The late Senator Edward Brooke, who was a Boston lawyer then, lived nearby and heard about Frederick. He sought him out because he needed some documents translated from German to English, and the two became friends. They had much in common as two veterans of the war, although from opposite sides. Brooke, who was African American, had been an officer in the segregated 366th Infantry Regiment. When his unit went to Italy, he fell in love with and married an Italian woman, and they had two children.5

Frederick’s career was on a far less promising course than that of his distinguished friend with political ambitions. Frederick worked all hours of the night at a bakery, which gave him very little time to socialize and acquaint himself with neighbors. The hours at the bakery were unforgiving—he had to wake up early in the morning to get the fresh bread out, and he struggled to make ends meet. It was a low-skilled job and the situation was stressful for Elinor, whose anxiety was already escalated by the passing of her mother in May 1948 of a cerebral hemorrhage.6

Gladys Farrow Powell had been very ill for years, but it was still a blow when the matriarch passed away at age fifty-two. The town of Milton mourned too; as previously noted, in her obituary Gladys was lauded for her role as a leader in the Girl Scouts. She had been the highest-ranking African American in a leadership position in the entire organization.7

With her two sisters living their own lives in different states, and both parents now gone, Elinor had to make her new family work without any of the support she had grown accustomed to having. She and Frederick had a child to raise and no money. Neither one of them had ever really known what it was like to worry about finances, because both of their families had prospered. Renting a cramped attic apartment was a frightening reality, and at some point Elinor and Frederick both realized they were on a path to poverty. They would not be able to buy their own house at the rate they were going, and given how society felt about mixed-race couples, getting a mortgage would have been extremely difficult even if they had the means.