Thankful Thursday: "The One"

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)
Phillip C. McCormick (1892 - 1981)

93 years ago this week, my great-Aunt Detty - Benita McGinnis - mailed a rather flirtatious, if not somewhat mysterious, penny postcard to a certain Mr. P.C. McCormick:

(Postmarked May 14, 1921)

Mr. P.C. McCormick 

#112 W. Adams St.

Chicago, Ill.

 
Dear Egg,
Just here for the night - walking up and down this yere ole alley, thinking of you.  When I'm in Chicago for a right while I'll look you up.  If you're ever in our town give me a "ring." $1.00 down bal. on delivery.                                                                                     - B. 

* * * * * * * * * *

The meaning of this postcard remains a secret between the sender and the recipient. Based on the postmark, though, Benita clearly was in Chicago, her hometown, when she wrote this.    

"Egg" was Phillip Columbus McCormick. He had, in fact already given Benita a "ring," all right.  A wedding ring.

If you've been reading this blog regularly, you already know my great-aunt Detty, or Benita McGinnis, fairly well. You've learned she was an outgoing, larger-than-life Ohio native who moved with her family to Chicago, Illinois, at the turn of the 19th/20th century, studied art there and in Paris, had her first serious relationship in Ireland that later left her with a broken heart, and was chief of the motion picture Censor Board in Chicago.

Army Sgt. Phillip Columbus McCormick
Circa 1918.  From Benita (McGinnis)
McCormick's scrapbook.

While Phillip Columbus McCormick was certainly Benita's opposite in temperament and ambition, he proved able to hold his own and then some.  Born on October 24, 1892, in Camden Township, Minnesota, he was one of eight children born to Patrick McCormick and the former Margaret Craven.   When he was about four years old, the family moved about miles away to the town of Hopkins, where Patrick McCormick was appointed postmaster.  

On June 5, 1917, two months after the United States entered World War I in Europe, Phil registered for the newly created Selective Service. At age 24, he was one of many young American men ages 21 - 31 years who did so on that very same day. He was working as a freight service agent in Saint Paul, Minnesota, for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, also known as the B & O. 

He was called up a year later and served in the United States Army for about nine months.  He never went overseas, serving most of his term in Washington State, where he worked his way up the ranks to the title of sergeant.

Upon his discharge at Christmastime in 1918, Phil returned to work for the B & O, this time as an assistant general freight manager in Chicago.  While living there, Phillip and Benita were introduced by a mutual friend named George Butcher.

"George came to see me one day," Aunt Detty told me in May 1981, just two months after Uncle Phil's death.  "He told me he'd learned there was a saint named Philip Benitius.  George thought it was a sign that his two friends - Phil and Benita - should meet."

She was skeptical at the time, not just about George's story but also about his friend.   But it turned out there really was such a saint.  "George was very anxious about this," she recalled.  "He said Phil was 'just my type,' so of course I was wary.  I remember when I finally met this fellow, he had brown eyes. I thought, 'I couldn't trust brown eyes!'"  

She decided her sister (my grandmother) Alice would like him, and arranged for them to meet.  

It turned out the entire boisterous McGinnis clan liked him, especially Tom and Janie McGinnis, Benita and Alice's parents.  Whenever he visited the McGinnis home, he was well-mannered, responsible, and respectful of both their daughters. Though from a large family himself, he was quiet and modest, the perfect complement to a family of unique and sometimes competitive individuals who were used to lively conversations around the dinner table. Tom was pleased that Phil was a fellow railroad man and a hard worker. As he had worked on the Nickel Plate Railroad in Conneaut, Ohio, some years before, he and Phil probably got along famously, comparing notes about railroad service and the changing industry. 

Benita's younger brothers Eugene and John enjoyed Phil's easygoing personality and dry sense of humor.  John especially enjoyed talking to Phil about history and his own experiences in the Great War as a cavalryman.  He became a regular visitor to the McGinnis household.

While Phil was kind to Alice, she was not particularly interested in him. On the other hand, he was especially drawn to Benita. Benita, for her part, began to pay more attention to the "man with the brown eyes," and their friendship blossomed into romance. The entire family rejoiced the day she ran into the house one evening and announced breathlessly that Phillip Columbus McCormick was "the one."

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Copyright ©  2014  Linda Huesca Tully

Born Going Up in the World

Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca 
(1928 - 1987)

1928 was a year of prosperity, hope, and bravado.

It was the middle of the Prohibition era, and Calvin Coolidge was president of the United States.  The U.S., along with 14 other countries, signed the Kellogg-Briand Pact, also known as the Pact of Paris,  a treaty that condemned war between two countries and advocated peaceful resolution of international conflicts (though some of the signers would violate it over the next decade.)

A page from my mother's baby book, showing
her arrival on July 4, 1928, at 3:40 a.m. and
her address as 6042 Stoney Island Avenue,
Chicago, Illinios.

