Secrets
When I was little, my parents spoke Italian from time to time, when they didn’t want us to understand them. They spoke a dialect, but I didn’t know it; I thought that everyone spoke like they did! Italians love secrets. But I wanted to know everything. For example, why, oh why, did the family change its surname from Bentivengo (really BentivengA) to “Bennett”? My father was so proud to be Italian; he was angry when we ate American (Mitigan) food. (One day he came in while we were eating bologna and cheese sandwiches on bagels, and he became so enraged that he said to my Mother: ‘My kids are gonna die of cancer, I don’t want them eating this shit.’ And he swept the remains of our sandwiches off the table.) So why did he call himself “Bennett”? The family females told me that he (my father) had changed the name when he became a businessman, because he did not want to become the target of discrimination. Bennett was a neutral surname; no one knew the nationality. But they also told me that he changed it when he was a boxer, because Bentivengo was too long. But one time, Daddy told me that his ‘ring name’ was Innocenzo Parole!! He said that he needed this false name because he was too young to be in the ring, so he took the name from someone else who was older. (I sorta doubt this, but he did fight Lew Tendler in a South Philly gym once. Dad lost.) My paternal grandfather was dead, I couldn’t ask him. (I never met him.) My grandmother didn’t speak English, except to say “little gramomma” when she saw me or my sister. Over the years, I began to think that perhaps my grandfather had committed some crime, and had changed the surname as an ‘alias’, but it wasn’t true. Although he did seem to have more than one wife at some point. I had so many questions when I was older, I would visit my parents’ house and take out my reporters’ notebook. Sometimes my father would become impatient (or uncomfortable, because I was nosing too close to the truth), and he would say, “Call your Aunt, ask her.” I called Serafina, my beloved Godmother, peppered her with questions endlessly, and she actually told me things that were a little closer to the truth. Afterwards, my father said, “You were on the phone for an hour! What did your Aunt say?” I told him, and he laughed! How tiresome!
Anyway, later I did a lot of research on the family. I donated to churches in South Philly and asked them to peruse their copious records, which were excellent. The findings sometimes shocked me. Adoptions, weddings. I spoke to cemetery directors, funeral parlor owners, wrote to the Archdiocese. This was ALL pre-Internet, pre-Ancestry.com, pre DNA tests (whereby I discovered two first cousins, and in one case, figured out which of my Mom’s five brothers had been dallying. I told my cousin who her Dad was before the genealogist got back to her. I sent her photos. Etcetera.) But many years before all this, I became a journalist because: 1) I like to write. 2) I need to know the truth and 3) I can always ask questions.