Latest / Stories That Live In Us / La Cugina d'Americana (with Suzanne Russo Adams) | Episode 30

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La Cugina d'Americana (with Suzanne Russo Adams) | Episode 30 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:01
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So there's things like that where you go and you read the newspapers and he had a cousin who he and another guy were going up to meet Al Capone and he got in a gunfight and got shot up and my grandfather said, well, it was open casket and they sure waxed him up good, and I'm like, oh wow.
• 0:23
  Crista Cowan: Stories that Live In Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family past, present and future.
• 0:31
  Crista Cowan: I'm Crista Cowan, known online as The Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:35
  Crista Cowan: I've spent my whole life discovering the power of family history, and I know that sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:43
  Crista Cowan: Sharing the stories that live in you can change everything.
• 0:52
  Crista Cowan: My very first job at Ancestry was content acquisition, and the person who interviewed me first for that job was a woman named Suzanne Russo Adams, and I was so captivated by her from the first moment I met her.
• 1:02
  Crista Cowan: Her stories about family history were so interesting, I think.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: What captured my attention first, though, was that she had a degree in family history, and, as a professional genealogist, that was something I didn't even know was possible.
• 1:17
  Crista Cowan: Somehow, I had missed that whole thing.
• 1:20
  Crista Cowan: I had the opportunity to work with Suzanne for years, and as my time with her grew, so did my respect for her family stories.
• 1:31
  Crista Cowan: Suzanne is half Italian on her father's side, and she has stories of such a rich, big, loud Italian family loud Italian family and I've met her brother.
• 1:50
  Crista Cowan: I've met her parents.
• 1:51
  Crista Cowan: I know her kids and all of the stereotypical things that come along with that are true about their family.
• 1:55
  Crista Cowan: But with that rich cultural heritage also comes some other colorful stories.
• 2:01
  Crista Cowan: So I hope you'll enjoy my time with Suzanne, as she shares just a few of those stories.
• 2:07
  Crista Cowan: So, suzanne, I'm so excited that you're here.
• 2:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's been ages since I've seen you.
• 2:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, it's been a minute right, yeah.
• 2:14
  Crista Cowan: So let's just jump right in at the beginning of your family history journey.
• 2:18
  Crista Cowan: Tell us about where you got started, how you got started.
• 2:21
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I was.
• 2:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, when I was younger I wasn't interested in it, but I come from a big Italian family, at least on my dad's side, and so I was always the kid that was sitting around the table when everybody was there, like listening to the stories, listening to the old people tell the stories, and so my cousins would be like, come on, suzanne, let's go, let's play.
• 2:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I'd be like, no, I'm listening to this story.
• 2:46
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so I never knew that.
• 2:46
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think that's kind of really, where a lot of that you know connection for me came was just the big Sunday dinners and everybody talking and things like that.
• 2:54
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so, honestly, I, you know I went to this special school and had a gifted program, and so they said the first day we're going to learn Latin.
• 3:06
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I was like going home crying to my parents, tears running down my face, when am I ever going to use Latin in my life?
• 3:12
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Well, fast forward.
• 3:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: To BYU I did use my Latin, but we can get to that part.
• 3:18
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Basically.
• 3:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I had a teacher who really, really stretched me and strengthened me.
• 3:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I had a teacher who really, really stretched me and strengthened me and he pointed up to the wall at one point in time and said hey, I had a valedictorian of my class go to BYU and I had never thought of BYU.
• 3:33
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I'm first gen college.
• 3:35
  Suzanne Russo Adams: My parents didn't go to college, my grandparents didn't go to college.
• 3:38
  Suzanne Russo Adams: My Italian side, you know, they're lucky if they finished the third grade and so it's kind of that immigrant story.
• 3:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I decided at an early age I'm going to go to BYU, no idea why.
• 3:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I end up at BYU and changed my major a few different times and then ended up taking the intro to family history class and kind of just fell in love with it.
• 4:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was one of those moments where I was like I really really would love to learn about my Italian side because I don't know a lot about it.
• 4:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was one of those moments where I was like I really really would love to learn about my Italian side because I don't know a lot about it.
• 4:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But I remember walking into the family history library for the first time, taking a reel off because it's not like anything was online back then Taking a reel of film, having one of the missionaries there help me put that reel of film onto the reader and scrolling through it.
• 4:28
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I knew the town where my family came from in Italy.
• 4:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I was scrolling through it.
• 4:32
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I couldn't read a thing, couldn't read any of it.
• 4:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I put it back on the shelf and walked out.
