May 11, 2025 • 10 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, our host, Lee Habeeb, opens up about his mother’s life and legacy in the patch of earth in Northern New Jersey she cared for and influenced with her love, grace, and class.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories and our special
celebration of Mother's Day. And now it's time for my
own celebration of my own mother and her life. The
world didn't notice when she died in December of twenty
twelve at the age of eighty, but those of us
who knew her and loved her, we all noticed. We
lost someone who lived for us, someone who loved us,
(00:32):
someone who would have done anything for us, and her friends,
even strangers. Christina LaPadula, my mom came into the world
in December of nineteen thirty two, a pretty.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tough time to be born, you'd think.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Though she grew up through the Great Depression and World
War II, the stories of her childhood were mostly fond one.
She grew up in West New York, New Jersey, a
densely populated town a three miles from downtown New York City.
Like the neighboring cities of Hoboken, Union City and Jersey City,
Western New York was packed with immigrant families from all
over Europe. First generation Poles, Jews, Irish, and German families
(01:14):
all had distinct cultures, food, and languages. Her parents were
both from Italy and came to this country with no
money and no education. Neither could speak English like all
of the immigrants in their neighborhood. Her parents didn't come
to America to change the country. They came to have.
(01:34):
America changed them and the lives of their family. Her
parents wanted their children to assimilate into the fabric of
their adopted homeland, and to do it fast. That meant
no speaking Italian in the house. Luckily for her, the
English as a second language movement in education had not
yet been born. The school systems of the day didn't
(01:56):
adapt to the kids. The kids adapted to the school system.
My mom lived in a small, five story walk up
apartment with her sister Marie and her brother John. The
streets bustled with NonStop action and drama, and though times
were tough, my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Never really remembered many really hard times.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I didn't know we didn't have much because no one
else I knew had much. She would always tell us
we were never poor. She would always add, we didn't
have money, but we were never poor. I remember my
mom seeing some of the tough neighborhoods in the sixties
and the seventies, and mothers pushing baby carriages and graffiti
(02:40):
and just what had happened to the American family, And
she knew it wasn't just lack of money that could
explain it, given the times she'd grown up in to
have a family intact and have families around you that
are intact, and churches around you, and she was surrounded
by Catholic and Protestant churches where it's harder to imagine
(03:02):
the kind of poverty that we now know, because there
were kids who were loved by families. My mom met
her husband to be in high school. She was the
captain of the cheerleading team. He was the captain of
the basketball team. And yes, these things happen in life.
(03:24):
My dad was a stutterer and was shy about it
and ultimately could have easily after some very good sporting years,
ended up, as he put it, in the penal system
because he had a temper and he was angry at
the world for this affliction of stuttering. And my mom
knew it and ultimately worked with him, loved on him,
(03:45):
and got him through college and he became an educator.
My parents got married right after dad graduated from college,
but they never took time to be a married couple.
There were always kids by the time. If they were thirty,
they had four of us to take care of.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Were they ready for it all?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, Mom didn't ask that kind of question, nor did
Dad or any of them back in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
They were probably better off.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No matter how long we delay such things, we're never ready.
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of Mom
and Dad before they became the adults they became.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They looked like grown ups even in their.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
High school yearbooks, as did most of their peers.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Why did they sacrifice so much? We asked that a
lot of both of them.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I learned as I got older that calling what my
mom and did his sacrifice irritated them.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
They were doing what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
No one back then thought postponing adolescents into their thirties
was an option. They started things, They started lives, They
started families and careers. One picture from their wedding is
my favorite. Young bride and groom grinning as they cut
their wedding cake, celebrating on a rooftop in a neighboring building.
(05:07):
No wedding planners, folks, no exotic honeymoons. It was a
drive up and down in Niagara Falls and back to life.
One of the great gifts my mom gave me, along
with my dad, was watching a marriage grow. In the
early days, my dad had a temper. It actually scared
(05:28):
all of us. He never hit anybody, but just the
power of his voice, well, it almost made all of
us cry. None of us understood what the fights were about.
