Make It Your Business
A Memoir About Possibilities
Dare to Climb the Ladder of Leadership
Sylvia M. Montero
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Copyright 2011 by Sylvia M. Montero. All rights reserved worldwide
Published by Front Row Press at Smashwords
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Praise for Make It Your Business
“Sylvia Montero is an amazing woman. I feel fortunate to count her as a colleague and friend. Her story is inspirational. In this book Sylvia tells how she rose from the poverty of the little house on stilts on a sugar cane plantation in Puerto Rico to being the senior Human Resources Officer at Pfizer Inc, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company. More important, she provides valuable inspiration and life and career success advice for young people coping with difficult circumstances. This book is a must read – for its inspirational story and it’s common sense life and career success advice.”
Bud Bilanich, The Common Sense Guy, Denver, Colorado
“Sylvia Montero’s book is a great source book for anyone climbing the corporate ladder – and a great read for anyone who believes in the American Dream. Ms. Montero has lived that Dream, and the lessons she learned along the way can teach us all about the meaning of success in the truest sense. I loved it!”
Andrew G. Celli, Jr., Emery, Celli, Brinckerhoff & Abady, LLP, New York
“An amazing story of the voyage from the depths of poverty to the pinnacle of success. Commitment, dedication and perseverance highlight the remarkable courage and determination that was the foundation of this motivational life story. As a friend and business colleague it was indeed inspirational to watch Sylvia’s strengths and leadership qualities demonstrated day in and day out as she climbed the ladder of success. A must read for all who are pursuing the American Dream”
Brian W. Barrett, Vice President, Pfizer Inc. (retired), New York
“Sylvia Montero’s wonderful book is full of lessons for those seeking to live their dreams in their personal and professional lives. Her rise in the corporate world from a humble background offers real-world advice into what it takes to be successful. She is honest about the challenges she faced and helpful in sharing what she learned from both her successes and setbacks. Her book provides inspiration and guidance to young men and women as they make their way in the world.”
–Robert B. Shaw, Management Consultant & Author, Princeton, New Jersey
“A best in class role model of a woman who has had a phenomenal journey of success to the very top of leadership. A book that will touch the hearts of readers and from which everyone will benefit, as business leaders and as human beings. Having had the privilege of working with her I can include myself among the many leaders who were touched by her magic and helped maximize their potential. A must read for our growing number of minorities striving to succeed in business.”
–Pedro Lichtinger, President and CEO, Optimer Pharmaceuticals, San Diego, California
“A touching and inspiring story of struggles and triumphs. Sylvia’s story will resonate with wise Latinas and others who find that we can convert our challenges into opportunities.”
–Margarita Rosa, Executive Director, Grand Street Settlement, New York
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Dedication
For my grandchildren, Kenny and Miranda.
In honor of my parents, Eligia Montero (1928 – Present)
And Cruz Montero (1922 – 2006)
Raising and Educating Puerto Rican Children
Value Who You Are and What You Are
Maintain a Positive and Proactive Attitude
Stand by Your Personal Integrity
Education, Education, Education
Understand the Business and Where You Fit In
Make it Your Business to Perform
PART FIVE: ORGANIZATIONAL SAVVY
Take Care of Your Physical Well-Being
Dress Matters—Use It as a Strategic Asset
Optimize Your Communication skills
PART SEVEN: WORKING WOMAN, WORKING MOTHER
The Responsibility to Give Back
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Acknowledgements
Thank you
“You have a story to tell. You ought to write a book, and if you decide to do so, I will help you.”
Bud Bilanich made this generous offer over dinner just days after I retired. A year later I took him up on it. Bud is the ‘Common Sense Guy,’ a success coach, motivational speaker, author, blogger and my friend. True to his goal to “help as many people as I can to create the successful lives and careers they want and deserve,” Bud spent many hours on the phone helping me think through my themes, sharing his own life experiences and professional knowledge. For two years, Bud gave selflessly of his talent and skills so that my story will reach a broader audience who might be helped by it. Why? Because that is the type of guy he is. I encourage you to meet this extraordinary man at www.budbilanich.com. Bud, with my deepest gratitude.
I am grateful to my parents, Cruz and Eligia Montero, for the heroism of their lives; for their fierce devotion to their five children; for their tough love; for never giving up. I regret that my father is not alive to read this, but I believe he knew my feelings. Thankfully, Mom was able to add her memories and will read the book in its Spanish translation.
Thanks to my siblings—Miriam, Elba, Rod and Wally—who, having shared the same experiences growing up, made sure that my memories were true and accurate. Special thanks to Miriam for also applying her teacher’s red pen to every detail of my manuscript and for coming up with the title of the book.
Thanks to my son, Ken, for his feedback and for that wonderful three-way discussion with Bud and me, sharing his perspective growing up with a single working Mom.
I must also thank many colleagues and friends who took the time to read my manuscript and provided precious feedback, particularly Don and Sandy, Brian, Monta, Jim and Pat, Mark and Patricia, Maria M., Hannah, Robert, Joe, the Smith family, Cathy, Sharon, Neil and Pedro, among others.
Special thanks to my editor and collaborator, Yosef Baskin, for “helping my more-tame written voice match my more-fiery in-person voice.”
I am grateful to my husband O.B., who always read the earliest draft of each chapter. For his time and patience, his love of the English language, his empathy and broad perspective, thank you.
Finally, I am indebted to the many mentors and sponsors who guided a young girl from the little house on stilts to the Boardroom.
