The Pelham Summer House for Children, which became the Pelham Manor Convalescent Home for Children

I am writing a long overdue thank-you letter to the residents of Pelham, New York. The original residents who deserve thanks lived in the Village of Pelham during the late 1800s. They were folks with generous hearts and kind spirits who sought to make the lives of many New York City children better by sponsoring them, first in private homes and later at Pelham Manor, for a “fresh air” break from city life during summer.

As time went on, your generous ancestors broadened their philanthropic reach to establish the first convalescent home for children with cardiac problems in America. Some of the home’s funding came from New York City Department of Education grants in partnership with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital; other funding came from private donors. The grass-roots fundraising efforts, however, such as fairs, bake sales and performances, were sponsored by local residents who were committed to the ongoing vision and mission of quality health care for youngsters in need. By the 1930s, children suffering from rheumatic fever were being cared for at Pelham Manor Convalescent Home for Children, in the general area of 975 Split Rock Road.

This is where things get personal for my family. During the early 1930s, my mother, Lenora Veni, became quite ill with rheumatic fever. She was the daughter of an Italian immigrant father and a mother who abandoned the family when Lenora was 4 or 5 years old. At the time, the family lived in a boarding house at 20 Leroy Street in Greenwich Village. Her descriptions of life at the boarding house included lice, bedbugs and roaches. She recounted how her head was shaved and doused in kerosene to kill off the lice and how each leg of her bedstead stood in kerosene-filled coffee cans to prevent roaches and bedbugs from crawling up onto the bedding. There was talk of rats too.

She told of abject poverty where every food stuff was rationed and saved. All dinner dishes were scraped into a communal pot and dished out at the next meal. Her father was employed as a taxi driver during this time. I guess the pay was minimal, providing for subsistence living only. Under these types of conditions, it is easy to see how untreated scarlet fever or a strep infection could have resulted in rheumatic fever. Untreated, she was dying.

As family lore has it, my grandfather Anthony, a taxi driver, had a “regular fare” who was a prominent judge. One day, he was waiting for the judge, leaning on the taxi and crying. When the judge came out, he asked what the problem was and my grandfather explained his daughter was dying and he could not afford treatment. The judge arranged for my mother to be admitted to Pelham Manor Convalescent Home for Children free of cost to the family and possibly paid for by the judge himself. My mother claimed she lived there for years. The treatment at the time was good nutrition and bed rest. My mother remembers this also as a time of great sadness as she was very young, alone, seemingly abandoned and sick in a very sterile environment. She did survive her illness and lived to the age of 82 so they must have done something right!

My mother worked hard to forget those years. It must have been extremely hard for her. As they were such formative years, she developed a love of reading which lasted throughout her life. She always had a fear of abandonment which shaped many of her lifelong personal choices such as marrying, having a family and sticking with us devotedly through thick and thin. She was a “clean freak” which drove all of us crazy resulting in all of us being clean freaks as well. She sorely lacked confidence, never felt she was well educated and indeed had giant gaps in her education.

The most important thing however was that she survived being a desperately poor child with rheumatic fever during the Depression and that is strictly thanks to the kindness and commitment of strangers. Those strangers were the residents of Pelham  who offered up time and funds during their own hard financial times to keep the Pelham Manor convalescent home open for children in need. How my mother got so lucky is nothing short of a miracle. Though this thank you is nearly a century late, I wanted to take the time to acknowledge a community who came together to do something new and big for many unprivileged, sick children of the time. You all have much of which to be proud. The Veni, Passentino and Reyhan families, whose progeny exist thanks to the care, sacrifice, work and thoughtful intervention of innovative, compassionate Pelham residents, thank you in perpetuity.