• 4:39
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But I walked out more determined to really learn about them and their lives and less like, oh, I know I can't do this.
• 4:47
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so it was really.
• 4:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was really at BYU.
• 4:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was really, you know, there that I started to kind of catch the fire for family history and I changed my major, didn't know that that was a thing that at BYU that you could do, and so I changed my major to family history, and so it was kind of this perfect timing, I feel like.
• 5:06
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I feel like a lot of people say in family history there's serendipity, you know, serendipitous things that happen.
• 5:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I feel like a lot of things for me have happened that way.
• 5:15
  Crista Cowan: So like it.
• 5:16
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, so you mentioned about growing up with the stories around the table.
• 5:20
  Crista Cowan: Who was around that table?
• 5:21
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So it was my grandparents, it was my aunts and uncles, it was, you know, my grandparents' siblings and cousins and things like that.
• 5:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So it was a lot, a lot of people, I mean, and that was kind of what we did is, on Sundays or big holidays we got together.
• 5:39
  Crista Cowan: Big Italian family.
• 5:40
  Crista Cowan: Big Italian family.
• 5:41
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, when was this?
• 5:42
  Suzanne Russo Adams: In California.
• 5:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Okay, yeah, near LA Love that.
• 5:45
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I have a lot of family that's in San Pedro area, palos Verdes area, san Pedro Fish Market, if any of you know that one.
• 5:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: That's some cousins too, so yeah, so fun, love that.
• 5:59
  Crista Cowan: So you figured out what you wanted to be when you grew up at BYU.
• 6:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You're a lot luckier than I am.
• 6:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, no, I really did.
• 6:10
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Well, I don't know that.
• 6:10
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I would say that I figured out what I wanted to be.
• 6:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I just had this love and this passion for learning more about that side of my family, and so that kind of really grew.
• 6:15
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so when I say, when am I ever going to use Latin in my life, when doing Italian family history, all the parish records are in Latin.
• 6:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I ended up taking Latin from Ray Wright and the paleography and all that kind of thing, and so that was really kind of interesting and special for me and it was really my eyes, I don't think, really opened until I went and did an internship in Italy.
• 6:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Tell us about that and that was something that I kind of learned that you kind of really do have to know the history in order to kind of understand where your family comes from.
• 6:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I did an internship, mainly in the Naples area.
• 6:55
  Suzanne Russo Adams: We kind of traveled around and went to some different archives and I was able to go to Sicily a few different times to do my own family research.
• 7:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Had you been there before, I hadn't that was my first time that was really my first time out of the country, so to speak, probably even my first time you know west or east of Utah Like honestly, I was like this is big deal, big deal stuff, and so I'm putting my you know, I'm growing up here, so and Naples is kind of a fun city to go to.
• 7:25
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's not the most calm city but it's got a vibrancy that's just kind of amazing.
• 7:30
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So it was the State Archive of Naples and we would, because there were two others that were with me I was lucky enough to have two others that were also studying Italian family history at the same time and so we were this little group, this little cohort, and so we went and we would pull records and we would look at them and we'd wonder what they were all about.
• 7:53
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so that led to going to the, you know, the library in Naples and researching.
• 7:55
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, how are these records made, how are they made?
• 7:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And and that really was special to me because I, I, I began to understand that you've really got to understand the history in order to understand the records.
• 8:07
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so, you know, fast forward, I mentioned that I went to Sicily a few different times and I met family there and got to stay with them and things like that.
• 8:17
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And then I went to one of the parishes where my family's from, and the whole time I only had a few hours and I had a cousin that came with me and the whole time as I'm trying to furiously write because none of this is on film, nevermind digitized, we're talking pre digitization I was writing things just fast and furious and he grabbed my arm and he said why do you care?
• 8:40
  Suzanne Russo Adams: They're dead.
• 8:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I was like I just need to keep writing.
• 8:45
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so that was meaningful to me too, to just be in that parish and to kind of have that experience on the ground, walk where they walked and just be where they were.
• 9:00
  Crista Cowan: So anyway, it's just amazing.
• 9:02
  Crista Cowan: And when you came home from that experience, did you reconnect with your family to share the information you had, or were you still just kind of gathering for yourself?
• 9:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I was kind of gathering for myself.
• 9:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So not at that time, but since then I would say most definitely I've had the opportunities to do that.
• 9:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But yeah, when I came home, I went, you know, finished out my degree and quite honestly I mean we're talking I graduated December of 1998.
• 9:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I just dated myself there, so, and I just didn't really know what I was going to do next.
