Reality TV Came a Little Too Late for Some Who Could Have Used It

In the early 1900s, my great-grandmother became a widow. Her husband was murdered inside the shop he owned. She was left with six children to raise.

Family insisted she move back to her native Italy, but she refused. She also declined invitations from relatives in Pennsylvania to live with them. Instead, she stayed in little Campbell, Ohio, relying on her faith and her tenacity to see her and her family through.

Imagine if there had been such a thing as reality TV shows back then. Think of how much easier the road would have been for my grandmother to trod!

Certainly, reality TV producers would have been clamoring for this unique take on a mom with a large family.

The possibilities of titles alone is mind-boggling. They could have called it "Anna on Her Own," as they followed the everyday lives of a young Italian immigrant attempting to raise six children in the rough-and-tumble "new world" of early-20th-century America.

Or they could have opted for something more dramatic and gripping: "Dad's Dead. Now What?" That title alone would have grabbed a lot of viewers and ensured the show to be picked up for at least three seasons.

The key, of course, would have been to make sure that viewers weren't actually seeing everything my grandmother and her six kids went through as they struggled to make it without a husband and a dad. That would have been too much of a downer, and maybe even a little boring for viewers who themselves were living through hardships like World War I and the Great Depression.

Instead, Anna and her brood would have had the opportunity to do some really exciting stuff the other kids wearing hand-me-down clothes and worn-out shoes never imagined. They could have gone on an African Safari with Teddy Roosevelt. Young Anna might have found a pair of high heels and shown off her talents on "Dancing With the Silent Film Stars."

Then, in need of a "vacation," she and the kids would sail back to Italy in style, visiting family and friends who would gladly invite Anna, her four daughters and two sons, along with three camera men, four hair stylists, two wardrobe people and five full-time nannies into their modest hilltop home in Abruzzo. Watching the kids pant and wipe their brows as they trudged up the dirt path to the house, a donkey lugging their suitcases behind them, would have kept viewers glued and certainly helped them feel the kids' plight.

At the end of every show, though, Anna would be shown stirring polenta over a wood stove as her six children played made-up games at the kitchen table. They were, after all, an everyday family, struggling to make it through without a husband and a dad, sharing common experiences and trying their best to make each other smile.

The "real" reality, of course, is far less glamorous. Nevertheless, my great-grandmother managed to send four of her six kids to college and to live to see members of her offspring become a lawyer, a superintendent of schools, teachers and happy housewives.

You have to wonder how much easier life might have been for her and her kids had an opportunity like a reality TV show come their way. What I know about my great-grandmother, though, tells me she would have turned it down, opting to stick with her faith and her tenacity to carry her through.