General Douglas MacArthur, president of the American Olympic Committee, unabashedly boasted of the team's goal to "represent the greatest country on earth" and "win decisively" before his athletes swept to victory at the 1928 Summer Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Walt Disney introduced the first cartoon with sound: Steamboat Willie, starring a cheerful little dancing mouse named Mickey who went on to become the most famous rodent in the world. Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and in so doing modernized medicine and saved millions of lives.

A first class postage stamp cost two cents.  The Soviet Union exiled Leon Trotsky. Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly an airplane successfully across the Atlantic Ocean.

To me, though, the most important event of 1928 did not make the headlines.  It was the birth of my mother, Joan Joyce Schiavon.

My grandmother, Alice Gaffney (McGinnis) Schiavon, had spent July 3rd trying desperately to cool off from the hot and humid weather.  With her husband Ralph Schiavon at work downtown, Alice took their four-year-old son, Tommy, to visit her mother, Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis and maiden aunt Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney, at the old family home at 8336 Drexel Avenue.  The mercury that day hovered near 90 degrees Fahrenheit, but the humidity in the air made the air feel much hotter.  Alice, with a month to go before her second child was born, felt itchy, uncomfortable, and huge.

Playing cards under the shade tree with her mother, aunt, sister Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, and sister-in-law Edith (Hoag) McGinnis, Alice watched as Tommy played with his cousins, Jack, Phil, and Jane.  She must have been as grateful as the kids were when the ice cream man came down the street, ringing his little bell, and she probably wished her final month of pregnancy would melt away as quickly as the cool treat.

It had been a long year.  Alice's father, Thomas Eugene McGinnis, had died the year before.  As much as she missed her father, she knew her mother, who missed him even more, welcomed the distractions of her children and young grandchildren. The ice cream and the Prohibition beer Alice's intrepid brother Gene had brought offered the adults respite and refreshment.  

Afternoon faded into evening.  The kids would have practiced marching for a block parade, and the men would have joined their wives and families at Mary Jane's house after work and reminisced together over dinner about holidays past, laughing and telling silly stories.  The women would have adjusted the pins in their hair to keep the stray strands out of their faces as they did the dishes, and they would have delighted in any whisper of a breeze as their cotton dresses produced as they brushed lightly against each other in the airy kitchen, while the men would have checked the ice box to make sure it had enough ice to keep the meat, coleslaw, and potato salad cold for the next day's picnic.

The Schiavons returned home to their Hyde Park neighborhood late that evening, sharing the gossip of the afternoon and eagerly looking forward to the next day. If Alice was starting to feel a combination of giddiness and fatigue, she probably dismissed it as simply anticipation of the Independence Day festivities all of Chicago would celebrate the next day.

The weather, in typical Chicago fashion, had hovered near 90 degrees Fahrenheit that Tuesday, but overnight it abruptly turned into a driving rainstorm.  Perhaps the thunder and lightning were nature's way of ushering in Independence Day with the appropriate fanfare.

During the early hours of Wednesday, July 4th, Alice Schiavon went into labor.  Whether she didn't take the signs seriously at first, thought she had plenty of time, or was waiting for the storm to clear, we will never know. Finally, she called her brother John to take her to the hospital while Ralph stayed home with their son.  Kissing her husband and her sleeping son, she climbed awkwardly into John's large sedan.

John McGinnis was thrilled that his soon-to-be godchild would be born on the Fourth of July.  Resolving to give the new baby a proper welcome to the world, he decided against taking the 10 block direct path to Woodlawn Hospital and opted instead to drive a circuitous route through some of the lovelier winding lanes of the city.  Never mind that the poor visibility of darkness and pounding rain interfered with the view!  In typical McGinnis fashion, brother and sister belted out old Irish ditties and  cracked outlandish jokes, seemingly oblivious to why they were out and about at three o'clock in the morning in a heavy electrical storm.  They barely made it to the hospital.

Reality kicked in as John pulled up to the emergency entrance to Woodlawn.  By now, Alice was  breathless from her advanced labor.  It must have been a confusing and chaotic arrival as John and the nurses struggled to help the young mother out of the rain and into the hospital. Thankfully, Doctor Thomas Doyle, the family physician, was already there to greet them.

Alice had barely settled down from her wild ride when things began happening much faster than they had four years ago when Tom was born. As the situation escalated and the nurses realized they had to move quickly, they shooed John away, eased his 30-year-old sister onto a portable bed and wheeled her into an elevator.

Mothers know that when it comes to their offspring, things seldom go according to plan and even babies have minds of their own.  And so it went with Alice.  She never made it to the delivery room but delivered a healthy baby girl right there in the elevator. It was 3:40 in the morning when little Joan Joyce Schiavon made her dramatic entrance into the world and into the hearts of her family.

Years later, my mother would say she was born "going up in the world."

Copyright ©  2012  Linda Huesca Tully


Did you know Ralph and Alice (McGinnis) Schiavon and their children Joan and Tom, or are you a member of the Gaffney, McGinnis, or Schiavon/Schiavone families?  If so, share your memories and comments below.