In 1958,when I was nine, my family moved from the Redfern City Housing Project in Queens to an apartment in an 1820 house located just a few blocks from Andrew Warde High School in Fairfield. In those days,truck farming was still a going business in Fairfield. In the summer, I used to watch the football team practice in the football field;then, I would climb the chain link fence and walk around Miro’s Farms, where long rows of corn were in front of pumpkins and lettuce and red rhododendronswere flashing in the distance.
    Past the fields ran the Black Rock Turnpike, where the Miro’s Farm store stood. The fields have long since been developed into homesites and recreational facilities, and the store has made way for a series of urban shops. Agriculture, a major industry in Fairfield for three hundred years, had finally, in my time, been swallowed up by suburbanization.
    All this was brought home to me by an online obituary tribute video to Barbara Miro, who died in 2021at age 85. Barbara was the wife of Joe Miro. Together they ran Miro’s Farmsfor over fifty years. Joe died in 2005. Joe and Barbara were two of the most popular people in our part of Fairfield. The obituary said that more than anything she was dedicated to her family and mentioned “she enjoyed gardening, jigsaw puzzles and listening to country music.” It also noted that she served as a Eucharistic Minister at Holy Family Church in Fairfield. I thought I would take a quick look at the attached tribute video but found myself totally caught up for the next forty minutes in this detailed selection of photographs of this woman’s life from childhood to old age. The fact that I knew her only casually added to my objective fascination of how this woman changed through the years. A photo of her in middle age was followed by her as a young woman, followed by a photo of her in old age. The backlight of all this, of course, is death, the organic conclusion for everyone; the foreground is life lived abundantly. I’m sure she had particular joys and sorrows, but what I took from the tribute was a basic kindness and good humor. The photos that reached out at me particularly were the ones when she was a bit older than  middle age, where the onset of the years were making inroads on the last signs of youth. She took no extraordinary efforts to hide the signs of her advancing age.
    Several photos show her with her husband, Joe, before either of them had grey in their hair. One shot has them riding a bicycle built for two. Her hair glints auburn in the sun and she is smiling. She looks about forty. Some photos show her at the same time in church, in her kitchen, with her family or friends, or working at the Miro’s Farms store. Other photos show her in her final years when her hair was white,her face was drawn, and she sometimes needed a wheelchair to get around. She is pictured smiling and wearing a sweatshirt that says, “I’m Retired: LEAVE ME ALONE”.

                                                                                                                Max H. Peters
                                                                                                                Publisher and Editor