Thoughts on Antonia

In the winter of 2010, I was deciding on the name for my new gallery in Chatham. A couple of things were happening at the same time. First, January marked what would have been my paternal grandmother’s 100th birthday. At the same time, I was reading My Antonia by Willa Cather. It’s a pioneer story and reminded me of my grandmother who came here to start a new life, a pioneer herself.

My grandmother, Antonia Boreffi, was born in Arnara, Italy, a small hill town south of Rome. Antonia migrated to the United States in the 1920’s with her husband Domenico. They both worked for the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company.

Wikipedia describes the Endicott-Johnson Shoe company:

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The Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company (“E-J”) was a prosperous manufacturer of shoes based in New York'sSouthern Tier, with factories mostly located in the area's Triple Cities of Binghamton, Johnson City, and Endicott. An estimated 20,000 people worked in the company's factories by the 1920s, and an even greater number worked there during the boom years of the mid-1940s when, helped by footwear it produced for the military during the war years, it was producing 52 million pairs of shoes a year. During the early 1950s, the work force was still approximately 17,000 to 18,000.

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It is hard to put into words what an amazing woman she was: loving, funny and compassionate. Although she has been gone for many years, she remains a force for her family and friends that knew and loved her.