Know Your Neighbor: Filomena Abys-Smith, Home Renovations Business Owner, Mt. Kisco

Filomena Abys-Smith wasn’t impressed with her first memory of America.

In October 1961, she and her parents crossed the Atlantic from their native Naples, Italy and docked on Manhattan’s West Side. From there, they settled into their first apartment in the South Bronx followed by 12 years at the Mott Haven projects.

“I was so disappointed. I was only six. You’re expecting to see the wild, wild west or maybe silver and gold and you don’t see that when you first come in,” Abys-Smith said. “It was kind of smelly and horrible and I was disappointed.”

Those early years were rough on her family but when Abys-Smith looks back she wouldn’t change that experience. It was all part of her initiation into becoming an American.

The Mount Kisco resident tells her story of the trials and tribulations of coming from a foreign land without knowing a word of English on her first day of first grade and growing up to realize a piece of the American Dream in a book she recently had published called “A Bit of Myself.”

“Some stories are very, very comical. Some are very, very sad, but all of them are part of the process of becoming an American, and that’s what I speak about,” Abys-Smith said.

Abys-Smith, 57, hadn’t intended to publish a book detailing her life’s story, even though the project was nearly 40 years in the making. Since the mid 1970s, the lifelong food lover had been writing down a collection of family recipes as well as stories and recollections of her own life over the years. However, some of the stories she thought were too personal for her to share.

As her children got older–she and her husband, Peter, have a 21-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter–Abys-Smith wanted to preserve the stories surrounding her family history, which she’s able to trace to Switzerland in the 1600s, for her children, and someday her grandchildren. Her husband encouraged her to take the leap into getting the memoir published.

“He said, “Fil, it’s like cooking a meal and no one’s eating it,'” said Abys-Smith, who loves gardening. “It’s just what are we going to do. You’re hoping that the kids and the grandkids will read it but there’s no guarantee of that. He said have it published. Let someone enjoy what you’re writing.”

Describing it as a rather typical immigrant family’s story, “A Bit of Myself” was published earlier this year and is available in paperback.

As difficult as it was growing up, Abys-Smith said she was grateful to live in an ethnically diverse area. All of her friends and their families were striving toward the same goal regardless of race or religion.

“We were all in the same boat rowing toward the shores of a better future,” she said. “We were all connected by the vision of reaching America. So it really didn’t matter whether you were white, black, Irish, Italian, Puerto Rican. We were all people who wanted to go toward that place, that place being America.”

Fluent in three languages (English, Spanish and her native Neapolitan), she took consumer studies, with a specialty in food and nutrition, at Lehman College after going to parochial school for 12 years.

Shortly afterward, Abys-Smith started her 21-year career as a school nutritionist in New York City’s District 11, which encompasses the Morris Park and Pelham Parkway sections of the Bronx. It is also where she met Peter, then a school custodian.

Later on, the couple moved to Yonkers where they lived for 18 years. The house they moved into Abys-Smith and her husband refurbished themselves. That project provided them the impetus to change career paths. About 14 years ago they opened the home renovations and property maintenance business Honey-Do.

Three years ago the family moved to Mount Kisco, which they saw as a centrally located community with good schools for her daughter and with easy access to shopping and the train station.

Abys-Smith has begun promoting the book. She’ll be appearing at Bradley’s Cafe in Larchmont on Sunday, May 5 and hopes to have a signing at the Italian-American Museum in Little Italy during the summer. “A Bit of Myself” is available on Amazon.com, at Barnes & Noble and on Kindle.

Despite perpetual challenges over the years, both personally and professionally, Abys-Smith is as optimistic for the future as when she and her parents set foot in America.

“I think opportunities are there,” she said. “You just have to really work for it.”