Jump To: Family Background Youth Transitions & California
A Banker & A Woodsman The
Bachelor Marriage & Kids Conclusion
This
memoir of our father is
done as an addition to other work on the family histories, but especially for
the generation of Pat McAnany's grandchildren who never had a chance to know
him. It is our view of a man who died way too early for even his children to
know him well. It will piece
together details his children remember and things we learned from others,
especially older cousins, who knew him longer than we did, as well as from
documents we've come across over the years.
It
starts with a bit of history leading up to Dad's birth in Shawnee, Kansas, and
then tells his story chronologically from his early days to his death on May
26, 1943. He lies buried in St. Joseph's Cemetery not more than a mile from
where he was born 59 years before.
The
Irish Journey: From the "Old Sod" to Sod Busting in America
Dad's
family was Irish on both sides. The McAnanys were from an old church- related
family in County Monaghan in Ulster. The Mansfields were descendants from
Norman Irish stock in County Tipperary in Munster in the Southwest. Both
families were flotsam in the wake of the Great Hunger, the Irish potato famine
of 1845-51. The McAnanys came in three groups: 1849 (Ann McAnany Murphy and her husband,
Catherine, Nicholas, Mary and Patrick
McAnany, and Michael and Dennis Murphy); 1850 (Rose and Philip) and 1851
(Ann). The Mansfields seem to have come in 1847. Both families landed in New
York City, along with hundreds of thousands of their fellow Irish.
Richard Mansfield married
The
McAnanys traveled under the name Murphy when the main party of eight landed on
May 2, 1849 in New York. That was because Ann Jennings McAnany had remarried to
John Murphy after Dad's Grandfather, Philip
McAnany, died in Inniskeen about 1843. The Murphy-McAnanys set out for the west just months after
Richard and Mary Mansfield went west themselves. Their route was undoubtedly by
boat up the Hudson to Albany, across the Erie Canal to Buffalo, on Lake Erie,
then by boat to Chicago and by barge down the Illinois-Michigan Canal to Peru,
Illinois where they went north to Amboy in Lee County by ox cart. The Murphys
bought a farm west of town and settled down to sod busting.
Dad's
father Patrick left home and wandered the country between about 1855 and 1861
when he joined the Union Army. He spent the last years before the Civil War in
Johnson County where the Native American Shawnee tribe were located, and worked
for David Daugherty who was married to a Shawnee woman. He knew the Shawnee language well and
later served as an interpreter on occasion. After service in the War, first as
an infantryman (wounded at Wilson's Creek in 1861) and then with the Military
Telegraph Service, he returned to Kansas City where he met and married Helen
Mansfield on October 18, 1869.
|
Patrick McAnany &
Helen Masfield McAnany in 1919 |
Life
in the Country: In The Shadow of the Shawnee
Dad's
family of eleven children was divided between the City Kids and the Country
Kids. The first five were born in Kansas City, Missouri: Edwin (1871); Philip
(1872); Paul (1875); Mary (1877-1880); and May (1880). The last six in Shawnee,
Kansas: Rose (1881); Richard (1882); Pat
(1884); Helen (1886); George (1888); and Robert (1894). Granddad bought
137 acres and an old house in Shawnee in June, 1877 with a friend James
Fincane. The land and house belonged to Frederick Chouteau, the old St. Louis
fur trader who worked the Kansas area. He had married a Shawnee Indian woman,
daughter of the prominent chief Blue Jacket. The farm was known as Blue
Jacket's farm. The house came to be called "the Groves" when the
McAnanys occupied it. The McAnanys moved to the country about 1880. There is an
old picture showing the family gathered on the front porches, upper and lower,
about this date, with Ed on horseback and Rose being held as a baby in arms by
a servant.
|
The Groves in about 1880 |
The
Groves included several Shawnee tribal sites that would have reminded
grandfather of his days with the Indians: the Council House; the Spring; and a
buffalo wallow. Most of the 137 acres were farmed, but a virgin forest of
walnuts, oaks and hickories occupied the eastern 30 acres, containing the
spring. Grandfather continued to work in the city after his move to Shawnee,
but by this time he was running a grocery business under the title of McLean
and McAnany in Kansas City, Kansas. He and his sons worked the ground as
farmers from 1880 until his death in 1920. Uncle Bob farmed it after that until
the land was developed into McAnany Estates in the 1950s and 1960s.
