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

Amanuensis Monday: Portrait of a Woman

Benita (McGinnis) McCormick (1889 - 1984)

A local Bay Area feature story from the mid-
1970s depicts Benita (McGinnis) McCormick 
with mementos from her travels.
Clipping courtesy of Suzanne Olson Wieland.

[Note:  Amanuensis is an ancient word meaning one who performs the function of writing down or transcribing the words of another.  Derived from the Latin root manu-  , meaning manual or hand, the word also has been used as a synonym for secretary or scribe.]

A few years ago, my cousin, Suzanne Olson Wieland, sent me a newspaper clipping about her maternal grandmother (and my maternal great-aunt), Benita (McGinnis) McCormick.

The paper was most likely The San Mateo Times, a publication covering peninsula news of the San Francisco Bay Area. Based on the photograph, I would estimate the article was published in the mid-1970s.  

A transcription of the story follows here.  (The story contains one factual error; it refers erroneously to Aunt Detty's son as "George." His name was Phillip, and he went by his nickname, "Bud."

PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN

She Grabs An Idea…

Then Just Hangs On

Artist and businesswoman, Benita McCormick, zips through life with vim and vigor.  The secret of her zest is to grab hold of an idea in the same way one would grab hold of the tail of a donkey - then hang on.

It was shortly after her marriage to Phillip McCormick, a railroad executive with the Baltimore-Ohio in Chicago, that Mrs. McCormick began putting her ideas to work.  Prior to that she had been too busy studying art illustration and painting at the Art Institute in Chicago and the galleries in Paris and later, working on the Chicago movie censor board.

Mrs. McCormick’s method is to take a creative idea, hammer and chisel it into the commercial world and produce a going concern.

Shortly after her marriage she got the idea of teaching children to paint to music after seeing the moods created by violinists during the rehearsal of love scenes in Hollywood.

She rented a studio in the Astor Hotel in Milwaukee, where she was then living, and began to teach the children painting to the tunes of the Teddy Bears’ Picnic and the Clock Shop.  Her idea was so successful that the Milwaukee Art Institute copied her idea and installed an electric organ in their institute.

Her painting classes brought an acquaintance with the youngsters’ mothers and out of this grew her interior decorating business which was soon thriving.

The McCormicks returned to Chicago and became involved in raising their twins, Jane and George (sic).  What then could be more natural than for a young mother busy at home to decide to redecorate her dining room?

So Benita set to work.  She stripped the dining room of its five panels of wallpapered hunting dogs and began to paint.  She painted the room in oils showing the different fairytales that would entertain the children.

Article about Benita McCormick 

Guests coming to the house were impressed and soon she was doing scenes for other people’s homes. One painting she did for her father, of his favorite fishing haunt, added $500 to the sale of the house.

As the children grew older and became more independent Benita turned her interest towards advertising.  She got the idea of making Christmas cards that showed the different models of cars.  And she soon had more orders than she could handle.  The result was a studio business that ran for three years.

A business enterprise that started during World War II and was to last for 16 years began when Benita dreamed up the idea of a job survey.  Her idea was to call people in their homes and tell them of the job opportunities available to them.  She would then send the prospective employe her card and have them present it to the personnel office that they applied to.

It was a workers market in those years; there were hundreds of jobs available that employers were desperate to fill.  Benita took her idea to the most conservative firm in town and won them over with a contract.

At the end of 16 years of personnel work Benita decided to retire with her husband and “have some fun.”  They made their base in San Mateo and began to travel.

They went to Europe and fell in love with Spain where they stayed one year.  After a year in California they returned to Spain and toured the Near East and the Holy Land as well.

“I’m mad about Spain,” says Mrs. McCormick, “I love the people, they’re so warm and friendly.  I like Barcelona best because it has a lot of life to it.”

It was during her stay in Barcelona that Benita became interested in applying gold leaf to statues.  She found a man in Barcelona who worked in gold leaf and became his student for five hours a day for eight months.

Professor Antonio’s studio was what had once been a stable and later the carriage house of a great mansion.  It had walls one foot thick that were pocked with cannon balls, a false floor and cathedral-high ceiling.

Back in California, Benita applied her newly learned gold-leaf technique to making coats of arms.  She first became interested in shields because she thought “it was a nice thing for people to have pride in their families.”

