Where it all began...
Though taken about twenty years before VJ Day, this photo of the Boston Common shows, on the right, the Park Street subway kiosks where Charles Spataro sold newspapers. Near the ornate fountain on our left you can see a line of benches. It was on one of those benches where Spataro sat, waiting for his shift to begin on VJ Day, August 15, 1945, when a woman approached and asked him to watch her infant.
From the 1947 Boston Latin yearbook
Newsboy Charles Spataro, from his Boston Latin yearbook. Not for nothing, but Latin was a tough school, and this kid also worked. We were impressed.
Not quite yet...
The August 22, 1945 Boston Record front page featured Nurse Barbara Dayson taking Little Mister Victory's weight. However, the caption was wrong. The baby would not be transferred into state care for another five days.
Foster homes
In the first five years of his life Robert Harrington (as he was named by the state) would live in three foster homes. His departure from the first two homes were shrouded in mystery, until our research uncovered two harsh truths. Robert's last foster home was in Pembroke, where he lived with Harold and Cora Bouvier. This loving couple fostered many children from the 1930s to 1950s.
Robert's new parents
WW2 Navy veteran John Garvey and his wife, Dorothy (in the center of this picture) had been married for about ten years when they applied to adopt a child. In 1950 five year-old Robert Harrington would become Robert Garvey and begin his life in Boston.
The ad for the restaurant
Around the time they adopted Robert the couple would buy this restaurant in Melrose.
Garvey's Restaurant
Robert's first parade?
Robert's first parade?
Tina challenged us to find a picture of her family's restaurant in Melrose. Whoever found it first was promised a plate of cookies. That was all the incentive we needed! The only picture found was one featuring the building for Transitone, makers of state-of-the-art transistors in the 1950s, but which shows, across the street, the front entrance to Garveys.
Robert's first parade?
Robert's first parade?
Robert's first parade?
From his DCF file, we know that on June 17, 1950 Dorothy Garvey would take Robert to Charlestown for the Bunker Hill Day Parade 1950. It is noteworthy the picture placed at the top of the Boston Globe article on the parade would be of "The Rascal King." Though he had been voted out of office a year earlier, the loudest cheers from parade-goers came when James Michael Curley Boston passed by.
A family tragedy
The article we found detailing the tragic death of young Frank Medeiros in 1931. How his father (also named Frank) bore this tragedy, or how it affected young Mary, is anyone's guess.
Mary Medeiros' 1935 Census
This is what told us Mary worked in the jewelry business, which possibly (we think probably) put her in contact with James Quinn, whom she would marry
199 Transit Street in the 1950s census
As described on page XX, after Mary and James P walked away from their children, James F and Kathleen were taken in by their grandmother, Emily. The 1950 census shows all the Medeiros, Quinn, and Spinacci family under the same roof
Lasting resentments
The 1964 obituary of matriarch Emily Medeiros which includes almost all other family members, but not Mary, who had left soon after the end of the war in 1945.
The Mohler family
The discovery of Robert's paternal side took us to the nation's Capitol and a prominent D.C. family whose roots could be traced hundreds of years.
Henry Benton Mohler
His internment document is what showed us Henry Benton Mohler's service during the war was with the 355th MPs. More important to our story was his date of discharge in November, 1944.... right around the time Robert Garvey was conceived. The question then was whether HB could possibly have been near Providence at that time.
Lynwood Mohler
Lynwood Mohler
Known in the family as a "rascal" Lynwood would serve our country honorably, although his post-war behavior left something to be desired, as evidenced in the July 31, 1956 Greensboro newspaper report of his arrest for illegal possession of whiskey.