SALAMANCA — Marie Pavia, a retired nurse who lived in the same house in Salamanca for 60 years, is settling into an apartment in Hillview Manor. But, unlike her last move, this time she didn’t have to take the whole house with her.
When construction began in the early 1970s on the Southern Tier Expressway, the Pavia home at the end of Summit Street was in the way. Rather than demolish the structure, Marie and her husband, the now late Jim Pavia, decided to move their house to a new location on a double lot on Fillmore Avenue.
In 1971, a construction crews did just that.
“They moved it just the way it was — with everything in it and without breaking anything,” said 85-year-old Marie. “They didn’t even knock over a vase of flowers I had on the television set by the window. The best thing was that we got a new basement.”
Marie grew up on Buffalo’s east side and remembers going to the Broadway Market every Saturday. Chickens were sold live and a person would have to kill and clean the bird themselves when they got home.
“If I had to do that, I wouldn’t be able to eat it,” Marie said.
Marie’s mother died when she was 10 years old and her father died six years later. Marie’s three older brothers took care of her after that.
“There was $1,000 left and my brothers gave it to me to go to nursing school at Edward J. Meyer Memorial for three years and a year at the University at Buffalo,” she said. Afterward, she trained in Sidney in central New York with a public health nurse before spending another year at Syracuse University.
Marie went to work in Salamanca for Dr. Gardner.
“My job was to visit pregnant mothers once a month to give them parenting lessons,” Marie said.
A Dr. Godfree, an orthopedic specialist for the Buffalo Bills, visited once a month to work with people in the clinic.
“I’d visit people afterward to check on them. Dr. Godfree liked this rural area too,” Marie said.
The Pavias were married in 1955 and had four children: Mark, Cindy, Rosemary and Maureen. All four children live in different states now. Marie also has five grandchildren. Jim owned several gas stations and an auto supply store in Salamanca.
Marie went to work at St. Patrick’s School as a substitute teacher for Anita Keenan and then as a sixth grade teacher herself.
She taught practical nursing at BOCES and, while there, got her bachelor’s degree.
“I enjoyed teaching,” she said.
A former nursing student, Margo Washburn, is now a neighbor at Hillview Manor.
In retirement, Marie enjoys walking and reading and attending daily mass at Our Lady of Peace with her friends, the Visotskis. She enjoys going to the Salamanca Area Senior Center.
Marie said that her advice to newly retired people is to go out west and see all of the National Parks.
“That’s what we did, in a pop-up camper,” she said. Most winters the couple went to Florida.
Marie has been on several Elderhostel trips to Chautauqua, Poland and England. Lately she confines her travel to visit with her children in Boston, Mass; Erie, Pa.; Detroit, Mich.; and Phoenix, Ariz.
“I’d love to go to Phoenix one time while the cactus are blooming,” she said.
This is Marie’s second winter in Salamanca since retirement.
“I can hear my poor car crying out in the parking lot because it’s so cold. We always kept it in the garage,” she said.
Marie enjoys living at Hillview Manor and said she will be even happier when she learns everyone’s names.
“When we had the spaghetti dinner last week, I was wishing everyone had on name tags,” she laughed.
One suspects that if she thinks of her new neighbors as patients or students, she won’t have any trouble at all.
(Contact lifestyles editor Amanda Grabowski at salpresslife@gmail.com.)
