How Reading Helped One Person Rise Above Poverty

My Grandma - Elizabeth Klein Montgomery

by Deborah Ng

So. Today is Blog Action Day and the theme is poverty. If there’s anything we writers can relate to, it’s poverty! All jokes aside, I do know a little something about poverty. I hope you don’t mind if I veer off topic a bit to talk about an amazing woman, my hero, my grandmother.

Grandma came to America from Hungary via Ellis Island when she as 4 years old. Her family was proud to come to America and even prouder to become Americans. My great grandmother worked as a seamstress but my great grandfather had trouble finding work as he was prone to epileptic seizures. In those days there really wasn’t any medication to take to keep them in check. Great Grandpa died in his thirties, when my grandmother was thirteen.

Grandma quit school in eighth grade to work in a sweatshop to help support her three brothers. The family lived in a basement tenement they shared with other families. I remember a story grandma told about how agonizing it was to watch neighbors enjoy ice cream on a hot summer day. At ten years old, she’d never tatsted ice cream. So one day she saw a little girl walking with an ice cream cone and she alked up to the girl and took it away. She said nothing ever tasted so good. She got a beating that night but it was worth it.

Another story grandma liked to tell was when how she and her family lived in a building with one bathroom per floor for each family. Toilet paper was a luxury so they used newspaper. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what that must have been like. One day, someone down the hall left a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom and my grandmother used it. She said she never felt anything so soft. The woman complained that grandma used her toilet paper and made sure never to make the mistake of leaving it behind again.

It’s a good reminder that some of the things we take for granted are luxuries for others. Grandma went days without a food so her younger brothers could eat. She was ashamed because her wedding dress cost $25 – but I think she looked so beautiful and happy in her wedding picture.

Grandma thought she was uneducated because she didn’t go on to high school but every night she read her brothers’ school books and kept up with them. After she married, she  began taking books out of the library about finance and the stock market. Soon grandma began investing her small savings. Her investments grew and she became adept at picking winners.

Grandma saved up enough money to buy a small store in her Queens, NY neighborhood. Her store was where all the families bought school supplies, toys, gifts cards and notions. Even now, old timers remember her with fondness. Thanks to Grandma’s investments, her store and Grandpa’s accounting job, they were able to have a very comfortable adulthood. In fact, my family, who had our own moments of poverty, rented an apartment in Grandma and Grandpa’s three family house.

They say knowledge is power and I believe that to be the truth. My grandmother chose not to be poor. She chose to educate herself and rise above poverty. Is it any wonder I admire this wonderful, enterprising woman?

Grandma passed away in 2000 at the age of 93. She had so much love for all of her chidlren, grandchildren and great grandchildren. She was generous, compassionate and, even though she didn’t think so, smart. She was my hero and not a day goes by that I don’t think about her.