The Struggle of Life as True Love Prevails

Contents

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

ABOUT THE BOOK:

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER #1

Chapter 1

CHAPTER #2

Chapter 2

CHAPTER #3

Chapter 3

CHAPTER #4

Chapter 4

CHAPTER #5

Chapter 5

CHAPTER #6

Chapter 6

CHAPTER #7

Chapter 7

CHAPTER #8

Chapter 8

CHAPTER #9

Chapter 9

EPILOGUE

DEDICATION

THIS IS DEDICATED TO

OUR FAMILIES AND FRIENDS

WE ALSO WANT TO SPECIALLY DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO OUR PARENTS.

AND

A SPECIAL DEDICATION FOR THOSE PEOPLE THAT HAD TO STRUGGLE IN LIFE TO MAKE ENDS MEET TO BECOME A GOOD PERSON IN SOCIETY.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

SPECIAL THANKS TO THE

SPRINGFIELD OHIO POLICE DEPARTMENT FOR HELPING TO OBTAIN PUBLIC INFORMATION

REFERENCE TO PAT’S GRANDPARENTS,

SERGEANT ALBERT ASH HENRY

AND

MARY KROE HENRY

THE STRUGGLE OF LIFE

AS

TRUE LOVE PREVAILE’S

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Abraham Abe Usera, a retired Law Enforcement Officer, was born in New York City, in the year 1944. He had attended schools in New Orleans, La. and New York City while growing up. He graduated from Halsey Jr. High School and Franklin K. Lane High School in Brooklyn, New York. He also graduated from University of South Dakota with an Associate Degree in Criminal Justice Studies and the Saint Leo Catholic University with a Bachelor Degree in Criminology with Honors. He has 10 brothers and one sister. He was born to the parents of Libertad and Beatrice Usera. He wrote a book named God’s Work which talked about his life saving actions and the many volunteer work he had done that he felt was a reflection in doing God’s Work. Abe is truly a Jack of All Trades. He had been approached by many people requesting him to write about how it was like growing up in a large city, especially in New York City. So he got together with his best friend and partner for life, Pat to write this book.

Patricia Ann Bile’ Usera, known as Pat, retired from a Medical Field, was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, in the year of 1945. She had also attended Halsey Jr. High School and Bushwick High School in Brooklyn, New York. Became a Certified Nurse Assistant and worked as a Unit Secretary. She has two sisters and one brother. She was born to the parents of Frank and Helen Bile’.

Both Abe and Pat met when Pat was 14 and Abe was 15 years old. They were married at the age of 18 and had two children. A daughter name Antoinette and a son name Christopher. They have put together information about the struggle of life and how true love had prevailed. Their writings start from their birth till they moved to South Dakota when they were in their early twenties. They are both an example of what true love is all about.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

THE STRUGGLE OF LIFE AS TRUE LOVE PREVAIL’S, is about two young people that met as teenagers and became partners for life. One had a family that had struggle in life to resist from being poor and living a large city. How they dealt with racial prejudice and the gangs in their neighborhoods. The way two cultures came together as one and also some history and nostalgia about their families.

The content in this book has accurate perception of what it was like to grow up in a large city. It contains many activities the authors did as they were growing up. The programs they watched on television and listen to on the radio. The games they played. The places they had visited. Some of the friends they had while growing up. The jobs they did and the locations of the business they worked at. The schools they went to, and some of the teachers they knew.

This book also talks about the leadership and faith of Abe’s mother, and how true love for each other prevailed. It also talks about both author’s family members and how they cope with the life in the big city.

The authors, Abe and Pat want you the reader to better understand how the Struggle of Life and True Love Prevails effect’s all of us as we continue growth within our families. No matter where you had lived as a child you will relate to situations told in this book. When you read this book you will want to talk about the contents to other people. This book does not contain any profanity or obscene events.

INTRODUCTION

BY

ABE USERA

Throughout my wife and my life, we had gone through some difficult and happy times. We had been involved with so many events in our lives that made us grow up faster in life as a child and up to being an adult. The big city life was an experience that no other words can truly explain.

