Georgia Franko interview, 2003

Abstract

Georgia Franko recounts her early life in the Tremont area south of Clark and West 25th in Cleveland, focusing on her family's immigration from Poland in the early 20th century to escape Russian conscription. She shares childhood memories of playing with her sister, attending St. Joseph's school from 1946, and the strong sense of community where residents were closely connected. Franko highlights the ethnic diversity of the area, including Polish, Ukrainian, Slovak, Syrian, and Irish populations, and the significant role of the Catholic Church in community life. She discusses school traditions, fundraising activities, and religious practices, as well as her high school years at St. John Cantius, her involvement in various clubs, and her early interest in writing. Additionally, she reflects on neighborhood activities and the importance of cultural traditions. Poor audio quality.

Interviewee

Franko, Georgia (interviewee)

Project

Tremont History Project

Date

2003

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

56 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Georgia Franko interview, 2003" (2003). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 223054.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1390

Related Resources

Tremont History Project @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Georgia Franko [00:00:00] Georgia. G, E, O, R, G, I. A. And middle initial G. Then Franko. F, R, A, N, K, O.

Interviewer [00:00:13] That makes sense. Thank you. First of all, what are your earliest memories of Tremont?

Georgia Franko [00:00:23] Well, my very earliest memory of Tremont, let’s see. My family was living on West 17th, south of [inaudible]. That street’s pretty well trashed, but it’s still there. My house is gone. Probably the first thing I remember. Well, when I lived in Tremont, one of the first things I remember, my sister and myself at the bathtub screaming and laughing and making shampoo hair. Yeah, I remember that. My sister remembers it too. Yeah, my mother had an old bureau up in the bathroom. When we were in the tub, we could see ourselves in the mirror and we’re doing hair. Yeah. [laughs]

Interviewer [00:01:09] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:01:11] Let’s see. From then until I was 19 and then moved to Detroit Shoreway and I just moved back about four years ago. But my family’s been there continuously since 1900.

Interviewer [00:01:22] Really? Do you know why they came here?

Georgia Franko [00:01:26] Well. Let’s see, my grandfather came because he didn’t like the Russians put him in the army at the beginning of the century. And family story is given to some old lady and she come here in his speed was in the army. I’m sure his ear drop which somehow made him ineligible. [00:01:56] No. Well, no problem still in Poland. Poland was controlled by Russia at that time. [00:02:05] Yes. Cousins here.

Oh, okay.

You know, my grandmother. This is only on my father’s side. I don’t know much about my father’s side at all. But there are also my mother’s problem because she’s going to marry a man here. But it was very easy for Poles Slovaks. Great to come here, make some money and then go back to Poland and bring the wife back. Territory and all that. So she came over here to marry him. But not my grandfather. My grandfather was her single husband.

3:10] Yes, from some place called Black Village.

[00:03:15] I don’t know. My grandmother never wanted to talk about it.

[00:03:27] My mother’s father.

[00:03:33] No, my mother and father.

growing up in Chima. What was it like?

[00:03:43] Very safe. Uh huh. Everybody knew everybody. It was really bad. If you are Mrs. So and so’s mom, mother came home. My mother had to work because my mother and father were separated and divorced after a long time. Somebody would come and tell her.

Grass. [00:04:10] Everybody’s grandmother was everybody’s grandmother. They said, do it and don’t do it. [00:04:20] Oh yeah. [00:04:24] Not much, really. Well, that lets you into a particular street.

Where- Did you go to school here?

[00:04:35] Yes, I did. I went to state investment school which is still

Interviewer [00:04:54] What was it like going to school there?

St. Joe’s cuts. I remember the beginning of the year, the smell of the floors, you know, they were all sanded and polished. [00:05:09] Still old building and the smell of they had this real clean, real clean smell. I went in. Yeah. The nuts were. The whole. [00:05:20] You know, all was black and all wrapped up. And I remember the nuts had the longest, deepest pockets. Those pockets, I swear, went all the way down to the floor. And now I wonder where those pockets were. Actually, I’m interested in old clothes. Folded. [00:05:40] Yeah. And actually fashion. But I vote. [00:05:45] And I forget that women used to- Didn’t have pockets in clothes early on. They wore like two bags on either side. And then it was tied at the waist and there was a slip in the skirt. So they didn’t actually put a pocket in the skirt, but it was in the bag. Isn’t that interesting? I just found that out recently. [00:06:30] Anyway. But I often wonder if they had those kind of bags.