Part One: Prologue
The Boardroom
I waited outside the beautifully polished, double wooden doors on the executive floor. Waiting to be called in by the Board of Pfizer Inc., I breathed deeply taking it all in, not wanting to forget any detail of this incredible moment. To make sure of being calm and at my best, I had gone to the gym that morning just like every weekday. I wore one of my best colors—a bright blue knit jacket over a black ankle-length skirt. I wanted to look my personal best: self-assured, positive and glowing.
Suddenly the doors opened and the Secretary of the Board beckoned me into the room. I sprung up and followed her into the traditional boardroom. A full 50% of the room was taken up by a massive conference table. Around it were the members of the Board of Pfizer Inc. plus my former boss John LaMattina, President of the Research & Development Group. I was announced as I entered the room, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board, Ms. Sylvia Montero, Senior Vice President of Human Resources, Pfizer Inc.” The CEO of Pfizer Inc, Hank McKinnell, and the entire Board stood as one and applauded. As the Secretary steered me around the table, one by one each Board member shook my hand and congratulated me. I concentrated intently on making eye contact with each one, to remember each pair of eyes and each strong handshake. John LaMattina hugged me with pride in his eyes. I continued the round aware of the historical significance of my appointment to the highest H.R. position in this remarkable company.
Twenty six years earlier, as a candidate for an entry-level H.R. position in Pfizer, Puerto Rico, I had flown to New York to interview with Don Lum, then head of Human Resources for Pfizer Inc. He asked me what my career goal was, and I didn’t hesitate to answer “Your job.” Although he seemed slightly surprised by my answer, he smiled and graciously wished me the best.
Don was my predecessor five times removed and I felt his presence in the room as I concluded my walk around the huge table. There was pageantry to the process that linked every person in that room to their own predecessors many times removed.
I walked out of the room the first Hispanic appointed to the top H.R. position of Pfizer Inc., the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Despite the earlier, over-confident remark to Don Lum, I never imagined myself actually in the office. This moment was truly far beyond my dreams.
I thought about the road that led me to the boardroom and I could not contain a smile of pride as I remembered the beginning.
Part Two: The Story
Innocent Happiness
I am born in Cabo Rojo, southwestern Puerto Rico, a most anxiously awaited daughter. After the birth of two boys, Mamita prays to the Virgin of Miracles, La Milagrosa, for a girl that she promised to name Milagros—therefore my name, Silvia Milagros Montero. (In Puerto Rico I add Cáceres, Mamita’s maiden name.) In fact, she prays so hard that she gets three girls: Elba and Miriam follow soon after. By my third birthday, there are five of us, with two older brothers and two younger sisters. Mamita is 24 years old, and Papito, 30.
We live in a little wooden house on stilts. No plumbing and no electricity. The outhouse and bathhouse are towards the back. Tropical fruit trees grow all around our little house. It’s a tiny four-room house, but we are comfortable in it. The house is located in the middle of the sugar cane plantation where Papito works. We don’t own it, of course. It was previously used to house single men who worked the plantation. But when our parents got married, the foreman generously let them live in it. They must have not wanted to lose Papito’s work, because he’s an excellent worker.
Our memories of those young years are happy ones. In Puerto Rico the sun shines hot, and to cool off, we crawl under the house and play in the shaded soil. We’re not afraid of the worms that also find ‘under the house’ a better place to be. But when it rains, it rains. What a pleasure when we run in the rain! The sound of rain on the zinc roof is a lullaby; I love to hear the sound of rain on metal.
Papito pumps water from the nearby well into two buckets that hang from the ends of a yoke around his neck and shoulders. The water is poured into a big barrel in the kitchen, and from there we scoop out water for all of our needs: to cook, to drink, to bathe, to wash dishes. A metal sheet covers the barrel to keep out the bugs and dust. The sink is a square metal box with a hole in the middle, attached to the outside of the kitchen window. A ditch carries the dirty dishwater away from the house.
Papito’s parents, Abuelo and Abuela, live a little further up the dirt road past the well. We often walk to their house for family gatherings and usually end the day praying the rosary. We love to climb on top of the big rock in front of their house. It’s big enough for many of us to climb on at the same time, and the older cousins tell many stories. We all learn that dwarfs, goblins, elves and other scary monsters live under that rock. For the walk back, Papito always carries a flashlight to light our way and also to make sure that we don’t step on a centipede—the bite is very painful. The clear night sky is filled to capacity with millions of stars. The nights are beyond noisy because of the ever-present crickets. But distinct and clear through the loud crickets, we hear the unmistakable music of the coquí, a tiny tree frog with a big voice.
The nearest ‘village’ is within walking distance. It’s called ‘Delicias Branch,’ the U.S. postal address. Our uncle, Tío Alejandro and his family live there. He has two daughters who are my playmates along with my siblings and the foreman’s daughters. The one-room school house for first, second and third grades is a little beyond Tío’s house. Tia Elena is the cook. I try to use this relationship to avoid eating boiled pumpkin, but it’s no use; I still have to eat it. For morning break we get milk made from powder. The glasses are put out in the sun so the milk is warm by morning break. My brother, Radames, doesn’t like warm milk, so he cajoles me into drinking his portion as well.
We are excellent students. Our parents drill into us the importance of education and doing well in school. Papito went to school until fifth grade and Mamita until third, both dropping out to help support their families. Later, as a teenager, Papito completed another three years of school in the evenings.
