Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “Mine come out in early June,” Bess said. “My mother prefers all white but this year I planted the colored variety without telling her. They were gorgeous. Blue and pink and even a wonderful rusty red.”

  “Sounds beautiful, and of course you’ve got the right kind of soil in Independence,” Margaret said.

  “Yes. But my mother said the colored ones in our yard made her ill so I had to dig them up,” Bess said.

  “That’s terrible,” I said.

  “The house does belong to her family. It’s her yard,” Bess said.

  Margaret and I said nothing. Bess went on, “Mother’s very good really. Set in her ways, but last year she let me redecorate our bedroom though she didn’t approve of the double bed I bought.”

  Was that a giggle I heard from Mrs. Truman?

  “Mother said twin beds were more appropriate and, after all, we had managed to have one child and it wasn’t as if … Well it was my daughter, Margaret, told me to go ahead and buy the bed. After all it was Harry’s money. Margaret hadn’t even consulted Mother when she did up the spare room for herself, but then Margaret’s her father’s daughter.”

  Bess picked up a roast beef sandwich and took a bite. “Very good,” she said.

  “And how do you organize meals?” Margaret asked.

  “We have a cook. Elise has been with the family since … Well since we came back from Colorado. She and Mother choose the menus but Elise knows what Harry likes and manages to slip in some of his favorite dishes.”

  The place sounded like a genteel prison camp and Bess Truman was a sixty-year-old woman! I wanted to lean over and shake her. Ask her how long she was going to take orders from her mother. But Margaret was smarter than I was.

  “A blessing to still have her with you,” Margaret said. “My mother passed away years ago and I miss her every day.”

  “I am lucky and Harry’s mother is alive too. She’s still healthy and sharp. Harry’s sister lives with her near their old farm,” Bess said.

  “And what does she think about all this?” I asked.

  “What?” Bess said.

  “Harry’s chance to be vice president. President even,” I said.

  “Oh well I suppose every mother would love to see her son in the White House, and Mrs. Truman is a true dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. I remember Harry’s sister saying once that she’d never even met a Republican. His mother told her that she hadn’t missed much.”

  We laughed.

  “Of course,” Bess said. “His mother has no idea of what politics demands, though…” She stopped. “You see,” she said. “Harry’s mother was never happy about his association with the Pendergasts. She remembers stories about the Irish farmers who came into Missouri in the forties just before the war. Desperate for land. Hiring out at first but then buying any scrap they could get.”

  At first I thought she was talking about some recent immigration of Irish farmers that I hadn’t heard about. Then I realized the war Bess meant was the Civil War. It made sense. Truman’s mother was probably in her nineties and born in the 1850s. The refugees from the Great Starvation would have still been alive and beginning to prosper.

  “Harry was friendly with these two boys. O’Connor and Broderick. Each one of their families had nearly ten thousand acres and did very well. Much better than the Trumans, to tell the truth. I think that bothered his mother. These interlopers. Of course they had to marry each other because, well…”

  She set down her drink. “You see Harry’s family are Baptists. Very strict in their ideas.”

  I wasn’t going to save her. Wasn’t going to jump in to say something about how clannish we Irish were. Let her explain why the good citizens of Independence would never let their daughters marry one. But Margaret was kinder. She turned to me.

  “People at home in Kansas City tend to stick with their own kind,” she said.

  Bess nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It took my mother a long time to let me marry Harry. His family being Baptist, when we’re all Episcopalians. Marry Harry,” she repeated. “That rhymes doesn’t it?” Bess Truman giggled. “Though I met Harry at a Presbyterian Sunday school.” She held up her drink.

  Was that Presbyterian going to her head? I wondered. I’d put the envelope with Ed’s welcome-to-Chicago tickets on the coffee table in front of the couch. Bess pointed to it.

  “And there are passes for a White Sox game in there?”

  “Yes,” I said. “They’re playing the Red Sox tomorrow afternoon.”

  “The Red Sox,” she said. “They’ve got a good team this year.”

  “You follow baseball?” I asked.

  I guess I sounded surprised because Bess said, “Don’t sound so surprised. I know Harry’s always telling people how he fell in love with this dainty little girl with golden curls and big blue eyes.”

  Wait, was Bess imitating Harry, exaggerating his accent? It sure sounded like it.

  “But I was a real tomboy. My brother Frank was two years younger than I was and when my father taught him to play baseball I insisted on taking part in the lessons. Well wouldn’t you know I could hit the ball farther than Frank and could catch and throw too. It tickled my father and Frank got a great laugh from bringing me along to the sand lot down the block. At first the other boys didn’t want me to play, but Frank acted like he’d been saddled with me. I remember the first time I got to bat. I knocked a homer all the way into Diggers’ Woods. After that the fellows fought to have me on their team. My dad would bring my little brothers, George and Fred, down to watch us play. Fred was just a baby. Only three years old. He doesn’t remember Daddy at all. I think a lot of his problems come because … Well of course my father’s death was hard on all of us but at least I have great memories of him.”