• 9:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I actually moved back to California, sat at my parents' house for like three months or so, kind of just wondering what I was going to do with my life.
• 9:45
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And, yeah, a friend of mine said, hey, I just got this job at this new little company called Ancestrycom.
• 9:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I was like, oh, really, tell me more.
• 9:56
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And she's like they're hiring.
• 9:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so I not a penny to my name hitched a ride with some friends who were from California, who were going to Utah for spring break, and you know, I interviewed.
• 10:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I interviewed at An, at ancestrycom, and at the same time though, I was, you know, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I could go and work for familysearchorg?
• 10:19
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And you know, it was family search international, I think it was really actually just family history department at that point in time.
• 10:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So so I did that, and that you know.
• 10:28
  Suzanne Russo Adams: During that week I went and interviewed with Andre Brummer.
• 10:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You probably remember.
• 10:32
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Andre he interviewed you, right?
• 10:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I went and interviewed with Andre Brummer, but I also went up to the church office building and they weren't hiring at the time, but they had a tour for people who were going to go work in the vault Granite Mountain Vault, in the vault, the Granite Mountain vault, and so I went and went on this tour and I remember I think it was the third floor or fourth floor somewhere in the church office building there where they would receive the films and they would check to see whether or not they were, you know, light or dark or if they had to do a retake or something like that.
• 11:14
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And and one of the gentlemen that was checking the film said, hey, would you like to see?
• 11:16
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, would you like to look?
• 11:17
  Suzanne Russo Adams: and so I grabbed the little loop and I looked down and I kid you, not Crista, it was my town in Italy it was my parish you remember the one that I said the cousin was hey, out of the two million plus films, it was my parish, it was Carini Palermo, sicily, and I just about fell over and I was just like you know, you have these little, like I said, serendipitous kind of moments, or God winks or whatever you want to call them, but that for me was one of those and I was just like what are the odds that you know not more than you know, six, eight months ago I was in that parish wishing that I could have that accessible to me, and there it was on film, not cataloged or anything yet, obviously because it had just been captured, and so that was something.
• 12:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was my grandmother's side, my grandmother's parish.
• 12:07
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So, fast forward a little bit, I ended up getting that job at Ancestry.
• 12:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: What year was that?
• 12:14
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was it was early 1999.
• 12:16
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was April 1999.
• 12:17
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I started on April 1st.
• 12:18
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So not a joke.
• 12:21
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Not a joke.
• 12:22
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I started there April 1st 1999.
• 12:25
  Crista Cowan: And what?
• 12:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: were you hired to do so?
• 12:27
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I was hired as the first person to write instructions on how to index data.
• 12:32
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Okay, yeah, so there was no digital, what we call a digital pipeline at that time.
• 12:37
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think Ancestry maybe they had a few things that they had gotten from Western Standard Publishing and Ancestry, you know, had the publishing company, the print publishing company.
• 12:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Lou Zooks was there, you know Juliana Zooks Zooks was there and you know Juliana Zooks and everybody, jen Utley you know, friends of ours, anyway.
• 12:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I was hired to write instructions on how to index data, and the first thing that we were doing was we there were really just three of us at that time, which you know probably.
• 13:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Your work there now probably blows your mind, but there were three of us a guy named Matt Page and he stood under a planetary scanner and he was scanning the slave narratives, and that was one of the first projects that we did.
• 13:22
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I was writing instructions on how to index data and pretty soon after that we got people like Spence Woolley but the woman that I worked with that was our manager because, like I said, there was just three of us she actually got let go.
• 13:39
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so Andre Brummer came to me and said, hey, we need to build a digital pipeline.
• 13:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I was like build a what?
• 13:47
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I studied family history, yeah, and so I had the opportunity to kind of hire people and we started to kind of figure out what would that look like.
• 13:56
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, if we're going to send things offshore to be indexed, how does that come back, how do we audit it, how do we edit it, what do we do, and things like that.
• 14:07
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so I started to help build that pipeline and we were off of Orem Center Street, it's called.
• 14:17
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Behind the post office, yeah, behind the post office we call it post office place and we sat in a big room and we had just you know fold out tables and there were people sitting across from each other, you know editing, auditing and you know doing all those things.
• 14:33
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So it was, there was a lot of synergy in those early days of Ancestry.
• 14:37
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was a lot of fun.
• 14:39
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I did that for a little bit, but then I moved into strategy and acquisition.
• 14:43
  Crista Cowan: Which is where I met you.
• 14:45
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, quentin Atkinson, and, you know, brian Peterson and everybody.
