Irene Mae Miller (Parzek)
b. 1923
Nassau, NY
d. 1949
Nassau, NY

Grandmother, paternal side

I grew up on the same land that Irene and her family lived on, and although I never knew her alive, she was always "there" for me when I was small, somehow. The house she and her family lived in, was inhabited by her mother Mary Miller, when I was small, and I always imagined there must be a shrine to her upstairs somewhere.

She was born on the family farm in the town of Nassau, NY, the second child of four. She kept photo albums, which my father still has, and which I have made good use of in my research. I wonder, sometimes, if the historian/archivist streak in myself and my dad, are inherited from Irene. She also played the guitar, and some times my father plays a song called "The Little Match Boy" that he says she used to sing to him, and everyone cries.

She met my grandfather Joe Parzek, at a dance in Pittsfield, MA, when she was 17. He was over 10 years older, and took her to her senior prom at Columbia Highschool. Irene was part of the very first graduating class of Columbia High in 1941 - I was the third generation to graduate from the same school, after my dad. Irene married Joe right after graduation, and had my dad in the fall of 1942.

As a girl, Irene had had strep throat, which untreated (which was uncommon back then) turned into rheumatic fever and her heart was scarred from it. She was weak, as a result. When my father was born, and WWII started, my grandfather was sent to war, and Irene went home to the farm with her baby. My father showed me once the letters that she wrote to Joe's commanding officer, asking that he be let to come home. It was really hard for her with a small child, living on a farm in the country, helping to take care of her parents and the farm. Back then (and up until I was a teenage!) the house didn't even have indoor plumbing, and there were a lot of things that just made life really tough for her. The letters did not bring him home, until the war ended and he separated from the army on November 17, 1945. Irene died from heart failure in 1949, when she was 26 years old and my dad was seven.

Her oldest brother, Vernon, was married to Irene's best friend Evelyn Parker, and Aunt Evelyn still, to this day, will sigh and say "my, you laugh like your grandmother" and tell me how I remind her of Irene. I like to think so.