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.

************

Copyright ©  2015  Linda Huesca Tully

Remembering Mary Jane and Elizabeth Gaffney

Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca 

1928 - 1987

In her own words  (Part Two)        

On June 24, 1987, a couple of months before she died of lung cancer, my mother, Joan Joyce (Schiavon) Huesca began writing the story of her life.  In this excerpt from her book, Joan Joyce Schiavon Huesca:  an Autobiography, she tells readers how she came to live with her grandmother, Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis and her great-aunt (and Mary Jane's younger sister), Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney, during the Great Depression:

"The years of the Depression were upon us, though I really wasn't aware of it, at the time.  My Father lost his job as a Supervisor with the Internal Revenue Service when the Roosevelt Regime came into Presidential office, and since my parents didn't have any other income, I was sent to live with my Grandmother, Mary Jane McGinnis and my Great Aunt 'Aunt Lyle,' Elizabeth Gaffney, and my 'Uncle Gene,' Francis Eugene McGinnis (my Mother's brother).  Grandma had a small pension from the city, so we were sure of enough to eat.

Mary Jane (Gaffney) McGinnis,
about 1935, Chicago, Illinois

"I really don't have much memory of my parents during those years, and only remember one time when they came all dressed up for some occasion or other to my Grandmother's house.  We lived on the second floor of a 'two flat' building owned by my 'Aunt Detty,' Benita Elizabeth McCormick (my Mother's Sister), and her husband, my 'Uncle Phil,' Phillip C. McCormick.  My cousins, Benita Jane (Janie) and Phillip (Buddy) were their children and lived just below us.

"Grandma and Aunt Lyle were the dearest, most loving people I have ever met in my lifetime.  My life was full of their Irish humor, blarney, and love, even complete with little Irish ditties:

'Saint Patrick was born at four in the morning,

His Mither and Fither were there at the time.'

"My earliest memories with Grandma and Aunt Lyle were of so much love.  They were wonderful to me.  What can I tell you about Aunt Lyle?  She was always smiling (I heard that she had quite a taste for liquor).  But, though I guess I have to be truthful and say she was fat, she had the softest lap in the world. I've been told that I was her favorite.  (Lucky me.)  Another early memory was the beautiful little coat she made for me.  It was a light salmon pink velvet, trimmed in ermine balls.  Aunt Lyle had been a Milliner, and was famous for the beautiful hats she made.  I understand she used to design a special baby bonnet for the babies in the Henry Ford family.  I never saw a million dollars, but I did have a lot of those bonnets, too, along with many hand-smocked little baby dresses that the Fords didn't have.

My mother, Joan Schiavon (far left), with her cousins, Benita Jane "Janie" and Phillip "Bud" McCormick,
about 1931, Chicago, Illinois

I guess that Grandma McGinnis was the example of what I always had hoped I would be like.  Grandpa [Thomas Eugene] McGinnis died a year before I was born, but always it seemed to me that Grandma had lived just for him, loving him completely.   (I, too, have been blessed with the dearest Husband ever, so it seems my prayers had been answered in that respect.)  Grandma had the bluest eyes.  How well I remember them, they were always full of love.  Two days a week were 'baking days,' and Grandma would produce all kinds of delicious pies, cakes, and bread.  

Elizabeth Gaffney (1862 - 1934)
The back of this photograph reads "Pin-Lock
Medal, Chicago" and is dated
May 31, 1898.

There was always extra dough, most of the extra would be made into 'little pies,' little triangles with either cinnamon and sugar inside, or 'leftover' apple slices from the bigger pies.  The 'little pies' were just for me.  I can remember sitting at the kitchen table for hours, my nose barely reaching the top, rolling a little ball of dough (sort of smudged looking, 'cause my hands weren't always as clean as they should have been), and when Grandma would turn her back, I'd pop the whole thing into my mouth.

Our house was always full of delicious aromas of baked goods, and some of this must have wafted out of doors, as there always seemed to be a stream of people at our back door, especially when Grandma had been baking. People were desperately hungry, and they seemed to know that there would always be something for them at Grandma's.  I didn't mind all the people who came around, as to this day, I love to have company.  I do remember one 'visitor' especially.  A gentleman, who seemed quite poor, but was different from all the others, as he came around to sell things such as aprons, pins, needles, pot holders, etc.  Grandma always asked him in, sat him down for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie, and as many times as she could, would buy something.  In later years, this same man, whose name was Morris B. Sachs, became quite wealthy, owned a large department store in Chicago, and finally, became the Treasurer of the City of Chicago.

Elizabeth "Lyle" Gaffney's millinery shop, early 1900s,
either Conneaut or Cleveland, Ohio.  She also made
hats for Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's teacher and
was the chief milliner for Marshall Fields 
Department Store in Chicago.

"Sleeping with Grandma would be the happy time of the day for me.  Grandma wouldn't let me get up as early as she, so I would lie there under her big quilted comforter, and play imaginary games on the stitching on the comforter, imagining that I was traveling roads to heaven knows where.

"Those were days of imagination, and our toys were mainly very small things, for no one could afford to buy much in the way of toys.  I would play for hours with local politicians' business cards, standing them up along the window sill, and pretending that I was their teacher, and they my pupils. . . . Memories such as these seem to live on with one through their lifetime."

                                                                                      - Joan Huesca