[00:06:44] There were eight grades. There was no kindergarten. I don’t think there were more than 40 students in each school. That school only had one class [inaudible]. There are still a lot of schools that had two classes. [00:07:06] I started school in 1946. [inaudible] Maybe 40 kids.

[00:07:24] Actually, the woman who taught third grade, I named her to her. She was there one year and she left many years ago after that. When I was a teenager, I worked on a baseball. Well, she bought, married. [00:07:44] And there she was, she was [inaudible].

Lot of steps.

[00:08:03] Oh, yeah. Straight up stairwell and last. Do I pull paper seals? We used to, you would save your newspapers and so on and then bring them to the school. And the school would sell them to where they’re sold now. That was a way of raising money. And we also would say years ago, the sales tax, they used to have, what’s it called? There were little pieces of paper that you get to signify that you had paid the tax on the purchase. [00:08:50] No, it was. It was printed standard. It was 3 cents on a dollar, but only after. After 30 cents. [00:09:04] You can buy a lot of things with that. [00:09:08] And we would collect those and bring those in. And the nuns forget to finally meet on that too. What else? I remember Sister Cecilia, who was my fifth grade teacher, and she was a music teacher and she ran choir [inaudible]. [00:09:35] And I remember after I made my first communion, you had a white dress. So every time. But something. Somebody’s coming or there’s a holiday or there’s a something, get out that white dress. And they give you a flower and you would march down the aisle or something. Oh, it’s black flowers. But you keep it. And they put them on the altar. You know, I remember that. What else do I remember? [00:10:03] Diagram sentences. That was a big deal. Yeah. Seventh. No, eighth grade. [00:10:13] And we would have races. Yeah, that was exciting. I was good at it. [Were you?] Yeah, I was. I enjoyed that spot in seventh grade. [00:10:33] But she would let me water the flowers while she. Remember on all the windowsills while she would do the Bible history stories, read the Bible history stories, which I loved. She said I picked up a lot of the flowers because she knew I was listening, but I was listening. And my Catholic rules guide. [00:10:58] Have you ever seen a Catholic rules guide wear a book? [00:11:06] So naive. It’s, you know, get a prayer book out of one side where we all Latin, which we learned. We learned how to recite all the lamps of fifth grade. We used to look total silence and sermon. And during the week it was total silence. [00:11:48] Yeah, you see old ladies sitting there. They weren’t watching them, they were standing. Yeah, they were sitting somewhere so old they just sat. And they had three, four prayer books of their rosary and they had their own little- They were physically present, but they weren’t following the mass. [00:12:25] They were doing their own thing.

Interviewer [00:12:16] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:12:23] Well, it was- If they had a high mass, there would be more singing and they would do a few [inaudible]. Mostly always by the choir. [inaudible] I remember when we go to church as children with our grades and not have a little [inaudible]. You’d come in- Oh, no touching. Boys on one side, girls on the other. [00:12:52] You’re marching like little soldiers. And then you stop and you’d go, click, click. And you’d go into your pew and then click, click. You’d sit down. [laughs] [inaudible] Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. But there was [inaudible] and the same thing in the hallways too, at school. And marching in. I think we used to march in at the beginning to, what is that? Washington Post March? [hums the tune] That one. Yeah, the great big old brass bell that you’d have to ring. Oh, yeah. Used to play out front of the school. Still pretty much the same out front. And the school, well, they remodeled some of it, but it’s still there. I remember. [inaudible] On holidays. [inaudible] Just on holidays. [inaudible] No, I don’t think so. No.

Interviewer [00:14:17] And what were holidays that- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:14:23] Oh, well, St. Joseph because of the St. Joseph [inaudible]

Interviewer [00:14:37] What was the makeup of the [inaudible], was it Polish?

