JM: So Gerri, you were born in 1961. What did you remember about your grandmother when you were growing up?

Gerri: My mother was boney, but my meme (French for grandmother) was soft. I remember falling asleep in her lap while she watched television. She would watch Red Skelton and all those old shows. She always had a big jar of peppermints for me. Her house was sort of Victorian. The curtains had tassels, and she had lots of knickknacks around, which were always dusted. She crocheted gorgeous things, like tablecloths and bedspreads and doilies. The house she was in then was right across the street from the fire station. I used to love to run to the window and watch the fire trucks when there was an alarm. She had an old ringer washing machine, and I used to like to watch her do the wash.

She was a great cook. She believed everything had to be slow cooked, at least 10 hours. So she would get up at 4:00 in the morning to make dinner for 6:00 in the evening. It would be cooking all day. My grandfather, my pepe, had been gassed in World War One, and he couldn't eat anything but soup, even during Thanksgiving. We got the old French cooking, and poor Pepe only got soup.

Meme was very outgoing, always smiling, talking a mile a minute, sometimes in French. It's funny. She would serve orange juice warm. She always warmed it up, and I never knew why. She belonged to the Golden Agers and the American Legion. She went on lots of local trips. They also went to the World's Fair in Montreal. She was deaf in one ear. She said that when she was a child, they tried to cure it by blowing smoke in the ear.

Janice: She had mastoiditis.

JM: When you became a teenager, did your relationship with her change?

Gerri: No. That was when we came back from Japan. My mother and I came back first, and then my father came back and was stationed in California. We stayed here. At that point, my mother and father were divorced. But even after they were divorced, my mother made sure I still had a relationship with my meme and pepe. So I would still spend Sundays with them almost every week.

When my grandfather died (September 1976), my father came back from California and took Meme back with him. They drove across the country, which must have been a very interesting trip. She was very self-sufficient and had all her marbles until she was 96 years old. Then she got sick. She had a scratch that got infected. She ended up going to the emergency room, and they said she was getting senile. They just filled her with antibiotics, and that can mess up your mind. She lost a lot of weight.

She was admitted to the hospital, and after a few days, they put her in a nursing home. She hated it. She kept saying, 'Get me out of here.' I was attending the University of Southern California at the time. They wouldn't let her out until her weight was back up. But she was so depressed, that she wouldn't eat, and she got down to 70 pounds. She finally gained some weight and they let her out. Then she broke her hip. They did a hip replacement, a full hip replacement when she was 98 years old. And that's what finally killed her.

JM: When did you graduate from high school?

Gerri: 1979.

JM: And what did you do then?

Gerri: I went straight to USC.

JM: What were you planning to study?

Gerri: I double-majored in cinema-TV production and medieval-renaissance history. My father had gone to USC to get his master's and doctorate in public administration. I was accepted to all the colleges I applied to, including three Ivy-League schools, but USC was the only school where I could have the double major I wanted. I graduated in 1983. I did an internship at WGBY (Public TV station in Springfield, Mass). After that, I worked at various TV stations all over the country. I make documentary films now.

JM: Where were you when your grandmother died?

Gerri: Here in Massachusetts. I picked up my father at the airport. Meme was cremated, and he brought back the ashes. She's at St. Patrick's Cemetery in Chicopee, where my father is also buried. I visit the graves three times year.

JM: What did you think when I sent you her photo from 1911?

Gerri: I recognized her immediately.

JM: Were you surprised to see your grandmother photographed as a child laborer?

Gerri: No. We all knew she worked in a mill then. But I was surprised that she was one of the children that Lewis Hine photographed. I knew about him from doing some research on a documentary. I was amazed, because I was always looking through the local history books in Chicopee to see if there were any photos of my grandmother.

JM: The birth records in Winchendon show that your grandmother's name was Rosina. Lewis Hine gave her that name in the caption.

Gerri: The only person who ever called her Rosina was my father, when he was teasing her. Otherwise, it was Rose.