The
town of Shawnee was already something of a border area--we call them suburbs
today--when Dad was growing up. His father was an example of a man who worked
in the city but preferred the country to live. He drove a buggy, but there were
interurban streetcars by the early part of the new century, as well as
automobiles a decade later. If you stand on the rise just east of Uncle Bob's
house on Nieman and old Military Road (Keating Drive), you can see the tall
buildings of Kansas City, Missouri in the distance (12 miles). Thus, the
McAnanys, including Dad, grew up with feet in both the world of the city and
the country. But the immediate surroundings of the Groves were redolent with
its Native American past.
Besides
his Indian connections, Grandfather met and knew many of the famous men who
moved west through Westport Landing, as Kansas City was known in its early
days. Not doubt the children were familiar with the history their father helped
to shape from the pre War days down through the creation of the modern Kansas
Cities. Dad was particularly influenced by this history as we see from his later
love of western fiction, his fondness of the out-of-doors, and his orientation
to the West generally.
Dad's
brothers and sisters were educated at St. Joseph' school in Shawnee and both
Uncle Ed and the younger ones were sent to Atchison, Kansas for further
training by the Benedictine fathers and sisters at St. Benedict's and the Mount
(Mt. St. Scholastica's). Dad would have attended St. Benedict's around the
years 1896-1904. The classes were very roughly divided between the younger boys
who were in grade school and the older students who were in "college."
That term was applied to what we call high school today, but about the time Dad
was there, it began to change to include college courses in today's sense of
the term. There were two college curricula, the classica,l which took four or
five years, and the commercial, which took three to four. Since St. Benedict's
was also a seminary that educated both aspirants to the Benedictine Order as
well as some diocesan clergy, the classical courses of modern language
(German), Latin, Greek and philosophy were stressed. Most of the boarding
students took the classical course since it qualified them for professional
schools, such as law and medicine.
|
St. Benedict's,
Atchison, KS in about 1890 |
Dad
would have been among about 160 students, most boarding in the one building. To
give you a sense of the level of comfort, an old Irish brother remarked, as a
final triumph in his long life at St. Benedict's, that in 1907 he had not seen
a single bed bug in the student dorms. The regimen was stiff: arise at 5:30;
wash and go to Mass and morning prayer; 7-12 devoted to classes;12-1:30 dinner
and recreation; 1:30-4 study and more classes; 4-5 free time; 5-6 study; 6-7:30
supper and recreation; 7:30-8:30 study; night prayers and to bed by nine. While
this schedule was relaxed a bit by Dad's time at the College, it was still the
basic routine.
Visitors
were not encouraged for most of the year; and vacations during the school year
were short. The monks spoke German
for the most part, though by the time Dad got there, English was prevailing.
Uncle Ed had graduated and Dad was followed by Nell (at the Mount) and George
and Robert. Nell probably went early, in grade school, so Dad may have gone
earlier as well. Being the oldest of the four younger McAnanys in Atchison, Dad
no doubt was the contact between the family and the schools. He probably had
some of his Sweeney cousins from the Mansfield side at Atchison about the same
time.
Dad,
like others of his time, was impressed with the religious atmosphere of the
College. He had remarked, according to Mom, that if she died and the children
were taken care of, he would become a Benedictine brother (was he joking?). His
several prayer books from this time indicate a strong faith that he carried
through the rest of his life. The Benedictines competed with other Catholic
colleges for students from the very beginning. The Jesuits were the nearest and
strongest competitors with colleges at St. Mary's, Kansas, Omaha, and Kansas
City. The next generation of
McAnany men tended to forsake the Benedictines for the Jesuits. The
women stayed with the Benedictine sisters and the Mount through the
grandchildren.
Transition
1905-1910: Wanderings and the California Idyll
Dad
probably left St. Benedict's no later than 1904-05, perhaps earlier. He would
have had time to complete five or six years beyond elementary school. He may
have been slowed down by a fever, then identified as malaria but probably
rheumatic, which laid him up for three months at age 11 in 1895. It was the
later cause of his chronic heart trouble. His mother inquired about his health
often in her letters to him, especially about cold weather and its effects.
