Junior High School Library! We had agreed that I could work following classes at John Adams High School, from 3:30 to 9:30 P.M., Monday through Friday, and a full day on Saturdays. So it was with the Lord’s help my earnings, along with my brother Sol’s earnings, helped father pay the rent and the family’s expenses required by our new home.

Father soon became used to “living way out in the country” as he put it. He got used to riding the street car to pick up material from the shop and so continued to work for Mike Lavin without any problem or interruption.

Nick received his medical degree from St. Louis University School of Medicine in dune of 1928 and passed the Ohio State Board Examination in duly, making him a licensed Physician. This was a great milestone in our family and made both father and mother exceedingly happy and proud. At the same time, Nick had been accepted as an intern at the old St. John Hospital, located at West 79th and Detroit Avenue. Father had now been able to prove those neighbors wrong, who at the time that Nick had gone away to medical school, had predicted that father, as a poor tailor, would never be able to afford the expense of educating a medical doctor, that a tailor’s needle could never make a Doctor of Medicine!