My Father 2

Dad was much older than mom. He met her in Greece. I don't know how exactly but my mother lived in Pireaus, Greece, which is a port town of Athens. From what I have been told they were introduced by a friend of his who was also in the merchant marines. They married in Greece, in the Greek Orthodox Church. My mom claimed she was only 16. My dad was around 40 years old. I guess at that time a May/December marriage was not that uncommon. Nor was an arranged one either. I can only assume that mom and her family, her brothers included, wanted her to get away from post WWII Greece and away from the Nazis. They wanted her to have a better life in America. I suppose she wanted a better life too. This is all theory; I really don't know the true story behind the marriage. Perhaps they fell in love???? I know Mom was a beautiful young woman; there are pictures of her to prove it.

Anyway, getting back to Dad, whose name is Juan Navarro Tigmo, He was born in April, 1905. At the time he met my mother he was already divorced from his first wife, Frances, and had 2 grown and married children. The first one was Evelyn. She married Harold Relucio and they had 3 children, Harold Jr., Roger, and Theresa. The second one was John Tigmo Jr. He married a woman named Frances and they had 3 children also. They are John, Mary Frances and Karen. But I digressed; let me get back to Dad.

Anyway, Dad and Mom married, moved to Brooklyn New York, and had Adrian. Then they moved to Clifton New Jersey and had Juanita, Josephine and myself. We lived in Clifton until I was about a year old. Then we moved to Elizabeth NJ We lived in an apartment on East Jersey Street upstairs from an antique store owned by a Portuguese family whose name I have forgotten. Dad worked at Alexian Brothers Hospital and Elizabeth General Hospital as head cook. He also moonlighted for a caterer named Johnny Bond.

As I mentioned before, Dad loved to dance. He was even on television. He used to be a dancer at Arthur Murray's dance studio and was televised. He danced ballroom. I remember seeing him at hospital gala's in his tuxedo dancing with a beautiful woman who wore a very wide crinolin floofy ball gown. He always wore sunglasses at these events. I think it was to hide his "oriental-looking" eyes. Or maybe he thought he looked more debonair??? He didn't need them; he was handsome just the way he was. It never, ever, dawned on me that my dad was not white. I knew he was Filipino, but I didn't realize the ramifications of having an Asian father instead of a white one. Having an oriental FATHER and a caucasian MOTHER was NOT common. I didn't notice the difference between dad's olive skin and black hair and Filipino accent and my mother's fair skin and medium brown hair and her Greek accent. They were just mommy and daddy to me; Ma and Dad as I got older. \

To be continued............................