Like all her ideas, this, too, has become an enterprising project with Benita making coats of arms for families and newly formed businesses.

And the McCormick’s coat of arms is “Without Fear.”

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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Travel Tuesday: Rebirth in the Land of Mañana

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

When a letter begins with the words, "Sit down," a big announcement is sure to follow.

That was how my great-uncle-and-aunt, Phillip and Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, learned that their daughter, Jane, had married her true love, Eldon "Ole" Olson, in a private church ceremony in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, in May of 1960.

Reading the news in their Barcelona pension, some 5,000 miles away from home, they were undoubtedly surprised, though maybe not entirely. True, it had been easier to see their son, Bud, marry and start a family, but letting go of their daughter was tougher to do.

They had to admit that she did what they would want her to do, which was to follow her heart and do things her own way.  Besides, she had tried her best to cushion the news.

Did Aunt Detty gold-leaf this small statue of
the Virgin Mary? From her collection of Spanish
Madonnas, it now sits on my dressing table. 

In characteristic fashion, Uncle Phil and Aunt Detty rose to the occasion. Swallowing their pride, they sent her and Ole their congratulations and decided to extend their stay a while longer. And being the larger-than-life couple they were, even in their 70s, their idea of "a while" turned into a year.

Spain, a place to retreat in a moment of uncertainty as they struggled to give their daughter some room to grow, became the place of their rebirth and rediscovery.

They made the rounds of the major art museums and architectural jewels, not just in Catalonia but throughout the country and became active members of the local artists' colony. Uncle Phil, already somewhat familiar with Spanish, began taking a conversational class so he could talk to people during his long walks through town.  Aunt Detty, always looking to reinvent herself artistically, signed on with a master artist to learn the art of gold leaf.

In a 1960 letter to my parents, Aunt Detty's words spill out breathlessly, and she seems to abbreviate many of them to help her fingers keep up with her rapid-fire thoughts.  Here, "g.l." stands for "gold leaf," while "E" stands for España, or Spain:

I've had 6 days of wonderful gold-leaf application.  Yesterday I g.l.  a little shelf.  Today I do the Virgin (plaster) that I helped repair & prepared for g.l. yesterday.  There is no one I know of in our country doing this gold and silver work and after we tour the rest of E, we may return here for Sept. & Oct. do do further study with this wonderful maestro - the head of the craft in Barcelona.  We work in his studio-workshop - the former stables of a castle (walled - even now, if you please) and so old that even Antonio's father, who had the place before him, doesn't know its age.

I wonder if the small statue of the Virgin Mary, shown in the picture above, is the same plaster Virgin that Aunt Detty was gold leafing?  My cousin, her granddaughter Suzanne (Olson) Wieland, gave it to me a couple of years ago, one of a collection of Madonnas Aunt Detty brought back from Spain.

Evidently, her hosts were equally fascinated by their older pupil:

Each day our lesson from 4:30 pm till 8 pm is punctuated by loud rings of the bell to admit some visitor, or client, to meet the "Americana."  [The maestro's] daughter, 14, brings her school friends and his sister-in-law came to check on me. . . . Evidently I pass muster, look harmless, and so get the welcome Española!  I love them all.

Aunt Detty and Uncle Phil were especially taken by the Spaniards' slower pace of life, their philosophy that there is always mañana - another day, and that if things don't resolve themselves right away, they will work themselves out eventually.  In the same letter to my parents, she marvels at this slower pace of life.

Joan, this is a week to the day from the start of this note.... you also know what mañana means - Mary Harlow told me that if a Spaniard says "Mañana - mañana" that really means the next day.  but life is so full here - I can understand how it takes months to get things done.  No wonder they think we do everything by "machinas" we move so much faster than they.

As with everything else they did, Phil and Benita McCormick wholeheartedly embraced the lifestyle of mañana.  Sure enough, they gradually accepted the idea of Jane's being married and lovingly welcomed their new son-in-law, Ole Olson.

