This was Lithuanian Day in 1944, August 15th. We were at a festival in a park in Shenandoah. I was visiting from New York. This bar we were at—it was just a set up for the photo, the bottles weren’t real. This is my mother, my aunts and cousins and me—my mother is next to me. My cousin did the writing. They used to call us “the Smudin girls,” my mother’s maiden name. I’m the sole survivor—it’s heartbreaking.

We used to wear eachother’s clothes. We had a little room with pegs where we’d hang all our clothes and we’d trade off. It was lucky we all wore the same size.

Next door to my Aunt Violet’s house in Frackville was the bar she owned, Sage’s Place. When my cousin got married, they had a case of Canadian Club under each table in the bar, and they cleared the furniture out of the house and everyone danced and danced there. The wedding party lasted for days!

Usually, every Lithuanian Day growing up, we’d celebrate at Aunt Violet’s bar. My mother would take the wash boiler and put ham on the bottom, potatoes on top of that, and cabbage on top of the potatoes and she’d cook it all together for hours. We’d have to go down at 2:00am to the bar to save a table for the next day—we’d sleep on the table to save our spot!