When the sun sets, we use mostly candles to light the house. We own one hurricane lamp that is used to light the living room. Once, Waldemar, the eldest, complains of a headache, and Mamita rubs some medicine on his head. The medicine contained alcohol, so when Waldy got too close to a candle, his head catches fire. What a scramble to put out the fire—Papito threw himself around Waldy, smothered the fire with his body and then had to figure out how to get him to the hospital in town. Luckily a distant neighbor owned a car. Waldy escaped with minor burns, but I always remember the smell of burning hair.
We use mosquito netting to cover our beds. Mosquitoes are big and they are many, and if one gets into bed with us, it’s a challenge to find it. The mosquito net is a safe and comforting barrier between us and the outside world.
Christmas is a holy day but Three Kings Day is the fun day. Before bed on the night of January 5th, we put out grass and water for the camels to eat when the Magi come with gifts. I have a happy memory of waking up one morning to something solid and cool on my face—a creamy ceramic face with blue eyes that open and close, my first doll. Mom is so happy that I retain this memory, as a store -bought doll must have required a special sacrifice. Without many store-bought toys, we are creative in our games. Radames imitates Papito’s work by using empty cans to simulate the oxcarts that carry sugar cane to the loading crane. A piece of string looped over the lowest branch of the avocado tree in the front yard becomes the crane that moves bundles of sugar cane from the cart to the truck.
A little creek flows behind our house. We like to fish using a string with a bent pin at the end. We catch small eels, and sometimes we enjoy the tiny morsels roasted over an open fire.
We raise or grow a lot of our food. Abuelo also works on the sugarcane plantation, and so he and Abuela are allowed to use part of the land for agriculture. Papito and Tío Alejandro help to seed and till the land, sharing in its produce: root vegetables such as yucca, yautía and ñame. They also plant banana, plantain, beans, black eye peas and pigeon peas. Our parents raise chickens for meat and eggs and, of course, the annual pig. We eat every part of the pig in all sorts of delicious preparations, the most exotic of which is the morsilla, a blood sausage made out of the intestines. Tia Juana is the best pig ‘chef’ in the family. She removes and meticulously cleans the intestines. Then she seasons the blood with local spices—garlic, onion, cilantro, peppers, oregano, pours it into the intestines, ties both ends and fries the sausage.
Our staple is rice and beans prepared in a variety of different ways. Waldy and Radames trap land crabs using an empty metal cracker box. When they are successful we enjoy crab meat, a special treat. Sometimes we get permission to go into a nearby coffee plantation to pick coffee beans. I use my skirt to form a bucket and when it’s full I empty the beans into the larger sack. Our parents dry the coffee beans in the sun and roast and grind it. This saves them money they would have had to spend to buy ground coffee. Our diet is supplemented by the fruit of many tropical trees—coconut, avocado, starchy breadfruit, mango, papaya, sweet and sour oranges, tart soursop, grapefruit, bittersweet tamarind and many more.
Papito goes to the bodega for additional groceries. He has to spend money to buy the things we can’t grow or raise, such as rice and powdered milk. Abuelo stops by our house every week on his way back from the bodega and he always has a treat for us—cupcakes or some sweet. It must be a sacrifice for him to spend even the few pennies those treats cost. We have priceless memories of the excitement waiting for him to stop by.
Papito earns $15 to $20 a week based on how many rows of sugar cane he seeds, cultivates or cuts. It’s a blessing that he doesn’t have to pay to live in the house. Later my father is promoted to operate the crane from the motor house and his wages are increased to $30 dollars a week. Mamita helps by stitching gloves, piece work from a local factory. She earns $2.35 or $3.75 a dozen according to the style of glove. June through September is tiempo muerto, dead time on the plantation, and that means no work for Papito and no income. So Mamita teaches Papito how to stitch gloves and they both stitch late into the evening. It still isn’t enough for our groceries, so they have to take the groceries on credit. Papito repays the bodega owner when he starts working again. It is almost impossible to catch up. One day the glove factory moves to the Philippines, and there is no more supplementary income. Our parents are afraid they can’t feed their children. That’s when they decide that Papito will move stateside as a migrant farm worker. And just like that, our lives are turned upside down.
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Nueva York, A Wondrous Place
Nueva York was a wondrous place in our minds. We looked forward to fairy tale beauty and magical things. The buildings would be silvery with beautiful balconies. The wide streets would be lined with trees and flowers, full of beautiful cars. Work was plentiful and everybody was rich. These perceptions had been formed by listening to the stories of those who were fortunate enough to return for visits.
Some of Mamita’s family had already made the transition to Nueva York. Mamita’s brother, Julio, had joined the army and from there he stayed in Nueva York. This young, handsome and uniformed uncle added to the stories of Nueva York that formed our expectations of the city that was to be our new home. Also in Nueva York were Mamá (our maternal grandmother), Tía Carmen and Domingo (‘Mingo’), Mamita’s siblings. We didn’t call Julio and Mingo Tío because they were just boys when we were born. They persuaded Papito to stay in Nueva York and his niece, Julia, helped him find a job in the costume jewelry factory where she worked. There he earned the minimum wage, $1.00 an hour, a lot more than he made on the plantation. He missed us terribly, and within a month, on July 4, 1957, we were on our way to Nueva York.