• 14:48
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Steve Nickel yeah, so that was, it was a lot of fun Fun years.
• 14:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Steve Nickel yeah, so that was.
• 14:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was a lot of fun Fun years, for sure, really good.
• 14:53
  Suzanne Russo Adams: How long were you at Ancestry?
• 14:55
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I was there until 2011,.
• 14:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: February 2011.
• 14:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I made the move over to FamilySearch.
• 15:00
  Suzanne Russo Adams: That was something that I thought I'd always wanted to do, right?
• 15:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so David, we met, who worked at Ancestry, had gone over there, and he said, hey, you know, if you want, you could come over and you could work with Italy, because, quite honestly, in my time at Ancestry, it was a lot of US-based things and that was fantastic.
• 15:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I learned so much about National Archives and, you know, state research and things like that.
• 15:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But he said, hey, there's an opportunity to come over and work and do things in Europe and Italy and South America, and so that was so fun for me because FamilySearch, in 2011, had just signed an agreement with the Director General of Archives for Italy for all of the state archives of Italy, and so I was able to be a part of that project for a good, you know, 12, 13 years, and that was fun.
• 15:54
  Suzanne Russo Adams: That was fun for me.
• 15:55
  Crista Cowan: Well and clearly where your passion started, and so it makes sense that yeah, yeah, and now you have a new role.
• 16:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I do, yeah.
• 16:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So just in June of this year I made the move over to Brigham Young University as the director of the Center for Family History and Genealogy and also associate teaching professor.
• 16:17
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I get to go and teach and give back and share what I've learned from visiting archives and working with Ancestry and FamilySearch.
• 16:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And it's a lot of fun because the center is actually.
• 16:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: When I say that a lot of people think oh, it's a family history center.
• 16:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's not, it's an academic research center.
• 16:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so at BYU there's the major in family history and so there are a lot of students who are majoring or doing a minor in family history and so that center we have multiple projects that they can go and get hands-on experiential learning to learn how to research and how to make it in the world of family history, because it's now an industry.
• 16:59
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I mean back then small.
• 17:03
  Crista Cowan: Barely anything online.
• 17:04
  Crista Cowan: You graduated and went home.
• 17:07
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, because what are you going to do?
• 17:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I just didn't even know.
• 17:10
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's amazing, because what are you going to do?
• 17:11
  Crista Cowan: I just didn't even know.
• 17:12
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's amazing, and it's so interesting At the time that we're having this conversation.
• 17:15
  Crista Cowan: School has only been in session for about a month, right, and so you've been in that role for about a month now with students.
• 17:22
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, with the teaching, with this teaching.
• 17:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I got there about June and so it was a lot of work in the center and the research aspect and learning.
• 17:30
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know how the center runs, but now I'm teaching, so, yeah, yeah, it's kind of a full circle moment.
• 17:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It is a full circle moment, it really is.
• 17:38
  Crista Cowan: Well, that's amazing.
• 17:39
  Crista Cowan: Well, so tell us a little bit about um.
• 17:42
  Crista Cowan: I want to hear your kind of favorite Italian family history story.
• 17:47
  Crista Cowan: Oh gosh, um, can you pick one?
• 17:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I don't know that I can, or tell us two or three.
• 17:53
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I don't even know if I could.
• 17:55
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I mean because I really I love all of my family, both sides of my family, so I have so many stories that's like picking a favorite star, a little bit.
• 18:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It is.
• 18:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I'll tell you, though, one thing I do love about my Italian side is kind of the folk ways and different things like that.
• 18:14
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I don't know if I've talked about this to a lot of people, but there's a lot of different superstitions and things like that, and so, actually, when I did my master's at BYU, I did that on the Council of Trent in that time period, early modern, that on the Council of Trent in that time period, early modern, and so there was, I looked at baptism, marriage and burial in that same town, where you know, I saw the films and visited the parish.
• 18:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Well, fast forward, that's all obviously online, and so when I was doing my master's degree, I had access to that and I was able to kind of look at some of the folkways of baptism, marriage and burial, and so, quite honestly, at some of the folk ways of baptism, marriage and burial.
• 18:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so, quite honestly, some of my favorite stories come from the superstitious things that my grandparents have told me, so, one of them being that my great-grandfather, matteo Russo, came to the US and then, as a lot of Italian immigrants do, they go back and forth a little bit and he went back to marry my great grandmother.
• 19:14
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But there was a witch in the town who wanted him to marry her daughter and so she kind of cursed him with these headaches and he had these headaches and things like that.
