Lucia Sanitate

My father bought the house on Garland in 1936 for $3500.00. The interest rate was 3% and the house was paid for by 1940. Not bad for a poor immigrant from Italy with seven children. But,why not? This was the land of opportunity.

Garland must be the longest street in Detroit and we lived right smack-dab in the middle of it, so whichever way we went, it was a long distance.

It was a good place to live, a friendly neighborhood – a good place in which to grow up. St. Margaret Mary Church was the hub of that Catholic, ethnic-rich community. We went to school there and to mass every single day.

When he came to this country, my father was a boy of seventeen. A few years later he served proudly for the United States in WWI.

Every autumn he would make wine. He chose the California grapes carefully at the railroad yard, and when they were delivered, neighbors helped unload the crates of plump, dewy fruit – Zinfandel it was – and handed them through the windows into the basement. It was an exciting time: the heady smell of fermenting fruit, the teady crunch of the press, the trickle of purple liquid caught into giant tubs. His time-honored method was not scientific, but he always had good wine, dry and clear, never vinegary. It was a point of pride with him, his wine, and justly so.

The old house in the middle of the longest block in the city is no longer there, a victim of razing in the now blighted neighborhood.

St Margaret Mary Church bowed out September 25. There were only thirty parish families left when the last Mass was said. My father bowed out on September 26. He was eighty-five years old.

I remember it kindly. It was a good place to live.

– Written by Lucia Sanitate Taylor

White flight continued to drain the city of its Catholics. The church that was once growing by leaps and bounds was drawing only about 50 people by 1980. Its school was shuttered in 1970. The Archdiocese finally ordered St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church closed in 1982.

Once our mother graduated from high school she went to work in an office. She was a good student however in those days most young women did not pursue a college degree. Especially those that did not have the money to pay for a college education.

The story our mother told about how she met our father is that she worked in an office in Detroit and dad came in and flirted with her and asked her for a date. Mother had choir practice so she told him he could go with her. He did not accompany her but he did come back the next week and asked again. They went on a date the next week.

Our parents were married in a Catholic ceremony at St Margaret May Church on July 7 1951. They had their wedding breakfast at the Whittier Hotel. The hotel was a beautiful Italian Renaissance building near the corner of East Jefferson Avenue. Although it closed in 2001 for much needed renovations, sadly it has only been partially renovated.

Mother tells the story that she spent two weeks in the hospital, one week delivering and recovering and one-week serving food and helping in the hospital. England was still recovering from WWII and it was still “all hands on deck”.

Celia was 2 years old and Bill was 6 months old when the young family returned to Detroit, buying a home at 11351 Woodbine Street in Redford Township.

After Mother died Carol, Celia and her husband Chris accompanied Dad on a sentimental journey back to England. We visited Upper Heyford and the home on Cowley Road in East Oxford where mother and father spent most of their time while in England. We traveled the beautiful countryside on the narrow rural lanes through charming villages.

It was a good trip. We are glad we made that trip together since Dad died not long after.