The family relationship and love for each other had helped us as children to grow up with dignity. Our faith in God had always been an important thing in our lives. No matter how poor we were and the struggles we went through, we had always prevailed.

We hope you will enjoy our way of life during the years from our birth to our early twenties. The different cultures we had and how we came to be partners for ever. The life we, the Usera family lived in New Orleans and the life both Pat and I lived in New York City.

We also hope you will enjoy some of the history of our families, some of the national events that took place and especially some of our personal events that took place during our lives from childhood till our early twenties.

Also it’s not our intention to let people feel New York City is a disastrous place to live, but to give an idea of what it was like growing up there during our time. We also have no intention singling out any particular person or race of people but to give you a true meaning of our experience living in the big city.

As for New York City, it is a city of many religions, cultures and races of people which make’s it a city of all nations. New York City has the best places to eat and the best food in the world, the Statue of Liberty, Museum of Natural History, the United Nation, Yankee Stadium, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Wall Street, Central Park, Riverside Drive, Times Square, China Town, Little Italy, Black and Spanish Harlem, best Broadway Plays in the world, Greenwich Village, many beaches as described in this book and many more. It’s a community of approximately eight million people that live in five boroughs. They are Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island.

There are many people out there that can truly give their own interpretation and story. This is Pat’s and my story and we hope you will relate to some of the events told in this book.

Enjoy and God Bless

CHAPTER #1

The Beginning

THE STRUGGLE OF LIFE

AS

TRUE LOVE PREVAIL’S

Chapter 1

It was a cold winter day in the month of November 1944 that I was born in a building at 3140 Broadway in New York City. I was born to my parents, Beatrice and Libertad Usera. I was also the fourth child born to my parents. The other siblings were John, Luis and my sister Carmen. It wasn’t too long after I was baptized on February 18, 1945 at the Our Lady of Esperanza Roman Catholic Church, our family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. You see my dad was a professional Musician playing all kinds of drums. There was an offer for him to play Music in New Orleans at the time.

Before we go on about me, here is a little about my parents. My father, Libertad was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 1906, to his parents Hipolito Hernandez Usera and Rosa Candida Vives Usera. Hipolito was Chief of the Fire Department in Ponce. The same year my father was born, my grandfather was having a drink, when someone had placed an unknown substance in his drink causing his death. The story goes that it was because of political reasons he was poisoned.

At that time my father had five brothers. They were Luis, Ramon Moncho, Elpitio, Remigio and Hipolito Jr. My grand mother Rosa later married a Francisco Alverez. They had a son name Horatio. My mother had told me my grandmother Rosa had some Indian Blood. She was not sure if she was from the Tainos Tribe on the Island or the Aztecs.

Most of my uncles were musically talented. Uncle Hipolito Jr. was an outstanding musician and director of the city of Ponce’s Orchestra. He taught music to Moncho and his other brothers. Moncho later in life became an orchestra leader. He was considered the best music arranger ever from Puerto Rico. He played clarinet, flute, saxophone and piano and was member of the Noble Sissle Jazz Orchestra from the late 1920’s up to the mid 1930’s. They played in Paris France in 1929. He had about 2,000 arrangements, compositions and repertoire, before his death in 1972. A Street was named after him in Ponce, Puerto Rico. I have been in contact with his daughter Bessie my cousin, who has blonde hair and blue eyes and lives in Florida these days. Her brother Raymond Jr. had died in the year 1995.

We know our generation goes back to the Country of Spain. One of the Usera’s that we know of is now becoming a Saint with the Roman Catholic Church. Here is some history about Father Jeronimo Mariano Usera y Alarcon. He and his twin sister Maria Nicomedes were born in Madrid, Spain on September 15, 1810. Maria died in infancy, and later in his priestly life Mariano took the name Jeronimo. His father, Marcelo Fulgencio Usera y Perez was the director of the Greco-Latin Academy and Professor of Latin in Madrid. Jeronimo Mariano was one of fourteen children.

He was born into turbulent times following the French Revolution and he saw the dawn of the so-called modern era. His family was deeply religious and socially prominent. His brother Gabriel was the Royal Surgeon, and his sister Eugenia married Tomas de Corral y Ona, the Queen’s doctor who delivered Alfonso XII and who received the title Marquis of San Gregorio.