• 19:28
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I kid you not, Crista, this is the story.
• 19:30
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I was told that they were fishermen, so it was a tiny little town called Trapetos, right on the ocean.
• 19:37
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So he goes out to fish and there was a sea monster that came and tried to kind of attack their boat and they fought it off.
• 19:46
  Suzanne Russo Adams: They cut the head off of the sea monster and then the next day the witch was found dead with her head between her legs.
• 19:54
  Suzanne Russo Adams: These are the stories.
• 19:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I don't know if that's one that you expected to hear today, but it was.
• 20:01
  Suzanne Russo Adams: His headache stopped, he married my great grandmother, they went to the US and there you go, there's the story.
• 20:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But yeah, so kind of little funny folk tales and things like that.
• 20:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But they were just, they were good, honest, hardworking people that loved family and I think that's where that around the table kind of thing came from, just hearing those stories and hearing about their lives.
• 20:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, my grandparents grew up in the.
• 20:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: They were born in 15 and 17.
• 20:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So Great Depression, prohibition, kind of things like that.
• 20:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I do have a few little stories like that.
• 20:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know they immigrated to St Louis Missouri.
• 20:41
  Crista Cowan: That's where Mateo and his wife came to.
• 20:42
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah that's where they came to, and so in the St Louis neighborhood that my grandpa grew up in there was a lot of mafia, so I do have some mafia stories in there too.
• 20:55
  Crista Cowan: Oh do tell, but my grandpa would tell me.
• 20:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: One of the stories that I love that he told was that there was a neighbor gentleman that would pile all the kids into the car and take them for an ice cream, like weekly or you know and things like that.
• 21:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And he said I didn't, I never knew why, but the reason that he would pile all the all the kids into the car was so that the cops wouldn't stop them and and say why are?
• 21:19
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Why is your car riding low?
• 21:22
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You pile all the neighborhood kids in the car.
• 21:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He was basically running alcohol and to the ice cream shop and so that he learned, you know, several years later, that's why that was happening.
• 21:35
  Suzanne Russo Adams: They were all in the neighborhood, yeah.
• 21:38
  Crista Cowan: You mentioned, like the St Louis connection and the mafia connection with your grandfather.
• 21:42
  Crista Cowan: People have this perception of Sicilians, right, right, and what is that I mean?
• 21:48
  Crista Cowan: Was your grandfather part of the?
• 21:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: mafia.
• 21:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He actually wasn't, but he grew up with a lot of those guys that were in the mafia and so he would tell me stories.
• 22:00
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Oh yeah, so-and-so in the neighborhood, so-and-so in the neighborhood.
• 22:03
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And he told me a story once that he was invited to, or he thought he might be invited to join the mafia because there was a fee you had to pay.
• 22:15
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yes, I didn't know this, but my grandma said no, if, if you know, so-and-so comes to you and says, will you join?
• 22:22
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I will, I'll leave you.
• 22:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I'm not, I'm not going to kind of put up with that.
• 22:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so he was really afraid that that was going to happen.
• 22:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He had a whole story.
• 22:31
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, my son has polio.
• 22:33
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know I can't all these things.
• 22:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so his friend walks into a shop and he told the kid that he was shoe repair shop.
• 22:42
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Right, he told the kid that he was working with don't, you know, don't get, don't get polish on him.
• 22:48
  Suzanne Russo Adams: That's basically what he said.
• 22:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Don't get the polish on him.
• 22:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He's big stuff pretty much.
• 22:54
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so he was worried that he was going to be asked to join.
• 22:59
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He didn't end up having to join, but I think it was something like $300 or something.
• 23:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's some enormous fee at that time that he would have had to, you know, fork out and if you're asked to join, you can't not join.
• 23:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah so but there are other little tangential stories too.
• 23:16
  Suzanne Russo Adams: One of my dad's uncles they lived in Milwaukee and he said things like I was the mayor of Milwaukee.
• 23:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: People came to me and when you're the mayor you're affiliated, right, and so he had to get permission from the feds.
• 23:33
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He said, to go to my aunt's wedding.
• 23:35
  Suzanne Russo Adams: There's little things like that that you kind of like.
• 23:38
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But my family, no, not specifically, but tangentially there.
• 23:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He knew those guys.
• 23:44
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And it's funny because, fast forward, there's a book and I can't recall the name of it right now about the mafia in St Louis book, and I can't recall the name of it right now about the mafia in St Louis.
• 23:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so I, of course, picked up a copy and my grandmother, my grandfather, was not a liar, he was not lying.
