My grandfather Tony (Anthony Paglione) was technically my step-grandfather. My grandmother got divorced and remarried when my dad was in high school. Tony was just as close to my siblings and I as our other grandfather, though. He was very Italian and very Catholic, something that surprised everyone when my grandmother, the daughter of a Baptist pastor, decided to marry him. He wrote Italian poetry in carefully inked calligraphy and he always made pasta dinners when my family was over. He spent a number of years in the National Guard. After he retired, he worked as a manager at the local grocery store. Tony was everyone's friend. After he died, my family spent years trying to find his pasta sauce recipe. It was impossible to recreate no matter how hard we tried. Just earlier this year, my dad finally found a wrinkled piece of paper with Tony's recipe carefully typed out. It was, without a doubt, written by Tony. There were no exact measurements, and he wrote certain words just like he would've pronounced them in his heavy Italian-American accent. "Sugar" is "tiny bit o' sugar" and "grated cheese" is "graded cheese." The only instructions for cooking the sauce are "slow, low, low, simmer." It's a sparse recipe, but it exactly captures the essence of him. 

– Ellie Brown

Relationship:  Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more Great-grandchild of im/migrant or more