Here at Musette Lewry in Furnessville there are a couple of Purple Sand Cherry bushes that were gifts from my father’s cousins and planted in March of 2005. Tommy Rosko had come into the store where I work, on the Valparaiso town square, later in the spring of 2005, and I informed him that I had named these bushes after he and his wife. In his self depreciating humor he warned that they may not do very well if named after him. I didn’t tell him that one of the two was more robust than the other; and it remains so seven years later. Shockingly Tommy suddenly passed away a couple weeks after his impromptu visit. I’ve been thinking about his family a lot these past few weeks or since his wife was diagnosed with a cancer that has been devastating American women of late.
Many families have their tragedies and my Dad’s family seems to have had their fair share. When a child, one of his maternal cousin’s choked to death at a family gathering in Chicago, and not to upset the other kids the tot was taken out of the home in a suit case. Later another one of the boys was killed in an automobile accident here in Indiana. Both hurts were so great that neither was mentioned much again in the presence of their parents.
No Words by Renee Kimberling is the story of Janet and the late Tom Rosko of Valparaiso and originally of Gary and Merrillville and the tragic losses of their two children five years apart in 1994 and 1999.
Tommy though and his wife Janet chronicled their story, which resembles the biblical Job in a well written book by Renee’ Kimberling, that tells of losing both of their children in the 1990s. No Words: A True Story of love, utterly tragic loss, and ultimate survival” was published in 2003. Most of the folks in the book are relatives that I’ve known all my life and I could write many annotations to the various events described therein. Ironically, I didn’t know either of the two lost children. They each came along about the time I was finishing High School and away at college and evolved into young adults during the thirteen years that I resided in the American Southwest.
Daughter Jill, I don’t ever recall meeting. I knew her name as my parents and paternal grandparents and her grandparent’s, my great aunt and uncle, mentioned her and the other kids frequently. My father is mentioned in the book and when he was in Southern Florida on vacation and had to deliver horrible news to Jill’s grandparents of her passing. Although I believe his being the messenger was for the brother’s passing. My mother who had watched the kids grow up while I was away in college etc came to visit me in Scottsdale and missed Jill’s funeral but was horribly upset. My heart went out to the entire family, but I had no recollection of ever meeting this cousin who lived nearby in Merrillville. Five years later with the passing of Jill’s brother, Jeff, I had only met him at a Christmas gathering a few weeks prior to his death. I couldn’t remember which one of the two boy cousins that I had just been introduce to was Jeff. Yet I’ll never forget observing so many South Shore passengers reading the newspaper headline of his passing while waiting for an inbound train at the Adam Benjamin station in Gary in February 1999. I thought to myself, they are reading about my family and yet this collegiate I didn’t even know! The night that the news came in of his passing, I had some feeling of urgency to get home to Crown Point from Chicago. My mother was getting ready to leave her offices for home when the call came in of the latest tragedy. I stood there as she emotionally responded. Dad was in Florida again and Mom and I attended the wake and funeral together. Five years later it was the grandfather’s funeral in January 2005 and then Tommy’s a few months later in May of that year. A couple of them I can’t sort out anymore as the settings were the same. Great Aunt Lorene held out till age 96 well after the publication of the book. Alas she languished for several years in three nursing homes and then was refused a Mass by her St. Thomas Moore Church in Munster because her poor attendance in recent years. Alas one of her classic retorts can’t be recorded for that epilogue.
Through reading No Words I learned a lot about my cousin’s lives that I didn’t know: how and where they met (And a lot more about their kids that I should have known). After all I was just eight when attending their wedding in the old St Thomas Moore church and my generation of young cousins kept waiting for them to smash the glass, too dumb to know that was only a Jewish tradition. My father who shared the same birthday as Tommy seemed to be the closest with him of all his cousins. They both worked at Inland and had many of the same interests. Tommy chronicles history in No Words much as Gene Shepherd says region folk do, by the corresponding automobile owned during a certain period. Janet is a very likeable cousin too, not flash like some of the others. My mom who doesn’t approve of anyone outside of her blue-blooded side of the family felt some kindred with Janet, and sold their house in Merrillville after the family had moved to Valparaiso. She even knew the family dog that I didn’t. No Words is the kind of family chronicle that makes the history professors at IUN in Glen Park take note as its the classic local family raising a family in Gary’s post war period. Its also the kind of story that should make you stop and think about what really is important in life, family and going home and hugging your kids and bonding with them, because there may not be another tomorrow!
The Purple Sand Cherry bushes behind the Lycokiwe Trail signage were gifts from Dad's cousins Janet and the late Tom Rosko author of the book "No Words" about the loss of their two children.
I think of Dad’s cousins every time I exit the drive and see the Purple Sand Cherry bushes named after them here, and I am pleased that they were both able to share time with me here in the dunes and be a part of my history too. I’m hoping Janet will rebound as she always has and join us for more happy times.
MusetteLewry 