Sheila Nevins | 07/10/2008 10:15 am
Letter to a Dead Great-Aunt: A Personal Memoir
Did you ever want to write a letter to someone dead?
What would you say?
This is what I wrote to my Great-Aunt Celia.
Click here to see documents from Sheila’s Great-Aunt’s past.
Sheila Nevins
New York City
United States of America
July 2008
Great-Aunt Celia
Mount Zion Cemetery: Section 43
Queens, New York
United States of America
Dear Great-Aunt Celia,
It is nearly 100 years since your tragic death in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire on March 25, 1911, but it is just today that I discovered you really existed and that your death in the fire was real. It hit me hard and I cried for you; and yet I never met you. I had heard that Grandma Fanny’s youngest sister had died at the Triangle Fire, yet it always seemed like family folklore — and, anyway, my father was born some three years later. Occasionally your death would come up in family conversations, but I am sorry to say only briefly, and Grandma Fanny’s eyes would tear up and then we would go on to fresh borscht or stuffed cabbage and some relative from the other side would try to coax me to try some sweet-and-sour Russian food that I had no interest in. So here I am working on a documentary, called "Schmatta," on a Friday in the year 2008. The film is about the fall of the garment center as a microcosmic look at the fall of Industrial America. The producer mentioned immigrant labor and the fire. I say, "I think I had a great-aunt who died in it."
"Really," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Well, there is a list of all who died," he said.
"Oh," I say, "but I don’t know my grandmother’s maiden name. She was born in Russia and she married my grandfather there. I’ll ask my Uncle Seymour," I say. "My father is dead. Uncle Seymour is my grandmother’s only living child."
"Uncle Seymour," I ask later that night. "Did you know Grandma Fanny’s maiden name?"
"Gittlin," he says without hesitation.
"G-I-T-L-I-N," I spell.
"No, two Ts."
"And what was her dead sister’s name, the one who died in the fire?"
"I don’t know," Uncle Seymour says. "But my name was supposed to be like hers."
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