Edited interview with David Cronkright (DC), grandson of Arthur Chalifoux, conducted by Joe Manning (JM), on May 31, 2008.

JM: Tell me about your grandfather.

DC: He was my mother's father. My mother's name was Claire. She was born in 1933, and passed away 10 years ago. I was born in 1953. My grandfather also had a son, Raymond, and another daughter, Doris. She passed away at seven years old of spinal meningitis.

JM: Where was your grandfather living when your mother was born?

DC: On 168 West Street, in Holyoke.

JM: Did he own his house?

DC: No, he always rented.

JM: Where did he work?

DC: Marvellum Paper Company, in Holyoke. He worked there 35 years.

JM: What did he do in his job?

DC: I don't know, but I know the company made wrapping paper, because he used to bring some home.

JM: When did your grandfather pass away?

DC: In 1991, when I was 38 years old. He was 93.

JM: Did he live close by when you were growing up?

DC: We lived at 438, and he lived at 433, five doors away from each other. I saw him just about every day. After my grandmother passed away, we would have him over for supper every night, so he wouldn't have to cook.

JM: What kind of relationship did you have with him at that time?

DC: I was always talking to him. He liked to talk about the old days, about how kids are today and what had changed, how hard the times were, going through the Depression. He talked about losing his daughter. He talked about carrying her to the doctor from his house all the way to High Street, because they didn't have a car. It just about killed him when Doris died. He kept her picture in his wallet all his life.

JM: Did he ever mention North Adams?

DC: All the time, sometimes about working in a factory, but not at the young age he was in the picture. He said he walked a mile and a half to school. He talked about sliding (sledding) down the Mohawk Trail (Route 2). He loved it there. He had a nephew that lived up that way. We'd take a ride up there with him to see his nephew, and sometimes spend a week there and help him with the garden.

JM: When you went to North Adams, did he ever show you where he lived?

DC: He showed us around the area, mostly the Williamstown area, where his nephew lived. But when we drove through North Adams, he would always say that he was born and grew up there.

JM: I have his World War I draft registration here, from 1918, and it lists his address as Holyoke.

DC: Oh my gosh, that's his signature. I can tell. That is amazing.

JM: It says here, ‘two finger of left hand injured.'

DC: That also amazing. That finger was always sticking up. He said it was an injury, but he never told me what caused it.

JM: And here he is in the 1910 census.

DC: His brother Eugene is listed. He said that Eugene was his real brother, and that he had some half-brothers. He was very close to Eugene. (Note: Eugene was half-brother Thomas's son. He was born in 1902, the year after Arthur started living with Thomas).   

JM: How old was he when he retired?

DC: When he left Marvellum, he went right back to work. He did some office cleaning jobs, and finally stopped working when he was about 65.

JM: Did your grandmother work?

DC: Yes. She worked as a cook for the Lestoil Company, in Holyoke. She also worked for a doctor as a nanny and housekeeper.

JM: What did his son Raymond do?

DC: He was in the Marines. He got a back injury that was a service-connected disability.

JM: What did your mother do?

DC: She was a nurse's aide, and she worked in a paper mill. She had many kinds of jobs.

JM: Did your grandfather ever talk about his French-Canadian ancestry?

DC: My grandparents went to Montreal a lot. My grandmother had a sister up there, and they would stay with her. Both of them were Catholic. They were married at Immaculate Conception in Holyoke (historically the French-Canadian church).

JM: What did you think of the photo?

DC: I loved it. It fascinated me, seeing my grandfather as a little boy.

JM: The photo was taken to convince people that children shouldn't be working at that age. What do you think your grandfather would have thought about that?

DC: I think he would have agreed. When you listened to him talk, you actually felt pain about the way he struggled all of his life, from the time he was a little boy. My grandparents never had anything. He said he made $25.00 a week when they were raising three kids. When he left the paper mill, his pension was $25.00 a month. When they died, they had insurance policies that were enough to bury them and almost no money to split between my mother and her brother. The only possessions they left were their furniture and stuff like that. He always seemed like he thought he was nobody, that he never achieved anything in life. But he had a lot to offer.

He was like a father to me. My mom got married when she was 16 years old, and she was divorced when I was less than two years old. So when my mom was working, my grandparents would take care of us children. After school, we would go to Grandma's. We were really close. Then my mom remarried, but my grandparents took us a lot of places, like to Lake Champlain, where they rented cabins, and we would stay with them as long as a month.

He used to say that when he was young, he really worked hard. He would always say: ‘You people have it easy today. You don't know what I went through as a little boy. You don't know how lucky you are. You've got everything; it's all handed to you. I didn't have that.' I look today at my life, and it's not easy. I struggle day to day, but I'm comfortable. I look back at him and know that he had it worse, so I've learned from him to be happy with what I have.

He loved to fish. Right up to when he died, he would go fishing in the Deerfield River, up on the Mohawk Trail. My grandmother died in 1987. Even after that, he did a lot of things. He was still driving when he was 90. And then he started having trouble with his eyes, so he just said, ‘Here's my keys, I'm done driving.' He was gardening right up until he died. He went berry picking, and he would do this all by himself. When he was in his late 80s, he was featured on a local TV news program as the oldest active bowler in the area.

He told us he had to leave school and go to work, but didn't tell us at what age that happened. He probably didn't think he would amount to anything, but the picture shows that he was an important part of history. If he was alive today and saw this picture, he would be tickled. If you had visited him to talk about this, you would never have been able to get away. He had story after story.

I am a grandfather, and I wish I could be the grandfather to my grandchildren that he was to us. It was a real blow to me when he died. I saw him that morning waving at me through the window, and then I got a call at work that he was gone. He was a fantastic man. We loved him dearly.