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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Wedding Wednesday: Ole and Jane (McCormick) Olson

Benita Jane "Janie" (McCormick) Olson 
   (1927 - 2011)
Elson "Ole" Olson (1924 - 1994)

Secret courtyard passage, Carmel-by-the-Sea

On May 6, 1960, while 20 million television viewers watched England's Princess Margaret marry Anthony Armstrong-Jones at Westminster Abbey, Eldon Olson and Benita Jane McCormick were being married in front of two witnesses in the quaint village of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Ole and Jane, as everyone knew them, had opted for a quiet wedding ceremony on the Monterey Coast, some 100 miles south of San Francisco International Airport, where they worked for Trans World Airlines. Charmed by Ole's romantic invitation to her to spend her life seeing the world together, Jane gladly said "yes" and set off to buy herself a wedding dress.

Unlike Princess Margaret and her groom, who arrived at Westminster Cathedral in a royal horse-drawn carriage amid a grand entourage, Ole and Jane drove for nearly two hours down to Carmel in a little Volkswagen Beetle, accompanied by their friends, Jerry and Sue Williams.  It would have been a cool and clear spring day, with temperatures ranging between 50 - 64 degrees Fahrenheit. Once there, they headed into the picturesque Church of the Wayfarer at the intersection of Seventh and Lincoln Streets.

Ole and Jane (McCormick) Olson on their
wedding day, May 6, 1960, at the Church of
the Wayfarer, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Inside, Sue Williams would have helped Jane change into her wedding dress, which we see here.  In her typical good taste, it was a stylish knee-length pale blue taffeta dress cinched at the waist with a satin belt, with a full skirt and a demure broad v-neck collar adorned with a large bow and chiffon-like three-quarter length sleeves.  A small pillbox hat with a short wispy veil crowned her head. 

This snapshot shows us the happy couple just outside the church after the wedding ceremony. Jane smiles obligingly, her veil blowing lightly in the Carmel breeze.   Ole, his arm around his bride, looks at her and not the camera, standing tall and proud.

Unlike her extroverted mother, Benita, or even the British royal family, Jane was never much for fanfare. For her, getting married was all that mattered, and as long as she and Ole were together, she wanted nothing else - neither a big wedding, nor guests, nor gifts.  Even the simple gold band Ole slipped over her finger acted as both engagement and wedding ring.

A congratulatory telegram from friends of
Ole and Jane Olson in care of the Church
of the Wayfarer, notes the wedding took
place in the afternoon of May 6, 1960.

Initially, Jane might have been apprehensive about telling her parents, Benita and Phil McCormick, after the fact. Then again, they had recently flown to Barcelona, Spain, for an indefinite stay.  She saw no reason to interrupt their stay by asking them to come home for the brief ceremony. She sat down and wrote them a letter announcing the news.

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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Sentimental Sunday: Loving and Letting Go

Benita Elizabeth (McGinnis) McCormick 
   (1889 - 1984)
Phillip Columbus McCormick (1892 - 1981)
Phillip Eugene "Bud" McCormick (1927 - 2004)
Benita Jane "Janie" (McCormick) Olson 
   (1927 - 2011)
Elson "Ole" Olson (1924 - 1994)

Benita Jane McCormick, known as "Jane," circa 1960.

As happens eventually to parents everywhere, Phil and Benita McCormick must have wondered how they could have just blinked one day and looked up to find their son and daughter all grown up: living independently, working, falling in love, and starting families of their own.

Their son, Bud, married a local beauty queen named Ruth Kant sometime in the 1950s.  Bud and Ruth had a daughter, but their marriage was short-lived.  Some time after their divorce, Bud fell in love again, this time with a young woman named Barbara Bowman. They married, had five sons, and established a home in the Chicago suburbs. 

Jane went away to university in New Mexico to major in English and worked during her summer vacations as a "Harvey Girl" at the Fred Harvey Bright Angel Lodge at Grand Canyon, Arizona.  After a few years, she was offered a job as a reservations agent for Trans World Airlines (TWA) in California.  She worked for the airline in Fresno for a short time before transferring as a ticket agent to San Francisco International Airport, where she met a handsome and charming Norwegian-American TWA freight agent, Eldon "Ole" Olson.

This menu cover from Bright Angel Lodge at Grand Canyon,
Arizona, hung in Jane (McCormick) Olson's kitchen for many
years, a fond memory from her days there as a Harvey Girl.

Meanwhile, by 1959, Phil, who had retired some years before, and Benita were feeling lonesome for their daughter. They sold their home in Chicago and moved to California,  renting an apartment at The Arlington at 1401 Floribunda Avenue in Burlingame, near the airport.  It was a big move for a couple entering their 70s, but they were thrilled to be closer to Jane and looked forward to seeing her often.