Georgia Franko [00:14:41] Oh, no. St. Augustine’s was the leftover parish. People who didn’t like Saint John Cantius or Our Lady of Mercy, or the church didn’t like them for some reason. Yeah, they came over to Saint Augustine’s. I think originally- I still don’t know where the Irish lived. It was supposedly an Irish parish at one time. I still don’t know where the Irish section was because it was gone by the time I was a child. There was still Ukrainian and Polish sections but not Irish. All white kids. There were Syrians that came over. Yeah, probably in the 1900s. [inaudible] They were all Christian. Christian Lebanese and Syrians. And going into fifth grade we had Puerto Ricans. We had some Puerto Ricans. I was raised [inaudible]. My brother was a rebel. [inaudible] got in trouble all the time. Yeah. Mostly it was just. There was no. There was no emphasis on nationality or anything, were just American.[inaudible] Oh, gee. [inaudible] [laughs][recording stops and resumes]

Interviewer [00:16:36] We were talking about- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:16:37] Oh, yeah. [inaudible] Puerto Rican girl- [inaudible] And then just before I graduated from 8th grade, which was 1954. [inaudible] A year before maybe? Well, we had an influx of Ukrainians that were coming, that were refugees from the Second World War. They were called DPs. You know that? Displaced persons? Yeah, yeah. And they- Oh my goodness, these girls and boys, they remembered the civil war. They remember running. They lived in holes, bombed out basements, camps. They were all scuffling anyway to get in. They didn’t want to go back to Ukraine because it was communist. So, they landed here in the United States. They got sponsored [inaudible]. I had two little friends.

Interviewer [00:17:55] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:18:05] I had some friends who went to Saint Aug- Cantius. I sort of knew them. And of course I went to Saint John Cantius High School.

Interviewer [00:18:12] Oh, I didn’t know that.

Georgia Franko [00:18:13] Yes, I did. So I met a lot of kids there too, yeah. But Saint John Cantius, well it was across the park, through the park and down the way. Actually, as a child, I probably never went too much further than the end of Lincoln Park as far as, you know, walking around, I went more towards Scranton Road and Scranton School. All that I knew was Scranton School, West 25th Street and Clark Avenue was a wonderful place. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So I went more near them. Oh, I knew two kids from Our Lady of Mercy. That would be my cousins. My mother’s brother married a Slovak girl. So they went to Our Lady of Mercy. But not really. No. The schools didn’t mix. No, not that I remember. Or the churches. No, no, we don’t. [crosstalk]

Interviewer [00:19:33] When you went to Cantius, what was that like?

Georgia Franko [00:19:37] Small. [crosstalk] Sure. There were only four grades. We had 125 freshmen and by the second year we had maybe 100. And there were 75 of us who graduated. Small. Small, yeah, and not too intense. No, no, no, it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t. Certainly wasn’t what St. Joe’s was at that time. It certainly wasn’t Magnificat.

Interviewer [00:20:11] What was St. Joe’s like?

Georgia Franko [00:20:13] St. Joe’s was more serious and much more expensive. And of course you had to get on the bus. When I went to Cantius, I just walked the same way, only a little further. It was $125. And that was cheap even then. Yeah. Comparatively. I think St. Joe’s was probably 500 in that time or something like that. Yeah. God knows what Ignatius was. I don’t know. Ignatius was seven or eight thousand dollars. Big dollars.

Interviewer [00:20:49] Were there many- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:20:55] Yeah. The only, not the ones who weren’t nuns were the industrial arts. They did the whole thing. They did business, industrial arts and college prep. I went to college prep. Everybody- The woodworking person was not a nun. [laughs]

Interviewer [00:21:18] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:21:20] Oh, let me tell you, if you’re an old timer, you say Augustine’s.

Interviewer [00:21:25] Okay. I will.

Georgia Franko [00:21:26] That’s okay. Just telling- Putting it out there. You know if you’re an old timer, you say South Side and Augustine’s. Uh oh! [laughs] [inaudible interviewer comment] You’re lucky.

Interviewer [00:21:42] What was- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:21:54] Oh, you mean as far as ethnicity, composition? They came from all over, but mostly west side. I wouldn’t say they came- I don’t remember anybody from the east side. Okay, let’s see. They came from Cantius, Our Lady of Mercy. They came from Saint Augustine’s. They came from [inaudible]. They came from other places on State Road. Mostly west side kids, you know, who wanted a Catholic education but couldn’t afford some of the higher priced places. And some of them wanted a coed school because there were very few coed schools. All the Catholic schools were male or female. [inaudible] There were more of them after a while.

