I was born in Sicily in 1945 the youngest of 4 children. My father brought us all to America in 1947. I raised in a very ethnic home. My marriage was prearranged in 1965. We had 3 children and a life of dosmetic violence. Being a good catholic Italian, I hung in there until he started to abuse the children, Under threats of murder, setting fire to the house and killing us all, I finally decided my children would not be raised in a violent home. I gather the courage with the help of my father, who was appalled that I had been through this and never spoke of it. I met and married my present husband in 1974. Not only did he marry me, but he became the only father my children knew. My ex fled the country returning back to Italy to avoid paying child support. Ken and I had one more child and have raised them, educated them, and paid for their weddings. They have given me 8 beautiful grandchildren.
After 41 years of working, my husband, a contract worker for Bartech, working for GM as a senior designer received a paycut 5 years ago. We had to start dipping into our savings, insurances, 401, stocks and any other assets we had. Then came the dreaded day when GM laid off over 30,000 workers, my husband being one because he was contract not direct. The directs got it 2 weeks later. We were just in shock because we had already dipped into our reserve. Now the unemployment has run out, and there is absolutely no income coming into the home. We will be in forclosure, just after we finished our repay agreement because we had already gone through this once before and it has drained us. We are 61 years old. If we can just keep our home for other year, we can be eliigable that reverse mortgage. If we lose this home to forclousre we will not have the eqity needed to buy a smaller home which we are both resigned to do. Please let us hang on for another year and a half.
