While I was growing up there was a family lore that my Grandma Julia knew Frank Sinatra. When he became famous he asked her for the pictures she had taken of him as a young man back so they could not be used against him. I always had the sense he wanted them back so people could not make money with them, or perhaps embarrass him.

Well, Mom was quite elderly, Dad was gone, and for some reason one day I asked her how Grandma knew him. Well, she said, his Aunt, Mary Tready, and Grandma went to grade school together in New York. In those days a woman going through eighth grade was quite educated! Mary was a Roman Catholic, had problems in her marriage, which she could not get out of, and needed a place to stay. Grandma Julia invited her to stay with them. Yeah, Frank Sinatra’s aunt lived with my mother’s family.

Frank loved his Aunt Mary. When as a young man in the 1930’s he came into New York to sing on the air, he would come to see his Aunt. At Mom’s house. Hell, this was New York, where half the entertainment talent in the country came from!!

“And?” I asked.

“So Grandma and Mary could get out of the house to go shopping he stayed with me and watched me.”

My niece Darah was there who let out with:

“Grandma, Frank Sinatra was your BABYSITTER!!??”

Yes, said my mother.

“Mom, don’t tell me that some of those pictures were you as an 8-year-old sitting on his lap in an easy chair?”

Yes, said my mother.

I’m still shaking my head back and forth over this.

“Did you ever see him again after those years?”

“When your Dad came back from the war we went to see him perform at a theater. He heard we were in the audience. He had us brought backstage so he could meet my husband. We had a nice visit.”

“And after that?”

“No”

Family lore. Lesson from Anthropology: get oral histories from your elders before it is too late!