What kid does They probably didn't know either. Sometimes I
thought one of them would just call it quits, But always, always,
the next day came and there they were. As time passed,
(05:50):
Dad's temper fated. As Dad's temper fated and he got
more comfortable, the marriage settled. My mom had learned a
lot less fights, and just with her patience, let him
grow up. As I got older, I came to appreciate
the small things, the daily habits and rituals that my
(06:11):
dad and mom shared. Those rituals and rhythms of life
gave me a great sense of stability, a great sense
that relationships can last, that love can last. The coffee
they had every morning, the daily run to the supermarket,
the evening coffee out by the pool, listening to war
on the transistor radio, the early dinners at a local
(06:32):
bar for pizza and muscles, Marinera, the card games.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Mom always won them.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The habits of love were there for me to observe
and later in life, to imitate. The love eye witness
didn't look like anything I saw in movies. It looked
like something so much better, something within reach. The constancy,
the consistency, the mutual understanding. None of it was terribly exciting,
(06:58):
but it was good for me. It was good for
my parents too. There's a line of theologian Dietrich Bonhaffer
who said this in a letter to his niece before
her wedding quote, it's not your love that sustains your marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
That lesson may be the greatest lesson. My mom and
(07:21):
my dad taught me marriage sustains love. The number of
things my mom did for us, well, there are too
many to count. But the thing we all most appreciated
was her taking a job as a secretary at a
local college, fairly Dickinson University, so all four of us
could go through college for free.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And by the way, there.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Were two years where all four of us were in
college at the same time. By the way, my mom
loved doing it loved the work. But in the end,
as we grew up and left home, a little part
of my mom well just died because in the end
what gave her the greatest satisfaction was motherhood.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It just did not work.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
She had a thrift shop called Anything Goes in our
little town, and we're not sure whether it ever made money.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Dad never came clean. He never told us the truth
about that.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But I always watched my mom give stuff away to
people who couldn't afford it. The negotiation was always I
really can't afford that Chris, and Chris would say, well,
just pay me what you can. Not exactly the way
forward for a great business enterprise, but I think my
mom ran that business just to just keep her maternal
instincts going and just continue to help and serve folks.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I also remember my mom as a warrior.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
An African American couple moved into town with a beautiful family,
and there were some efforts to resist this, and it's
called blockbusting. That was the discrimination pattern of the North.
The South had theirs, the North had well, we had
our own too. And I'm broadcasting from Oxford, Mississippi, and
speaking about segregation in New Jersey, but it happened, and
(08:57):
my mom fought that. She remembered as a young Italian
girl being called wap and daego, and Italians did not
get perfect treatment from their white European brothers and sisters.
It was rough go and my mom also always stood
up for the young Jewish kids in the neighborhood, so
discrimination was something she just didn't well, She didn't stomach well.
(09:21):
The other big memory I have is of my mom
sharing with me one day as she gave to me
the purple heart and the picture of her brother's tombstone
and Sant Lauran, France. She lost her brother in World
War Two. He was a paratrooper and was killed in
France not long after D Day, and I was honored
(09:42):
with that presentation. My mom gave it to me and
it hangs in my office still. My last memory of
my mom is at the nursing home. I remember those
last days. I would always take the late shift and
I would sneak in cigarettes for her more menthols, and
I would sneak in a really good meal there. She said,
(10:03):
the stuff here is rubbish, you can't eat it, and
so I would bring in all the food She wasn't
allowed to eat, and we'd go outside in the dark
and in the cold. At midnight, I'd turn on that
transistor radio and put on her favorite station, try and
catch some Sinatra oldies, and she would puff away and
then slice up a good steak with some of the
great macaroni and cheese at the diner next door. And
(10:25):
those are the fondest memories I have of my mom.
