Her mom and dad both emigrated from Lithuania to New Philadelphia where he passed away from lung cancer at age 48 from the coal mines. The Czar of Russia had agents all over the PA coal fields looking for him and similar emigres to bring them back to Russia and serve in the Russian military. My grandfather outsmarted them, arriving in America using a German name. He went on to a great but very short life in his new country, America.
He told my mom to leave school at age 12, go to work and send the money home so he and the rest of the family could survive. He passed away 11 years later, when she was 21. She continued to send most of her pay back to the coal region to support her mom and her siblings. When she married she did not have a bank account because all of her money was sent back home.
Those were hard times. I vacationed in the PA coal region and of course grew to love the place and the hard working people.
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