provide the nurturing and guidance to which he felt his children, particularly the girls, would respond. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Tony Ciccone needed a wife, his own emotional needs balanced by the pragmatic realities of what was best for his family and for family life.
He could not have been more wrong – at least, as far as eight-year-old Madonna was concerned. Ferociously self-absorbed and self-centered as only the young can be, in her eyes the deep, unresolved anger she felt over her mother’s death was now, at her father’s marriage, compounded by what she regarded as his callous betrayal of the love and attention she had showered upon him. Not only had he deserted her for another woman, but her new stepmother had usurped Madonna’s notional position as the ‘little lady’ of the household.
Whatever the reality, that was the truth as she saw it and she took action accordingly. Feeling, perhaps unconsciously, that if she couldn’t win her father’s attention by conforming then she would have to explore other avenues, she rapidly changed from childish coquette to ‘difficult,’ defiant daughter. As for her stepmother, Madonna viewed her from the first as the enemy, even refusing to honor her father’s wish that she should call Joan ‘Mom.’ The simmering resentment she felt towards Tony’s second wife has lasted to this day.
Within weeks of her marriage, Joan Ciccone became pregnant, giving birth to a daughter, Jennifer, in 1967, and the following year to a son, Mario. As though that were not enough, Tony Ciccone next decided that their house in Pontiac was way too small for a family that now numbered ten members. It was, he felt, time to make a break with the past, time to move from the down-at-heel, racially mixed neighborhood of Pontiac, where Madonna had happy memories of joining her black girlfriends in backyard dance sessions, to the nearby but infinitely more upscale – and exclusively white – suburb of Rochester. The family’s new home at 2036 Oklahoma Street was typical of the modest affluence of a still-sleepy country town; a two-story clapboard and red-brick Colonial-style house where today Joan Ciccone runs a children’s daycare center in a converted garage. just down the road was Saint Andrew’s, the Roman Catholic church that the family would now attend, with its own school to which the children would go, a brisk walk away for ten-year-old Madonna.
Her new classmates at Saint Andrew’s were impressed by the bright and lively youngster, a darkly pretty girl who always seemed to have a way of standing out from the crowd. The Ciccones had arrived in Rochester at the same time as the Twomey family, and ten-year-old Nick, another new student at Saint Andrew’s, immediately struck up a friendship with Madonna. He was the budding jock athlete to her flashy cheerleader, and they became childhood sweethearts, chasing each other round the schoolyard and joshing each other in class. Like her, Nick was the middle child in a large family, and so realized instinctively what made Madonna tick. As he says: ‘We were both narcissistic souls with an insatiable need to be noticed. When you are in a large family and life is busy and everyone is competing for attention you do what you have to to rise above the crowd. She is like everyone else, there is this huge gap in her soul to be loved and noticed.’ Energetic and voluble, both were seen as leaders by their classmates, Nick by virtue of his athletic prowess, Madonna because of her manner in class. ‘She was bright and always verbal,’ remembers Nick, ‘and when she had to give a report it was never just about the material – it was always about how she could say this in such a way to get her noticed or to get a laugh.’
Given her own extrovert nature, and her friendship with the equally outgoing Nick Twomey, it is perhaps surprising that one of Madonna’s best friends at that time was Ruth Dupack (now Ruth Dupack Young), a shy,
He could not have been more wrong – at least, as far as eight-year-old Madonna was concerned. Ferociously self-absorbed and self-centered as only the young can be, in her eyes the deep, unresolved anger she felt over her mother’s death was now, at her father’s marriage, compounded by what she regarded as his callous betrayal of the love and attention she had showered upon him. Not only had he deserted her for another woman, but her new stepmother had usurped Madonna’s notional position as the ‘little lady’ of the household.
Whatever the reality, that was the truth as she saw it and she took action accordingly. Feeling, perhaps unconsciously, that if she couldn’t win her father’s attention by conforming then she would have to explore other avenues, she rapidly changed from childish coquette to ‘difficult,’ defiant daughter. As for her stepmother, Madonna viewed her from the first as the enemy, even refusing to honor her father’s wish that she should call Joan ‘Mom.’ The simmering resentment she felt towards Tony’s second wife has lasted to this day.
Within weeks of her marriage, Joan Ciccone became pregnant, giving birth to a daughter, Jennifer, in 1967, and the following year to a son, Mario. As though that were not enough, Tony Ciccone next decided that their house in Pontiac was way too small for a family that now numbered ten members. It was, he felt, time to make a break with the past, time to move from the down-at-heel, racially mixed neighborhood of Pontiac, where Madonna had happy memories of joining her black girlfriends in backyard dance sessions, to the nearby but infinitely more upscale – and exclusively white – suburb of Rochester. The family’s new home at 2036 Oklahoma Street was typical of the modest affluence of a still-sleepy country town; a two-story clapboard and red-brick Colonial-style house where today Joan Ciccone runs a children’s daycare center in a converted garage. just down the road was Saint Andrew’s, the Roman Catholic church that the family would now attend, with its own school to which the children would go, a brisk walk away for ten-year-old Madonna.
Her new classmates at Saint Andrew’s were impressed by the bright and lively youngster, a darkly pretty girl who always seemed to have a way of standing out from the crowd. The Ciccones had arrived in Rochester at the same time as the Twomey family, and ten-year-old Nick, another new student at Saint Andrew’s, immediately struck up a friendship with Madonna. He was the budding jock athlete to her flashy cheerleader, and they became childhood sweethearts, chasing each other round the schoolyard and joshing each other in class. Like her, Nick was the middle child in a large family, and so realized instinctively what made Madonna tick. As he says: ‘We were both narcissistic souls with an insatiable need to be noticed. When you are in a large family and life is busy and everyone is competing for attention you do what you have to to rise above the crowd. She is like everyone else, there is this huge gap in her soul to be loved and noticed.’ Energetic and voluble, both were seen as leaders by their classmates, Nick by virtue of his athletic prowess, Madonna because of her manner in class. ‘She was bright and always verbal,’ remembers Nick, ‘and when she had to give a report it was never just about the material – it was always about how she could say this in such a way to get her noticed or to get a laugh.’
Given her own extrovert nature, and her friendship with the equally outgoing Nick Twomey, it is perhaps surprising that one of Madonna’s best friends at that time was Ruth Dupack (now Ruth Dupack Young), a shy,
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