The flight cost $186 for all six of us, mostly borrowed from the family in Nueva York, except for $35 that Mamita got from selling what little furniture we had. Our uncle, Julio, sent new dresses for the three girls; the boys wore their ‘good’ school clothes. The three-hour trip by public car, from southwest Puerto Rico through the curvy roads of the inner island to San Juan in the northeast, cost $15. Tío Alejandro and Tía Elena accompanied us to the airport so, aside from the driver, there were nine of us crammed like sardines, with the youngest ones on laps. The five children were ages four to ten; I was seven.
The overnight flight on a propeller plane left at 11:30 p.m. and arrived early next morning. Terrified, we remained frozen to our seats for the entire trip. We must have looked frightened, because the stewardesses seemed to hover over us more than other passengers. Mamita didn’t dare leave her seat and another passenger helped Radames to the lavatory. The girls were dolled up in our new dresses with stiff petticoats that popped in the air when we sat down. For the big event, Tía Elena had given us short hair cuts easy to groom. The ups and downs of the plane made me motion sick.
We were very happy to land at Idlewild Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport). However, the drive from the airport to our apartment gave us our first real impressions of Nueva York and what a disappointment it was. We drove through claustrophobic ‘tunnels’ formed by tall buildings on either side. We stared wide-eyed as our expectation of fairytale beauty was replaced by soot-blackened buildings with corroded fire escapes.
For the first three months we lived in a furnished room on Manhattan’s West 78th Street, not far from the Museum of Natural History. When we got to the one-room apartment that was to be our home, we were disappointed that there was no ‘under the house’ to play in, and we missed the outdoors. Mamita was afraid to let us go outside to play and we had to avoid the landlord so he wouldn’t find out just how many of us—seven—were living in one room. Inevitably, he did find out and we were asked to leave. We moved to a tenement apartment in the Lower East Side near Tía Carmen’s apartment. The apartment was across the street from the neighborhood park and the pool. Finally, the boys were able to go out and play while Mamita watched from the window. The girls were always much more closely supervised. The apartment was very cold. The building had no boiler and Mamita was afraid to light the gas heater for fear of a fire. However, we were glad to have more space: two bedrooms, the kitchen and a small living room. Waldy and Radamés shared a bed in one room; our parents and the girls slept in the other room. I slept with Elba and Miriam in one bed and our parents had the other bed.
Our parents had paid the previous occupant for his meager furniture, and we quickly discovered that the beds were infested with bed bugs. The entire building was infested with cockroaches and no level of cleanliness inside the apartment kept them out. Mamita was beside herself. Despite the country soil we grew up in, this was the first time that we lived in such dirty conditions. We were careful to check our coats for cockroaches before leaving the house. I got used to sleeping on my side with a corner of the blanket draped over my exposed ear because I was afraid that a cockroach would crawl into my ear. I had that habit for many years even after I no longer had to worry about cockroaches.
We got sick right away. In Puerto Rico we had been vaccinated only for Small Pox, so in Nueva York we came down with all the childhood diseases. Who knows how our parents handled five children with the Mumps, the Chicken Pox and the Measles one after another; the boys also got Whooping Cough; Miriam, the youngest, developed Asthma; and, of course, we caught one cold after another. Our uncle, Julio, the only family member with a car, often rushed one of us to the hospital wrapped in a blanket. I still remember my embarrassment because my handsome, young uncle could see my bare bottom when the nurse gave me a shot of penicillin.
We were enrolled in the local grammar school, PS-4. Miriam (age 5) and Elba (age 6) started kindergarten and first grade, respectively. This was their first school experience because there was no kindergarten in our country schoolhouse. Radamés (age 9) and I (age 8) were mortified we had to repeat second and third grades, respectively. Mamita pleaded with the school authorities to allow Waldy (age 11), her eldest, to continue on to the next grade. Waldy had been an A student in Puerto Rico with excellent prospects for a scholarship. She must have been very convincing, because they placed him in fifth grade.
The first year of school was extremely difficult, especially English and Social Studies. We learned English through total immersion; more than half the time we didn’t know what the teachers were saying even though they would speak more slowly to us. They told us not to speak Spanish at home, an impossible expectation because our parents didn’t speak English. We wanted to learn English quickly so that we would fit in: Waldy borrowed reading books from the lower grades so that he could read them at home at his own pace; we sat next to other Spanish-speaking kids who could help us out. We all remember embarrassing moments when a mispronunciation or awkward sentence structure would get a laugh from the kids.
But we built up our vocabulary and worked hard to eliminate the accent. Some sounds were more difficult than others. We had trouble with the long and short ‘e’ sounds, the ‘th’ sounds, the American ‘r,’ the ‘t’ that sounded like ‘r’, the ‘ch’ and ‘sch’ that were pronounced ‘k,’ etc. Yet, the transition from not speaking English to speaking it was so quick for me that I don’t really remember the process in between.
Miriam was so frequently sick that our parents decided to pull her out of kindergarten. Not knowing the rules and thinking that kindergarten was optional, they just stopped sending her to school. One day an intimidating social worker came to our apartment asking why Miriam wasn’t in school. Terrified, Mamita asked a neighbor to translate and the social worker saw first-hand our living situation. The $22 weekly rent depleted Papito’s $40 pay check. After tax deductions and tokens for the subway, he was left with $10 a week for his family of seven. Miriam was allowed to stay home and we received an emergency check for $129. That’s how we ended up on Welfare and placed on a priority list for subsidized public housing.
