Did You Know
From Eliafamily
Every month, the administrator of this site will select a factoid about our family for the front page. If you have a good idea for a Did You Know?, please post your idea on the Discussion page (see link at the top). Each month the front page also highlights a featured page.
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2007 Did You Know? Features
May
As was common with immigrant families, many of the Elias have both an Italian name and an Americanized name. Names were changed by doctors, schoolteachers, or the kids themselves. Uncle Tom, for example, was born Carmello, Uncle Charlie was born Rosario, and Aunt Mary was to be named Natale.
April
Sam Elia was the Athletic Director of Norwich High School until 1977.
March
Steven and Rebekah St. John were wed ten years ago by the lake of the historic Lakeside Inn in Mt. Dora, Florida. Among the notable events of the wedding weekend was the wetting of the old inn's lobby wood floor by the spilled beer and drink cooler of the bride and groom's dear friends. Mostly Steve's grad school buddies, naturally.
February
Brown Station, New York, the birthplace of Charlie, Mary, and Rose, was a burgeoning, vibrant town when the Elias moved there from Hoboken - but now, nearly all of the buildings that stood in their time were moved or destroyed to make way for a giant reservoir in Ulster County that still serves New York City. Very likely the spot where the Elia house once stood is now under gallons of drinking water!
January
Jennifer Majewski was born in Augsburg, West Germany, in 1971 making her the first Elia born in Europe since Angela Ocello in 1903.
2006 Did You Know? Features
December
Like many Mediterraneans, Maria Elia was an ardent believer in the malocchio, the Evil Eye. Infants and the elderly were especially susceptible; intentionally or unintentionally if one were glanced at by a person afflicted with jealousy or other disreputable emotions, the victim of the malocchio would suffer sickness. She would advise her children and grandchildren that a hand gesture, the manu cornuto, could ward off the malocchio, but this gesture was itself fraught with spiritual dangers. Maria could diagnose the evil eye by noting if olive oil dripped in water took the form of an eye; and could cure it with recitation of prayers, confirmed when the oil no longer formed at the top of the bowl. More information.
November
Rose Modica went to school until she was 14, and then began working at the Norwich Knitting Mill (an employer of many Elias). Because she was underage, her boss asked her to hide in the ladies restroom whenever the male inspectors came to look over the factory's operation.
October
Having named her first daughter after her mother Angela, and her second daughter after her father Michele, Marie Barbarossa resorted to thumbing through movie magazines as she looked forward to another daughter. Movie star Debra Padget's name struck her as pretty - and thus Debra Barbarossa (Dorward) was named.
