My grandmother, Elizabeth Irene Wiggans was born on the 16th of April, 1916, in the back bedroom of 290 Peshine Ave, Newark, NJ. She came into the world at 12:05 a.m., weighing 12.5 pounds. She was ‘Elizabeth’ after her mother but her middle name came from a stage play – “Sally, Irene & Mary”. To her father, she would always be ‘Lovey’. To everyone else, she was Irene.
Her parents James Wiggans and Elizabeth Rooney were born in Chorley, Lancashire, England. Her father immigrated to America in May of 1912, and her mother in November of that same year. They married 5 months later in 1913.
Though her father was a member of the Church of England, her mother was a Roman Catholic, descended from an Irish Catholic father and a mother whose family remained English Catholic through Henry the VIII’s reformation. So Irene was baptized a Roman Catholic on the 30th of April 1916 at Blessed Sacrament in Newark, NJ.
Growing up, she shared a double bed with her sister Theresa Dinah who was born June 27th, 1917. Dinah also went by her middle name, taken from their father’s sister. But it was Irene who was said to look the most like their Aunt Dinah.
Her mother’s sister, Mary Rooney, who immigrated in 1913, lived with the family at 290 Peshine, on and off, the whole of Irene’s childhood. She shared a bedroom with the 2 girls – except in summer – when the girls used the music room as a bedroom.
Childhood Memories
Most of what we know about Irene’s childhood comes from an interview she gave to her granddaughter Tammy Brintzinghoffer in November of 1995.
She was best friends with her sister, Dinah, and a girl named Stephanie Keyl – a minister’s daughter who lived down the road at 280 Peshine. She got 10¢ from the tooth fairy. A nickel every Saturday for candy. And sometimes a nickel for ice cream and movies.
Her sister would bite her when she didn’t get her way, and they both played with headless dolls because they fought over them so much. She hugged the fur off her favorite Teddy Bear, and her mother gave it away when she was nine years old. But her favorite thing was their piano.
She skated in Weequake Park and sledded a lot, 3 blocks downhill, towards the railroad tracks. Her father played tennis or ball with them, and every Sunday they would go to the racetrack where she knew ALL of the horses. They had no TV or radio as a child. She was 5 years old before the first radios came out.
She once had surgery to dig an eraser out of her ear.
They had a 2 bedroom flat with a big kitchen and a big pantry that was heated by a coal stove with gas and electric lighting – but the electricity went out a lot. In summer, they would pull up the rugs to expose the linoleum and take down the curtains to keep the flat cool.
Her mother was very strict, but her dad was not, and she was never spanked.
At Christmas, they ate goose, and stockings were hung on the end of the bed – full of apples, oranges and coloring books. They decorated the tree on Christmas Eve and they weren’t allowed to open presents until Christmas morning, after breakfast and 9 o’clock mass. At Easter, she and her sister had new outfits and patent leather shoes, and they dyed Easter Eggs on Holy Saturday. Her father would buy firecrackers on the 4th of July and the whole block would take turns setting them off.
She said every Saturday was like a family reunion, people singing, eating, talking – sleeping over anywhere there was a bit of room. Christmas Eve was also a big family day, but they never went out on Halloween.
A Very Sad Year
At the age of 16, in the spring of 1932, Irene completed her formal education. She attended a two year high school program, training to become a practical nurse at the Blessed Sacrament Commercial School, which opened in 1916 and closed in 2010. That summer, Irene tragically lost both her Aunt Mary and her mother Elizabeth within a period of 5 weeks.
The Asbury Park Press and the Newark Evening News both reported that on Monday, July 18, 1932, Mary, age 54, leapt from the 3rd floor of her home at 290 Peshine Ave. According to Irene’s father James, Mary had been restless the night before and despondent because of neuralgia. At 6:30 am, James heard Mary leave her room and walk to the back porch. He rose to find her lying in the rear yard. She died an hour later at City Hospital from fractures of the skull and legs.
Her funeral was held at T.J. O’Mara’s Funeral Home on High Street, July 20 at 8:15 in the morning. A high mass of requirem followed at Blessed Sacrament and Mary was then interred at Holy Cross Cemetery, North Arlington, NJ.
Immediately following the tragedy, Irene’s family moved from Peshine Avenue – their home of 18 years – to 184 Linden Ave, Irvington. This was around the corner, not a fifth of a mile, from Agnes and Henry Hummel. Aunt Agnes was the youngest of the 3 Rooney sisters to have come to America from Chorley. It was there, on Linden Ave, just over a month later, on the 25th of August that Irene’s mother Elizabeth passed away from peritonitis brought on by a burst appendix.
Believing she was suffering from the flu, she collapsed in the street near her home and later died in Lincoln Hospital on the 25th of August, 1932. Friends and relatives were invited to attend a funeral at their new residence on Linden Ave, followed by a 9 am requiem mass at Blessed Sacrament. Elizabeth was then also buried at Holy Cross Cemetery, on the 29th of August, 1932.
Because the 1940 census recorded addresses for 1935 as well – it was tracking Great Depression related migration – we know that Irene’s family moved again in the wake of her mother’s death to 561 Devon Street, Kearny, NJ. They were there at least as early as April 1, 1935, and possibly soon after the loss of Elizabeth.
Love & War
Irene once told me that her family weathered the Great Depression more comfortably than most because her father always had steady work. In 1940, he was a die mixer, after many years as a die presser, and pulling 40 hrs a week for an annual income of $1250.
Though Irene was only able to get 6 weeks of work in 1939, she put in 60 hours as a private duty nurse the week prior to the 1940 census, for an annual salary of $200. Dinah was working as a radio assembler for a salary of $800 and was almost fully employed in 1939.
War had been raging in Europe since 1938, and on June 22, 1940 France surrendered to Germany. Just seven days later, on June 29, Irene’s sister Dinah married Walter Brady. The following day, Germany invaded the Channel Islands, but Pearl Harbor was still more than a year away.
Eighteen months later, Irene met James Henry Brintzinghoffer and it was a whirlwind affair. No engagement ring, no wedding dress, and only 6 weeks from meeting to marriage. At the time, Irene was living with her Aunt Agnes at 305 Isabella Ave in Irvington.
I don’t know how they met – but very shortly after, James was selected for the draft. Selectees were typically given a few weeks notice to report for induction, so when James asked Irene to marry him on February 6, 1942 – she was sitting in a chair in her Aunt’s living room at the time – he probably already knew he’d been called up.
Draft registration began in September 1940, but James joined the National Guard voluntarily on October 23, 1940, at Fort Dix. He signed up for a period of 1 year and would have been out of the Guard only a few months when he was drafted into the Army.
They married 7 days later on the 13 of February, 1942 at Our Lady of the Valley in Orange, NJ. Irene recalled that it was hectic and cold. There was no heat in the church and afterwards they went to a bar just to warm up.
There was a small reception at Charlie Willy’s in Orange, a 3 day honeymoon in Asbury Park and then, on March 7th, James reported for duty. He was later sent to Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia for Officer Candidate School and Irene went with him. He was still in OCS when she returned alone to New Jersey for the birth of her first child, Penelope.
Irene and James were married for almost 54 years, until her death on November 27th, 1995. Together, they had 4 children who are all still around to tell the story from this point on.
