During these years of the great depression Charlie is fortunate to be working as a telephone service engineer and while things are tight financially, they are always able to put food on the table. They also could afford enough gas for Sunday rides to visit Grandpa in Black Rock or Mother Luwina, Marie's Aunt, at the Convent of St Francis in Stella Niagara.  The children loved to visit the Convent with its large lawns and a beautiful view of the Niagara river gorge. 

Marie is expecting again and toward the end of her term she was fighting an ear infection.  To help ease the situation, Charlie frequently took Marie out for dinner and a ride, sometimes covering almost a hundred miles. When they arrived home around midnight, Charlie carried Marie into the house asleep. Her health became progressively worse and in spite of treatments with experimental medications, the ear infection eventually caused blood poisoning which took her life on April 10, 1937, a week after the loss of newborn child Shelia. The hearing issue that Marie suffered from would reappear in subsequent generations with two grandchildren born deaf and several others hearing impaired.

A day or two after the funeral, the black wreath is gone from the porch of the two story home in Cheektowaga as well as the cars that had lined Roycroft Blvd all the way to Cleveland Drive. The furniture was back in the living room and the kitchen back in order.  Charlie and the older boys are sitting on the front porch in a driving rain storm.  The sky has turned from dark to black, the rain is pouring down with lightning flashes over and over followed by thunder claps. Eventually, the clouds part and move away to reveal a huge rainbow stretched across the blue sky, a beautiful day with the fresh smell of rain signaling a new beginning! 

Its easy to imagine what might be going through Charlie's mind.  The grief of losing his wife and child, the worry of a large family, the emotional impact on himself, the older boys and the young children.  Housekeeping, school schedules, summer vacations, illnesses, injuries, on and on; the challenge of raising seven children!  In fact, Charlie has dismissed many of these thoughts on a long ride he took by himself following the funeral and burial services.  Years later when asked how he was able to deal with such adversity, he would answer, "The mind is capable of rationalizing anything, all it needs is time." 

What he is thinking about is how to insure a successful outcome for his family.  He knows from his personal experiences following his Mother's death that idleness is the devil's workshop and that creating rules, giving assignments, checking performance, rewarding performers and punishing non-performers, as difficult as it can be, is the only way to instill the discipline needed to give each child a reasonable chance of success in life.  He believes that he can provide the positive direction and encouragement and a level of emotional support equivalent to or possibly better than families fortunate enough to have both a Father and a Mother.