Between his leaving college and starting to work at the Union Mortgage and
Investment Company in about 1910, he appeared to reflect the usual hesitant
transition from school to occupation. From his letters of this period, he tried
his hand at "business" in various capacities. Several letters from
Oklahoma City in early 1907 indicate he was in "collections and
sales." But as frequently, he was looking for work and probably did all
sorts of "temp work" (as we would call it now), whether for
businesses or on farms (which he knew well from his life at the Groves). In May
of 1907 he was in Milford, Nebraska and intending to go to Denver. The next letter we have is written on
Christmas Eve of that year from Raymond, California. This moving from job to
job may be best explained by panic 1907 when the economy was a shambles.
How
and when he went to California, we don't know for sure. But his brother Edwin
married Louise Jameson in Kansas City on October 19, 1907. We believe Dad was
there and only after left for California. Did he "ride the rails" to
the Golden State? Probably, as we heard such stories as children from Dad. The
Raymond work had Dad cooking for the lumberjacks up in the mountains just 40
miles south of Yosemite. The town itself is in the foothills of the Sierra
Nevada and was then being used as the railhead for visitors to Yosemite. They
would stay overnight and then start out by wagons for the Park. The timbering
was further up into the mountains but the logs were brought down into the town
for shipping. By February 21 the
economic slump had closed many lumber mills and Dad found
himself--again--without work.
The
next we hear from him is October 14, 1908 and he is back timbering, this time
at Pino Grande in the high Sierras, forty miles west and slightly south of Lake
Tahoe. The lumber mill rough cut the timber and then shipped it by narrow gauge
rails to the North Fork of the American River where it was loaded onto a cable
gondola for passage to the other side, 1250 feet above the canyon floor. Pictures show Dad as a mechanic on the
narrow gauge railroad that hauled felled trees from various sites to the Pino
Grande mill and then the cut lumber from the mill to the cable crossing. Dad
tells a story about working at a job throwing wooden blocks behind the wheels
of a locomotive which backed onto a construction site over a very deep canyon.
He quit after one day! When Pat and Char viewed this area in summer 1997, they
can attest to the heights and drops in the area.
|
Patrick Damien McAnany
(fourth from left) working on logging train near Pino Grande, CA in 1908 |
Dad
did lots of other kinds of work in California, but lumbering seems to have been
his aspiration. He remarks on December 16, 1908 that he is back at Davis
awaiting another lumbering job. He also mentions working on the "State
Farm." This most probably was the newly organized agricultural experimental
farm connected to the new state college at Davis. Nell mentions in another
letter that Dad had worked in the San Joaquin Valley--which would imply farming
in the vegetable rich Central Valley closer to Los Angeles. Whether Dad ever
got as far south as L.A., we don't know. But if he did, he could well have
looked up his McAnany cousins, children of the recently dead (1906) Uncle Phil
McAnany.
Certainly
by 1910 he had returned to Shawnee. He returned because his brother Ed had
"called him home," as was later recounted to us. It was at this point
that Dad gave up the out-of-doors work that seemed to have attracted him to
California and began his life behind a desk for the next thirty five years.
Occupation:
Banker; Aspiration: Woodsman
Dad
returned to a job at the newly created Rosedale Bank, begun by his brother Ed
and other investors. Handling money was what Dad did for the rest of his life.
It was at times as much stress as that one-day California job of throwing wood
chucks behind the wheels of the locomotive. By sometime in 1910 he was at work
in the office where he would spend the rest of his life: the Union Mortgage and
Investment Company in Kansas City, Kansas, another creation of Ed and his
business associates. This picture shows the three employees who worked at the
Union for many years: Dad, Uncle Bob and Miss _______. Starched white shirts, ties, vests and
jackets were the order of the day. In summer you could remove your coat for
relief, but only if a client wasn't in the office to be served.
