Anita Ceresani Irwin, my mother, was born in Fano, Italy on August 7, 1913 and passed on March 13, 2016 at 102 years of age. At the behest of my grandfather Americo to immediately immigrate to America to avoid the limitations imposed on southern Europeans by the Johnson Act. This the second wave of Italian immigrants after the First World War, the first being in the 1880’s-1890’s. Like other immigrants she passed through Ellis Island in New York city harbor with her older brother Pasquale and mother Maria to reside a short distance from New York city in New Haven, an established Italian cultural heritage city.
There she and her brother Pasquale attended Thompson Grammar and West Haven High School and retained their Italian heritage and daily language until the 1970’s when many of the this second generational wave of Italian immigrants passed on, thus completing my mother’s assimilation into America.
My mother’s career in entertainment as “Cosmo & Anita” in the 1930’s was cut short by her mothers early death and she returned to manage the home of her father and brother. “Cosmo & Anita” was a dance team traveling between Boston and Philadelphia and benefited from the ever so popular Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers dance team that swept the nation in the 1930’s as illustrated by their publicist professional marquee photo. There were a host of stories from this era of her life including her friendship with Rudy Vallée, and her partner Tommy Cosmo, from New York city, who would show up at our house from time to time.
My mother gained full citizenship in 1941 where, during the war, Italian aliens were under threat of deportation. Her marriage to Russell Thomas Irwin in 1945 yielded a single son, Robert, a year later, and they lived together with her father, mother, and brother as an extended family. My mother moved to Southern California in 1985 with her son, and his wife Helena, where he completed graduate work at the University of California in physics and his wife Helena in mathematics. In 1988 Anita moved to Downey where her son Robert and wife Helena took positions with Northrop Grumman Corporation until their retirement.
My mother was socially active at the Downey YMCA and attended daily until her late 90’s. There she befriended several other Italian ladies and families, and then, spent her afternoon’s with her boyfriend Earl-it was off to McDonald’s for their afternoon burger and fries (her secret to living to 102 years of age). Often my mother would “walk the wall”, her phrase for walking beside the wall from Brookshire and Cherokee to 5th street and then on to Downey High School and back home to Dolan Avenue. Anita was well into her mid 90’s when she could no longer manage “walking the wall”. As many Italians do we lived as an extended family where my mother lived in the rear house and continued to put together my favorite Italian dishes well into her late 90’s. My wife’s, Helena, family was also, post WWII, from the southern Europe and my father-in-law (Luby) had many a harrowing stories of the partisans combating the Nazi’s in night strike and run gun battles-it was a special selfless generation that rose to the exigencies of the times.
The last few years of my mother’s life were necessarily challenging, that said, each of my mother’s birthdays after her 100th birthday was a celebration. The neighbors in the bag of the cull-de-sac would stop by my mother’s rear house to acknowledge her post centenary birthday-we all raised a glass in her honor, indeed, the then president (Barack Obama) of the United States (and his wife, Michelle) sent my mother a congratulatory letter on her 100th birthday. I hasten to add that with every person who lives to such an extraordinary age there is a sense of isolation that is concomitant with the loss of all of her friends and relatives. My mother, Anita Ceresani Irwin, past on March 16, 2016, at 102 years of age. It has taken me all of just about three years to even write this obituary, and two years to just open the doors to her rear house without Helena or another friend as emotional support. We will be buried together at Rose Hills overlooking the city we have learned to love. Her inscription is an inscription for her and every mother: ”A mother’s love knows no depth nor time nor place boundless it’s own star.”