Interviewer [00:22:55] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:22:57] Yeah, oh yeah. Outside of the neighborhoods. Yeah. They came from off of Ridge Road. They came from State Road. They came from Brook Park area. Parma. Mm hmm. Oh yeah.

Interviewer [00:23:16] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:23:17] Oh yeah. Oh yeah. My parents- My grandparents were founding members. Saint John Cantius is just down the street. It’s the Polish church. Okay. [inaudible]

Interviewer [00:23:33] Was that different from- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:23:37] No, no. By the time I got into high school, we weren’t doing English yet. We were still doing Latin. Yeah. Uh huh. And it was the same. Saint Augustine’s is very small, small church. It was originally a Protestant church. The old Pilgrim Church was there first. [00:24:01] And they sold the Diocese the building and built that [inaudible]. And Saint John Cantius was, is large. It’s full of marble. It’s bigger. And I find it very impersonal. [crosstalk] And I never felt affection for that church. Yeah.

Interviewer [00:24:33] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:24:33] As a child? Oh yeah. There was this thing- There was this thing, I don’t know if you know about. When I was a child, on Easter Saturday, you’d go kiss the cross and get a [inaudible] Oh, yeah, they did that. They did that at Cantius. Yeah. Eggshells all over the street. Oh yeah, they’d do it afternoon when there was no more fast. And you’d have the battle of the Easter eggs. All the colors.

Interviewer [00:25:06] What was that?

Georgia Franko [00:25:08] That’s Polish. Well, no, it’s Slavic, I guess. You’d bring your basket, you’d have some of each [inaudible]. And especially- Now, my mother remembers a better one. It was everybody then. By the time I was a child, not too many went. It was mostly older people, older people and grandchildren. But after the mass, come outside. And usually it was- It was a [inaudible] of boys and girls, really. Yeah. If you have your egg and you hold it, you hold it with the tip inside and the stronger part on the outside. That crash each other’s paint.

Interviewer [00:25:49] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:25:50] Oh, no, no. Each other’s egg. [crosstalk] Yeah. The eggs together. And sometimes someone would be able to crash three or four person’s eggs. You know, they’d be the winner. Then you’d eat the eggs usually. And all the eggshells, colored eggshells, would be all over the sidewalk. Oh yeah. And kissing the cross. They had the exposition of the crucifix. Do you remember the purple? They put the- It’d be tricky to do that, anyway. You put purple over all the statues? Okay. And they’d have the cross out in front of the communion altar rail. You remember the communion altar rail? Okay. Alright. And at Cantius they had still some real old ladies. And if you could do it, did it with a [inaudible] indulgence. The thing was that if you died that minute, you’d go straight to heaven. [in a whisper] I always thought it was full of a [inaudible]. The more I read [inaudible], it was a real corrupt thing. It may have started out a good idea, but we were selling indulgences. That’s how Martin Luther [inaudible]. That’s one of the few things [inaudible]. And I don’t like to do it, but when I was a child, you could go around to the churches on Saturday. There was plenary indulgences. And then I could go into other churches. They had some Catholic churches. So at Saint John Cantius, oh, this huge, long, long main aisle. And most people walk down the aisle, but some old ladies would, like, crawl down on their knees. You ever see that in pictures sometimes? Yeah? Older [inaudible]. But praying that rosary all the way down the aisle. And then you kiss the feet of the cross. See how they’re all worn out already. And that was- I remember this one year particularly. I must have been a real pest. And my grandma says to me, go, go. You know, go kiss the cross. [laughs] I was 8 or 10. That tells you what the times were like. [00:28:05] There was no problem. If you were going all over the neighborhood, no one was afraid. So I went to Cantius, I went to Lady of Mercy, I went to Saint Augustine’s, and I went to Saint Michael’s, which Saint Michael’s was originally a German church. And now it’s mostly Puerto Rican. It’s one of those churches with all the wooden carving. It’s gorgeous. Oh, just gorgeous. So I’m going to kiss the cross way up at the main altar. I said, oh, my God, there’s someone dead under the altar! I saw this body. Ran out of the church because they didn’t put my lights on. Which, you can- A few lights. Ran like crazy out of there. And I found out later, I forget what saint it is, but they have a statue of a saint. Most of the other churches I knew had the Last Supper or something. I was scared of my mind! [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh huh. I always remember that. It took me years to go back. Yes. And I have been into church there. It’s gorgeous. I like churches. Any church, any denomination. I don’t care if I enjoy.

