A son remembers his mom, a single working mother, who ran for native workplace In a Pennsylvania coal mining space within the Nineteen Forties, a mom was elevating two youngsters on a secretary’s wage. Invoice Sayenga remembers his mom’s determination to run for workplace, and her lasting affect.
A son remembers his mom, a single working mother, who ran for native workplace
In a Pennsylvania coal mining space within the Nineteen Forties, a mom was elevating two youngsters on a secretary’s wage. Invoice Sayenga remembers his mom’s determination to run for workplace, and her lasting affect.
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LEILA FADEL, HOST:
It is Friday – time for StoryCorps. Again within the Nineteen Forties within the small coal mining township of Bethel, Pennsylvania, Marie Sayenga was elevating two youngsters alone on a secretary wage. She acknowledged a necessity for enchancment in her native authorities and determined to run for workplace. At StoryCorps, her son, Invoice Sayenga, sat together with his daughter, Ellen Riek, to recollect his mom’s lasting affect.
BILL SAYENGA: Mama was widowed after I was 4 years previous. She had no training past highschool, raised my sister and me on virtually no cash and purchased a home in order that her youngsters would have a correct place to develop up. She was 5 foot tall and a half-inch. And when she’d get mad at me and playfully go to swing at me, I might maintain my arm out, my fingers towards her brow, and her arms would swing beneath mine. After which, in fact, she’d begin to chuckle, and he or she wasn’t mad at me anymore. And that was who she was. I do not think about myself a weak individual, however I am puny subsequent to Mama, and I don’t know the place that energy got here from.
ELLEN RIEK: So, to your grandkids, what do you suppose it is vital to learn about Granny? And what do you hope they do not lose on this subsequent era?
SAYENGA: Integrity, and maintain discovering out extra items of who you’re. I keep in mind, the second time she ran for tax collector, we’re on this small suburb of Pittsburgh, and one of many staff was a man by the title of John. And John got here to the door one Sunday morning with all of my mom’s opponent’s posters from throughout city. He’d torn all of them down. And he was very happy with himself. He introduced them to the door and smiled and confirmed Mama and mentioned, look, I took all of them down. She mentioned, take these again out and put each rattling one in every of them again up. Invoice, you go together with him. Ensure he does it. She’d’ve misplaced that election quite than cheat even a bit of bit. That is Mama. Of all of the people who I’ve met in my life, I respect her and admire her extra extremely than anyone else that I’ve met.
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FADEL: That is Invoice Sayenga remembering his mom, Marie Sayenga, at StoryCorps. Marie went on to win that election and 5 extra earlier than retiring from workplace in 1978 after 24 years of service. Their dialog is archived on the Library of Congress.
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