By Muriel J. Smith
RUMSON – Though babies have been born since the clock ticked in a New Year this week, they are oblivious to what the future holds for them or the past that has brought about the life they will face in the 21st century.
Not so at the other end of the spectrum, where a very attractive, energetic and lively lady has a century of memories and is looking forward to whatever adventures 2015 has in store for her.
Rose Ramali, who lives with her daughter and son-in-law, is looking forward to turning 102 years old on June 1 and continues to enjoy a life filled with love, tragedy, problems and change, but always hope and her own self-confidence that things will always be better.
Ramali, fastidious in dress, her hair carefully coifed, can entertain and educate an audience for hours on end with her memories of what life was like in the early part of the 20th century when she was born, and the years that followed, through the Depression, wars, moves and change. She’s a regular attendee at the Rumson Seniors Club twice a month where she admits she is not the oldest member. “My friend Rose is 103…both of us Roses are over 100…” The group, including Ramali, recently celebrated the holidays with their annual dinner at the Rumson Country Club.
Born in Sicily, Ramali was 2 months old when her parents packed her and her three older siblings up for the long trip across the sea to hopefully a new and better life in America. Ramali’s great uncle, her mother’s brother, sponsored the family for their new home, so they knew there would be security, love, and anxious relatives awaiting their arrival. All of that and crowded quarters as well, as the family settled in with the sponsoring uncle, staying in his home in Oyster Bay for a year. Over the next few years, three more children were born, making Ramali the middle child of seven. The family moved several times, with Ramali living in Manhattan, the Bronx, Pelham Bay, later Morristown, all before her present home in Rumson.
In spite of low paying jobs for her parents – “Let’s face it, they were immigrants, they had to take whatever jobs they could get,” – she says without rancor. “My mother was a dressmaker in the garment center, and she always made certain we were always well dressed and taken care of.” The garment center wasn’t assembly-line efficient in the 1920s, Ramali explains. “They brought a bundle down to you and you had to put them together and make the clothes.” She shrugs at the idea it was difficult work: “I did it too, I love to sew.” She recalls her parents gave her a Singer sewing machine when she married in 1935, the same Singer she continues to use today. “I just had it out yesterday, “ she explains. “I had to repair a couple of garments. It’s a wonderful machine. Works perfectly.”
Growing up in New York was wonderful, Ramali continues, since families all lived in the same community and neighbors watched out for neighbors. When the first family in the neighborhood got a radio, “we’d all go over there at night and sit on the floor and listen to the programs. There was a spooky one we all really liked.”
Ramali’s family didn’t have a radio, “but we did have a Victrola with a horn. My mother loved music and we had all the records of Caruso and all the other great singers. It was really great.”
She also remembers when the family had gas before electricity was introduced into their neighborhood. She laughs now remembering “the big meter on the kitchen wall; you had to put 50 cents in the coin box to get lights, and if the 50 cents ran out and you didn’t have more change to go in, you were in the dark. ” The family lived on 123th Street when they first got electricity, and Ramali recalls it was “a little scary, because it was something new, it was strange. But we all liked it.”
With seven children and a limited income, living conditions were always a bit crowded but nonetheless stable and fun. Her brothers slept on folding beds, she and her sisters slept two or three to a bed, but life was always good because there was always family in the community.
Ramali’s dad had worked in construction from the time the family first arrived in New York, and can count helping to build the subway system as one of his accomplishments. But working in cold, wet conditions, often for long hours and without proper rest and warmth, left him in poor physical condition. By the time he was in his 50s, he suffered a stroke and was seriously disabled, and Ramali’s mother took care of him for three years before he died at age 59. Ramali’s mother, herself suffering from a number of ailments, died four months later at age 49. By that time, Ramali and three of her siblings were married, so they did what every Italian family would do: ”I took by younger brother, my siblings took the other two, and we all raised our siblings in our parents’ absence. That’s what you did. You were family.”
Folks who have lived for 100 years have suffered through far too many wars, and while Ramali was still a toddler during World War I, she vividly remembers when Armistice Day was declared and soldiers came home. “Our house was on the corner of 13th Street and Avenue A, and we saw the soldiers marching up the street with all the neighbors throwing out fruits and everything else to celebrate their coming home. But the soldiers were all yelling ‘we want spaghetti.’ These were happy memories.”
The Depression years of the 1930s were a different story. Ramali was married then …to the husband who lived three doors away from her family in the Bronx, and who was friends with Ramali’s brother, Charlie. “They were great friends, they were in business 36 years together and never so much as an argument.” The pair owned a small store where Ramali also worked, selling all matter of goods and merchandise for housekeeping. Their business got started on $600 of the $900 the Romalis had saved for the birth of their first daughter in 1939, using the rest for a crib and carriage and “what we needed to start a family.” The business was a success “because we all worked hard,” but it was another 12 years before the owners saved the $12,000 necessary to buy property and expand the business. There was never any talk of a mortgage; “we never got anything until we could afford to pay for it.” These were lean years for everyone, Ramali remembers the men who had cartons of apples and sold them on street corners to make a living. But family sticking together made the difference for the Romalis.
It was Ramali’s older brother who acquired the first television set in the family in the 1950s, and once again, the family gathered at one house on “Tuesday nights to listen see Milton Berle. Then we’d have coffee and cake and walk home.” She smiles in remembrance.
Ramali has made no fewer than three trips back to her roots in Sicily and has connected with aunts and uncles back there over the years. “I think I’ve done everything,” she muses, thinking of her lifetime. “I’ve raised a family, traveled, gone on cruises, been to Japan and Hawaii…and every day, I thank God that I’ve been able to do all of that.”
Nor is it over. The centenarian and matriarch of a family of two daughters, four grandchildren, nine great-grandchildren and two great- great-grandchildren is looking forward to her June flight to Florida to spend a few weeks with her daughter and granddaughter.
Any advice for future generations? “ Stop being so greedy…like Hitler…We’ve had too many wars, people and countries should get along better. We can do this by becoming tolerant of each other, by loving each other. My advice? Be happy!”
