Post by Lydia Capello on Nov 9, 2015 10:04:53 GMT -5
LAS VEGAS CENSUS PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM AND RETURN BY MAIL. LYDIA M. CAPELLO  BASIC INFORMATION
FREE FORM APPLICATION TITLE HERE: Cliché as it may be, Lydia can scarcely remember a time when her life could be worthy of the title ‘normal’. She had hardly come close to the white picket fenced in happy family that television commercials corporations used to sell their products. This could have been, as Paulina and Tommy Capello fell in love in Brooklyn, New York just shy of their eighteenth birthdays. It was fate! They were both born to Italian immigrants with many brothers and sisters and thick accents that twisted your ears dreams. It was the spring of 1936, Paulina’s favorite season, when they eloped in the Catholic Church just around the corner from their childhood flats. Understandably so, and as expected by the young couple, their loved ones were hurt that they had made such a life changing decision without the company of their families. In Italian tradition, family was more than everything. Paulina and Tommy explained that they had made a recent discovery that she was pregnant- which meant Tommy had made the decision to enlist in the Navy to ensure they would have a solid, secure future ahead of them. The sudden and brash change in their course of life came before their high school graduation, when Tommy had discovered a couple of his buddies had made the choice to enlist in the United States military themselves. In bravery, but in ignorance, as they had no idea what animosities brewed over the Atlantic. The year was spent like a waiting game for a young and pregnant Paulina. Her husband had been sent off to basic training for the entirety of the fall and thankfully she had acquired the help of her mother and sisters. They had forgiven Paulina, though she always suspected they never truly did. Tommy returned as a newborn soldier in November when his wife was eight months pregnant and gushing with love over his return. Though, he had also returned with life changing news. He had already been given orders by the Navy to be stationed at their main base, Pearl Harbor, effective within the next month. Within the past year, they had turned many new chapters in their lives, all so fast, which frightened yet excited the young and then naïve couple. The idea of moving to the mysterious (to them) islands of the Pacific was an exciting journey to behold. So, they moved to Oahu, Hawaii, in December of 1936 following the birth of their daughter, Lydia Marie Capello. Upon arrival to their new tropical home, it was a very strange sensation to feel summer heat on their skin in what was supposed to be the dead of winter. New York had always been struck with snow. But it was more than delightful weather for baby Lydia and only lifted their optimistic perspectives for the future. The Capello’s lived in a small, but perfectly cozy home just a short walk from the water. It was a neighborhood for other’s that had been ordered by the U.S. Military to relocate their lives. Tommy spent his days on the boats and the evenings with his wife and daughter, whom they adored more than anything. Paulina had found part-time work as a teacher’s assistant at the local school in which Lydia had attended when she became of age. They had taught their daughter to read and write before she had even began school, determined to be ahead of the game of life being as young a family they were for what was considered normal in 1940s society. Tommy had taken Lydia, now five, on his shoulders to watch the Navy’s planes practice in the sky in the late afternoons before dinner when he felt she was old enough to understand to some degree. She did and from an early age, Lydia became an ambitious girl. Pearl Harbor had been devastatingly blind sighted on the day of December 7th, 1941, and needless to say the Capello’s were amongst those stuck in the middle of it. It was very early that morning when foreign planes were seen in the skies around Hawaiian territory. Lydia and her mother had been on their walk to school, as routine, when Paulina recognized the Japanese symbols on the fleet’s wings. She covered her horrified expression from her daughter, before picking the little girl up and making very quick hast to their school. Lydia, being very young, was clouded with childlike incompetence and confusion. Tommy had put in an overnight shift at the harbor, which would turn out to be a most unfortunate coincidence in his fate. The Japanese had taken the first couple hours of the morning to arise vague suspicion over their presence- before brutally attacking not just the naval base of Pearl Harbor, but the civilian areas of Oahu as well. Paulina arrived fearful with her daughter and the other teachers were seemingly aware of the planes in the sky as well. It was a small school by the military base- though that was what posed a problem in their protection plan. Lydia had been stuffed under a wooden table against the wall with some of the other children in a classroom she could vaguely remember. The last thing she recalls her mother saying to her, hands gripping her little shoulders tightly, was, “Stay here, right here, Lydia, ya hear me? Everythin’ gonna' be all right.” Her dark beauty disappeared to return outside to search for any stragglers to house- but within three minutes of her leave Lydia remembered the very loud boom of the explosion that she witnessed bust through the windows like a persistent intruder. She remembered her ears ringing and she couldn’t hear a single thing. She remembered not knowing why. She remembered sitting under that table for hours with the other children, some crying, as the sounds of war raged outside and not a single teacher had returned to check on or sit with them. And she remembers not shedding a single tear, but even at such a very young age she suppressed her fear extremely. By late afternoon, the classroom had been engulfed with ash and silence. The very last thing Lydia remembered was closing her eyes in attempt to black out the insistent gunshots that rang in the distance sometimes clattered on the rooftop. Then she awoke very briefly in the arms of a solider, who had told her just what her mother said- everything was going to be all right. And she drifted back into a deep, trauma induced sleep. The next morning she was informed at the hospital that both Paulina and Tommy Capello had been amongst the thousands of causalities that had fallen prey to the Japanese fleet. Devastated, Lydia burst into the last fit of sobs she would release for a long time. She then took all of her grief and became almost a mean, resentful child. Especially when she had been thrown upon a boat a couple days after with a few other children that had been orphaned after the terrorist attack. "We found that you still have family in New York City, your grandparents," the social worker had told an already emotionally tired, almost six-year old Lydia. She didn't want her grandparents or aunts or uncles- she wanted her mother and father. "World War two has officially began, little girl. We can't afford to keep stuffing our foster homes, now." Upon reaching the mainland, she was then stuffed with the same children into a military like automobile and they were practically shipped across America. Upon immense child-like questioning on Lydia's part, she found that the other girls were going to a New York charity school. In some parts of the country it became unbearably cold, they stopped less than often, only when the girls had to relieve themselves really, and the lack of food had led the children to become rather malnourished, rather quickly. They reached New York in a miserable state. First it was to the charity school to unload the other orphaned girls then to the home of her maternal grandparents. The solider held little Lydia in his arms and Paulina's mother stepped out into the winter air, two days before Christmas, and merely stated with a hard scowl, "We don't want 'er." She went back inside. The instant neglect had bruised Lydia's innocent heart almost indefinitely. From then on, Lydia had become a student and permenant resident of St. Maria's Charity School for Girls of Rochester, New York. To be continued! |
Last Edit: Nov 10, 2015 15:54:55 GMT -5 by Lydia Capello
