My name is Mary Pat; I’m Santo’s
granddaughter. I’d like to thank you all for coming today, to what is my
grandpa’s last great party. We didn’t do this for my grandmother, and I think
that’s something we all regretted, so we really wanted to say a few things
about Grandpa today.
At the funeral home this morning, my
brother reminded me of how Grandpa always wanted to know where each of his
grandchildren were. If one was missing, he’d immediately notice and ask: “Where’s
Pauly? Where’s Janie? Where’s little Joe?” It occurred to me as we were talking
that I would never again hear anyone shout, “How’s Mares!” when they enter a
room, and I would never again hear him ask for a “high five” from one of my
kids.
It would mean a great deal to my
grandfather to see you all here, as it does to our family. I’d like to take a
second to point out that Grandpa was not a man to mince words. If he didn’t like
you, he made sure you knew it. Everyone sitting here should give themselves a
pat on the back – you made the cut.
When I was asked to write this speech I
was both honored and nervous. I wasn’t sure what I’d say. My grandmother, who
we all love and miss, was easy to know, and easy to get along with. She was my
best friend when I was four years old. Her, I could write a speech about. But
Grandpa was a different sort of person. I remembered a time when my sister and
I were at a drug store shopping to buy him a Father’s Day card. Most of the
cards for a grandfather didn’t really fit with who our grandpa was to us.
Puppies or flowers or cookies or hugs, the cards in the store suggested a
cuddly man, a doting “gramps” sort of guy that Grandpa just wasn’t. As it turns
out, there’s no card with a picture of a
Manhattan or a big bottle of Chianti on the front and then blank inside so you
can write down the names of all your kids.
It took a big extended family dinner to
get this right. Italian style, just the way Grandpa liked it—a couple bottles
of wine, lots of my mom’s good food, and all of us sitting around the table
long after it had been cleared, just talking to each other. And here’s what we
came up with.
Grandpa, Santo to many of you, was born
in 1927. Historically, that was two years before the stock market crash and the
beginning of the Great Depression. Grandpa was raised on the West Side of
Buffalo by parents who had come to America from Sicily in the hopes of
providing a better life for their family. The story sounds like any other, and
yet Santo Bueme was a man all his own.
The newspaper summarized Grandpa’s life in just a few
short paragraphs. A retiree of Niagara Mohawk,
employed at the Huntley Station in Tonawanda, NY. He ran B&B Heating and
Hardware alongside his cousin and partner, Carl Bueme, until they started Bueme
Construction. That turned into Bueme Development Corporation, which included
the great Wimbledon establishment in West Seneca. And finally, Oakridge
Estates, known to me nearly my whole life simply as, “The apartments.”
But reading off that list
still doesn’t define the person we knew. When we talk about Santo going into
business with Carl, that wasn’t just a partnership. As my dad said, Partnerships come and go, but this lasted
eighty-nine years. That’s not just business. Hardware stores and
construction companies don’t explain that Carl and Santo grew up in the same
house on West Avenue, that they ran lemonade stands together as little boys,
were best friends for life. In fact, the story goes that my grandfather and his
siblings and all his cousins, regardless of age, all started kindergarten at
the same time. Because none of their parents could read, write, or speak
English very well, every single one of those kids had “Bueme” spelled a
different way on their record. It was the kindergarten teacher who figured this
out, and looked over all the different spellings, and made up the way we all
spell the name today. This might explain some of the confusion over how to
pronounce it, because to a lot of people it doesn’t really look like “Bueme,”
but we can all take a lesson from what Grandpa said about it: “If people say it
wrong, just don’t answer them.”
Grandpa was proud of his name,
and he worked hard to make something of it. Joe and my mom Judy can’t think of
any part of their lives when their father wasn’t working at something. He went to work every single
day. At night, he’d sit at the table with Grandma and say, “What are we going
to do tomorrow?” and he’d be excited
about the prospect of another day, more to do, let’s get going. Santo was a man
who came from nothing, and just by getting married he put himself $75 in debt.