• 23:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: As I read, and I read this, the streets that people lived on, and I read who you know he was talking about, it's the same, it's the same people that are in this in book.
• 24:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, they lived on labity, that's where the core of it was.
• 24:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And, um, he did have a, an uncle of his that that got shot and was killed um by a.
• 24:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He wasn't in the mafia but by a little mafia feud.
• 24:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So there's things like that where you go and you read the newspapers, and he had a cousin who he and another guy were going up to meet Al Capone and he got in a gunfight and got shot up and my grandfather said Well, it was open casket and they sure waxed him up good, and I'm like oh, wow Little things like that.
• 24:50
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, and it's interesting because you know we have today there's gangs and back then there was the mafia, and a lot of times people equate those two things, but the mafia was really about family and protection and that's how it started in Sicily.
• 25:03
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It was, and that's exactly right.
• 25:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: In my studies at school, I did a few things papers on the mafia and it really was about, um, protecting the family from from landowners or from from people that, would you know, we're trying to take land and things like that, and so, um, it started out as that.
• 25:21
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But, yeah, of course, coming over to the U?
• 25:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: S and things like that, there there's, you know, that element of nefarious and lawlessness and prohibition.
• 25:32
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, all those, all those types of things, yeah.
• 25:36
  Crista Cowan: Played into it.
• 25:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You're actually reminding me of when I did my internship in Italy.
• 25:40
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I visited not Trepeto but Carini and I went to the civil office and got a few records and things like that.
• 25:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And then my friend and I were sitting in the in the piazza and we had these two very nicely dressed men come up to us and say hey, what are you doing here?
• 25:59
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I explained who I was and what I was doing, and you know things like that and they said well, if you need anything, you come to us.
• 26:07
  Crista Cowan: So they were the mayors of that town, whether appointed or not.
• 26:14
  Crista Cowan: Yes, were those the kinds of stories that your grandfather was telling around that dinner table when you were?
• 26:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: growing up?
• 26:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yep, yeah, those are, that's where I heard those yeah and so your grandfather grew up in st louis.
• 26:26
  Crista Cowan: Where was your?
• 26:27
  Crista Cowan: Where did your grandmother same?
• 26:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: they both immigrated to st louis, so they're from both of them were from a Palermo area in Sicily and from that you know that same area, but they both grew up in in St Louis immigrated to St Louis and then out to California and there's so the.
• 26:44
  Suzanne Russo Adams: My grandfather, like I mentioned, comes from that tiny little town, trepeto.
• 26:47
  Suzanne Russo Adams: A massive group of them kind of came from from Trepeto.
• 26:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's a tiny fishing village like 3,000 people today.
• 26:55
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So they came and immigrated to St Louis and then to San Pedro, california, and there's even a Trepato club right now and there's strong ties between the two.
• 27:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So growing up in that area we would go to massive family reunions like 400 or 500 people, something like that.
• 27:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: There was a baseball game, there was trophies passed back and forth, so it was just fun times.
• 27:18
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But when I visited Sicily I would see people that I had seen at family reunions.
• 27:25
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So there's a strong back and forth.
• 27:27
  Suzanne Russo Adams: People go and they still, many of them have a home in that town and in California and so that's kind of a fun thing to see.
• 27:37
  Crista Cowan: And so then you're related to everyone Pretty much.
• 27:40
  Crista Cowan: Yes, Is that how that works?
• 27:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Like first time I went there, the phrase that I would hear is La Cujita del America, like the cousin from America, you know.
• 27:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so it was just kind of funny.
• 27:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, I went to the parish that first time I visited.
• 27:54
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I went to the parish and there was the priest was having a movie night and a lot of the youth were there and I was still, you know, fairly young, and so I had some kids come up to me and say, hey, heard you were from California, or heard you're from the States, and I'm like your, your English is perfect.
• 28:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And they're like, oh, we lived in San Pedro for like 10 years and now we're back, you know, so it was.
• 28:15
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's a lot of fun.
• 28:16
  Crista Cowan: It's interesting because a lot of immigrant stories are about fleeing a place and coming to America and in some cases, within just a generation or two trying to assimilate so much and not talk about the old country, and it sounds like this experience for your family is very different.
• 28:34
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Well, it is and it isn't, because there's kind of a melding or a mixing.
• 28:40
  Suzanne Russo Adams: There were seven kids in my dad's family my aunts both married men, his older sisters both married men from Italy.
• 28:47
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But all of the boys you know there were three boys didn't.
• 28:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: They married Americans and my dad was very much we're in America.
