This is Part III of my longest free verse poem that first appeared in my Of Pain and Ecstasy: Collected Poems. This episode relates to my maternal grandmother who was taken back to her native Galicia, Spain, by her husband, my grandfather, from her comfortable home at 10 Perry Street in New York City's Greenwich Village when winds of the coming Spanish Civil War began to blow with gale force.

Her story both during the Spanish Civil War when my grandfather was taken prisoner and tortured as a supporter of the doomed Republic leaving her to raise 8 children on her own through hard work, while still helping less fortunate (and less industrious) neighbors with the help of her adolescent children during and after the war.

Her life is the stuff that heroic fiction is made of, without the glitz, glamor, or accolades heaped upon both fictional and lesser heroic figures in real life. She was poor in material wealth, but one of the richest human beings I ever met or will ever meet in life, and one of my personal heroes.

In writing and reading this poem my intent was to tell their untold stories, and also to have my readers and listeners take a closer look in their own lives for those worthy, unacknowledged heroes who may never have gained their fifteen minutes of fame or sought it, but lived lives of quiet heroism, lifting themselves by their bootstraps and facing adversity head-on guided by a belief in themselves, a firm moral compass, the knowledge that no honest work was beneath them, that no one owed them a free ride, and faith in a God who might test them but never place upon their shoulders burdens they could not overcome. The lessons they teach us if we choose to absorb them are worth more than any taught in any classroom. The wisdom they impart can never be bought with gold.