Those are just some of the stories I remember so
many more. I don't have the time to tell the
life of Christina LaPadula, Christina Habib, my mom.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories and our special
celebration of Mother's Day. And now it's time for my
own celebration of my own mother and her life. The
world didn't notice when she died in December of twenty
twelve at the age of eighty, but those of us
who knew her and loved her, we all noticed. We
lost someone who lived for us, someone who loved us,
(00:32):
someone who would have done anything for us, and her friends,
even strangers. Christina LaPadula, my mom came into the world
in December of nineteen thirty two, a pretty.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Tough time to be born, you'd think.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Though she grew up through the Great Depression and World
War II, the stories of her childhood were mostly fond one.
She grew up in West New York, New Jersey, a
densely populated town a three miles from downtown New York City.
Like the neighboring cities of Hoboken, Union City and Jersey City,
Western New York was packed with immigrant families from all
over Europe. First generation Poles, Jews, Irish, and German families
(01:14):
all had distinct cultures, food, and languages. Her parents were
both from Italy and came to this country with no
money and no education. Neither could speak English like all
of the immigrants in their neighborhood. Her parents didn't come
to America to change the country. They came to have.
(01:34):
America changed them and the lives of their family. Her
parents wanted their children to assimilate into the fabric of
their adopted homeland, and to do it fast. That meant
no speaking Italian in the house. Luckily for her, the
English as a second language movement in education had not
yet been born. The school systems of the day didn't
(01:56):
adapt to the kids. The kids adapted to the school system.
My mom lived in a small, five story walk up
apartment with her sister Marie and her brother John. The
streets bustled with NonStop action and drama, and though times
were tough, my mom.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Never really remembered many really hard times.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
I didn't know we didn't have much because no one
else I knew had much. She would always tell us
we were never poor. She would always add, we didn't
have money, but we were never poor. I remember my
mom seeing some of the tough neighborhoods in the sixties
and the seventies, and mothers pushing baby carriages and graffiti
(02:40):
and just what had happened to the American family, And
she knew it wasn't just lack of money that could
explain it, given the times she'd grown up in to
have a family intact and have families around you that
are intact, and churches around you, and she was surrounded
by Catholic and Protestant churches where it's harder to imagine
(03:02):
the kind of poverty that we now know, because there
were kids who were loved by families. My mom met
her husband to be in high school. She was the
captain of the cheerleading team. He was the captain of
the basketball team. And yes, these things happen in life.
(03:24):
My dad was a stutterer and was shy about it
and ultimately could have easily after some very good sporting years,
ended up, as he put it, in the penal system
because he had a temper and he was angry at
the world for this affliction of stuttering. And my mom
knew it and ultimately worked with him, loved on him,
(03:45):
and got him through college and he became an educator.
My parents got married right after dad graduated from college,
but they never took time to be a married couple.
There were always kids by the time. If they were thirty,
they had four of us to take care of.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Were they ready for it all?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Well, Mom didn't ask that kind of question, nor did
Dad or any of them back in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
They were probably better off.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
No matter how long we delay such things, we're never ready.
I remember as a kid looking at pictures of Mom
and Dad before they became the adults they became.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
They looked like grown ups even in their.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
High school yearbooks, as did most of their peers.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Why did they sacrifice so much? We asked that a
lot of both of them.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I learned as I got older that calling what my
mom and did his sacrifice irritated them.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
They were doing what they were supposed to do.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
No one back then thought postponing adolescents into their thirties
was an option. They started things, They started lives, They
started families and careers. One picture from their wedding is
my favorite. Young bride and groom grinning as they cut
their wedding cake, celebrating on a rooftop in a neighboring building.
(05:07):
No wedding planners, folks, no exotic honeymoons. It was a
drive up and down in Niagara Falls and back to life.
One of the great gifts my mom gave me, along
with my dad, was watching a marriage grow. In the
early days, my dad had a temper. It actually scared
(05:28):
all of us. He never hit anybody, but just the
power of his voice, well, it almost made all of
us cry. None of us understood what the fights were about.