• 28:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know he didn't really learn the language and, quite honestly, my grandparents would speak Sicilian when they didn't want the kids to know what they were saying.
• 29:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But because my aunts married one of my aunts married a man from Trepeto and the other aunt married my uncle who's from Ischia, which is near Naples, and so they really were immersed in the culture and the language and things like that.
• 29:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And, as the you know, the younger kids, it kind of made that distinction where there was that cut and things like that.
• 29:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But I think there is that turning back and maybe that was part of what I was doing was turning back is wanting to learn the language, wanting to know where I came from, and listening to those stories really helped.
• 29:40
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, did that cause?
• 29:42
  Crista Cowan: Growing up in a family where you know some of the cousins are immersed in the Italian culture and some of the cousins have you know American mothers and the grandparents are still speaking Italian.
• 29:52
  Crista Cowan: Like does that create more unity or does that create a little bit of division?
• 29:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Um, I honestly, for my family, I felt like that created some unity.
• 30:02
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I mean, I think I don't know there were moments in growing up where my grandpa would turn and be like that's American food, why are you eating that?
• 30:10
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And my dad would be like, dad, it's because we're in America, right, and so there were.
• 30:15
  Suzanne Russo Adams: There were things like that, but I don't know.
• 30:18
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I see we're pretty close as a family and the cousins are pretty close, but it is.
• 30:24
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It is kind of interesting, kind of trying to straddle that line between a culture and American culture and you know the Italian culture.
• 30:32
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting because I think a lot of people would say there isn't an American culture because it's such a melting pot, Right, and that some of you know that a culture like an Italian culture is so strong and so prevalent and so pervasive that it might almost overshadow a little bit, and yet it's a way that families create their own unique culture within a family.
• 30:56
  Crista Cowan: It sounds like for you, yeah.
• 30:57
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think so.
• 30:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I think you're right and it's funny Every once in a while I just have this pang of I miss them so much.
• 31:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: My dad was a shoe repairman for a lot of years and so I really got to live with them and kind of understand them.
• 31:14
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And you know, because my parents were working, I would come home from school and my grandma was there and she'd give me a big hug and her hugs were the best.
• 31:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And it's so funny because you talk to my cousins and they're like, oh yeah, I was their favorite.
• 31:29
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I'm like, no, you weren't, I was you know it's that kind of feeling.
• 31:32
  Suzanne Russo Adams: She had that love in her that she just gave that love.
• 31:37
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And my grandfather, I remember going to his shop and he would empty the coin drawers for us and so he would just give and give and give, and so that was just.
• 31:48
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's just such.
• 31:49
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I just have such really amazing memories of them and a lot of times they would speak to me in Sicilian and I would answer back in English and that was kind of that funny little thing that we had.
• 31:59
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But he, I don't know, I felt a love from them because I tried to understand them.
• 32:06
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think when my grandpa would say things like oh that's American food, I would try the other foods, I would try the Italian foods and I loved it.
• 32:19
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So I don't know, I just I miss them so much every day, and so I think part of me learning about them um, was was it means that I have a piece of piece of them in me always, and learning about their heritage, about my heritage, really learning about where, where they came from or where their parents came from, you know.
• 32:35
  Crista Cowan: I love that I miss my grandparents too.
• 32:37
  Crista Cowan: Sorry, yeah, no, I get super emotional.
• 32:40
  Suzanne Russo Adams: No, I every like all the time I miss them.
• 32:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:44
  Crista Cowan: And and then knowing how much you love them, you're a mom, and what does that look like to transmit that love, that knowledge of your grandparents, the stories, the culture?
• 32:56
  Crista Cowan: What does that look like in your family?
• 32:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It looks like food, quite honestly, because, like, that's a lot of what I did with my, with my grandparents and grandma, and so, you know, we'll make the meatballs and the sauce and things like that, and my kids all get in there and they want to do it, and and we still have a lot of the same Christmas traditions or holiday traditions where we make, you know, the food that we made when I was a kid, and so it looks a lot like that.
• 33:25
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Quite honestly, I probably do need to be better about sharing specific stories with them, though I need to do that.
• 33:33
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I've thought, you know, it'd be nice to make a recipe book of all my grandma's recipes, but, quite honestly, when you do Italian cooking, it's a little bit of this, it's a little bit of that, and so my kids have gotten into that.
• 33:42
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Especially when we're making meatballs, they're like, oh no, it needs this, it needs that.
• 33:46
  Suzanne Russo Adams: All right, we got to do this, what do you think it needs?
