Almadora “Emma” Iannacito was born in Louisville, Colorado in 1905, above the Track Inn tavern. The daughter of Amadore and Antonia “Anna” (DiGiacomo/James) Iannacito, her father was a native of Pagliarone, a village in the southern Italian province of Campobasso. Emma’s mother Anna was born in Como, Colorado in 1883, the daughter of Italian immigrants Mariano and Rosaria DiGiacomo.[1]
Married at eighteen, she and her husband separated in 1943. Her husband Sam Carpenter was an ambitious man who focused on success in his public affairs, and gave little attention to his family life. After their separation, Emma settled into a house at 4614 Bryant Street in north Denver where she remained a homemaker, supporting her family by washing and ironing clothes and renting out one of the two bedrooms in her home to boarders.
Emma Carpenter’s industriousness and ability to adapt was certainly handed down to her from her mother, Anna (DiGiacomo) Iannacito, who lived a very non-traditional life. Anna, a widow (her husband Amadore died the year Emma was born) and single parent of three daughters (Mary, Lucy and Emma) at a very young age, became an astute business woman, running boarding houses in several mining camps and towns in Colorado. Needing to both work and care for her children, Anna was faced with many hard decisions including sending her daughters to live with their grandparents, Rosaria and Mariano DiGiacomo, on their farm in Wellington, Colorado. In her later years, Emma Carpenter recalled fondly the time spent there and told stories of riding buckboard wagons, trading eggs for candy at the general store, walking miles on dirt roads to visit neighbors and attend school, fearlessly killing rattlesnakes, and simple days of hard work and little playtime. Even after Anna remarried and had three more children (Vernon, Virgil and Beverly Phillips), she continued to work.
Although a “simple woman” at heart, who struggled in her youth and marriage, Emma was the Carpenter family matriarch. According to her daughter Frances:
She never learned to drive a car, never drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes or dated another man before or after her marriage to Sam. She rarely left her home for more than a few hours, always preferring guests to visit her. Forever a caregiver, anyone who entered her home was soon asked “what can I give you to eat or drink” and always sent away with a plate of food for the road. Often that plate included her homemade bread and a jar of her grape jelly. Emma Carpenter’s world was filled with the joy of everyday work and familiar events. She took pride in her neat and tidy house, prepared food that was an expression of love for those who ate it and felt great joy in keeping a wonderful flower and vegetable garden as well as tending aged grape vines.[1]
Few knew it, but Emma, with only a sixth grade education, wrote poetry. These poems, which she wrote and kept for herself, were often written at her kitchen table. In 1965, Emma Carpenter wrote the following poem:
LITTLE DREAM ISLAND
My days will all be pleasant
I’ll draw pictures in the sand
My problems all forgotten
In this oh so beautiful land
I’ll talk to the birds and flowers
I’ll sing with the gentle breeze
Just wondering around a hilltop
Among mother natures trees
The stars will be my friends at night
Oh Gosh it’s a wonderful thrill
To live on my little dream island
Right next to my make believe hill
Emma Carpenter died in Denver in 1999. By: Alisa DiGiacomo