What kid does They probably didn't know either. Sometimes I
thought one of them would just call it quits, But always, always,
the next day came and there they were. As time passed,
(05:50):
Dad's temper fated. As Dad's temper fated and he got
more comfortable, the marriage settled. My mom had learned a
lot less fights, and just with her patience, let him
grow up. As I got older, I came to appreciate
the small things, the daily habits and rituals that my
(06:11):
dad and mom shared. Those rituals and rhythms of life
gave me a great sense of stability, a great sense
that relationships can last, that love can last. The coffee
they had every morning, the daily run to the supermarket,
the evening coffee out by the pool, listening to war
on the transistor radio, the early dinners at a local
(06:32):
bar for pizza and muscles, Marinera, the card games.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Mom always won them.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
The habits of love were there for me to observe
and later in life, to imitate. The love eye witness
didn't look like anything I saw in movies. It looked
like something so much better, something within reach. The constancy,
the consistency, the mutual understanding. None of it was terribly exciting,
(06:58):
but it was good for me. It was good for
my parents too. There's a line of theologian Dietrich Bonhaffer
who said this in a letter to his niece before
her wedding quote, it's not your love that sustains your marriage,
but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.
That lesson may be the greatest lesson. My mom and
(07:21):
my dad taught me marriage sustains love. The number of
things my mom did for us, well, there are too
many to count. But the thing we all most appreciated
was her taking a job as a secretary at a
local college, fairly Dickinson University, so all four of us
could go through college for free.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
And by the way, there.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Were two years where all four of us were in
college at the same time. By the way, my mom
loved doing it loved the work. But in the end,
as we grew up and left home, a little part
of my mom well just died because in the end
what gave her the greatest satisfaction was motherhood.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
It just did not work.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
She had a thrift shop called Anything Goes in our
little town, and we're not sure whether it ever made money.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
Dad never came clean. He never told us the truth
about that.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
But I always watched my mom give stuff away to
people who couldn't afford it. The negotiation was always I
really can't afford that Chris, and Chris would say, well,
just pay me what you can. Not exactly the way
forward for a great business enterprise, but I think my
mom ran that business just to just keep her maternal
instincts going and just continue to help and serve folks.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
I also remember my mom as a warrior.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
An African American couple moved into town with a beautiful family,
and there were some efforts to resist this, and it's
called blockbusting. That was the discrimination pattern of the North.
The South had theirs, the North had well, we had
our own too. And I'm broadcasting from Oxford, Mississippi, and
speaking about segregation in New Jersey, but it happened, and
(08:57):
my mom fought that. She remembered as a young Italian
girl being called wap and daego, and Italians did not
get perfect treatment from their white European brothers and sisters.
It was rough go and my mom also always stood
up for the young Jewish kids in the neighborhood, so
discrimination was something she just didn't well, She didn't stomach well.
(09:21):
The other big memory I have is of my mom
sharing with me one day as she gave to me
the purple heart and the picture of her brother's tombstone
and Sant Lauran, France. She lost her brother in World
War Two. He was a paratrooper and was killed in
France not long after D Day, and I was honored
(09:42):
with that presentation. My mom gave it to me and
it hangs in my office still. My last memory of
my mom is at the nursing home. I remember those
last days. I would always take the late shift and
I would sneak in cigarettes for her more menthols, and
I would sneak in a really good meal there. She said,
(10:03):
the stuff here is rubbish, you can't eat it, and
so I would bring in all the food She wasn't
allowed to eat, and we'd go outside in the dark
and in the cold. At midnight, I'd turn on that
transistor radio and put on her favorite station, try and
catch some Sinatra oldies, and she would puff away and
then slice up a good steak with some of the
great macaroni and cheese at the diner next door. And
(10:25):
those are the fondest memories I have of my mom.
Those are just some of the stories I remember so
many more. I don't have the time to tell the
life of Christina LaPadula, Christina Habib, my mom.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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