Dad
first served as secretary and then as president and general money manager. He
was a minority shareholder (15%). The money was lent to people wanting to buy
their own homes at a time when mortgages were difficult to get. The Union also
lent money on farm and commercial property. Nearly all of this was located in
either Wyandotte or Johnson Counties, Kansas. The Office was in the Commercial
National Bank Building at 5th and Minnesota in Kansas City, Kansas. As I recall, the Union paid 6% on
investments. Of course that might have been very different during the Great
Depression when mortgages went unpaid. That was a tough time for both the Union
and Dad, though, as I recall, most properties were eventually paid off. I think
there were a few foreclosures, maybe only on commercial property. I know that
Sievers Farm in Lenexa came back to the Union sometime in the late '30s or
early '40s. It was about 180 acres on both sides of old Highway 50 and was in
sad repair when Uncle Bob and Louie began to farm it. There were bull snakes
six feet long in the weeds turned up by the plow.
|
Patrick D. McAnany at
work in the Union Mortgage in 1920's |
Dad
spent every weekday in the office, but on weekends he would revert to his out
doors life. His golfing was the most refined of the outdoors sports. He was a
member at the old Shawnee Country Club that ran along Turkey Creek out on old
Highway 10 towards Zarah early on (maybe the Teens and '20s). After he married,
he joined Milburn CC near the intersection of 10 and 69 in what is now Overland
Park. He also played as a member at Quivira.
But
an equal love was for fishing and hunting. Don Ellis, an insurance man in KCK
was his fishing partner. They fished Quivira, but also Tanecomo (Rockaway
Beach) and other lakes and streams. Dad fished several times in Colorado over
summer vacations. We remember the cabin in the Gunnison Canyon in 1937. His
hunting was mostly confined to quail, ducks, geese and a few rabbits, though he
owned several high powered (.306) rifles one with a scope for "mountain
goats". He never realized his trip back to the West for this last quarry,
though he did practice his marksmanship with these heavy calibers at Uncle Gov
Major's farm with his nephew, Ed McAnany who had smithed these guns for Dad. I
remember eating duck with the buckshot cooked in.
|
Patrick D. McAnany
with his son Richard in about 1938 |
The
other piece of out doors life that Dad indulged in was his keeping and milking
of a cow across Stanton Street (now Nieman Road). We owned several cows during
the years 1927 to the late 30s when the cow went out to Uncle Gov's farm. Dad
never quite gave up his farming roots.
The
Life of a Bachelor: His Mother's Son 1910-1922
Dad
did not marry until February 28, 1922. He was at that time just past his 38th
birthday and, one would think, a baptized, if not confirmed, bachelor. But like
many Irish relatives before him--and since--he was just slow to the altar
rather than shunning it. Dad was the smallest of the McAnany sons--only
5'8", but he was also the handsomest. His dark good looks and polished
manners made him eligible among the young, and not so young, ladies of Johnson
and Wyandotte Counties. The irony
was he chose to marry a not-so-young lady from Jackson County, Missouri when he
did take the step.
What
were the reasons Dad delayed far beyond even his reluctant brothers to marry?
One thing was he was devoted to his mother and appeared not at all to mind
being the son left to carry on after most others had married. To compare their
marrying ages: Edwin was 36 (1907); Phil 33 (1905); Paul 28 (1903) and 44 (1919); George 27 (1916); and Robert 23 (1917). Mom always indicated that there was a special devotion
between Dad and his Mom, and because she married into that relationship and lived
with it for fifteen years, she probably knew what she was talking about. It
also played off of a relationship between Uncle Ed and Dad in which the younger
brother took up where the older left off.
In fact they served as co-executors for Grandmothers estate, probated in
July 1937.
Ed
left the farm in 1907. Phil probably left much earlier as he moved to Kansas
City, Chicago and then Boston, starting in the 1890s. Paul left earlier than
his marriage in 1903 as he was already railroading for some years by then. May left by the time of her marriage, at
least by 1910. Nell married in 1912, George in 1916, and Robert in 1917.
Grandfather died in 1920. This left Dad as the basic decision maker for Grandma
and Aunt Rose. Probably Uncle Ed and Dad recommended that Grandma sell the
Groves (but not the farm) to Aunt Nell and Uncle Wood Marshall in 1921. Dad , Grandma and Aunt Rose then moved
to an apartment in Kansas City, Kansas, close to both work at the Union and to
Uncle Ed's office and home.
Dad
also played congenial uncle to a growing number of nieces and nephews. Starting
with Winnie in 1910 and continuing through another twelve Kansas City
grandchildren, Dad had lots of opportunities to play the bachelor uncle.
