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This is Who We Were: In The 1970s

1977: Daughter of Single Mother

Raised by a single mother, eight-year-old Maria Genovese enjoyed flying kites, washing dishes, and gossiping with her best friend, Barbara, in Buffalo, New York.

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Life at Home

Eight-year-old Maria Genovese and her mother Anne lived in an urban renewal housing project on the shores of Lake Erie, on the lower west side of Buffalo, New York.
Maria attended a nearby elementary school and spent most afternoons at a daycare center organized by her mother, who was in her second year as an attorney for the Erie County Department of Social Services.
Her specialty was child welfare; one of her most demanding tasks was determining which children should be removed from their homes because of abuse, neglect, or inadequate food.
Maria never met her father, who was rarely mentioned, and she has learned not to ask too many questions.
Shortly after they moved to the area, Maria's mother led a committee of parents to form an after-school daycare program at the housing complex.
When school was over at 2 p.m., children from throughout the area were brought to the facility to study, play, watch TV or wrestle until their parents arrive.
Like Maria, several of the children lived with only their mothers; most saw their fathers occasionally, some as often as weekly.
Maria liked the center, especially since her mother was always busy and nearly always late getting home from court.
She had dozens of friends at the center, and often they constructed intricate games or work on art projects together.
Occasionally, with her mother's written permission, they went on field trips, which were tremendous fun as long as everyone behaved, held hands crossing the street, and kept quiet when the leader was talking.
Maria hated for adults to get mad and scold the children.

Maria Genovese lived with her mother in Buffalo, New York.

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Maria's mother Anne grew up in a strong Catholic household in Queens.
She attended parochial school, lived to watch American Bandstand with her friends, talked endlessly about guys and argued about what a boy was actually doing when he reached “second base”—and whether or not she would like that.
In college she confronted a much wider—and wilder—world away from the protection of her home.
She realized how sheltered she had been and concluded that she was letting down her country by not speaking out concerning the war in Vietnam.
With some encouragement from her new friends, she felt it her duty to protest, often and loud.
Quickly, she absorbed literature she had never seen in her home, regularly reading radical newspapers such as The Great Speckled Bird and discussing concepts of war and sacrifice well into the night—occasionally to the detriment of her studies.

Young Maria enjoyed Christmastime.

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She also fell in love with her soul mate, a man who shared her views and took her seriously.
During the last days of her sophomore year, her boyfriend left the United States for Canada to escape the draft.
Two weeks later she discovered she was pregnant with Maria.
She wrote to her boyfriend repeatedly with the news, but never received a response.
An abortion was unthinkable; her own father disowned her and forbade anyone in the family from speaking to her ever again.
After the baby was born, Anne and little Maria attended college together, living on welfare, school loans, part-time jobs and a small trust fund set up two decades earlier by Anne's grandfather.
Anne finished college with a degree in social work, a badly bruised ego, lots of student debt and a two-year-old child.
Somehow, law school seemed the logical next step, so Anne and Maria went through it together, studying every minute of the day.
Anne thought she could make a difference and make up for lost time with Maria.
Poverty, unemployment, underemployment, rage and frustration were among the many issues Anne confronted each day on the job.
Often after saving Buffalo's children, Anne had little time for her own, but pushed on.
She worried a lot about whether she was a good parent, even while in the midst of organizing another project for the community.

Maria's mother, Anne, worked her way through school.

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As a special treat, she and Maria stayed up night after night to watch every episode of the television miniseries Roots.
Though Anne kept telling her what each scene meant, Maria didn't care about the history or who was wronged; she just loved the story and watching TV with her mom.

Life at School

Most mornings, Maria walked to her second-grade class, only five blocks away.
Even though the newspapers were filled with stories about the integration of schools, she saw little change; everyone in her class was white.
Her mother said that will change soon; a judicial order handed down required that black children from the east side of Main Street be bussed into her school in the fall when she started the third grade.
Maria had heard several of the mothers talk about moving to the suburbs where there were few blacks.
Anne, on the other hand, was excited that the black children would have an opportunity to get a better education, and talked endlessly about what a great learning experience Maria would have going to school with black children.
Maria didn't care as long as she gets to attend school; she loved learning and reading and being with her friends.
Going to school was simply heaven, particularly her handwriting class, where the teacher consistently said her work was among the best.
At night, when alone, Maria endlessly practiced her cursive strokes and prepared entire pages of script, simply for her own satisfaction.

Maria loved school and being with her friends.