Very early in Mariano’s life he felt that God was calling. When he informed his parents that he wanted to be a priest, his father wanted to make sure that it was a true calling and took young Mariano on a trip to Italy. Upon his return to Spain, his vocation remained unaltered. In 1824 he joined a convent at the age of 14, and a Cistercian one to boot! There he lived the words ora et labora. He donned the white habit of St. Bernard at age 15. It was at that time he changed his name to Jeronimo, in honor of St. Jerome, translator and interpreter of the Bible which he loved to read.

Jeronimo studied philosophy in the Monastery of Merra in the providence of Lugo (Spain); theology in Alcala’ de Henares, and in San Martin de Castaneda, Sanabria (Spain). He had outstanding grades. In December of 1833 he became a deacon in the Convent of the Hyeronimites in Madrid, and celebrated his first Mass in the parish of St. Gines in Madrid in 1834. It had taken 10 years from the time he entered the convent until his ordination. His initial commission was a preacher and rural missionary in Sanabria (Spain).

Spain underwent a wave of anticlericalism in the third decade of the last century, which included suppression of the Inquisition, expulsion of the Jesuits, the closing and confiscation of religious property, banishment of several Bishops and killing many priests. Around 900 convents were closed and goods confiscated. In 1837, the anticlericalism interrupted Jeronimo’s rural mission in Sanabria. The priests were violently ejected, their goods were confiscated, and they were forced to live in the open outside of the convent walls. Traveling by donkey to far away villages, he would minister to remote communities.

In 1840, when his order was suppressed in Spain, he returned to Madrid. He took the opportunity to teach Latin and Greek at the Universidad Central de Madrid. In those days he used to say that (religious) commitment and fervor are neither tired nor pessimistic. He dedicated time to the youth, preaching with a special devotion. He became chaplain to the Casa de Campo and preacher.

In 1778 Portugal had ceded to Spain several African colonies; Fernando Poo, Annobon and Corisco in the Gulf of Guinea. In 1843 a returning expedition brought to Spain two Africans, Quir and Yegue, and Queen Isabella II directed Father Usera, then her chaplain, to instruct them in the Catholic faith. As Father Usera taught the two Africans Spanish, he also learned their native tongue. He also taught them religion and the two were baptized in 1844. By royal order, Quir and Yegue were baptized in the Royal Chapel, with the Queen and her mother, Maria Cristina, being the godmothers, represented by the Count of Santa Coloma and the Duque de la Roca. The Patriarch of the Indies, Antonio de Posada poured the baptismal waters. The two were eventually returned to their native land and from that humble beginning Christianity was spread to the Spanish colonies in Africa.

On July 18, 1845, Jeronimo is on board the vessel Venus, en route to (Equatorial) Guinea and arrived in Fernando Poo on Christmas of that year. His facility with languages led Father Usera in a short period of time to write a catechism, vocabulary and grammar in the bubi language spoken locally. He also drew a map of the island. He devoted his time to educating and instructing the natives in the Catholic faith. Just when he was making headway, he became deathly ill and was ordered to return to Spain. He left for Spain on March 25, 1846. The trip home took 83 days and the doctors who examined him back in Madrid declared that had he not returned he would have died.

During his recovery period, he wrote Memory of Fernando Poo, and finished his thesis in theology. He was named preacher to her Majesty, Isabella II. He never returned to Africa, though he would always hold a special place in his heart for the African race. He asked and received an ecclesiastical appointment in the Indies. After chartering his own vessel out of his personal funds, he took charge of the Cathedral in Santiago, Cuba in 1848. He immediately began to study the religious condition of the country, its culture, its needs and was appalled by the ignorance of the masses and even of the middle classes.

He began designing a response to what he found. He would write: Many had no news of the existence of God. They are born, live and die without having known the sweetness of family or the consolation of religion, of faith." Father Usera was spread thin beyond measure. He was penitenciario, professor in the seminary and ecclesiastical governor until the arrival of the new Archbishop, [Saint] Antonio Maria Claret on February 15, 1851. His greatest challenge was and still is again in a deplorable state.

The partnership he forged