"Live and Let Live"

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Ernest George Alberque, Sr., used to say to his children "live and let live".  

Yes,  he and his family did "live well".  From childhood, he had worked hard and was proud of his achievements. He was able to enjoy the finer things of life. 

But, no, he didn't mean that his children should do whatever they pleased and simply tolerate others.     His intention was to convey to his children the notion to share, to help others, so that others could live well, too.  

This is an inspiring message that is a wonderful legacy to all his "children", regardless of their generation after him.  

One Family's Story

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There were innumerable ways he in which he lived this philosophy, especially during the Great Depression.   We have permission to recount one of the ways.  Here is the edited excerpt:

Marguerite was born on April 22, 1919.  She was 10 years old when the depression started.  She wasn't real sure why it started or how it started.  However, when pressed on this issue she said she guessed it was because people were living beyond their means.  She recalled that people were spending money and buying stocks but when the stock market crashed on Black Tuesday, she recounted news stories of business men jumping out of the windows of Wall Street.

Marguerite lived with her mother and her older brother in Ridgefield Park, NJ.  Her dad, Pop, worked as a barge captain for the New Jersey Central Railroad.  He was an Irish immigrant  who came to America "before there was an Ellis Island."  "He just got off the boat in New York, at the Battery, and walked all the way up to 48th Street," she said.  Anyway, Pop wasn't home much, as she recalls, because he was hauling rock from the Palisades overlooking the Hudson River down to Baltimore.  He would be gone for two weeks or more at a time.  

Sometime around Christmas 1929, Pop stopped working.  Marguerite didn't think he was fired and she knew he didn't quit.  He just stopped working.  For the next three years he was home and she recalled how strange it felt to have him at the dinner table because he used to never be there.  Now he was always there.

Pop had just bought the house in 1929.  Prior to that they had been living with Marguerite's aunt, uncle and six children in Haverstraw, NY.  Pop had bought the house from the Alberque family--"the richest folks in town."  "They had an Irish maid."  She went to school with the Alberque kids and she was great friends with Mary Alberque.  But Mary was different, she was really rich.  The Alberques were different than any other family in town, she recalled.  At some point during the three years Pop was home, she remembers, he was unable to make the mortgage payments to Mr. Alberque and Mr. Alberque never pressed Pop for the money.  She knew that when Pop did go back to work three years later he paid him back "every red cent."

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