Things About My Mother


My earliest memory is the only one I have of my mother who died shortly after this event - the last December of her life. We were attending a birthday celebration of a cousin still in a high chair. The recollection is of this high chair being to my right; my aunt leaning over the baby with birthday cake on the table. The cake was white and speckled with something colorful. My mother, I presume, stood in the background behind her sister. My grandmother was also present.

Parents with First Two Children
Christmas 1959. I'm the baby.

There is a faint memory of what the house looked like, arriving at the house, and even going into a basement for the party. All I remember is the picture of the two sisters and several small children. After discussing this memory with the lone remaining sister, she concluded this occurred in December 1962, less than two months from my fourth birthday.

Mother
Senior Picture

I was born to a woman with a weak heart, the result of rheumatic fever as a college freshman. I am the second child; my older sister is nearly four years older than me. Although she knew that her life was at risk, my mother deliberately gave birth three times despite being advised to stop after Mary Anne. That kind of courage has always impressed me and made me want to be courageous.

Photo Used in Newspaper Article about Catholic Women's Group
My mother loved ceramics. She was a devout Catholic.

With my mother’s health problems it was impossible for her to perform most of the customary motherly duties. Joe and I were very young, 2 and 3 respectively and Mary Anne was only 7. Eventually she decided to have a very risky operation to repair her mitral valve, one of the early open-heart surgeries, rather than live life in bed.

High School Debate Team
I think this is from her freshman year at Gonzaga as a member of the debate team.
It may have been from her high school days since the girls are all dressed alike.
Catholic schools often had a dress uniform everyone wore.
Unfortunately my mother was one of the early casualties of open-heart surgery as she died soon after the surgery, having never left the hospital, and my father became a widower. This was very difficult, not only because he was now alone in caring for three small children; he also had the additional burden of feeling responsible for my mother’s death because, after all, he was the father. All reports indicate that my mother was a positive influence on my father and a very loving wife and mother.

Freshman Class Photo

These years of marriage were the happiest of my father’s life, and he took her death very hard. Following her death he consulted a psychologist looking for help for himself and guidance in raising his children. The psychologist advised my father to cut off communication with his deceased wife’s family for the sake of the children, advice which he followed.

Mother's gravestone
The back of my grandparents gravestone marks my mother's burial place.

My father, a truck driver at the time of my mother’s death, struggled to care for his children. He was overwhelmed and looking for a way out. His mother lived 400 miles away and he felt that he had to exclude his dead wife’s family, the result of the meeting with the psychologist. The end result was an untenable situation with babysitters costing him every minute that he was away from home trying to support his family. 

Mother and Father Wedding Photo
April 24, 1954
Mary Anne would be born roughly 10 months later.
My father was desperate for help with his children. At a Parents Without Partners event he met Mary Moore, a widow several years older, who had an adopted son from her first marriage and was looking for someone to provide for her and her son. They  married and a new family, now consisting of four children, moved into Mary’s house in Red Lion, PA.


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