My Mother’s Vote Counted

I grew up in the inner city of Rochester, New York.

My family lived in a red-brick house that was built to last. It’s still there, in fact. Eastman Kodak had purchased all the property in our neighborhood and turned the entire area into a parking lot. But not our house. They couldn’t touch it. The Landmark Society wouldn’t let them. The foundation of our home was too strong, too solid; so much so it was deemed a landmark.

In perspective, in more ways than one.

There was so much love in that house, I can feel it today; that was its true foundation. The house was built on Love that was placed there, in part, by my mother, Frances Turri Pilato.

She did so much for so many people for so many years. In big and little ways.

I remember every year she’d visit homes in the neighborhood and collect money for what was then called the Leukemia Society charity organization. There weren’t many homes left in the later years, and many of those who lived in those homes had little or no money at all to donate. But that never stopped my Mom, even during the winter months, when she mostly made her rounds for the charity. There she’d be in the middle of February, putting on her coat in that big old-fashioned kitchen that we used to have. She’d then take her little manila envelope with the tiny strings, and walked out…