Taking a new turn in the road of life

Brooklynite uproots to Waterford

By Patricia Bogumil

Editor

An email about the arrival of someone called the “Mayor of Carroll Gardens/Brooklyn” recently arrived in the general news inbox of Southern Lakes Newspapers.

We checked it out.

Sure enough, Celia Cacace is now living in Tichigan with family, ensconced in living quarters at the top of a steep flight of stairs in a home in the Blue Heron Pointe subdivision, trying to figure out how she fits into her new community.

Since arriving here Jan. 15, Wisconsin living has been quite an adjustment for Cacace, a city girl who’s lived all her 76 years within a 10-block area of south Brooklyn, N.Y. and where, like the song says, most everyone knows her name and is glad she came.

Cacace (whose name is pronounced Kuh-KAYSS, with emphasis on the second syllable) now lives with her son, Robert and his wife, Ann, who’ve welcomed her into their Waterford home.

The building Cacace has lived in for many years is currently up for sale. The urban gentrification she’s fought all her adult has now bumped Cacace out of Brooklyn.

“Gentrify! I call it genocide,” she said, shaking her head.

For years, Cacace has paid $500 in monthly rent, but today the rents in the old neighborhood (realtors call it Carroll Gardens, which sounds more trendy than south Brooklyn) can go for $5,500 a month, she said.

Friends in Brooklyn urged Cacace to put her stuff in storage and live with them while she continued the hunt for an affordable place, but Cacace opted to come and stay with family here.

“I love my son and my daughter-in-law,” she explained, adding: “Of course, I would like to go back to Brooklyn. It’s my roots there in Brooklyn.”

Her situation touched a chord in the hearts of many New Yorkers, where her plight was featured in news stories in the New York Post and New York Daily News, which called her the “Mayor of Carroll Gardens” and “Mother and Memory of the Community.”

A Jan. 13 send-off party (“they didn’t want to call it a farewell party, it was a ‘welcome back to Brooklyn’ party,” she said, laughing) drew more press coverage, as friends and neighbors from all around the city and suburbs came to wish her luck in her new life.

On a typical day in Brooklyn, Cacace said, she’d wake by 4 a.m., slowly get up and start her day with a shower, then get dressed and take a short walk down to the Happy Pants restaurant.

Cacace is well known and respected in her Brooklyn neighborhood, having served on a local community board there for years. At the Happy Pants, her favorite table was waiting every morning for Cacace to enjoy her decaf tea, read her three daily newspapers and talk with neighbors who share their problems, hopes and dreams.

Here, Cacace’s family knows and respects her, but that’s about it.

She’s tried walking around her new neighborhood but, unlike Brooklyn, there’s no place to walk to and meet up with people. Her new home is nestled between the lake and marsh in Tichigan, which is very pretty, she said.

But that setting also means the roads are plowed but not salted due to environmental concerns, and walking there is slippery and hazardous right now.

She’s attended the non-denominational church her family attends in this area. She may also check out the Catholic churches.

Cacace doesn’t drive, although she said she may learn once Wisconsin’s snow and ice season ends.

She’s also not much into traveling; her flight to Wisconsin was only the second in her life. Her first flight was more than 50 years ago on her honeymoon to Florida with husband Joe, who died in 1979.

Cacace’s family is happy to drive her wherever she’d like to go. Cacace has been to the Waterford Public Library, and she may ask about doing some volunteer work there in the children’s area. For years, Cacace also volunteered at a local senior center, helping to make the day brighter for the elderly people there.

But it’s hard for her to get to those kinds of places right now on her own.

“This is a big change at this point in my life, I’m a Brooklynite,” she said, quickly adding: “I’m not knocking Wisconsin, it’s beautiful.”

Cacace does not know the person who sent the email alerting the Waterford Post to Cacace’s arrival in town.

Robin Marion describes herself as a “fellow civic-minded person from Brooklyn” who has also struggled to find a niche in life after relocating to the Midwest.

Marion knows about – and empathizes with – Cacace’s current situation from New York news stories read online.

“If I was Celia, I’d probably start with connecting with a church and the library,” Marion said in a followup email, “and maybe I’d help out with the outdoor (River Rhythms) concerts when it gets warm.”

Marion notes that a recent New York news article reports that Celia looks out her window now and sees a forest and a road.

“I wish she could see the forest for the trees and the road not taken … I wish she saw this as Robert Frost might:

“‘Two roads diverged in a wood (Brooklyn and Waterford) and I –

I took the one less traveled by (Waterford)

And that has made all the difference.’”