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She also loved owning a calculator—a gift from her mother on her birthday in February.
She was not allowed to use it at school, because calculators were banned there, and considered an inappropriate shortcut.
But she used it at home to add up everything; last week she added up every telephone number on one page of the phone book, just for fun.
When asked by her mother's friends, “Are you going to be a lawyer like your mother when you grow up?” she said she wanted to be a mathematician, which always drew praise.
She was not really sure what a mathematician did all day except play with a calculator.
Maria also loved to talk, especially with her friend Barbara who lived next door and was a year older.
Barbara knew everything, even things about boys, because she had brothers.
She also knew which songs were cool and had her own record player in her room.

Growing up in Buffalo meant lots of snow days!

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Thanks to Barbara, Maria learned that continuing to wear Mickey Mouse panties was baby stuff and should stop immediately.
Just being around Barbara made Maria feel grown up.
When they were together, Anne called them the “giggle girls.”
Several days this winter, school was cancelled because of snow.
Buffalo experienced 47 consecutive days of snow, and not only was school cancelled, it was too cold even to go outside.
For the past several months, Anne had been dating Joe Notvitski, a sociology professor who lived nearby.
A native of Michigan and a Vietnam War veteran, he attended college on the G.I. Bill, and eventually earned a Ph.D.
Maria loved having him around.
Because of his flexible class schedule, he occasionally came by the daycare center around 4 p.m. And took Maria to the park and other places.
With Anne's permission, the two explored the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and her favorite, the Buffalo Zoo.
Mr. Notvitski even promised to rent a boat and take her sailing on Lake Erie.
Twice they flew kites together; Mr. Notvitski could make his kite dive like a rocket and then jump back into the sky at just the right moment.
They also washed dishes together—Mr. Notvitski said he doesn't need a dishwashing machine as long as Maria was around—and sometimes they fix meals.
Without being asked, he has took her to her favorite movie, Rocky, three times—more than any of her friends—and she hoped for a fourth showing.
Maria was especially pleased that he ignored all the warnings from her mother about eating healthy, and snuck her a taco on the field trips and a pop tart for breakfast.
It felt so deliciously wicked to eat a taco behind her mother's back.
Maria spent even more time with Mr. Notvitski; her mother seemed to be called away almost nightly to handle emergencies, but she did not miss Maria's birthday party, which began at their apartment, but then shifted to his house.
There she opened her presents, including a Bionic Woman doll, from her favorite television show, and a Beauty Salon and Repair Station.
At Mr. Notvitski's, she also found a sign posted on the door of the spare bedroom where she often slept when her mother was away at night.
Printed in green and white letters on computer paper were the words “Maria's Other Room.”
When she opened the door, she found that he had painted the room pink and hung frilly floral curtains just like in the magazines.

Life in the Community: Buffalo, New York

The economic base of Buffalo was drying up due to the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway, which ended the city's long run as a transportation center.
The steel and automotive industries, which were a mainstay of the economy, began to contract.
Buffalo's population was shrinking, its unemployment rate was rising, and the general age of the citizenry was getting older.
At the same time, well-intentioned urban renewal projects and threats of desegregation were breaking apart many once-stable ethnic neighborhoods.
Those who could afford to move into the suburbs were fleeing the city.
Attempts to stem the tide with a new campus of the University of Buffalo on the lakefront ended with investments going to Amherst instead, making that community the fastest-growing in the state.

Changing America

A Princeton University study showed that 6.8 million married couples had elected surgical contraception.
The FDA banned Red Dye No. 2 as an additive in foods, drugs and cosmetics.
The Supreme Court reversed a New York law that prohibited the distribution of contraceptives to minors.
The Li'l Abner comic strip ceased publication.
International tourism broke all records; popular destinations were Venice, London and Paris.
America's infant mortality was 16.1 per 1,000 births; maternal mortality was 12.8 per 10,000 births.
Fred M. Hechinger, editor of The New York Times, wrote, “The massive failure in basic skills—particularly reading and writing—is nothing short of scandalous.”
Charleston, South Carolina, hosted the new Spoleto Festival U.S.A., which opened with Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame.
Van Gogh's painting “La Fin de la Journée” sold for $880,000.
A study reported that alcohol consumed during pregnancy may injure the fetus.
The Japanese car industry employed 7,000 robots for painting, welding and assembly.
A study showed that only 21 percent of pregnant, unmarried teens chose to give birth, of whom 87 percent decided to keep their children.
America imported 1.5 million foreign cars, breaking all previous records.
The popularity of smoke detectors soared, with more than eight million sold.

Citation Types

Type

Format

MLA 9th

"1977: Daughter Of Single Mother." This is Who We Were: In The 1970s,Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GH1970_0018.

APA 7th

1977: Daughter of Single Mother. This is Who We Were: In The 1970s,Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GH1970_0018.

CMOS 17th