A TWA gate agent offers his hand to
Jane McCormick as she disembarks
a jet on one of her many travels.

At 32 years old, she was having the time of her life, working for a major international airline during the Golden Age of air travel.  It was the same way Phil had felt during early days with the railroad in the 1920s. 

In 1960, most airports were new and clean, bright places that attracted not only business and leisure travelers but also the curious who came to see what all the fuss was about. And there sure was a lot of fuss. Large concourses displayed artistic tourism posters beckoning people to see new places. Passenger lounges offered travelers and would-be travelers enormous windows to gaze through at sleek and silvery jet airplanes that promised to take them in style to see their families, or maybe even to an exotic vacation abroad, much quicker than by rail or boat. Airline employees, usually clean-cut young men and women, wore crisp uniforms, enjoyed good pay and flight benefits, and received special training in customer service, charm, and etiquette.   

Eldon "Ole" Olson, year unknown

Passengers at the time were generally from the middle and upper classes. Decked out in smart outfits and wearing the latest hairstyles, they came to airports to see and be seen. Those traveling for pleasure were typically accompanied by large entourages of family and friends who saw them off and greeted them on their return as if they were the most important people in the world.  

No wonder, then, that Jane and Ole's courtship felt so magical, especially against this glamorous backdrop.  Ole Olson was everything Jane had dreamed of:  funny and bright, kind, attentive, and romantic.  She could not believe the similarities between him and her father.  Like Phil McCormick, Ole was fair-skinned and fair-haired and was from Minnesota. To top it off, he was a freight agent (and later supervisor of ramp services) for TWA, just as Phil had been a freight agent for the railroad.  

When asked years later about those days, Ole recalled that Jane was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.  He loved her lilting laugh, the way she looked up at him through her clear blue eyes and long dark eyelashes, and the graceful way she moved through a room.  He teased her about being sentimental, but he loved her for it, all the same.  

It gradually became clear to Benita and Phil that their little girl was falling in love with Ole Olson.  As she began spending more time with him and less time with her parents, they reluctantly had to admit that they were no longer at the center of their daughter's life.  

Sometimes love is about letting go.  As much as they understood that, Phil and Benita also  realized they would have to find something else to fill their new-found time.  So just months after arriving in California, they closed up the apartment and obtained two one-way TWA airline passes to Barcelona, Spain, to begin the next phase of their lives.

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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Wisdom Wednesday: Young for Such a Little While

Benita Jane (McCormick) Olson  (1927 - 2011)

Jane McCormick, Chicago, Illinois,
circa 1938

Of all their accomplishments, none brought greater joy to my great uncle and great aunt, Phillip and Benita (McGinnis) McCormick, than their two adopted children, Phillip Eugene and Benita Jane, known as Bud and Jane.

My mother, Joan (Schiavon) Huesca, told my sisters and me many stories about her cousins, as they lived only a few blocks from her in Chicago, Illinois. She was quite the tomboy and played mostly with her cousin Buddy.

Jane preferred to stay out of the mischief that my mother and Bud always seemed to make.  It would not be until many years later that Jane and my mother grew close as they discovered in each other common values and experiences as daughters, sisters, wives, and mothers.

At Jane's funeral in 2011, her daughter, Suzanne, shared this poem from her mother's leather scrapbook.  Jane had penned it at the tender age of 16. The Chicago Tribune had published it, no doubt making Jane's own creative mother, Benita, quite proud.

Wistful and wise, the poem is subtly humorous and self-effacing, so characteristic of Jane's personality.  It reminds me of one of her favorite childhood authors, A.A Milne, who wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh books.

When I was very young (almost a year ago)

And thought myself so awfully wise,

I'd sigh and smugly say,

"Aren't children brats?" and

"What makes them act that way?"

I saw them with unseeing eyes.

But now when little girls are lost in make-believe

And grimy boys make cops-and-robbers' sounds, I smile

Glad to hear that happy noise

And wish that I could lose myself, or climb a roof

And skin my knee, as do the boys - 

We're young for such a little while.

- Benita Jane McCormick

   Chicago, Illinois, 1944

(Gratefully published with permission from 

Jane's daughter, Suzanne Olson Wieland.)

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Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully