Telling Our Stories

It was the end a of cool spring day and my wife and I were looking for an escape from our regular route to walk our dogs. We chose to visit an old cemetery just outside the center of town. The sky was becoming clouded over with rays of sunshine peeking through. It was marked with shades of dark blue clouds mixed with patches of blue sky. The air had turned crisp with sunset approaching, as we got out of our car. Our dogs we oblivious of the natural beauty around us, they were just interested in the new smells. The stark grey leafless trees, inside of the granite fence posts with their rusted red iron rails marked ancient family plots. An occasional evergreen and a few lonesome daffodils added a little color to the scene. The grass is still brown with patches of green and a few tattered flags, that had made it through the winter. Walking along the paths of the aging roadway I notice names of folks once prominent in the town. Among them are not only names from history but as time g...

            The bright, mild January 1990 day in Abington, Massachusetts, was far from the Laotian jungle of November 30, 1968, when the helicopter carrying a three-man crew plus Staff Sergeant Richard Fitts and five of his fellow Green Berets was shot out of the sky and crashed, a fireball killing all on board. Twenty-one years later amidst different geopolitics, an American-Laotian search team found his remains—a few teeth and about a hundred bone fragments, some his, some not. It was enough.             Cars lined the roadway swirled among grass and gravestones. People edged toward Richard’s open grave. I kept a distance, not wanting a privileged space and stopped about twenty feet from the hearse. The Army honor guard stood perfect in uniform, their faces frozen in solemnity. Three riflemen would fire the salute. Six pallbearers carried the flag draped casket. Three drummers beat the dirge-pace...

  Sometimes I think my August birthday came with an innate affinity for summer.   The moment I catch the first fragrance of lilacs, I step out of hibernation and revel in the nascent season with as much delight as a child counting the days ‘til Christmas. Tonight is one of those perfect late June evenings. July Fourth has not yet arrived, so my illusion that the summer will last forever is safe.   My home on a hill faces west and nature has outdone herself this day. I raise my glass of Pinot to the spectacular sunset show then head to the kitchen to finish setting the table. To the undiscerning eye, this is an ordinary scene. The day is done. A cool summer breeze rustles the curtains as a young woman sets a place for two. Flowers grace the table; chicken roasts in the oven and salad chills in the fridge.  Clearly, someone else is expected.  His name is Will, and I can tell you that there is no such thing as an ordinary day with Will. He is the man I l...

  My mother enters the kitchen through the back door, the basket balanced on her hip, the first load of laundry washed and hung on the clothesline.             "Kathleen, I want you to go over your aunt's today and help her."             My ever-so-compliant-seven-year-old self agrees immediately while my more inquisitive self wonders, "What is this all about? What about my chores here, or entertaining my little brother, watching my baby sister?" I don't know this aunt, my mother's older sister, very well, but she is always kind to me when we visit.   I start out on this hot summer morning in late June, happy as only a child with no worries or responsibilities can be. Three streets away from our new house in Weymouth stands 14 Wildwood Road, originally my grandmother's cottage, where my Aunt Mary Rose and her family have lived since the winter of 1940.  ...

                                                  It was July 21, 1970, an early summer evening, and I was standing on the bridge with a couple of friends, surveying the river near the flood stage, at the paper mill. Halfway around the world in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam, two OH6 helicopters were falling out of the sky and four young men would die in the crash. One GI, Specialist Walter Joseph Kacsock, a very close, childhood friend and classmate would become forever young.   Two days later, after coming home from work I got a phone call from Chuck’s cousin bearing the news. The conversation was brief, he had been killed in action and she would call with more details as the family was informed. The next two weeks seemed like forever waiting for his body to return home. Chuck or “Sock” as he was known to his friends, was ...

                                              (Photo by John Daly)                          “Hi, Anne, it’s Dee Campbell calling.  Just wanted to congratulate you on Kendra and Christian’s  wedding on Saturday.  Well done! “   “Oh, thank you”. I said. “It was a lovely day” .   But what I really thought was “if you only knew! ” My husband occasionally reminds me that every wedding has unexpected  little upsets, no matter how much planning has been done.   I recall  the fiasco of the Friday night Wedding rehearsal for our daughter Kendra’s wedding on the campus of the University of San Diego.  Fate had been on our side in acquiring for Saturday, October 28, 1998, one of the highly coveted wedding Masses offered there at the Founders Chapel....

My father was a man who had a saying for every occasion. One we heard often was “all good things must come to an end.” He never said this at the beginning of an event, only at the end when we were saddened by a party, a picnic, or some special occasion coming to a close. These words were said, I have come to realize, not to console but rather to prepare us for the painful losses that lie in the path of all of us as we progress through life. And so, on a gray, mid-autumn day, as my sister and I, filled with excitement, set out on our first quest to encounter someone famous, he simply smiled and told us to be careful. The date was November 6, 1960, two days before the presidential election. The famous person was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Our admiration for him had been growing steadily from the first time we heard of him. His Irish Catholic heritage was shared by us and predisposed us to regard his aspirations to our nation’s highest office as courageous. He had become our hero an...

      “Good evening, Mrs. Magillacuddy, stormy night out there.”  “Yes Henry, looks like we are going to get a heap of snow before the night is over.”  “Is this one of your children?” “Yes, indeed, one of the younger ones.”  “You have quite a wonderful mother there, young lady.”  He covered the fare collection opening on the till and waved us through.  “Yes, sir,” I smiled as we headed down the middle of the bus before sitting in the two-seater, on the opposite side of the driver’s rear mirror.  My mother’s name is Margaret Ellen Cameron always was and always will be the name she was born with. However, a Spanish-speaking priest at Saint John’s Catholic Church in Quincy back in 1918 entered her name at Baptism as Margarita Helena.   I’m not only the youngest child, I am her only child. Mrs. Magillacuddy is one of her made-up names.  My mother didn’t like people knowing our business, so strangers got aliases....