From the Streets of New York
Life was not always the chaotic mess that is had become later on. In fact my earlier years were quite pleasant and full of very enjoyable memories of my aunts, uncles and cousins of which there were many. In 1961 I was an orphan selected by my stepparents at the tender age of 9 months old from the Catholic home bureau located in Manhattan New York. Therefore I was not related to any of my relatives by blood which is something that I would be thankful for as I grew older. My foster parents were Florence and Gondolfo Verra, otherwise known as Flo and Adolf whose first attempt at having a child failed due to a miscarriage which was why I came into their lives. At the time they were living with my grandmother Helen Campbell on my stepmother’s side of the family in a tenement building located on Delancey Street in the lower east side of New York City.
The lower east side of Manhattan was an ethnically diverse and tough section of New York City. Irish, Italians, Poles, Ukrainians, and other ethnic groups resided within this poor lower-class workers neighborhood. Living in the heart of this cultural community Flo’s side of the family was a mixture of various nationalities which was predominantly Polish and German while my stepfather’s side of the family was Sicilian Italian which were scattered and living in historic Little Italy. They both were street hardened being raised and surviving on the streets of the city. Flo ran away from home for a time and hung out with a group of delinquent girls and managed to get herself into all kinds of trouble. Eventually she was caught by the police and sentenced to spend time at the Women’s house of Detention on Welfare Island now known as Roosevelt Island. A stint at Welfare Island was the fate of many a poor woman who got convicted of crimes against public order including intoxication, disorderly conduct, vagrancy, "violating Public Health law," etc. In Flo’s case it was disorderly conduct. Those that were sent to Welfare Island were amongst the worst of the troublesome and were labeled as "crazed, contagious, or criminal."
The history of my stepfathers’ upbringing is more of a mystery to me since he and I had a falling out early in my youth, not that we were ever close to begin with. However from what I’ve been told Adolf also grew up on the rough and tumble streets of Little Italy working his way up through the ranks of the ‘family’ as a soldier that had some associations with the very predominant crime family. I didn’t know what his function in the family was but many years later I was told that he was a ‘mechanic’, otherwise known as a hit man. Whether this is true or not I’ll never truly know. However on my birth certificate which I have obtained after 50 years it shows that Adolf stated his occupation as a ‘mechanic’ and from what I can remember he did not work on any type of machinery. Nevertheless whatever his reputation was, it is evident that my father and my relatives were involved with the mob. I never realized until many years later why I had so many uncles that never looked alike as they were all part of the same crew, a family that I would be initiated into when the time was right. Fortunately as life went on I was distanced from the crime aspect of the family and since my actual bloodline was not truly Italian I would not have been a candidate to become a mob associate. I always think that if life was different and I had gotten involved in a life of crime I would either be dead or in prison by now.
Of course at the age of only 9 months old I was pretty oblivious to my circumstance as I became the newest edition to the family name. I was a bandage for a child lost, a false son to satisfy the selfish needs of a couple that desired to be parents. So I was welcome with open arms and for a time treated as a prince. Like a toy doll I paraded around it in cute outfits and doted upon by all the relatives who showered me affection. It was a superficially happy time for the couple that was reaching for some normalcy in their otherwise chaotic lives as the concept of having a child would bring them closer together and for a few years it did until the novelty of parenthood began to wear off.
So I was handed over to an unstable couple that presented themselves as normal, moral and devout by the Catholic home bureau and for a time they attempted to live life by these standards. However as the saying goes a Zebra can’t change it stripes, the true nature of my make believe parents would eventually unveil itself. This revelation was not immediately recognized; in fact it has taken many years for me to come to terms with the way I was raised and to get to the roots of all that has transpired to shape the person that I am today.