Patricia Marshall tells stories of how they all loved Uncle Pat to drive them
to various places because he was good to kids.
Another
feature of Dad's preference for staying single was his outdoors activities and
his close male friends. One of the closest of these was Chris Nieman who became
a boon companion. "Uncle" Nieman, as we kids called him, was the
local bank president--chosen by Uncle Ed, no doubt, who helped start the
Shawnee State Bank. Chris lived with the McAnanys at the "Groves"
until he married shortly before Dad, and at an equally late age. No one ever
suggested that Dad was harboring a vocation to the Benedictines, for as Mom
always said, Dad had lots of girl
friends. One particular one that Mom may have resented even after marriage was
the beautiful cousin from Chicago, May Callahan Ryan.
Aunt
Rose, who never married, also became a feature in Dad's life. They were close
friends all their lives, despite personalities that seemed quite opposite. We have many letters of his to
"Rosie" over the years offering advice as well as news. After he
married, he moved in just upstairs from Rose and Grandmother. Our mother never
appeared to resent this closeness between mother, sister and son.
Marriage,
Kids and Back to the Country, 1922-1943
Dad
met Mom through Uncle Ed's marriage to Louise Jameson. Even though Its doubtful
that Mom knew Dad from the wedding date in 1907, she knew of his family quite
early after the marriage. Louise Jameson was a Desloge and therefore some sort
of cousin to the Guignons. After Ed and Louise settled down and shared a close friendship
with another St. Louis born woman, Genevieve Moore, the Guignons began seeing
something of the McAnanys at social gatherings. When Dad and Mom first met,
there isn't a clue, but somewhere between 1907 and the early 1920s. It may have
been a function of Dad's moving to KCK in 1921. This would have made him more
socially accessible to Kansas City, Missouri. Our understanding was that their
courtship was not a prolonged one, so maybe it occurred during 1921.
It
might be well here to encapsulate Mom's story so the reader can catch the
rhythm of these two late-bloomers. Julia Rose Guignon was born in
St. Louis (Normandy) on January 3, 1890, the third of eight children. Her mother was from a wealthy St.
Louis family, the Miltenbergers, and her father had made a small fortune in
real estate in the late 1880s. Mom's family lived in a subdivision in Normandy that
her father (Emile S. Guignon)
had developed for well-to-do St. Louisans wanting to live in the wooded
suburbs. That idyllic life ended rather abruptly with the panic of 1893 in
which Granddad lost his holdings and incurred considerable debt. They lived on in St. Louis for another
six years, with Granddad trying to recoup his real estate career. They moved to
KCMo in about 1899 and bought a house on the hill overlooking the
yet-to-be-built Union Station. The Liberty Memorial now stands on the site.
They were poor but terribly proud as they grew up in a town Grandmother always
considered "the frontier." Grandfather Guignon began his own real estate firm and had a
modest career compared to his early success. His son, Barat A., took over the
company around 1917 and turned it into a considerable success during his
tenure. Much to Grandmother's dismay, her children almost all married Protestants
and no doubt all below their deserved, if tattered, status as St. Louis OFF
(Old French Family).
|
Julia & Emile
Simon Guignon in 1935 |
Dad
offered an alternative to these other marriages. He was Catholic (if Irish),
came from a well regarded family (if rural), and ran a family business (if
moderately capitalized). No doubt the other thought was that Julia was now
approaching 32, an age that would make most mothers--not to say
daughters--frantic about spinsterhood. Mom apparently never shared that dread
but one can well believe that her parents were rather relieved that, not only was she marrying, but she was
making a "suitable" match in the bargain.
Mother
was different from the stereotypes so deeply embedded in the French genes.
Though she never worked outside the home, she constantly dreamed of a career,
not only outside the home but outside the bounds of "acceptable"
feminine stereotypes themselves. Her sister Lucille had chosen the only visible
route along this path by joining the Sisters of the Good Shepherd where women
rather jealously, if furtively, guarded their independence within a
"male" church. Mom also tended to reject the OFF devotion to social
status. She always regarded the Guignons as the better part of that tradition
vis-a-vis the Miltenbergers whose wealth also had evaporated over the years.
