He’s Dad, Grandpa, Pop-Pop, Uncle Frank, Frank E., or just plain Frank. But whatever you call him, Frank Marra is larger than life, and now – as he enters his second century – that’s truer than true.
Before the Nov. 11 Armistice ending the Great War, Frank Marra was born in New York City on Sept. 24, 1918. He was the first of the three sons (Frank, Joseph and Edward) of Mary (Carmelina) and Arthur (Arturo) Marra. His parents formed part of an extended family who emigrated from the Campania Region (Province of Salerno) of Italy’s south. He attended grammar school (PS 57) and high school (Theodore Roosevelt) in the Bronx.
In 1939, three years after graduating, with the Great Depression still plaguing the U.S., he set out for northern California. There he met up with Uncle Hugh (Waldo J. Marra) and worked for the Bank of America for a few years in Placerville, Davis and San Bruno.
Heeding the call to duty, like many of the “Greatest Generation,” he enlisted in the National Guard and served on active duty from Pearl Harbor Day to November of 1945, as a technical sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 258th Field Artillery. His campaigns included Normandy, northern France, Belgium and the Ardennes, the Battle of the Bulge, Lichtenstein, Austria and Germany. In an interesting anecdote, a member of his unit asked him to pull the lanyard launching, what was said to be the first artillery shell, across the Rhine into Germany proper.
Frank has other, more colorful war stories, including unique experiences during several months of pre-Normandy training in the United Kingdom, especially Wales.
Following WWII, Frank returned to the Bay area and the Bank of America after a special round-trip to New York to marry Cecilia Genovese in the Bronx on Sept. 14, 1946. The couple had fallen in love long-distance style, with Mom’s famous home-baked cookies (sent to him in the service) sealing the deal. They honeymooned coast to coast and settled in San Bruno.
In late 1947, they returned to their New York roots, which meant finding a new job (at Chemical Bank in mid-Manhattan), followed by the birth of two sons, Albert in 1948 and Eugene in 1953. Family, friends, work (with several promotions into management slots at Chemical) and homeownership in Yonkers brought new challenges, rewards, and many of life’s sweetest blessings: a successful career, a summer home near Little Peconic Bay in Southampton, a 70-year marriage to Cecile (who passed away at age 97 nearly two years ago), the marriage of sons Albert (to Adrienne Rinaldi) and Eugene (to Montell MacBroom), and the birth of four grandchildren, Andrew and Alex, and – after a 15-year gap – Clara and Gabe.
Frank Marra survived two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the stock market crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and several post-WWII periods of boom and bust, war and peace. He saw Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle play baseball at Yankee Stadium, and U.S. astronauts walk on the moon. He held down two jobs to send both of his boys to college and grad school, and volunteered for many years at St. Bart’s Church and the Jewish Home for the Blind. He danced with his wife at the weddings of two of his grandchildren (Alex to Isabel, Andrew to Kristen) and he has held in his arms three young great-grandchildren: Margaret, Cecilia and Dominick.
So at this point is there anything that a 100-year-old man wants or needs?
Perhaps the next 100 years may tell us
