Aunt Tess
Tess
Both, in childhood and as an adult, there was little dispute that Aunt Tess was the family hero. She was probably the source of a certain amount of jealousy and difficult feelings amongst her sisters and certainly was the source of much excitement and anticipation amongst the nieces and nephews when she would visit.
Tess was the only Mravintz girl who completed college and in fact had achieved a Masters Degree in Slavic languages through the University of Pittsburgh. During WWII she had entered the service as eventually a captain in the WAC. She had been involved in a great deal of training of young women going into this new branch of the service.
Tess took on all of her jobs with great enthusiasm and gusto. People enjoyed being around her and she was an excellent story teller and was often able to enliven many a conversation with her tales of officers war events, and general programs to train this new strain of American military women in such things as sex education and needs of women as opposed to men in military situations. In order for this to go successfully you had to have a very confident person heading it rather than the stuff y military structures.
For us as children, a visit from Aunt Tess was like a combination enchantment by a fairy godmother or an Auntie Mame. Tess swirled into the house, let down her amazing long hair, which had a bright stripe. She would put on interesting clothing that she had acquired from her last post, and proceed to tell you about riding elephants in Ceylon or battles between cobras and mongoose. You would find yourself amazed at the battles between the Tamils and the Hindus where domestic help could not make it to the job that day because they were busy avoiding being burned alive by the opposing ethnic groups.
I always remember being aware of a life of adventure excitement and danger that nobody seemed to know about and you didn’t hear about on your five o’clock news. I do remember seeing pictures of riots and demonstrations in Asia, Africa and European cities that there was a lot of history going on that we didn’t know about. While hanging out with Aunt Tess might be scary, the truth was it was always accompanied by laughs and tickles. You could count on getting chased around the yard as a Tamil housekeeper getting run down by a Hindu assassin.
Tess bridged a gap in our family between the desire to separate ourselves from our Slavic and European background and become a part of the American establishment that had been the family goal. Also through her formal education and actual experience and USIA, her work for other ambassadors, artists and artisans, we began to realize a legitimacy in that background that was not all something to be ignored, but rather something to be seen as a part of our true heritage and roots.
When Tess was in the WAC the most significant instance that came up was when my father was seriously injured in a battle incident in Italy. There was some question about his condition and whether he would be able to pull through his injuries. Tess was actually able to get clearance to physically go and see my father in the hospital cooperating and discharged. Then they toured together in Italy while George was recovering. Until the family heard it from Tess, the family didn’t think he’d be all right. This was a great ability she had and spoke to her top foreign contacts, which helped her increase her career.
In the foreign service as a cultural affairs attaché, Tess would play hostess to people such as Danny Kaye, Louis Armstrong, John Steinbeck, and Ernest Hemingway as well as all the local and international painters, opera singers, and people of the time who had great artistic input in that world.
We were often sent autographed books by various dignitaries, although we were way too young to understand how powerful this was. We got to see all of the tokens of her life and work, including the autographed books, religious objects such as statures of Buddha and Greek triptych. It was hard for the “regular” aunts and uncles to keep up with an aunt like Tess. There was a certain amount of jealousy that might be expressed after she left. For my generation, especially for me and for Sally, Tess was an inspiration that there was another way to look at the world and to become a part of the amazing broad things that were happening throughout the world.
If you look critically at Tess, you can see that from time to time there was a problem with overuse of alcohol, which was a part of her job. She did not have to stick around to do daily chores, raise children or maintain a household without help. In Auntie Mame’s apartment, broken cocktail glasses from party the night before were always swept away by the next morning. She didn’t do well with retirement; she suffered a stroke from which she never entirely recovered.
That said, I shall always be indebted to my Aunt Tess for this wonderful example of what women could be in that day and age where few women could achieve the kind of dramatic life experiences that were her, day to day bread and butter. She made our family a lot more than it would have been with out her. She is my hero.