Almost two years to the day after arriving in Nueva York, we moved to a five-room apartment in the newly built projects near the FDR Drive and the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn. We were so happy because it seemed like a palace to us: my sisters and I had our own room, the boys another and our parents finally had a private room. We were comfortable and warm, and we could control the roaches. With the security of Papito’s job, the welfare check and the extra food, our parents finally felt that they could feed us. Elba and Miriam were delighted they didn’t always have to wear my hand-me-downs. It was then that our parents decided we would stay in Nueva York. Before that, Mamita had yearned for the familiarity and cleanliness of our little house in Puerto Rico, which the plantation foreman kept unoccupied for three years in case we decided to go back.
Mamita was fanatical about cleaning our apartment, with full power over a small army of six to assist her in that task. On Saturday mornings we each did our chores under her critical eye. The boys cleaned the windows; the girls washed and ironed. With no washing machine and little money to spend on laundromats, we washed clothes and bedding by hand in the deep kitchen sink. And we all had our turn wiping fingerprints and smudges off the grayish-white walls. Papito completed the process by sweeping and mopping the floor after everything else was spotless. Only then could we think of doing something that was fun.
Five years later, we were offered an apartment in a new public housing nearby. We couldn’t believe the mansion we moved into. With four bedrooms, I got my own room!
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Raising and Educating Puerto Rican Children
Welfare. It was our big family secret. Mamita and Papito were embarrassed they couldn’t support their family independently, so we didn’t volunteer that information to family or friends. The process itself was also very humiliating. We called the social worker, always a man, El investigador—the probing questions and technique of scanning the apartment told us all he was investigating. He usually showed up during the day—no appointments—so Mamita had to get a neighbor to interpret. One day, I surprised her by volunteering to do the translation. With some hesitation, Mamita and El investigador agreed. At least from then on, our private matters did not have to be shared with our neighbors. My siblings soon caught up with their language skills, and we all became translators for our parents whenever El investigador visited, or when we went shopping, or when we had to go to the apartment project’s management office. We all experienced the humiliation of El investigador’s intrusive questions, but we were proud to be of help to our parents.
Our parents were suspicious and afraid of the very different and dangerous world that we lived in. They were determined that we would not be influenced by street-smart kids who experienced crime, drugs and alcohol and who inescapably ended up as dropouts, in jail or casualties. Our parents lived in fear that we would become statistics, so they were very strict and kept us rather secluded from the outside world. We were not allowed to socialize with our peers—no sleepovers, no visits. The girls were supervised 24/7, but the boys had a little more freedom. They were allowed to go to the park or to the neighborhood pool, but always with a time limit. We were all church goers and participated in the various church groups. Wally and Radames were altar boys; Elba, Miriam and I were members of the ‘Daughters of Mary.’ The Monteros were known in the parish as an exemplary family. Nonetheless, I hated to go to the required monthly confession because, try as I might to mask my voice, the priest would always recognize me. We all cringed during the ‘fire and brimstone’ sermons that the Jesuit priest delivered on Good Fridays.
Our outings were all family events. Mamá, Tía Carmen and her family had moved an hour away to The Bronx, so we often took the subway to their home where we spent the day playing with our four cousins. In the summer we rode the subway to Coney Island for a day at the beach and the amusement park. We loved to hang onto Papito while we tried to swim in the ocean. In the afternoon we would ride the Carousel and reach for the gold ring for a free ride. We always ended the day at Nathan’s for their famous fried shrimp with tartar sauce. (Mom never touched that strange white American sauce.) Family events like birthdays, Christmas and New Years were always dancing opportunities. We learned how to dance all the Spanish dances—from the traditional Danza and Plena to the Guaracha, Cha Cha and Mambo which was transitioning into the modern Salsa.
Summers must have been tough for Mom to keep her growing brood under control. We didn’t go to summer or day camps offered by the neighborhood Settlement Houses because that was part of ‘the world we had to be protected from.’ So we spent a lot of time at home. The boys pushed for more play time in the park and got it, while Mom would accompany the girls to the playground. She would sit on a bench talking with the other Hispanic mothers and taking in the sun. But Mom had to get back to the house to clean, wash and cook, and that meant that we spent a lot of our apartment time engaged in our favorite pastime, reading. We were allowed to go to the local library by ourselves, and even though it was only three blocks away, it was a big deal to be allowed to go alone. The dangers, though, were not Mom’s imagination—Pop had been robbed at knife point in our own elevator. Once on our way to the library, we came across a man in an open raincoat, revealing too much, and from then on we took another route.
We are all bookworms and always were. In the summers, we withdrew the maximum allotment of books and read them all within the six weeks’ allotment of time to keep them. The stories in those books took us to places we couldn’t even dream of visiting: fairy tales, adventure stories like Robinson Crusoe and Journey to the Center of the Earth, the entire Louisa May Alcott collection and more. I worked my eyes so much one summer that I needed glasses when I started school in September. Then by December, because I actually read less during school, I no longer needed the glasses. All that reading did wonders for my reading scores!
We lived our lives on two cultural tracks—the Puerto Rican home and the American school. At home we were a traditional Puerto Rican family. We ate Puerto Rican food: rice and beans, tomato sauces seasoned with golden home-made sofrito, chicken browned in a skillet, salted cod fish, plantain, green bananas and root vegetables like yuca, ñame and yautía. Then at school in Home Economics, we were taught that the healthy American diet was steak, potatoes and green vegetables, while our school friends talked about hamburgers and hotdogs. One day, Radamés complained to Mom that she should be making steak and potatoes, with green vegetables like the Americanos. Mom was furious because she worked hard to serve us healthy, freshly made meals, better than when she was a little girl. She also saw the complaint as a challenge to our ethnicity. As an adult, Radamés remembers this episode and realizes how ironic it was that later revisions of ‘the healthy diet’ proved Mom so right. We actually did eat a very healthy diet. Today, we consider it a treat to eat Mom’s home-made Puerto Rican meals.
