About Elusia

Her name was Elizabeth C. Lombardo. She was our mother. Elusia passed away on August 27, 2003 in Matthew House in Auburn, NY. Betty was so very ill from cancer and its complications. With only a short time left to live, we asked her if she wanted to go home or to the Matthew House. She nodded yes to the Matthew House, so we arranged to have her go where she could be comfortable and get the care she needed. Matthew House in Auburn is a facility manned by volunteer help, and is run by a board of directors, with a director on site and on call twenty-four hours a day.

Ma said she wanted to go to college to be a journalist or to Hawaii to learn to do some work in the oceans, a microbiologist I think she said. Wll as things would have it, she apparently fell in love with Big Mike, and started a family. Like everything she did, she knuckled down and did a great job raising us, and like all parents, took a lot of crap from all us, who were always so smart with our youthful know it all attitude, and our youthful exuberance. We certainly did know it all, like every other kid growing up, we really did not much at all, about life or about experience.

Ma was the daughter of Peter P. Bommersbach and Elizabeth Catherine Leja Bommersbach who both came over from Poland with a lot of hopes and dreams and not much else. Peter P., who lived with us here at the family house for his last ten years or so, started a bar, ran it during prohibition, then turned it into an insurance agency. Grandma ran the bar when Grandpa, or butch as we used to call him, was out making collections on the money that people owed him. Below you will find a picture of Butch, Grandma, Ma (the oldest child), her brother Pete (our Uncle Pete), and her sister Irene (our aunt Renee pronounced re-knee).