Rosina Stella (Abate) Urbach (1917 - 2014)

Born 1917 in Cerrisi, Decollatura, Catanzaro, Calabria, Italy

Ancestors

Wife of Gunther Hugo Urbach — married about 1946 in Reno, Washoe, Nevada, United States

Descendants

Died 2014 at about age 97 in San Bruno, San Mateo, California, United States

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Biography

Rose was born in Calabria, the 4th of 6 children. Her father worked in the U.S. and visited them in Calabria every 2 years until WW1 began. In 1921, when she was 4 or 5, he was able to send them enough money to immigrate. They came through Ellis Island, and Rose was quarantined in the hospital on the island because she was sick. Once she recovered, she and her family settled in northern Minnesota where her father worked in the iron mines. They lived in a succession of mining company houses in Aurora, Kitzville, and Hibbing, Minnesota, before finally buying a former mining company house and settling permanently in Hibbing. She was educated at local grammar schools and graduated from Hibbing High School. The family was very poor, so the Great Depression didn't affect them, financially, as much as it did most other people. Rose was a teenager during the Great Depression, and she and her older brother both got paying jobs to help their family survive since the iron mines laid off most of their workers. She first worked as a cleaning lady for a few of the richer households in Hibbing, which paid about $2 per week, then she got a job as a secretary for the school district, which paid $5 per week, and finally she was hired as a saleslady for the local Montgomery Ward's department store, which paid $11 per week, plus some benefits. She split her weekly wages with her mother Lucia so that she could buy things from the itinerant/door-to-door salesmen, since her father went in to town to buy the groceries. Rose saved up her vacation time from the department store until she could take a month off, and used it to take a train trip across the U.S. to sight-see. She visited and toured every Montgomery Ward's location that the train stopped at, until she ended up in San Francisco, CA where the manager of the store offered her a job. She decided to take the job, and when she returned to Hibbing she got a transfer from her old boss and moved to California. She shared a house with some other women in Daly City, CA until she met and married her husband Gunther Urbach in 1946. They married in front of a judge in Reno, NV. They bought a house in San Bruno, CA where they raised 3 children. Rose was active in the local Italian Catholic church, teaching catechism and assisting the nuns at the convent by driving them on their errands. She also was a Girl Scout leader for her daughter's troop, and worked part-time at a local grocery store. Later in her life she became active in local politics as a citizen's advocate, and achieved a small amount of local fame because she worked at her local voting precinct, attended every San Bruno City Council meeting, spoke at most of the meetings, and they were televised. She enjoyed her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and many friends until her death at her home in 2014.

Sources

• Rose's memories as related to her family.