Claire Dennis was born in South Philadelphia, eighth of nine children, of Domenica Pitaccio and her second husband, James Lattanzio. Her parents were immigrants from Abbruzzi, in southern Italy– Ripa Teatina and Francaville al Mare. She grew up speaking that dialect of Italian in the Catholic Church. Her eldest sister, Rosa, served as a model for Claire to educate herself and marry out of the ethnic community. She attended the Blockley School of Nursing at Philadelphia General Hospital and married a dental intern she met while working at PGH, Franklin Klaiber Dennis. She joined the Methodist church and gradually abandoned Italian. She moved with him to the Boca Raton, Florida, Army Air Corps base for the war years, returning to west Philadelphia with one infant thereafter. She kept house and assisted in the dental office for the next several decades. Her kitchen was famous. Selling the home not long after being widowed, she finished her life in the suburbs, surrounded by family, succumbing to metastatic cancer at eighty-four.
first forsythia
– a walker slows in fine rain twigs finding their way down hospital corridors – forsythia bringing forsythia –no one sends it color restored to a spot on her cheek –forsythia a vase of roses moves for a sprig of forsythia bright in the long night –only forsythia left behind at the hospital –forsythia funeral – no forsythia still open –Emergency Room last forsythia |