By Mary Malloy
She celebrated her 106th birthday in January, and shares some of her memories here:
Antoinette DeMilia Grieco was born in Boston, MA, in January of 1903. She was one of six children born of Italian parents, Maura and Salvatore - there were four boys and two girls. She moved to Lynbrook in 1911. "I loved school," Grieco reminisces. "When it was bad weather, my father would tell my mother not to send us to school..I didn't like that - I begged him to let me go!" She said she remembers that Lynbrook was mostly farmland then, and the railroad was ground level. The grade school is where the administrative building is now, on Atlantic Avenue. Her elementary school certificate, which she still has, shows that she completed courses in reading, spelling, arithmetic, geography, and U.S. history. The certificate also reads that she had "punctual attendance" and paid "diligent attention to study."
She entered Lynbrook High School in 1917, but never finished because her family wanted her to work. At first she did odd jobs - such as sewing in factories - and then decided she wanted to go to business school. She got her business diploma and started working as a stenographer at Browne's accounting firm in Jamaica in 1924. She got married to Edward Catena when she was 23-years-old. They had four daughters: Vivian, Dolores, Janet and Ronnie.
Soon after they married, the Catena's moved to an apartment in Jamaica, and then to Rosedale, where her father's family owned a farm. They bought a house there for $5,000. "I remember shopping at the A&P, where they had wooden floors with sawdust spread around on them," she said. Mr Miller used to come down the street in his horse and buggy, she remembered, selling fresh fruits and vegetables in large wicker baskets. "He would stop for his regular customers," she said. "People would run out of their houses when they heard him coming."
After a few years, the family moved briefly to Baldwin, and then back to Lynbrook where, she said, "someone talked [my husband] into buying some property." The piece of land was on a field where the school eventually took possession, and their house was literally jacked up and moved to Doxey Place.
Grieco said that she and her family did not suffer as much as some others during the Great Depression of 1929. "My husband had a pretty good job," she said, and his $35 weekly salary was more than the average at the time. "We had meat only twice a week anyway, and I made a lot of stew." Her sister and her family, she said, got "relief" - what we now call "welfare," and whatever meat they got from the government was shared, because they had no freezers to store it in. She said that her cooking was "nothing special" but listed some mouth-watering recipes she had made over the years, including Italian dishes, savoy cabbage with spare ribs, and pasta fasulli. She remembered standing in line for meat, coffee and sugar after World War II, when those items were rationed.
Edward Catena died in 1958, and Antoinette married Victor Grieco a few years later.
Antoinette enjoyed the music of Perry Como and Tony Bennett, and still attends all of the school districts' class musicals. "I talk to everyone, and tell them that I came here when it was a little wooden schoolhouse and the outhouse was in the parking lot," she chuckled. Her favorite president was "the one with the pretty wife" (JFK). She remembers the day he was assassinated. "My husband called me into the living room to watch the T.V,." she said. "Everyone was crying."
Grieco said she has no desire to learn to use a computer, since she is having trouble with her eyes as of late. She cherishes her years living at Nathan Hale on Doxey Place, playing bridge and pinnacle with other senior citizens. "It was senior housing, and I liked it very much." She was there for 25 years. She now lives with her daughter, Dolores and her husband, Joe, in Oyster Bay. She has 12 grandchildren and 26 great grandchild, one of whom - John, 100 years her junior - will be graduating from the Lynbrook kindergarten center this year.
What advice would she give now to people who are trying to save money? "I never had a credit card...we paid any store charge accounts at the end of each month," she said. "And I sewed little dresses for my daughters...I liked to sew."
As far as Lynbrook goes, she said it hasn't changed much. "The stores are built up a little bit more," she said, "But it's still a nice village to walk through and meet people during the day."
Comments about this story? Mmalloy@
liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 202.