Interviewer [00:29:25] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:29:28] Oh, yeah. [inaudible] I have not gone to any services there. When I live on West 65th Street, I belonged to a group called West Side Ecumenical Ministry. And we had what was called clusters. You asked how churches interacted. Well, not here, but in that area at that time, in the middle ’60s and ’70s, all the churches got together and did projects together. And one year we had visiting churches during Lent. It was very interesting. The ministers had a sermon and they had coffee hour. Very nice. But not when I was a child. The devil was there. Something happened. [crosstalk] I never believed that.

Interviewer [00:30:33] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:30:43] Well, it’s a little bit out of my neighborhood but yeah.

Interviewer [00:30:45] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:30:49] Yeah. Mostly. Mostly. Well, Cantius was Polish. Down the hill was Peter and Paul’s. It’s still there. They still have masses there, I guess. That’s Ukrainian. Lady of Mercy is Slovak. Saint Augustine’s is mixed, only once were Irish. There was a Polish Catholic church, which is now, we have a Korean church in the area. St. Thomas. St. Thomas [inaudible], something, Korean [inaudible]. But that was originally the Polish Catholic Church. When my mother was a young girl, probably in the mid to late ’30s, there was a big disagreement in the Polish Catholic Church. There was a group of people who wanted to say the mass in English and some other things, I don’t know. So they broke away in one of these big, oh my goodness, scandals. Yeah. And it’s on West 14th before Fairfield. And they were Polish too, but they were heretics. And let me see. I don’t know anything about the ethnicity of Pilgrim Church, whether they had any particular ethnicity or not. Across the street is St. George’s. They’re Syrian. Zion is a UCC now. That is German. A lot of stuff in the building- The building has German words on it. German writing. Let’s see. The church on the corner of Starkweather and 14th, opposite side of Pilgrim. Now they’re a Puerto Rican Pentecostal. [inaudible] Yeah. And what nationality were they at the time? I don’t know. A lot of the Lutherans were Germans or Swiss. There was a large Swiss area around West 25th and Walton at one time. And they had a church there. Again, I didn’t know about them until much later. What churches have I missed? There was another- There was another smaller one. I never really walked around too much on West 7th and West 5th. When I was a child, that was a [inaudible] area. Yeah. And a lot of those homes weren’t well built, so they were starting to fall down. And they were already absentee landlords. And most of my people had moved up from West 5th, West 7th, West 11th. My mother was born in a house on Thurman Alley. Small, Thurman Court. The house isn’t there anymore. [inaudible] So I don’t know too much about down there except St. Peter and Paul’s. there’s another Orthodox church down there, but I don’t know what those are. A lot of Ukrainians down around that way. And Russians. ’Cause [inaudible] and Poles moved up a little.

Interviewer [00:34:37] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:34:45] Oh, yeah, yeah. And at one time it kept cultures together.

Interviewer [00:34:51] Oh really?

Georgia Franko [00:34:52] Oh, sure. Oh, sure. They- They bring their priests from- The whole, the whole little town would come together. They sent for the priest. [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When my mother was a child, she was only allowed to speak Polish in the house. She hated that. That’s why I don’t speak Polish. She felt really abused by that. She spoke beautiful Polish. My mother could read and write Polish.

Interviewer [00:35:31] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:35:35] Oh, the songs, the things that carried out were the various traditions like the breaking the eggs. Certain songs were always sung in the native tongue, okay? I hardly ever went to church at Cantius. Usually then I didn’t- I wasn’t there at a Polish mass, but I went back recently to still sing at Polish mass. I practiced the whole thing. Yeah. And they sing traditional, very old Polish songs, hymns. Yeah. All the churches did that. And I don’t know what other kind of holidays they had, but all of the churches had their old-fashioned holidays that they kept. Yeah. And like the Ukrainians, they did. They had the pisaki and all the embroidery. They had their festivals when I was [inaudible].