She was a closet rebel who promoted such offbeat lifestyles as "health
foods" when the term was limited to such eccentrics as Benard McFadden and
George Bernard Shaw. And she was shyly beautiful in a family of obtrusively
beautiful women.
Rather
typical of Mom's playing against type was the marriage, arranged inconveniently
at 7 A.M. on a no doubt frosty morning in late February (2/28/22). There was a
small but enthusiastic crowd (Aunt Marie and Uncle Leo Sheridan served as
witnesses) to welcome into the mutual families the "elderly" couple.
They left on a Texas honeymoon that took them to Galveston and other parts of
that terra incognita, again a fantasy that would appeal to Mom's
elliptic sense of humor. They returned after a month to an apartment in KCK
which no doubt concerned Grandmother Guignon, if only because it was in a
different (very different) state. It was only accessible by streetcar since the
Guignons did not own a car. Dad's car, I suspect, was a status symbol that Mom
also relished. She even learned to drive, though she never much exercised the
privilege, what with a car enthusiast husband and children to tend and then
children eager to drive themselves.
|
Wedding Invitation for
Patrick McAnany & Julia Guignon, 1922 |
Married
life began in an apartment and soon Mom was pregnant with the first child.
Patrick Owen was born and did not survive more than a few weeks, and was buried
in Shawnee at St. Joseph's cemetery. He had been named after both his
grandfather and his dad, though where the Owen came from we have no clue. It
must have been a cruel blow for these two older parents, since further
pregnancies were not guaranteed. One story heard from Aunt Elise Collins was
that Mom went back home to the Guignon house on Coleman Road to recuperate. How
long she stayed and what she went through, we don't know, but the implication
of the story was that it wasn't only physical. In any event, Mom returned to
KCK and a new pregnancy.
Richard
Sarsfield-- a Mansfield patronym-- was born March 2, 1924. It was very special
for everyone as Dad and Mom began real parenthood. Grandma and Aunt Rose had
first choice to spoil the "little doll," though there were many
others, such as the adoring McAnany nieces, not to say the whole Guignon tribe.
A year and half later, July 29, 1925 Julia Marie followed. John Christopher was
right on time, yet another year and half later, February 18, 1927. The
apartment was unsuitably crowded and Dad bought a home just before John
arrived, located--naturally--back on his home turf in Shawnee. The house was a
rather handsome "bungalow" of a story and half sited on 2/3 acre
corner lot, five blocks south of the town's main intersection of Merriam
(Johnson) and Stanton (Nieman). The backyard had the remnants of a tennis court
which was soon occupied with a sandpile and a white picket fence. The front
porch ran across the entire front (long) part of the house and was framed by
pillars and pergolas, which bore wisteria plants. Two large (7x6) picture
windows looked out to a sloping front yard that ended in a wall covered with
rose bushes. Across the street to the east was a cow pasture (Goddard's). To
the south was the frame home of Emma Douglas and companion Effie Gellesipe,"old
maids," who monitored the misbehavior of the McAnany boys.
|
5th & Stanton in
1930's |
Patrick Damien and Emile Guignon, the
twins, were born in 1930 (Pat on his parent's eighth anniversary, February 28
and Emile the day after). The names were an equitable division between the
Irish and French heritage, being named for their respective grandfathers. With the twins came several (other?)
social disasters: Depression and drought. The Depression sent millions out of
work and onto the road. Many hoboes or vagabonds came to the door seeking
menial work or handouts, or both in the 1930s. We remember seeing them sitting
on the back porch eating whatever Mom prepared for them. Most of the work
around the place was done by other neighbors who were as hard pressed as these
hoboes. Dee Brown, for instance, did lots of the heavy yard work and other
chores. He was local and had a family to support. To youngsters whose father
continued to work all during the Depression, the impact was pretty peripheral,
beyond the strange men who appeared at the door. The droughts were something a
lot more direct.
|
The twins: Patrick
& Emile held by mother and father in 1930 |
The
drought years of the 1930s were exceptional. The ground across in the cow
pasture showed deep cracks and the surface was powdery dry. The dust storms
that blew in from western Kansas were monumental and quite scary for kids. The
sky would blacken like the worst thunderstorm--but no rain would fall. It would
begin howling with a wind that didn't stop for hours and the dust would seep in
under every window, though shut and locked. Mom would spread damp clothes on
the windowsills to absorb the invading dust. Outside afterwards, the world was
coated with dust, turning the corn from green to gray. These were the years of
the Okies that we knew about from stories on the radio or from newspapers.
