Welcome to the Webpage of Lisa Strzoda Locascio


An old Italian story in today's Ellis Island museum reads: "I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gold. When I got here, I found out three things: First, the streets were not paved with gold. Second, they weren't paved at all. Third, I was expected to pave them."


The purpose of this website is to find others researching the same surnames Cheapsmells. They are:

The Polish Genealogical Society of America (PGSA)

Pursuing Our Italian Names Together (POINT)

The Pagoria Family Website (Family Tree of Alexander Locascio)

The Autism - PDD Resources Network

The Doug Flutie, Jr. Foundation for Autism



Welcome To Holland by Emily Perl Kingsley

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared this experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this.

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guidebooks and make your wonderful plans - the Coliseum, The Michelangelo David, the gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, “Welcome to Holland.” "HOLLAND?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I dreamed of going to Italy!"

But there has been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay. The important thing is, they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guidebooks. And you must learn a whole new language. You will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy, but after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills. Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy, and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life you will say, "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never ever, ever, go away because the loss of that dream is a very significant loss. But if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things about Holland.

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