Interviewer [00:36:37] So what’s pisanky?

Georgia Franko [00:36:38] Oh, pretty Easter eggs.

Interviewer [00:36:41] Oh, okay.

Georgia Franko [00:36:42] Uh huh. Everybody had their own breads. Oh yeah. And early on, sort of in the 1900s, into the ’20s and maybe into the mid-’30s, they had cultural societies. They had opera. They had light opera. Oh yeah.

Interviewer [00:37:00] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:37:02] No, it wasn’t part of my culture because I went to Saint Augustine’s. But the other schools did. The other churches did. Yeah.

Interviewer [00:37:12] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:37:13] Yes. No, no, no, we didn’t- Well, we did Saint Patrick.

Interviewer [00:37:21] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:37:22] Not that much. I think, as I remember, parties and stuff like that. They were- They were- Father Walsh, oh my gosh. He was there forever. Wasn’t too much on parties, so he had pretty much the same, except for the [inaudible]. So, all I remember there was card parties. Card parties. Yeah. I don’t remember- We never had a special festival. Well, we had some Christmas- Oh, and in the school, we had Christmas plays, which I really don’t remember actually. Yeah. On the third floor? What a- Straight up, man. It was huge. Oh, the ceiling must have been 20 feet high. It’s still there. Uh huh. The stage is still there. I remember they must have had wonderful plays at one time because I remember the backdrops. [inaudible] I was always interested in theater. Always.

Interviewer [00:38:35] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:38:38] Not in grade school, but in high school I was in the choir. Soloist in choir. And I was the star - ooooh! - of the musical. [inaudible] Oh, yeah. Oh, sure. I just wanted to see- But I didn’t have to have it. I was looking through some of my old- I’m going through that now. I don’t know if you do this now, but we exchanged pictures, especially senior pictures. And they were all saying, young and beautiful voice. And I’m looking forward to hearing your records.

Interviewer [00:39:14] [inaudible] -in high school?

Georgia Franko [00:39:16] I did everything except- Everything except the sodality. Sister Sabina. And I tried out for cheerleaders and I wasn’t good enough. We didn’t good cheerleaders. I was in Mission Club I was in- That was a great mission club. But we did- We collected money and had great dances. We always put on dances and decorating. Oh yeah. And I belonged to the theatrical group. I was National Honor Society and I was fourth in my class. Let’s see, and I was- What else did I do? We had some other clubs. I was in the science club. I did everything.

Interviewer [00:40:00] Wow. Pretty impressive.

Georgia Franko [00:40:01] Yeah. I guess. I had a lot of energy. I enjoyed myself. Uh huh.

Interviewer [00:40:10] What other type of things- You said you- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:40:14] Oh. No, we were a very close-knit family. So I could- I didn’t hang- I had four or five girls. There were only- There was a very small group of us that was college, yeah. Everybody else was industrial arts or business. So it was funny. There were four to six of us in classes with mostly all boys. Hardly ever mixed with the other girls. Yeah. Because our schedules didn’t- You know we were taking Latin and [inaudible] What did we do together? We belonged to a lot of the same clubs. We would visit each other at home. And all of us had boyfriends. So we went- Didn’t do any- Couple times double dating, things like that. I was a High Timer. I worked- I wrote in school. Yes. I still love to write. And the High Timers worked next to [inaudible] Press, which is no more. A couple of my girlfriends were. But they weren’t involved. We would do that together too. We could write in the paper together or we did things like yearbook together. We did that kind of stuff. But I remember that was a great thing, the High Timers. We’d go down to Kent State. Oh, that was beginning. [laughs] Yeah. For journalism conferences. And I got to go and spend the whole day with this guy I met. He was really good writer. The day after, Anthony Celebrezze was elected mayor. [inaudible] Oh, no, he was the Mayor of Cleveland. [inaudible] All of the city. Yeah, it was pretty cool. Yeah. I met Windsor White who was the lead social writer there. What was his name? I met Seltzer, Louis Seltzer who was the - he was huge - editor of the Press. Yeah. This terrific stuff! [crosstalk] Yeah! And I was there. What was his name? I don’t remember. The guy I spent the day with. He got stuck doing- It was his day for the obituaries. But it was interesting. He was very not happy that I put a [inaudible]. Bill Tanner. He was very good. He won a lot of awards if you read the [inaudible]. So we did all those kinds of things together. And I helped my mother at home. My mother worked, so I cooked, cleaned.