These
were years of great anxiety for Dad because he was in the business of
mortgages, put in deep jeopardy by the Depression. As mentioned above, there
were very few of these mortgages that the Union foreclosed on. Most were
carried through those grim financial years of 1930-1941. The effect of
increasing family obligations, critical business decisions, and the onset of
middle age caused Dad to have a series of heart attacks. The first one occurred
in 1936 or so. Dad took several trips to Colorado during the summer months to
recuperate, with exposure to his beloved western mountains and trout fishing in
Gunnison. He also took a trip to the Rio Grande Valley Texas in about 1939 with
Mom, Aunt Estelle and Uncle Gov Major. On that trip they purchased a small
citrus grove of five acres in McAllen from the Goodwin Brothers. Each of these
trips served recuperative purposes for Dad.
|
(Left to Right) Julie,
John, Richard, Patrick, Patrick, Emile, & Julia in 1937 |
There
is a story that Cousin Edwin J. McAnany told on Dad after recovering from one
of his late heart attacks. Dad had been away from work for a number of weeks
and returned one day in casual clothes, sporting a gray beard. He met a local
businessman he knew quite well and, on not being recognized, approached the man
for a handout. The man rebuffed Dad who then burst into laughter at his little
joke. About this same time Dad and Mom posed for a famous picture in the back
yard: Dad with beard and an old felt hat is dressed in his buckskin jacket and
both he and Mom are sporting shotguns. It is a replica in its own way of the
more famous Gothic Portrait of a couple by Grant Wood. I think Dad always
showed a relish for the common man's clothing. Putting this picture beside the
one of him as a young man about to embark on his California trip and several of
him in his railroad overalls in Pino Grande(above) shows him in his best
mood--far from the serious, not to say grim, attitude of him dressed in his
business suits. Dad was a "dresser" from what we can see, but he
seemed to prefer the casual to the formal.
Dad's
final illness was precipitated by continuing heart trouble. According to his
death certificate, Dad's trouble began on December 24, 1942 (probably with a
heart attack of some sort). He was hospitalized at St. Margaret's in Kansas
City, Kansas for 78 days, probably initially for the heart attack and then
returned briefly before his surgery on May 26. At home during the early months
of 1943, he had lost a good deal of weight according to a recollection of Sr.
Pat Marshall reporting on Aunt Nell's visit with Dad in the spring. The nature
of that operation by Dr. Barney is suggested by its finding of a partial
obstruction of the bowel and cause of death as "post-operative surgical
shock." The language of
mesenteric thrombosis gives the cause of the obstruction, perhaps due to lack
of an adequate blood supply from atherosclerosis. In any event, there seems to
have been no sign of cancer as some feared. That the death was
"sudden" probably was due to the acute onset of the thrombosis where
surgery was demanded but risky because of the heart condition. This hardly
explains why Dad did not leave a will since he had been ailing for many months,
not to say years.
Dad
was waked at home, a custom that is hard to believe from our perspective
today. I remember distinctly the
crowd of people standing outside in the front yard as the coffin was carried
down the front steps to the hearse. There were tears in many eyes beside the
family's.
To
Be Continued
This
memoir was undertaken to capture a fast fading life that touched many of us.
This version is not intended to be final (I still want to add pictures) and I
pass it out to family who may want to add details, correct errors, or just tell
stories. My own recollection of Dad was one of a reader (business magazines
like Kipplinger Letter, Business Week, Fortune; sportsman's magazines like
Field and Stream; books about the West like Zane Grey; poetry like Goldsmith's Deserted
Village), an internationalist (always listened on short wave to reports from
around the world--heard the news on Pearl Harbor from overseas), a businessman who knew Wyandotte and
Johnson Counties like the back of his hand, a neighbor who spoke with everyone
from merchants to farmers and all in between.
Last
Updated July 1998
Jump To: Family Background Youth Transitions & California
A Banker & A Woodman The
Bachelor Marriage & Kids Conclusion