Sentimental Sunday: Sailing New Worlds Together

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip Columbus McCormick  (1892 - 1981)

Not until the early 1980s did time finally begin to catch up with the couple who had deftly evaded its reach their whole lives.
 

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick gazes lovingly at an oil portrait by
artist Mary Rowley of her husband, Philip McCormick, on their 50th
wedding anniversary, at their San Mateo home, 1971.
(Photo courtesy of Suzanne Wieland)

My Great-Uncle Phillip McCormick slowed down considerably after suffered a pair of strokes in 1980, as he was turning 88. Aunt Detty, three years his senior, walked a bit slower by then, but she was still sharp of mind and memory and did her best to help Phil regain his speech and his own memory.  For some time, he was laid up in a hospital bed in the McCormick's study, where a physical therapist visited him regularly.

Aunt Detty was devoted to Uncle Phil in those final months.  She would sit next to him, often bringing visitors into the room so they, too, could stimulate him with fresh faces and voices. Remembering tales of days gone by, she often stopped in mid-sentence to ask him a name or a detail, as if she could not remember it herself. 

When he could not recall a word or a name or a date, she would gently give him a hint or a wink, never prodding but encouraging him to surface the memory from the recesses of his mind.  She was not about to give up on him.  As with any long-time married couple, their life had not been without its ups and downs.  Now, in the midst of their greatest challenge, they would weather the storm together.

A sailor's daughter and herself a life-long adventurer, she knew what it was like to navigate rough waters. Moreover, like any long-time married couple, she and Phil  Some years before, she had, in fact, done an oil painting of two men in a small fishing boat, holding steady through rocky seas. Now she steered the course for both Phil and herself with unwavering determination and resolve. 

"Through the Storm," by Benita McCormick.
Date unknown, probably 1960s or 70s.

After some difficult weeks, Uncle Phil slowly began learning to talk again, but it was too slow for his liking, and not longer after that he suffered a couple of setbacks.  Noticing his frustration,  Aunt Detty would squeeze his hand or pat him reassuringly on the shoulder, leaning over to kiss him tenderly. The adoring way he gazed back at her through his blue eyes when the words would not come spoke volumes more than anything he could have said.

It was hard for the family to say our final goodbyes to him.  I remember my Aunt Jane, Phil and Benita's daughter, calling on March 24, 1980, to give me the sad news that he had died.  

Everyone worried about Aunt Detty.  When you have spent 60 years of your life with someone, losing them must be like losing a part of your body. She tried to be philosophical about it and used to talk about their being together again someday when she got to Heaven.  She was 92 by then and still living on her own.  She did her best to keep active, receiving visitors and reading and responding to condolences from friends and family far and wide.  But the nights were the hardest, after everyone had gone home.

In a letter to me in the summer of 1981, a few months after Uncle Phil's death, she wrote,

I am very slow in answering all the wonderful folks who told us they loved us with their many kindnesses and prayers.  But they were a prodigious group and only now am I working my way through the pile of mail before me.

More mail comes daily from those who have just heard about Phil.  Thank you for your great comfort and love during my ordeal.  

I feel more like myself now, though the arthritis is still very tough - no new medicine seems to reach it.

But...I shall carry on, eh?

                                                           Aunt Detty

Carry on she did, busying herself with her projects, old and new.  One of them was selling bee pollen by mail order. She was convinced of its health benefits and saw herself as a pioneer in the nutritional supplement field, predicting (with great accuracy, it turned out) that its popularity would grow. Even after moving in with Jane and her family in San Carlos, she sent samples of bee pollen to grocery and drug stores, sports groups, even to major league sports team training camps:  the San Francisco Giants in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the San Francisco Forty-Niners in Redwood City.

Unfortunately, bee pollen could do only so much to stave off the ravages of old age, and Aunt Detty grew increasingly frail. She could hardly walk anymore, and Aunt Jane, Uncle Ole, and their daughter Suzanne took turns pushing her wheelchair and helping her with her daily routine.  

She was a guest of honor at our wedding in the summer of 1984.  As delicate as she looked by that then, her triumphant face showed her pride at witnessing the day as we walked down the aisle past her.  You would have thought she had orchestrated the whole thing.  She loved my husband - "I'm just mad about him, Linda.  What a dreamboat!" she had written to me after meeting him a year earlier.  

Five months after our wedding, Aunt Detty fell at Jane's home.  The fall precipitated her decline rather quickly, though today I can't remember the particulars; maybe because it was too painful to think about at the time.  When we heard the news, my husband and I had just returned home from a trip to Mexico City, and I was only too grateful to have the chance to go to the hospital to say one last goodbye. She drifted in and out of consciousness and died peacefully a few days after Thanksgiving, on November 26, 1984.  

