Edith Ann Canapary was born on January 20, 1928 in Brooklyn, N.Y. She was the second child of Alice Brennan and Ed Canapary. Edith was born after the family returned from Cuba, right before The Great Depression.
The Great Depression hit the United States with the stock market crash of 1929. People lost everything and according to legend thousands of Wall Street brokers jumped out of skyscraper windows to their deaths. The family was living in an apartment on Third Street in Park Slope Brooklyn. In 1932, Alice and Ed had twin boys. Now there was Alice Edith and the twin boys Ed and private.
Ed got a job working in a store his father owned in Flatbush, Brooklyn. They framed pictures and sold stamps to collectors. Very few people had the cash to have pictures framed or add to their stamp collections.
Times were bad and Ed had to do something, he was out of money for rent and they had to move to Edith’s grandparent’s house in Bay Ridge. The economy did eventually pick up and Uncle Alberto Pinera (the husband of Alice’s sister (Daisy) offered Ed a job in his Company on Wall Street. Ed jumped at the chance to work in his brother in law in the family business which exported to Cuba and Argentina.
The Family was able to move back to Park Slope to an apartment on Eight Avenue. This was Near Saint Saviors Church and school. Alice, Edith and the twins all attended Saint Savior’s grammar school. Alice and Edith also Attended Saint Saviors High School for girls. Most of the Catholic High schools in those days for one sex only. Edith was a good student, but Alice who was three years ahead was the smartest girl in the school. Unfortunately for Edith, the nuns (sisters of Notre Dame) were always comparing them. This irked Edith at times.
These were happy years for the young Canapary family on Eighth Avenue. Eventually Ed and Alice had put aside enough money to buy a house. They purchased a brownstone house on Second Street Park Slope for $4,000. Today, it is worth between 5 and 6 million dollars. Edith had a nice bedroom with a fireplace. She wasn’t allowed to use it because her dad was afraid of the flue not working. The twins had a fireplace in their bedroom also but they used it on occasion when their father was out. Luckily, they didn’t burn the house down. Edith had lots of friends who always were welcomed at the house.
Edith finished High School at Saint Saviors and went on to college at Mount Saint Vincent which was run by the Sisters of Charity. She took the subway to Manhattan and then a train to the college every day (about a 1 and 1 half hour commute each way). When Edith graduated from College, she still lived at home and worked for a big Real Estate Firm in Rockefeller Center in Manhattan.
Edith met Tim Holland as he was in the Navy and on leave. It was a happy courtship and they married after completing his service to the United Sates in the Navy.
Tim got a job and they rented an apartment in Great Neck, Long Island. Tim hadn’t finished college before entering the Navy. Edith encouraged him to go back. He enrolled and was accepted at Saint Bonaventure College in upstate at Olean, New York and after a few years, Tim graduated with a degree in Physics. Tim got a job in New Jersey with Bendix (a manufacturing and engineering Company) and they moved with plans on enjoying an long life with their three children, older girl private and two sons Tim and Kenneth.
This didn’t work out as they planned. Tim died of Colon Cancer in 1961.
With three children to support and a mortgage to pay, it was important to get a job right away after Tim passed. Edith decided to become a school teacher. She had a college degree from Mount Saint Vincent but her major was Business. They accepted her as a teacher in the Neptune School District and Edith taught for the rest of her life and enjoyed doing it.
It was a policy of the school to take the school children on outings. Edith had taken her class on an outing when it started to thunder and there was a bolt of lightning in the sky. She immediately took the children to a safe place until the storm was over. One little boy in the class was absent the next day or two. He lived with his mother. When they contacted the mother, she said that her son was hit by lightning and that he was in bed completely paralyzed. She also said she was suing the school and Edith personally because of her irresponsibility letting her son get hit by lightning. Edith was no dope. She gave her son Kenneth the Polaroid camera and told him to go over to their apartment. The paralyzed? Boy was shooting hoops .in the yard. Kenneth took a picture and told the boy to give it to his mother. That was the end of the lawsuit.
Edith and her children lived in a small house in Neptune. There was a tree in the yard right next to the property line. It had been there long before the houses were built. In the fall, the leaves started to fall. The next door neighbor was in her yard and said to Edith in a not so pleasant tone “Your tree is dropping leaves in my yard”. Edith shook her finger at the tree and said “Naughty, Naughty, I told you not to do that”.
Edith had a kind heart. A boy in Edith’s class was having a hard time at home. After getting approval, Edith invited him to move in and stay with her and her children. When he grew up, he and Edith’s daughter were married. The boy’s sister also moved in with them at a later date. God bless Edith. The father of the two children that Edith took in would visit his children at Edith’s house. He and Edith grew fond of each other and they married. Edith then bought a larger house in Elberon, New Jersey and the family moved there. She kept the house in Neptune and rented it.
A few years after Edith’s husband Tim Holland died, Edith’s parents sold their house on Second Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn and moved to a very nice apartment (with a doorman and lots of polished brass) on elegant plaza Street. They had a view of the grand Army Plaza Arch that would remind one of the Arch de Triumphs in Paris. It was a great location and Auntie Florence and Cousin Theresa Woolley both moved into apartments in the same building. Aunt Daisy lived in Plaza Street and Uncle Ed Brennan wasn’t far away on First Street. They had a very nice social life and spent a number of happy years there.
But they were getting older. Edith was coaxing them to move closer to them in New Jersey and Herb wanted them to move near him in Connecticut. Edith won out. Brooklyn was changing and the streets weren’t safe for older people. Edith had found a nice apartment at “The Galsworthy Arms”, affectionately called “The Gallbladder Arms” near her. The timing was right because on that very day, someone tried to rob her father’s car and an older lady was beaten up in the elevator of their building.
Their new Life in New Jersey fell apart when Edith was diagnosed with Cancer. Edith had lost her sister Alice at age 32 and Edith was only in her mid-fifties. Ed and Alice had moved to New Jersey to take Edith’s kind and generous offer to look after them in their old age. Now she was the patient and in their minds, their roles were reversed. Edith’s Husband worked on the weekends. So every weekend, they pulled themselves together and went over to Edith’s house to be there for her. Edith told her brother confidentially that they didn’t have to do it, but she appreciated and enjoyed the fact that they were there.
Edith was not alone surrounded by family in her hospital bed when she passed away on May 28, 1985. Edith Ann Canapary Holland Schwerd was a beautiful, kind and generous lady who met many challenges in her life but always met these challenges with Good Humor, Courage and Grace.

Write-up by Herbert Canapary FAG Member