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Highlands Today

Children Of The Great Depression

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

Rose Panzarella, 86, speaks about her experience during the Great Depression during a group interview at Balmoral Assisted Living Center on Tuesday in Lake Placid. Panzarella spoke about her father working for the WPA saying "he had to do it he had no other work, we had to eat."

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By BILL RETTEW JR.

Highlands Today

Published: October 8, 2008

LAKE PLACID - For two years, Charles Joseph Mooney dug ditches for the Civilian Conservation Corps for $18 a month, and sent all but $2 of his monthly pay home to support his family.

Those were the days of the Great Depression, which started in 1929 and carried on through much of the 1930s.

Life was incredibly hard but Mooney said they had something that today's economically-hit Americans don't: happiness.

The 86-year-old was one of nine Great Depression-era citizens who talked Tuesday at Balmoral Assisted Living Center about what sets apart the Great Depression days from today.

Several of those meeting in the library at the assisted living center experienced incredible hardship but everyone said they preferred then to now.

Talk centered on recent stock market fluctuations and parallels between the 1930s and 2008. The nine seniors agreed; no one would trade places with today's youth.

Rose Panzarella, 86, grew up in Arbor, N.J. She said it was different when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

"Those days you didn't have money to put in the bank," said Panzarella. "We lived from day to day."

Lura Gould, 92, agreed with others in the room. Everybody was in the same boat.

"When we grew up, we didn't know any better," said Gould.

Elizabeth O'Donnel lived in Chicago with her father who was a police officer. She said that higher gas prices and the economy has already changed how people think and act.

"It's already making a difference in people's lives," said O'Donnel. "I saw people jumping out of windows and it could happen again."

No one in the room stopped investing in the stock market because of the 1929 crash. Most agreed that people have changed, and for the most part, it wasn't a positive change.

"The younger generation has no respect for anybody or anything," said 80-year-old Helen McCoy. "They don't respect the police and they don't respect the elderly."

Gould said today most of younger generation couldn't face going without lighting or running water, as her generation did regularly and without complaint.

"There was so much we didn't have," said Gould. "We loved living. We had as much as anybody else."

"Rebellious" was the term Gould used to describe younger Americans, many who she said are disrespectful students and don't respect the elderly.

Panzarella said families don't have the unity they did when she faced the Great Depression.

The 86-year-old talked lovingly of holidays with families. Holiday fare food was often only available on those special days when parents, grandparents and children gathered.

Bill Rettew Jr. may be contacted at 386-5857 or wrettew@highlandstoday.com

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