Within two years, we were all speaking English. As we became fluent in English, the five of us began to speak to each other in English. This upset Mom because she didn’t understand us. Pop learned enough English to carry on a conversation and get the gist of our fast-paced discussions in English. His interaction with people at work, store owners, subway attendants, etc, all helped him learn English. Mom, on the other hand, stayed home with her kids, plus she had us to translate for her. Mamita became ‘Mita’ when addressing her and ‘Mom’ when talking among ourselves; Papito became ‘Pop.’ I changed the spelling of my name from Silvia to Sylvia, as another way to fit into the culture around me. Our Three Kings Day gave way to Christmas. With time, the star filled skies of Puerto Rico, the tropical showers and the freedom of playing all day out in the sun or ‘under the house’ all receded into happy childhood memories ‘before the move.’ Mom and Pop spoke about going ‘home’ some day.
Christmas must have continued to be a big challenge for Mom and Pop. They tried very hard to save us from envying other kids’ toys. A couple of Christmases, they actually struck a deal with us. One year we wanted bicycles but we could only afford a single one. So we agreed that the bicycle would be a communal Christmas gift that we would share; we got a lot of pleasure from that one bike. To teach us to ride the bike, Pop and Mom would take us to the East River Park and Pop would run alongside, letting go without our realizing it. We loved it! Another year I really, really wanted a typewriter. Since I had learned to type in Junior High School, in High School I wanted to turn in typewritten papers. Once again we agreed on a communal gift and we got our money’s worth, so much so that Miriam took the same machine to college with her.
In Junior High School I was given the choice to study a foreign language. Without hesitation I chose Spanish. Other kids thought I was just looking for an easy ‘A,’ but it wasn’t that at all.
When I came to Nueva York, I was already reading and writing Spanish. I could read Pop’s Spanish newspaper. I used my Spanish all the time when I interpreted for my parents. But as English became my dominant language, I was starting to grasp for words in Spanish. There was also the permeation of ‘Spanglish’ in our neighborhood. I wanted to be as fluent and accurate in Spanish as I was in English. Sometimes when I didn’t know the correct word in Spanish, I felt I was losing something important to my identity. So even at that early age, there was a statement about pride in my roots. The kids were right about how easy Spanish was the first couple of years. Mom and Pop spoke very good Spanish and I had the two years of school in Puerto Rico. When I forgot a rule, I would speak the sentence in my head and the right answer would be there. But I did clean up some misspellings and I started culling Spanglish from my vocabulary. I continued studying Spanish through High School, where third- and fourth-year Spanish became much more challenging: complicated conjugations, sentence structures, reading comprehension, with analysis of Spanish poetry, short stories and novels.
The Lower East Side of the 1960’s and 1970’s was a somewhat mixed neighborhood. Once a center of Jewish culture, it still had a sizeable Jewish population. The mostly blue-collar Hispanic population was growing fast along with the beginnings of an overflow from Chinatown and Little Italy. The Williamsburg Bridge connected Manhattan and Brooklyn along Delancey Street. South of the Williamsburg Bridge, the Grand Street area was predominantly Jewish; north of the bridge it was predominantly Hispanic. The stores were owned by Jewish merchants who usually learned Spanish for their largely Spanish-speaking clientele. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if a word was English or Yiddish—tumult, crotchety, chutzpa. The public schools were also similarly populated. In those days, the kids were assigned to advanced or regular classes according to their academic achievement. The Monteros soon worked our way to the more advanced classes that were mostly filled with Jewish kids.
Sara was my best friend in grammar school, a very bright, fun-loving Jewish girl. She and I were inseparable in school, although we never visited each other’s homes. We were best friends and we enjoyed competing academically. In sixth grade, we competed for an accelerated Junior High School program—two years instead of three. Only one of us would be selected, and I was very hopeful that it would be me. The accelerated program would make up for the year I lost when I arrived in New York—I would no longer be older than the other kids in class. That wasn’t to be, though, because Sara was selected. And so I lost my best friend to another school, and we lost contact until we met up again in High School. The teachers explained that they felt I would benefit more from the full three years having so recently arrived (four years before) from Puerto Rico. I went on to the local Junior High School where I graduated Valedictorian.
As much as we didn’t appreciate our strict upbringing, there must have been something to it. We had a strong nuclear family, and we had no doubt that we were loved. The discipline at home made it a good place to study, and Mom was formidable in her expectations of us. Yet, she was surprisingly tolerant when we experienced difficulty in school. When she felt bad that she couldn’t help, she encouraged the older ones to help the others. She didn’t demand A’s although we brought home many. B’s were just as good as A’s. To the occasional C or rare D, she would tell us to do the best we could. What she did demand was good behavior, and that was the first thing she looked for in our report cards. We were all good students. Wally went to Aviation High School in Long Island; Rod went to the prestigious Stuyvesant High School; Elba went to the High School of Art and Design; and Miriam set new records with a scholarship to a private middle school in the Village followed by another scholarship to the exclusive United Nations International School. I went to the neighborhood academic High School, Seward Park HS, where I was assigned to the honors program.
