My memories of my Mom are few and dim. She died in 1952 when I was twenty years old. I have one photograph of her. It was taken by a newspaper and shows her in a bathrobe sitting on the side of a hospital bed. She is holding in her hand a letter. It was may 1948 and the letter is from President Harry Truman. It was congratulating her on being named the “Catholic Mother of the Year” for America. A picture of my Dad has been superimposed on this picture just below where Mom is holding the letter.
Her name was Marguerita, which I understand is from a Latin word meaning ‘pearl’. But everyone called her “Rita”. But a pearl she certainly was when you think of how much a pearl stands out from the contents of other shells. Being named “Catholic Mother of the Year’ was not surprising since she had fifteen children in the first nineteen years of marriage. By 1948 when this occurred, four of her sons were priests, or about to be since two of them would be ordained in 1948. Three of her girls were then nuns and the youngest, Rosemary, would enter the Holy Child order of nuns in 1950. She certainly qualified as the Catholic mother of any year just with those statistics. She was a catholic mother in her abilities and talents. She had lost one child in the 1919 influenza epidemic. So by 1948 having be challenged by the task of raising so many children it was not surprising that her health had begun to fail. She would have good periods and then bad ones. I recall most of the last year of her life she was in bed. She was in and out of consciousness during that time. She was by then living in the home of her eldest daughter Winifred.
She was born on November 28, 1887. At the age of eleven, in 1898, she made the newspapers. She had embroidered a coverlet of red, white and blue. She asked her parents to mail it to Admiral Dewy, the hero of the Spanish-American War. They thought that would be the end of it, but not, the Admiral sent a “thank you” note. Some how the press got a copy of the note he had sent and ran an article entitled, “Dewy Thanks A Little Girl”
She was an outstanding student in the Parochial School she attended in South Philadelphia. She was therefore offered the opportunity to enter ‘Girls High” if she could pass an entrance exam. Girls High was the academic equivalent of “Central High”, the boys high school of high academic requirements and rating. She succeeded in passing the exam and was the first graduate from the Parochial school system to enter Girl’s High. She went on to more academic success in high school and then entered Normal School, another name for a Teacher’s college in those days. After graduating from Normal School she taught First grade. But when her father died in 1908 she took on the task of caring for her mother. She, her mom, was to me as Grandmom Cosgrove. Grandmom eventually came to live with us in our home in West Philadelphia. I remember her vaguely since she died before I was six years old.
Mom was married on her twenty-fifth birthday, November 28,1912. It was also Thanksgiving Day. She and Dad had settled for that Thursday when they had difficulty getting the Saturday of that week. Among her talents, in addition to embroidering, sewing etc., was oil painting. I distinctly remember an oil portrait of Christ’s mother Mary on the wall in our home. I had thought it had to have been purchased it look so professional. I was really surprised when I learned that it was Mom’s work. In addition to those talents she was the only doctor most of us ever knew. She gave birth to nine of her children at home. It wasn’t until the last five or six that she delivered in a hospital.
Another of my fondest memories in a walk I had with her on the beach in Sea Isle City. It happened in 1949. I had like my six older brothers thought I should be a priest. So I spent two years at a junior Seminary College in Newburgh, N.Y, but now I felt I couldn’t continue. I wanted to tell Mom first so I brought up the subject of my schooling and that I wanted to end it. She suggested we take a walk on the beach. I can still feel her arm over my shoulders as we walked. She was most loving, sympathetic and understanding. She knew my greatest fear was how would I tell my Father, so she said she would handle that and did so.
All of her children had been launched into careers by 1952 except me. My sister Winifred told me that every once in a while in some of her conscious moments, Mom would lament that Paul was still unsettled. She would say, ‘He’s going from pillar to post’. So even in the days when her life was waning she still was concerned and worried about her child’s welfare. It was as if she couldn’t rest in peace until her task was completed but the Lord thought otherwise and called her home on November 15,1952.
I remember another funny experience. We lived in a large house in West Philadelphia. It had three living floors and an attic on top and a basement below. There were two sets of stairs from the first floor. One came from the parlor area in the front of the house and the other from the kitchen in the rear. The stairs from the kitchen were enclosed up to just three steps below the second floor hallway. I was on this platform that the two stairways met. I was coming down in the dark from the third floor and walking on the second floor hallway when I was frightened. A big “BOO!” came out from seemingly no where and made me jump. Then I saw it was my Mom standing on the platform between the two stairways. It reminded me later that even after all these years as a mother she was still very child like.
Mom loved music. She played the piano with gusto. We had ‘sing alongs’ at birthday parties and other celebrations. One of the musical gimmicks was to take an old standard and write words for it, a parody. It could be about the particular person being feted or the even we were celebrating. All of us were encouraged to learn a musical instrument, piano, violin, etc. In my case I had been offered a dollar a week to be used either Boy Scouts or piano lessons. I took the Boy Scouts since by joining and attending the meetings I could go to summer camp. Later I regretted not learning the piano. While I was living alone in the fifties in the big empty house I started taking lessons. I think it was my sister Mary a teaching nun who was instructing me. I didn’t do well. Later using method call “Faking” which ignored the bass clef. I eventually could play some melodies, but I’m glad my Mom wasn’t here to hear them. She would have covered her ears!
Later in 1948, the year Mom was named Catholic Mother; she had a very happy moment. Her oldest son Frank, a missionary priest in the Philippines, came home. The Japanese had interned him from late 1942 till 1945. He spent that time in the Santa Tomas University in Manila, which had been converted into a prison. Frank could have come home immediately after his release but he opted to return to his people and restart his work. He left America in 1939 for the mission, so it had been nearly ten years since Mom had seen her first born. The reunion was a moving one for all of us. I had been only ten when he left and had only vague memories of participating in his first High Mass and attending his ordination in Washington, DC. I was by this time finished my first year in college. Sometime last in July of 1948 Frank was going to head back to the Philippines. He obtained permission to go back by way of Europe. My Dad opted to pay for my going along with him at least to Rome. We were sitting in the car to be driven to New York Harbor and Mom was standing on the porch waving ‘good-bye’. We were in Sea Isle City, NJ and the porch was about 6 feet up from the ground. So we were both leaning towards the window and looking up. The car started to move off, we waved and she did too. I noticed as we settled back in our seat tears in Frank’s eyes. He saw me looking and said, “I’ll never see her alive again!” How prophetic that was! She was not here either to see him raised to a Vicar in 1954 and consecrated a Bishop in 1958. He joined her in heaven in 1970.
These thought and memories of my Mom came to be through a request of my nephew Greg McSorley. He had heard a great deal about Granddad Richard but little about Grandmom Rita—so he gave me the idea for these jottings. Until next time, Pax Tecum!