12:53 AM 10/9/02
A scanned version of these notes were sent to me by Jeanne George. Any typos are mine.
He left Lazio (Ancient Latium) after a scrape with a nun who was vising the family home, in Sezze, a guest of his nun sister. Since nuns always took the best places next to the fireplace leaving him cold he dropped some coals inside the undergarments of one nun. Consequently, the family sent their young delinquent son, during a school break to accompany an uncle for delivery of prize horses to a ranch outside Roanoke, Virginia in America.
Born Cesareo Giorgi, he immigrated cattle-horse boat to Virginia at age 11 or 13. Having literally believed the allegorgical tale that streets in America were lined with gold when youthful Cesareo and his uncle first saw a larged-sized silver coin on the street, they walked by it to save pocket space for the gold ones expected.... but never materialized.
The uncle unexpectedly died in a traffic accident and the boy without passport was first taken in by an immigrant Italian family in Roanoke; then, as waterboy for a railroad work gang of italian laborers who were laying the Delaware Lackawanna track northward toward New York - where it thought many well-educated Italians lived - who would help the lad return home to Sezze Romano.
When the RR crew reached a rural stop called Vestal on the south shore of the Susquehanna R. in the Southern Tier of N.Y. State, they made contact with an immigrant colony of Italians employed in a new fast prospering shoe-making company called ENDICOTT-JOHNSON (EJ) located directly across the river from Vestal. The shoe factory founders Henry B. Endicott and George F. Johnson were paternalistic industrialists with a vision and commercial smarts from Massachusetts. Their benevolent labor policies attracted thousands of Europeans, who poured into America for a better life at the turn of the Century. The booming success and increasing need for machine operators of the EJ Shoe Company quickly became widely known. One of the first English phrases learned by non-English-speaking immigrants upon clearing the admissions procedure at Elis Island Immigration Authority in New York City was "EJ which way".
EJ bought up much land surrounding the first factory structures constructed along both sides of the Erie Railroad that ran through the elongated valley flatland between the east-to-west flowing Susquehanna River and the line of hilltops to the north. The geologic map of that land was superimposed with a well-conceptualized infrastructure plan for the Incorporated Village of Endicott that sprang up. Company benevolence soared as did the profits of leather and shoe sales. Workers could buy Land and houses with EJ backing. All workers had complete health care services at no extra cost, three beautiful parks with large swimming pools, tennis courts, playgrounds, roller and ice skating rings, playing fields for outdoor sports, golf courses, free concerts, fire works and horse races, emormous celebrations for Labor Day, Decoration Day, Independence Day, Christmas and Thanksgiving Day. All school children were given free shoes of their choice every autumn and annual gifts from Santa Class; RR carloads of citrus fruit were sent to Endicott from Florida ever winter by G.F. Johnoson as gifts to the community. Appropriatly, each of the two stone arches that spanned the Main Street extremeties of Endicott and Johnson City had the words HOME OF THE SQUARE DEAL chisseled across its horizontal span and that procleaimed the VALLEY OF OPPORTUNITY. Morale was high in the American melting pot ideal community. Young waterboy Ceasreo walked across the bridge from Vestal and was well received the many Italians working families in Endicott.
His name, Cesareo George, was Americanized by an immigration official who did not know that the Italian pronunciation of ''i" is the same as the English pronuncieation of the hard "e". The warmth and excelent of the booming town , he established Italian immigrant families that took him in, the ready offers of jobs with EJ and schooling in English prompted Cesar to postpone his return to family in Italy - month by month, year by year, decade by decade more than five times. When old enough to own and skillfuly ride a motorcycle, he became friends with his future wife's brother Nicola and father Alfanso, courted Giulia Presenza at the Presenza residence on O'Dell Avenue of Endicott's North Side... also took her and other members of the Presenza family on motorcycle rides around town, to nearby parks and country outings.. Caesar and Julia (Americanized from the Italian Giulia) married in May of 1917.
He retired in 1957 after many years of hard work it Endicott Johnson Shoe Factory and visited Italy for the first time.