“August” what do I remember about this month from years gone by? The first and most important memory is that this is the month in which I was blessed with my marriage to June. Twenty-seven years ago in this month we were married. The date was the fifteenth of the month, which also happens to be a holy day in the Catholic Church. One of my many good sisters, who was a nun, remarked that it was a blessed omen getting married on a holy day. When I told June, or maybe she heard the remark herself, she said something like, I was married before on a holy day and it certainly didn’t turn out to be a good ‘omen’! On that day, the fifteenth, I also recall that if you went into the Atlantic Ocean, or maybe any ocean or water, you received a special blessing. Why it occurred completely escapes me! I may even have the days mixed up but it is a memory associated with August and the ocean.
Another remembered event in the month of August was that all of my young life in the summer was spent in Sea Isle City, New Jersey. We went down from Philadelphia shortly after school ended and stayed until it was close to starting again. We lived in a big house, which was located just a short distance from the boardwalk and beach. We had only one house between the beach and us. Our house had four floors counting the ground floor or basement as one. It had an attic too but I can’t recall if we ever went up there. There was a porch that ran from the rear of the house all along the side which faced the ocean and then across the front. It was one floor above the ground. Under the porch there was sand like ground on which we played. We often reenacted events like parades and funerals down there.
One August in particular comes back to mind at that house. It was the day I was to leave for a trip to Europe. I was going with my brother Frank on his return trip to the Philippine Islands. He had come home sometime in the spring. The year was 1948. He had been a missionary there from 1939 on and was interned by the Japanese from 1942 till 1945.After his release he chose to return to his mission in the southern part of the Islands rather than come home. He was returning to that mission now via Europe and I, thanks to my Dad, was going to make part of the journey with him. As I climbed into the car I noticed tears in my brother’s eyes as we waved to our mom standing on the porch. He told me he was feeling sad since he felt it would be the last time he would see our mom alive. He was right! This was in the year 1948 and our mom had had heart problems and hospitalization earlier that year. She would continue to have such problems and left us in 1952. Frank was her first born and the first son; I was the thirteenth child and the last son. Between us we had five brothers and seven sisters.
The return trip to the Islands via Europe would start with a visit to Cobh and then Dublin, Ireland. We went via a Cunard Lines ship, the Maurtania; it took us five days to cross to the port of Cobh from New York. We would take another boat from Dublin to Liverpool. We then went up to London. We would sail to Portugal from Liverpool. We visited the shrine of our Lady of Fatima in the Northern Portugal and then took a train. It ran from northern Portugal through Spain and then along the Riviera to Genoa, Italy. I remember making it a point to get off the train in Monaco since an ex Philadelphian, Grace Kelly, was now a Princess there. This was so I could say the rest of my life; “ I was once in Monaco along the Riviera!”
We created some future memories of this August by spending the last weekend in July and the first few days of this August in Hilton Village, New York. We were at the home of my son Dan, his wife, Lori and their two daughters Hannah and Meaghan. Meaghan was hardly with us in that she came home on Saturday night from a week of working on a church project and left on Sunday morning for a week at a field hockey camp.
Hilton Village is a suburb of Rochester and is about 3 miles south of Lake Ontario. It is an area of single homes, big trees, and very little of it commercialized. It reminded me of the area around Yardley, Pennsylvania where we spent the months of May and June this year. Dan pointing out the historic sites as he drove us around the area. We drove by many ‘ponds’ which in Florida we would call ‘lakes’. The war of 1812 left many marks here on one of the Great Lakes. It was the first time I ever realized how close the city of Rochester was to the Lake, and in fact part of the city extends northward up along the Genesee River to the lake. There is a sign reading “The Port of Rochester”. I have never before thought of Rochester as being a port.
One day Dan took us out to lunch to a place called the “Crescent Beach Restaurant” It was of course in the town of Crescent Beach along the Lake. As we headed to our table by the windows facing the lake we noticed that next to our table was a group of five men, all of the gray haired variety. It reminded me of our group who try to lunch weekly here in St. Petersburg and whom we call the “ROMEO’S”. I mentioned the similarity to June as began to sit down and the men at the table must have heard me. One of them turned to us and said ‘we are the ROMEOS!” He handed me a business card reading, “ I AM A ROMEO!” Under the large print were the words “Retired Old Men Eating Out”. In St. Pete’s we call ourselves “Real” old men eating out not retired. June of course accents that on occasion by calling us ‘Really, Really Old men!”
August is a month of many birthdays. There are my children Mary, Dan, and Paul as well as June’s sister Mary, and my niece, Winnie Allen, grandson Paulie Berger and a grand niece Denise Bugey. We wish them all a happy day and ‘ad multos annos!”
I finished the book, “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama. This was written in 1995 and has a sub title “A Story of Race and Inheritance”. He searches for his identity as he travels from college to Chicago and back to his roots in Kenya. It is a memoir. He wrote more recently the book, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” In both he demonstrates an ability to write, to tell a story and to be convincing in simple language. It is easy to see how he was elected to be the Editor of the Harvard Law Review.
In the ‘Dreams’ book I came across how the lapel button with a shamrock and below it, “O’BAMA” possibly came to be. The button was a gift from an old friend Nancy Carroll who gave it to me while we were up in Yardley, PA. Barack during his work in the community in Chicago on their problems wrote:
“Whenever I first reached them (people he was trying to get help from) they would often be suspicious or evasive uncertain as to why this Muslim – or even worse yet, this Irishman O’Bama wanted a few minutes of their time”(p.279, emphasis added)
In the book he also refers to the overwhelming feeling of hope. He writes of it as he listens to a sermon one Sunday entitled “The Audacity of Hope” The sermon is based on the story in Samuel of Hannah who is barren and suffers rebuke and taunts from her rivals. She weeps and is shaken in prayer. She promises God if he gives her a son she will dedicate him to the Lord. He does and thus is born the prophet Samuel.
Obama will always be for me a great writer even if he is never President. I read a quote about him in the local Hilton paper. It reads “Central to Obama’s biracial appeal is that Ann Dunham (his mom) was white and from Kansas, and his father was black and from Kenya…if someone with is diverse background can rise to the cusp of presidency, America remains the land of opportunity, despite its flaws.” To which I say Amen! Pax tecum until the next time!