My sole focus in school was on getting the grades needed for a scholarship to college. I loved school and I studied for A’s. Anything less was a major disappointment—agony. Sadly, other kids perceived this attitude toward academic achievement, along with our social distance, as arrogance. There were some frightening experiences in grammar school and Junior High School, when I became the target of the school bullies. In grammar school, my uncle Julio once again came to the rescue by having a good conversation with the school principal, which took care of the problem. In Junior High School, bullies waited for me after school intent on beating me up. Luckily, my two brothers were there to defend me. The bullies were always the kids with the worst grades and behavior problems.
The honors program in high school was extraordinary. Seward Park had the advantage of the most advanced, sometimes experimental, programs. The demographics of the student population reflected the local neighborhood—mostly Hispanic and Jewish kids with a smattering of Italian, Chinese and African-American. The honors classes were mostly filled with Jewish kids and one or two minorities. The Jewish kids were economically better off; they dressed better; they had educated parents speaking English at home, so their conversational English was excellent and they were confident. The most stress I experienced was in English classes, where I felt I was at a distinct disadvantage. In those honors classes, we covered the most advanced works of literature and then discussed them in class. In creative writing, to my horror, we had to write our own short story. I was paralyzed by the fear of making a fool of myself and kept procrastinating. Finally, I decided to write about something I knew and that had affected me deeply, Mamá’s death a couple of years earlier. Written in the first person in the voice of a young girl losing her grandmother, the story’s vocabulary didn’t have to be very advanced. What pride when I saw the A+++ on the three-page story and the professor asked me to read it out loud. Whew, I began to realize that the fear was inside me and that maybe I could control it.
In High School, I qualified for a special work program that placed me in the Attendance Office during my free period and introduced me to my first true mentor, Mr. Steinfeld. He took a lot of interest in me; he asked questions; he listened; he looked at my notes; and he comforted me when I didn’t get my mandatory ‘A.’ He trusted me. Delightfully, my grammar school best friend Sara also went to Seward Park High School. Because she had gone through the accelerated Junior High School program, she was one year ahead of me, yet she was no longer in the honors program. In fact, she was way back with the problem kids. One day, not too long after I had started working in the Attendance Office, she came to see me. My happiness at seeing her lasted until she asked me to look through private student records for the home address and phone of a boy she liked. I refused and, with the lost of trust, we never spoke again. I was very upset that my grammar school friend only came to see me to take advantage of my position in the Attendance Office. And I thought back on the decision that my teachers had made selecting her for the special program over me. I would never have squandered that opportunity.
One day, Mr. Steinfeld asked me to tutor his nephew Joseph, who was struggling with ninth-grade Algebra. With my parents’ permission, I walked to Joseph’s home in the Grand Street area three times a week for $3.00 an hour. Nine dollars a week was a lot of money and came in very handy for some of my school expenses. To everyone’s delight, Joseph’s grades in Algebra improved. That was my first teaching success, and it reinforced my growing desire to become a teacher.
The day finally arrived when our parents voluntarily dropped out of the Welfare program. Mom was making a little extra money baby-sitting, we were all teenagers and took advantage of work/study opportunities and Wally was off to the Air Force. The surprised social worker insisted that we still qualified for Welfare but enough was enough. It was a big step—freedom from the price we paid for charity.
Precisely because of my family’s welfare experience, it is an honor to be in a position to help other people. One of the important lessons learned is to help others in a way that is both helpful and not demeaning. As a related story, the mother of the young man I was tutoring knew that my family and I were going to Puerto Rico for the first time since our arrival. On the last day of tutoring, she gave me a gift bag, almost a full wardrobe of clothing—tights, slacks, blouses—an incredibly nice thing to do. Yet I walked out of the house embarrassed to be receiving charity again. If the gift had consisted of one item, great, but a suitcase full of clothing was too much of a different message. Had I been so poorly dressed every time I visited her home? How could I ever explain that to her? I didn’t even try. But while I never faulted her for my feelings, it became clear that sometimes a showering of gifts is not the wisest gift.
This was the year when all our savings went toward the long awaited trip ‘home.’ Nine years after arriving in Nueva York in 1966, we went back to Puerto Rico; I was sixteen years old. Pop stayed for a week because he had to come back to work but we stayed for three weeks. We stayed at Abuelo and Abuela’s house – the same little wooden house they lived in when we left for Nueva York. The rock in front of their house was smaller than we remembered and the trail to our old house seemed narrower. Our little house was still standing but no longer in use. The mosquitoes were ferocious and left large welts on our no longer sun-cured skin. We had trouble with the heavy humidity and heat, and the bugs were frightening, but the stars were just as numerous and bright; the sky bluer than blue and running in the rain was still a treat. We reconnected with family and friends and then returned to our other ‘home.’
In my senior year, Mr. Steinfeld encouraged me to apply to Barnard College of Columbia University. My goals had been more modest—City University—but I took my mentor’s advice and applied. I was surprised to get a call for an interview and more so when I was accepted with a full scholarship.
I graduated Salutatorian from High School which required that I give the welcoming speech on graduation day. Once again I agonized over the speech and the fact that I would be speaking in front of hundreds of people. A school friend was so proud that a Puerto Rican was getting this honor that one day he said to me, “You are the pride of Puerto Rico.” I thought about this as I worked on my speech. What would be my message? Then I saw the reverse should be true—that I should be the one proud, proud of who I am and of my Puerto Rican heritage. So I had my message, and I went a step further and wrote half my speech in Spanish so the Hispanics in the audience who didn’t speak English well—my parents included—would be able to understand me. I observed the uncomfortable shifting in seats by the non-Spanish speakers as I explained this to the audience and went on in Spanish to a spontaneous applause by the Spanish-speaking audience. And so off to a different and frightening Ivy League world.