Interviewer [00:43:35] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:43:37] My mother. Well, my mother and father separated right after the Second World War. My mother had a job. I always remember this. My father was not supportive [inaudible] and she had to work. And she worked at the May Company as a salad girl for 47 cents an hour after the Second World War. And then she got lucky and got a job at White Sewing Machine, which was very big. Down in the Flats [inaudible]. There were a lot of strikes, god. [inaudible] Well, she was one of the first people who lost their jobs in foreign competition. Yeah, White Sewing Machine moved most of their piecework over to Japan. Yeah, and now it’s still sort of around. It’s called White Consolidated Industries. And then after that she worked- Gosh, she worked on a lunch wagon, one of those cars that you pull down the sides. And she liked that. But it didn’t pay a bunch of money. But we lived upstairs from her mother and father, which is the house I live in right now. [inaudible] So my mother did. Then my grandmother got very ill and my mother stayed home to take care of her. [laughs] Lasted over 20 years. My grandma died in 99. Uh huh, yeah. At home in her bed.

Interviewer [00:45:26] So, then, was it a double house?

Georgia Franko [00:45:30] Yes. Double house, yeah. We lived upstairs and and my grandparents lived downstairs. And I live in my grandparents’ house now.

Interviewer [00:45:38] [interviewer]

Georgia Franko [00:45:41] What was it like? Well, we were on our own a lot because we would stay away from grandma. Grandma was very critical. She was not fun at all. So my mother would go to work and we would be upstairs and of course we always went to school. Always. I always liked school. When I was younger I wasn’t very good at school. I was always in the second and third, especially in math, I’d have to stay in and sit [laughs] during recess and go over my math. [inaudible] Yeah, yeah, yeah. My whole family. That’s absolutely epidemic in my family. All crummy. But now we have new blood coming in and all those women brought their math skills. We got a couple of really good next generation of grandchildren So it was pretty quiet. Well, my grandmother didn’t like noise. God knows what noise was. Almost everything was noise. So you had to be quiet. I remember spending days in the summertime because girls weren’t allowed to do much things, had to stay around the house. Yeah. So I embroidered hideous cloths, you know, and playing Parcheesi on the front porch and playing games called counting the cars. We sit on our front porch, almost on Scranton Road, and we’d watch. Scranton Road was very busy then. That was a main artery when we were children. Until they opened the freeway and all that stuff. So we would sit on the porch and count cars. One of us would be Chevrolet and the one Ford, stuff like that. And we’d count and whoever saw the most of whatever within a certain period of time was the winner. And played Red Light Green Light and Spot. [inaudible] Oh yeah, yeah. My sister would be furious because when they’d put you up against the wall they hit you with the ball. I was too fragile and the boys would [inaudible]! [laughs] My sister hated that. But, you know, I could never climb the fence. They’d have to help me over. [laughs] I still can’t climb the fence. And late, and well, 8:00 or 8:30, on the summer nights, we’d be out in the back, our backyard, catching fireflies. It was a beautiful city.

Interviewer [00:48:25] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:48:37] Oh, you mean what we did for commencement?

Interviewer [00:48:40] Yeah.

Georgia Franko [00:48:41] Oh yeah. In the 12th grade. I graduated from [inaudible], and in the 12th grade we had, we always had, every year at Christmastime, we had something called the Christmas Bride. And actually there was an old tradition from the church itself. And the midnight mass, during the midnight mass, some young girl, young woman from the church, would carry the statue of the infant Jesus up to the church. [inaudible] And this was sort of an outgrowth of that. That was- They had everything from- Some years they decided to dress the procession. You know, [inaudible], you know, with a long dress, and the St. Joseph and the angels, and some years she was in a bridal gown. And it was all sort of stupid, growing up, you know, when you’re a freshman and a sophomore and a junior sort of, gee, you know, next year one of us would be the Christmas Bride. And then when we were seniors, there was the Christmas Bride. I wasn’t the Christmas Bride.

