In 1938 at the age of 4, Jeanine Hewitt sailed from France to what is now Morocco. Her father had been called to serve in Italy. So she, her mother and 9-month-old brother were sent away. She and her grandson Josiah Johnson met at the StoryCorps recording booth in Logan to talk about that experience, as well as being raised by her grandparents.
JEANINE HEWITT: I remember my brother and I, looking at the airplane going overhead, and all those shells from the guns falling off the sky.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: That's crazy.
JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Wow. Hot shells, loud explosions.
JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, yeah, were in those barracks for almost three or four years. Adjacent to Dad were trenches where the American were fighting. Y'know, at night, it was scary, because they would come and knock on the door, they would be drunk. And my mother was all alone with two kids. My mother was very young, and she wasn't very maternal. All of a sudden, her husband wasn't there. And so it was like, "W-hey!"I'm gonna have good life." You know, like on weekends, she wanted to go with her friends. And so she would look us up. And we had no way to get out of that room until she'd let us out. And there was a little window over the top of the door. My brother would actually climb on my shoulder. And then I would hoist him to the window, and then he would go out. So we'd get in trouble because he'd be out, and I'd be in, you know. But my maternal grandmother, she was really still caring, even though she was so far away.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah,
JEANINE HEWITT: She finally — and I don't know how — found out that we were out on the street 24/7, basically. We'd go from the train station on the skate. And they were big old metal skate. And I can confirm that because of my knee. And we would come down like 100 miles down that road, you know. And here's my grandmother in front of the hotel, and she saw how we lived. She got really upset and told my mother, she said, "I'm taking those kids with me."
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Good.
JEANINE HEWITT: And she brought both my brother and I back. The house was very simple.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah,
JEANINE HEWITT: There was never any port-a-potty or anything like that. I mean,
JOSIAH JOHNSON: And that's why the ... wow.
JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And no Frigidaire no TV, we didn't have much in there. Your fridge was the cool air that you got out of the window.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, l'air.
JEANINE HEWITT: Basically yeah. In the winter, it was a mild winter. And so if she made something that needed refrigeration, she'd put it outside on the window.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: And I noticed that you carried that into your adult life as well, because I'll walk out sometimes into the garage and there'll be a cassoulet from yesterday.
JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, you carry your old ways. My paternal grandmother, when we had those big family dinner, I remember, she would cook chicken. I'd love to get into the platter with the chicken and get to the grease and wash my hands. And my — you know how kids...
JOSIAH JOHNSON: In the grease?
JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And then just rub it all over my arms. And my grandmothers would say, "Go ahead, do it! Makes your skin good!"
JOSIAH JOHNSON: I mean yeah. Moisturize. I want to know how have the experiences with your grandparents affected how you were a grandparent to me?
JEANINE HEWITT: A lot. I'm actually very grateful that I've had a hard life. Yeah, it teaches you how to treat people. It teaches you how to love your own children, and how to take care of your children. And one thing that I've always done is care not to be like my mother, and not to do the things my mother did. So I did spoil my children. You know, you transfer the knowledge that you have to whoever you touch.
JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, I know you definitely have transferred a lot of knowledge to me. Well, I'm really glad that we got to do this. Thank you.