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Marriage and College
My future husband migrated from Puerto Rico to live at my aunt’s apartment in the Bronx. He had dropped out of high school and came to New York to make a living. He was one of the few non-family young men that I interacted with on a regular basis. We were not allowed to date, but because he lived at my aunt’s place, we saw each other often. So, even as I worked through the academic and social challenges of high school, my parallel cultural life was moving along a more predictable course—during my senior year in high school, I was engaged to be married.
Our courtship was very traditional: He formally asked my parents for my hand in marriage and came courting on agreed days. Although my parents were dismayed that I would be married so young, 19 wasn’t an unusual age for Hispanic girls. Mom had married at 17. I would be married at 19. Not surprisingly, they did express their expectation that I ‘be allowed’ to continue my education, and my fiancé agreed. Still, my own dismay was silent: from my perspective, no one but I had a voice in that decision, even if I were married.
We didn’t go out alone until immediately before we got married, when we went to look at the apartment we were renting. During this year of courtship, I was in my senior year of high school – still very focused on my studies. The fact that my fiancé had dropped out of school bothered me but he assured me that he would finish High School. I pictured us working and studying together, excited by the thought of my own place, doing my own thing and making my own decisions. We were married during my freshman year at Barnard. He worked in a distribution center while I focused on the requirements of a full time student and the rhythm method of birth control endorsed by the Catholic Church. A year later, my beautiful little boy, Kenneth, was born.
I knew early in our marriage that it wasn’t going well. My husband’s wages were minimal, poverty is not as romantic as it sounds and I wasn’t happy. Our tenement apartment in the Lower East Side was similar to the first apartment I had lived in when we first arrived in New York. Once again, the cockroaches. Worse, the bathtub was in the kitchen with our toilet (in the hallway) shared with the next-door neighbor. The boiler often broke down, and the owners took their time repairing it. The building was also a haven for drug dealers. I became active in a government-sponsored program focused on clearing the community of crime and drugs. When the drug dealers figured this out, they in turn put the pressure on us to get out. One evening, we came home to a vandalized apartment. Thieves had actually broken through the wall above the security gate that protected the doorway. We could see their footprints—on the ceiling. We lost our small stereo and what little jewelry there was.
But the most traumatic experience came late one cold night. Kenny’s crying awakened me to what seemed like a fog inside the bedroom. The acrid smell down my throat sent a cold shiver through me. I was instantly alert, in a state of panic, realizing we were in a smoke-filled room, screaming, “Oh my God, the apartment’s on fire!” I grabbed screaming Kenny and bolted for the door, only to be met with a thicker wall of smoke. The fire had been set in the exterior hallway against an unused door that led straight into my bedroom—exactly where we had placed the crib. I quickly closed the door and ran with the baby to the living room where the smoke hadn’t reached and where I could get out through the fire escape, if necessary. I was terrified to climb down six flights of a rickety fire escape in thirty-degree weather carrying a struggling baby. With trembling fingers, I dialed 911, and the operator said stay inside because the firemen would be there in minutes. Kenny had quieted down and was settled on the sofa. While I waited for the firemen to arrive, I threw a bucket of water at the flames in the hallway.
The whole event was literally a scary wake-up call. We moved to another building as quickly as we could. I also immediately began to petition the Housing Authority for an apartment. It took a couple of years, but we were finally granted an apartment in the projects.
Meanwhile, I continued to carry a full course load at Barnard College. My time there was an extraordinary life-changing experience. Thanks to Mr. Steinfeld for steering me in the direction of Barnard College and to Barnard for the financial aid that made it possible. Barnard was my introduction to a world beyond my dreams—a world filled with very confident women. It was a no-nonsense learning environment where I interacted and competed with some of the brightest young women in the country. The quality of education was one that only the mention of Ivy League or Seven Sisters can evoke. (Barnard College shares the distinction of The Seven Sisters along with Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Vassar and Wellesley.) Here I was in this environment during the turmoil of the late 1960’s, marveling at how freely my classmates challenged the establishment, our government and other governments around the world. Some of the most memorable debates occurred spontaneously between classes in the study halls. These spur-of-the-moment gatherings where we exercised the right to tackle any national or international issue taught me to have an opinion about what was going on in the outside world. Yet when Barnard women joined the Ivy League men across Broadway—Columbia University—in a sit-down to protest our involvement in Vietnam, it was not in me to join them. Instead I walked through the demonstrators and went to class, but not because I supported the war. Not at all. I wanted my brother back. But because I couldn’t snub the amazing college that handed me the gift of this magnificent education. Between the church and my home, my world had been one of do’s and don’ts, rules and regulations, ‘shoulds’ that I mostly obeyed. I was there to study and get my degree.
When I was pregnant during the first semester of my sophomore year, the subway ride from the Lower East Side up to Barnard at 116th Street was especially nauseating. The waitress at the small campus café would give me a spoonful of cola extract to settle my stomach before class. The baby arrived late in February, it was a difficult labor, and I was unable to return to school that semester. The professors assured my friends at school that I would not return for the typical scenario: young Hispanic, married and starting to have children. If the statistics played out, chances were that indeed there would be no return. And in fact, I came close to making just that decision.