Interviewer [00:50:00] Oh, no?

Georgia Franko [00:50:01] No. No. I should have been the Christmas Bride. But I had a boyfriend, full-time boyfriend that we were planning to be married at that point. I was going steady. That was no-no. So the girl who was going steady but they were planning to get married, she got it. But it was okay with me because then I didn’t have to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning, Christmas Eve, on Christmas Day, because that was the deal. You were the Christmas Bride. That you had to be at the church for the midnight mass. So anyway, boy, there wasn’t a dry eye at the class, even the boys, because that was effectively beginning of the end. Oh, very [inaudible]. Not a dry eye. Even the toughest guys. [inaudible] Oh yeah, that was beautiful. That was really nice. And we had a senior prom, of course. I’m trying to think, did we have a senior luncheon? I don’t think so. But of course we had a graduation. And I remember. Oh, yay! You know? And there are pictures of me coming out of the church when we graduated from St. John Cantius Church in my cap and gown and I’m crying. Why am I crying? You know, I was crying. People you didn’t talk to, you had, you know, hated, everybody’s hugging, you know/ [laughs] And it was warm so all the girls, we took off our dresses and we just had the gown on. We wore slips then. And people hardly wear slips anymore. How about that? Oh, wow. Get on off. Oh, okay. But we all were in our slips and we all had to have white shoes to go with our white cap and gown. And the boys were- I don’t remember if the boys wore black or the boys were red. Oh, I don’t know. ’Cause our colors were blue and gold. I don’t know. Anyway. Yeah. And we had red roses we carried. [inaudible] Yeah, that Christmas Bride thing, that was amazing. [inaudible] [laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And my brother- My sister went there. I went there, my brother went there. And a couple years, a year or two after my brother went there, they combined with to become Cleveland Central Catholic. You ever hear of that school?

Interviewer [00:52:47] Yes. Oh, yeah. It’s over by- [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:52:48] That’s the last. That’s where it is now. It was at Cantius. Yeah. They had three campuses. Cantius, Saint Stan’s, and Saint Michael’s on Scranton Road. Now it’s just Saint Stan’s. Saint Stan’s was our rival. Yeah. They were bad in basketball, but we were bad in football.

Interviewer [00:53:11] Did you go to some of the games then?

Georgia Franko [00:53:14] Oh. I was first attendant in the football.

Interviewer [00:53:17] Oh really?

Georgia Franko [00:53:18] Oh, yeah. The football queen was the girlfriend of the captain. Always. The girls- One girl had this idea, we’re gonna wear formals. And it was in late October or something. And the homecoming. Yeah, we’re wearing these formals. And same girl had the idea we should. It was stylish to wear these clear plastic shoes. Toeless. It was just the straps in the back. Mine had little diamonds. Ahh! And I had some- Somebody- Somebody’s mother’s stole. We all wore stoles [inaudible].

Interviewer [00:54:01] [inaudible]

Georgia Franko [00:54:05] Oh, well, we were so bad in football. But we played hard with basketball.

Interviewer [00:54:12] What was your favorite sport?

Georgia Franko [00:54:16] All of them. Oh, yeah. I was a diva in sports. I was gym leader, which was [with emphasis] the club [laughs] at the school.

Interviewer [00:54:28] What was it?

Georgia Franko [00:54:29] Well, we helped the gym teacher. Yeah. We set up the lines and the teams. And I did referee. Oh, yeah, I played. I was never a bear. I was always dependable. You know, I always got picked, but I was no star. [inaudible] Yeah, yeah, we helped the gym teacher. You know, we’d keep track of the balls and the bats and all that.

Interviewer [00:54:59] When you would play Saint Stan’s, were there rallies and stuff like that?

Georgia Franko [00:55:03] Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. The boys would come out. Girls would dress up in cheerleader costumes. Oh, big things, yeah. Oh, yeah, got all dressed up. Always had a prayer. Oh, yeah. All that stuff. Oh, yeah. [inaudible]. Lots of fun. Lot of fun. [inaudible]

Interviewer [00:55:35] Thank you very, very much.

Georgia Franko [00:55:36] Oh! I love reminiscing. [inaudible] Oh, yeah. We have-

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