His focus became not just working his way out of debt, not just making money,
but working as hard as he could to build a better life. It was about providing
for his family. I think it’s pretty cool that his job, the career and business
he and Carl built for themselves, was building homes. Because homes are the
backbone of family. Grandpa and Carl committed their lives to creating the
place for families to go. I always loved being able to point to my house when I
was growing up and saying, “My grandpa built that,” and I know my sister will
always appreciate that she can say that about her house now. And even though
when it came to be my turn, my grandpa had to say he was too old to build me a
house, I want to take a moment and thank my husband for making sure that he got
to see our house that we are building before he died. It meant a lot to him and
it means a lot to me.
Before building homes, and
long after that, Santo showed what “work ethic” should look like. He started out
small, and took everything he earned to turn it into something better. A
hardware store. A construction company. Real estate. Not for himself. None of
it for himself. For his family.
One of his biggest beliefs was
that you have to focus on something,
and whatever it is that you choose, if you give it everything you’ve got,
you’ll do well at it. He’d say, “If you want to focus on girls, you’ll get
girls. If it’s a sport, you’ll be good at that sport. If you want to focus on
money, you’ll find a way to make money.” This seems simple, but it’s hard to
achieve. And yet, it’s the way he lived his life. He believed in work, so he
worked. When he retired from Niagara Mohawk, and he wanted to start running
with my grandma, he started running. He won medals and awards. Runner of the
Year. He did a half-marathon in an hour and 43. He wanted to do it, so he did it.
He also believed in family. He
and Grandma were married for 67 years. My uncle Joe said, “As tough as my
father was, my mother was just as tough; they both put up with a lot.” All the
married people here know what that means, but 67 years of marriage is
impressive. And he loved her. You could see it in all the old pictures, and we
could see it after we lost her. They spent their life always together. And they
were happy to be where they were, happy to see you. No matter what else was
happening in their lives, if you had something going on, they showed up for
you. Santo and Helen, walking through the door. You could count on it. To many
of you that meant friendship. To many, it meant support. Friendship. Family. To
me, it meant Grandma and Grandpa. Whatever they were to us, they were there.
Because that’s what they believed in, and it’s what Grandpa believed above all.
Family before everything.
He spent a lifetime showing us what hard
work looked like, and how the reward was sharing it with the people he loved. He
taught Joe and Judy: money is not about buying stuff. You could tell he
believed this just by looking at him on a regular day. He used to pick me up
from school in an undershirt and old jeans, in a pickup truck with the snowplow
still attached, even if it was May. He was so understated that everyone at
Joe’s wedding thought he was “the banana guy.” Amy had no idea what they were
talking about. She said, “What banana guy?” and everyone said, “You know, the
guy who delivers the bananas to the gym every week! He’s standing over there
next to Joe in a tux!”
No, to him, money wasn’t about the
stuff; it was for building a life. I think now, looking back over his life, and
what a life, that it makes sense that my grandpa was a builder. Because while
he built houses and apartment buildings and bowling alleys, he really built
much more than that. He built a family, he built a life that has carried all of
us. And now, we can carry with us the lessons he taught us. Hard work, family,
love. His life was full and well-lived, one we can only hope to live, and it is
worth carrying on his great legacy.
To show that we already do live his
legacy, I’d like to share a story. When I was first dating my husband, he
asked, “What are you?” I said, “I’m Italian.” He said, “You don’t look Italian. And…Michalek…isn’t that
Polish?” and I said, “I’m ITALIAN.”
And my mother, she married a Polish man.
Joey married a nice Polish girl. Even Grandpa married a nice Polish girl. And
these are my blond Polish sons and my sister’s Irish redheads. Grandpa was our
last full-blooded Italian. And yet, we all go to my mother’s house every week
for Sunday sauce. We don’t miss it. We sit down as a family and we do that,
because we are Italian. And that is from Grandpa. It’s because of him that we
are a great Italian family.
In loving memory of Santo Joseph Bueme
July 30, 1927-September 2, 2016