She was 95 years young.

Of course, being Aunt Detty, it was only fitting that she would have the final word. And so it was that her funeral, after all the eulogies and laughter and tears, we listened to the reading of a poem she had written around the time she and her beloved Phil had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  

I would like to think of it not as her farewell, but rather as a love letter to Phil and an au revoir to all of us. 

Voyage for Two

When I have finished all my earthly tasks

And said my last goodbye to those I love, 

And settled my cold bones in that warm earth

My venturous spirit then will want to rove

And bidding me to follow she will race

To that dark harbor where the strange ships wait

And we shall steal abroad like ghostly mice

And hide in shrouds until she clears the gate

And I shall know the ecstasy I've sought

In waves of beauty promised by fair isles

With color far surpassing all my dreams

Enough to meet the distance of their miles.

All exotic places hall be mine;

Those I have known, and those I fan would woo

But Darling, that is when I'll know the truth.

I just won't want to seek them without you.

So we shall wait unseen, my sprite and I,

In some sweet spot, bright as a wild bird's feather

Until you hear the call and find us there

And you and I shall sail new worlds together.

- Benita McCormick, 1971

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Copyright ©  2016  Linda Huesca Tully 

Friday's Faces from the Past: Pictures of a Golden Day

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip Columbus McCormick  (1892 - 1981)

One balmy Sunday afternoon in October of 1971 on the San Francisco Peninsula, some 2,149 miles and 18,262 sunrises from where they first pledged their love for each other as husband and wife, Phil and Benita McCormick strode confidently into church, arms linked and faces beaming, ready to begin their second half century together.

Re-enacting a photograph taken as newlyweds, Phillip and Benita

McCormick pose on the balcony of their San Mateo apartment

on their 50th wedding anniversary, October 7, 1971.

Some 30 relatives and friends gathered at Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Burlingame, California, to witness the McCormicks renew their wedding vows.  

The McCormick Family, left to right (first row): Phillip E. "Bud"

McCormick; Jane (McCormick) and Suzanne Olson, their

daughter; and Benita (McGinnis) and Phillip C. McCormick.

 Golden Jubilee Mass for Phil and Benita, October 7, 1971, 

Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic Church, Burlingame, California.

Among those in attendance were Phil and Benita's daughter Jane with her husband Eldon "Ole" Olson and their daughter Suzanne; their son Phillip "Bud," who flew out from Chicago with childhood buddy and family friend Jack O'Brien; Phil's cousin Maurice McCormick, his wife, Dorothy (Sillers) McCormick and their sons, Maurice "Mickey" and Kieran; and my parents, sisters, and me.  Kieran and Mickey McCormick, both Catholic priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, concelebrated the Golden Jubilee Mass. 

 

Phil and Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, flanked by cousins,
Fathers Kieran (left) and Maurice "Mickey" McCormick,
exit Saint Catherine of Siena Church.
Burlingame, California, October 7, 1971.

An early dinner reception followed at The Castaways, a Polynesian themed restaurant on Coyote Point at the edge of the San Francisco Bay. 

The evening was filled with story-telling, song, good-humored jokes, plenty of Irish blarney, and "more laughter than you could shake a stick at," to quote a saying of the day. 

The restaurant has since closed, but fond memories remain of a close-knit family and the beloved couple who enriched not only their lives but the lives of so many others through their charismatic and vibrant ways.  

Author's Note:  All the photographs on this page courtesy of my cousin, Suzanne (Olson) Wieland.  They are reprinted here with loving gratitude.  LHT

Jane (McCormick) Olson and her cousin,
Father Kieran McCormick, at the reception for
her parents.  October 7, 1971, The Castaways
Restaurant, Coyote Point, San Mateo, California.

Phil and Benita McCormick pose outside the Castaways
Restaurant on Coyote Point, San Mateo, California.

One of my sisters with my father, Gilbert Huesca. October 7, 1971,
The Castaways Restaurant on Coyote Point, San Mateo, California.

My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca with my youngest sister and me
at the reception for Aunt Detty and Uncle Phil, October 7, 1971.

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Copyright ©  2016  Linda Huesca Tully

Sentimental Sunday: Letters, Light, and Love

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick.  Oil portrait
by artist Mary Rowley.  As seen hanging on the
living room wall in daughter Jane McCormick
Olson's living room, 2011.

When I was a freshman in college in 1974, my Great-Aunt Detty heard I was looking for a summer job and thought she could help.  She wrote to me to share a lead and some encouragement.