• 33:48
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And they're smelling it and they're, you know, testing it and things like that.
• 33:51
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So it's fun.
• 33:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's fun to do that with them.
• 33:53
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I love that, yeah.
• 33:55
  Crista Cowan: You've had the opportunity now, as part of your career, to go back and forth to Italy probably more times than Matteo did.
• 34:03
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, yeah, I've actually had the opportunity, quite honestly, to travel all over.
• 34:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I did a lot with South America, I did a lot with Europe and, quite honestly, I did a lot with the Pacific Isles, australia, new Zealand too, and so I've had the opportunity to go over to more than 100 archives and visit 100 archives.
• 34:26
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But quite honestly, Crista, it's amazing to me I have that connection with Italy, but in my work at FamilySearch people would say, oh, you have this affinity for Italy, and I said, sure, but I grew to love people all over the world by going to all those different places.
• 34:43
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I would tell my colleagues and co-workers I don't play favorites when it comes to God's children, so to speak.
• 34:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And so last year, last August, I had the opportunity to go to Australia and on my mom's side I have an early LDS ancestor who served a mission in Australia 1856 to 1859, you know, super early and I was able to walk where he walked.
• 35:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I have some of his journals and so that was really special to me because it was things he would write Took dinner on such and such street and I'm like I was just there.
• 35:16
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I walked there and in Australia I also found my uncle.
• 35:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: That's from Ishkiy.
• 35:23
  Suzanne Russo Adams: He went from Ishki to Australia and then to California.
• 35:27
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I was able to find his file of you know immigrant immigration file with a picture and things like that, and I had my own.
• 35:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Who do you think you are kind of moment where the archivist brought it out and there it was.
• 35:39
  Suzanne Russo Adams: But I find that there's connections all over the world that way and and to be able to walk where they walked and, you know, be where they were, is just so special, no matter where in the world it is yeah, yeah, I love that.
• 35:55
  Crista Cowan: The connection between your grandmother's grandchildren all thinking they were her favorite yeah, oh for sure, they all do you ask them.
• 36:02
  Crista Cowan: They all still say the same thing but the connection between that and then you becoming this, like you don't have a favorite archive or you don't have a favorite country.
• 36:13
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I don't, I don't, I like, I literally like, if you said, put me in Argentina, oh I love that, I love those people.
• 36:20
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Put me in New Zealand, I love it.
• 36:21
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You know, I just it's, it's just amazing to see, see all of all of that rich history and the culture in all of those different, different countries.
• 36:31
  Crista Cowan: I absolutely love it.
• 36:32
  Crista Cowan: Have you been able to take your kids on any of these adventures with you?
• 36:36
  Suzanne Russo Adams: No, and they all want to go.
• 36:38
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's funny though, both my daughters are studying French.
• 36:41
  Suzanne Russo Adams: My husband speaks Spanish and I have the Italian thing going on.
• 36:45
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So they are all kind of saying, hey, why don't we go to Southern Europe?
• 36:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: And I'm like you know what we actually need to do that.
• 36:52
  Suzanne Russo Adams: So, yeah, that's a thing that we hope to do, yeah for sure.
• 36:58
  Crista Cowan: Well, speaking of hope, is there anything else as you think about your journey into family history, your journey with your family, the love you have for your grandparents?
• 37:06
  Crista Cowan: What do you hope for the future?
• 37:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I just hope to see it grow.
• 37:10
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I hope to see.
• 37:11
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think we live in a world where people are not connecting as well, so I hope, I hope that we are able to um, through our families and through our history, to connect better, and I think the family history really can do that for people.
• 37:27
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I really think that it um, there's an aspect of healing, there's an aspect of hope in in what we do, when we understand our ancestors' lives and we learn little things about them and try to understand them, and so I think that's what I hope.
• 37:42
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I hope that for my family, I hope that for my kids that they'll be able to really kind of know and understand themselves by studying their past.
• 37:50
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah Well, it sounds like you have come to know and understand themselves by studying their past.
• 37:53
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah.
• 37:53
  Crista Cowan: Well, it sounds like you have come to know and understand yourself better through this whole journey.
• 37:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I think so.
• 37:58
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I hope so.
• 37:59
  Suzanne Russo Adams: It's a process, though that's one thing that I love about family history You're constantly learning.
• 38:04
  Suzanne Russo Adams: You're constantly growing.
• 38:05
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I'm learning something new every day.
• 38:07
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 38:08
  Suzanne Russo Adams: I find that as well.
• 38:09
  Suzanne Russo Adams: Yeah, I love it.