Dearest Slimmest Niece Linda,

I told Janie tonight that you're having difficulty finding a job. She wants you to know that Sears is really looking for salespeople who will work during summer and take a part time job during school year.  The pay to start is $2.30 per hour. She says you must say you'll work P.T. while in college. Of course if you can't really fulfill your promise you still have had a summer job and the work experience you need. She also said the catalogue dept. (that's where she works) is very pleasant, too. Same pay to start. . .

In the same letter, she fondly remembered my first cousin, Paul Schiavon, who had recently visited her while stationed in California with the United States Navy:

O yes, tell Paul I wrote a very praiseworthy note about him to his Mom and Dad last night.  Thought they'd like to know how much we all love him.    Love to the Huescas -

                                    Aunt Detty and Unk Pill*

As luck had it, I found a part time job shortly after that, though not at Sears. What I really wanted, though, was to work for the airlines, where I could practice the foreign languages I spoke and have the opportunity to see the world like my aunt and uncle had.  Nearly a year later, my dream came true when American Airlines hired me as a temporary reservations agent in downtown San Francisco.

Aunt Detty, now in her eighties, was ecstatic that I was working for a major airline, but she worried that my temporary status and zero seniority made me more likely to be laid off.  In her proactive  and creative way, she made up her mind to help my chances of staying on by writing a couple of glowing letters of commendation to the company on my behalf.  Working for a company that valued customer service, I cannot help but think her letters might have helped save my job during that uncertain time.

One morning as I arrived at work, my supervisor handed me an inter-office envelope.  Inside were two letters, the first from the department chief.

Congratulations, Linda!  I think you should be very proud of this letter.  Mrs. Cormick (sic) wrote to express her appreciation and to commend you for the excellent service you have given her brother-in-law. 

I also wish to add my thanks for a job obviously well done.

                                                                  Carolyn David

                                                                            Manager, Reservations

Behind the manager's commendation was a photocopied letter in familiar handwriting.  It was impressive, though a bit over the top. 

This commendation letter from my aunt to
American Airlines,  probably helped me from
being laid off in 1976, when the airline had to
cut some of its recent hires. 

                                                                   January 29, 1976 

Miss Carolyn David, Res. Mgr:

Dear Miss David, 

It is a pleasure to be able to write you this letter about one of your employees.

The other day I learned of the great comfort and consideration given a relative of mine (who speaks little English) by Miss Linda Huesca.  Not only did she speak Spanish fluently, but apparently she went out of her way to make my brother-in-law feel safely headed on his way home.  I believe she even met him at the airport and put him on the plane.  We all appreciate this so much, as the family were not able to be with him that day, and he is elderly. 

Will you please thank Miss Huesca for us?  She must be a great asset to your organization.

                                                        Sincerely,                                                                                                       

                                    (Mrs. Phillip C.) Benita McCormick 

P.S.  Our brother tells us that in addition to being so helpful the young lady is very attractive. 

It was all I could do to keep a straight face in front of my supervisor. Deep down I was grateful my aunt loved me enough to write such a nice, though a bit exaggerated, letter.  When the layoffs eventually came, I was spared, and I worked for American for several years afterward.  "Well, maybe you didn't need them," she said one night when the letters came up in conversation, "but they didn't hurt, did they?"

On Wednesday nights I would drive up to San Mateo to visit my aunt and uncle, and before I got there I would stop at a drugstore next to the apartment complex to pick up some flowers and the usual treats - a bottle of Mateus Rosé and a pink tin of peanut brittle. They were all I could afford on my part time salary, but you would have thought I was bringing champagne and caviar. Uncle Phil loved the peanut brittle, and Aunt Detty would have three wine glasses ready, and we would spend the evening talking and laughing until it was time to go home.

One winter evening as I was paying for my gifts, a powerful storm knocked out the power in the neighborhood.  I had to wait for someone to let me into the apartment building because the doorbell and electronic buzzer did not work.

Uncle Phil had gone to bed early, but Aunt Detty was reclining in her chair as she waited for me, her eyes bright and face aglow in the candlelit living room.  She looked like a young girl ready for adventure.  As we could not cook dinner that night, we ate peanut butter and celery for dinner and washed it down with my cheap red wine.  As the hours passed and our stories grew more outlandish, that wine tasted better with every sip.

She loaned me one of her nightgowns, and we curled up on the couch under a warm blanket.  Our candlelit shadows danced on the ceiling as the rain pounded the windows and the lightning crackled in the distance. Aunt Detty's daughter Jane called from nearby San Carlos to make sure we were all right.  She sounded relieved, if not a bit wistful, when we reassured her gaily that all was well.

Eventually the electricity was restored.  We watched out the window as the apartments in the surrounding buildings came alive with white light.  Giggling like children, we turned the lamps off around us and kept the candles going.  We did not want the magic to end.  

* Our nickname for Uncle Phil McCormick.

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Copyright ©  2016  Linda Huesca Tully