  Here it was. The ticking time bomb. What to say now. Once again it was Margaret who stepped in.

  “No way to really understand why someone takes their own life, I suppose,” Margaret said.

  Bess didn’t respond. Her head was bent down over the drink. Oh Lord, I thought, Margaret has made a mistake. We should have stuck to the Irish principle of ná habair tada, say nothing. Margaret had gone too far. But then Bess looked up. Blinking.

  “My mother still goes over and over his last days. Had she been too hard on my father? Had my grandfather said something to him? Yes, he owed money but my grandfather Gates was very wealthy. He could have settled his debts. I wondered if my father had asked him for the money and been turned down. Would a man leave four children behind because his pride had been hurt or was he so ashamed that he just couldn’t go on?” She stopped.

  “You’re trying to be rational about the irrational,” I said. “The Irish talk about someone being taken over by evil fairies, being driven mad. It’s shame that opens the door to them. Keeps you from thinking straight. So worried about what you imagine people think that you can’t see clearly anymore. When you were a little girl whipping that bat around did you give one snap of your fingers about what the boys you were beating said about you?” I asked her.

  Bess laughed. “I did not. I’d run those bases with my arms in the air. My brother Frank wanted me to try out for the all-girls’ team the Kansas City businessman Jim Wilkinson was starting. Mother would have fainted dead away.”

  “All girls? When was this?” I asked.

  “Let’s see, it must have been about 1909. I was twenty-three. Jim was a pal of Frank’s. The team was barnstorming throughout the Midwest. I was tempted, believe me. Wilkinson started another team that he called All Nations with men, women, colored players, even American-Indians. The best of them became the Kansas City Monarchs, the Negro team. Frank took me to quite a few games. Those fellows could really play. I suppose baseball’s my way of connecting with the past.”

  I sipped my drink. Chose my words carefully. “And your father,” I said.

  She nodded.

  * * *

  Which was why I spent the first afternoon of the Democratic convention not in the stadiu
m but sitting in the box seats behind the White Sox dugout at Comiskey Park with Bess Truman and Harry’s brother Vivian. Grace Comiskey, who’d taken over the team when her husband, Charles Comiskey’s son, had died, pushed out the boat for us. Charles Comiskey, who’d founded the White Sox, had been friends with my great-uncle Patrick. Another Irish Rebel. A picnic basket waited for us with hot dogs, popcorn, and peanuts. A steady parade of beer sellers appeared and, miracle of miracles, the White Sox won. Beating Boston 5–4 after losing to them 11–0 just the week before. I didn’t say another word to Bess about the vice-presidential nomination as I watched her drop her frightened-little-woman façade and cheer the Chicago team home. Yelling when Luke Appling homered to win the game.

  I wondered if Harry Truman knew that there’s a tomboy still inside his matronly wife? “Always good to win when you’ve been counted out,” I said to Bess as we rode in the back of the car Ed had arranged for us.

  “I told Harry I’d meet him in our hotel room at five,” Bess said. “And, Nora, you can tell your cousin that if the president really wants Harry, he won’t say no.”

  “Good,” I said. Nothing more.

  And indeed Ed told me later that very evening they’d brought Harry Truman into Bob Hannegan’s room at the Blackstone where Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on the telephone speaking from San Diego.

  “We could all hear Roosevelt,” Ed said. “That booming voice of his. He asked Bob if he had Truman lined up. Bob said no. That Truman was a goddamn Missouri mule. Roosevelt was shouting. He told Bob to tell the senator that if he refused he’d be responsible for breaking up the Democratic Party in the midst of the war. Then the president hung up.”

  “And what did Truman say?” I asked him.

  Ed laughed. “He said, ‘Oh, shit.’ But agreed.”

  So … Lots more maneuvering, and Ed later told me that he and Ed Flynn and the other city fellows spent most of the night promising jobs to any delegate that was wavering. But on Friday night, July 21, 1944, Harry Truman got one thousand plus votes and became the party’s nominee for vice president. Margaret and I were sitting with Bess Truman; her daughter, Margaret; and Harry’s brother, Vivian. As delegation after delegation declared for Truman, Margaret Truman jumped up and down with every announcement. When Truman’s victory was announced, Bess did smile, but was a still point in the pandemonium.

  Two nights before, the convention had listened in silence when Roosevelt accepted the nomination for president by radio hookup. That familiar voice had filled the hall. He’d wanted to retire, he said, to lead a quiet life but he would continue in the office because the stakes were so high. “We must win the war,” he said. “Win it fast. Win it overwhelmingly.” And then he said that we would work with all peace-loving nations to make sure there would never be another world war.

  And now here was Harry Truman, the fellow who might very well have to fulfill those promises. He fought his way up to the platform through delegates that were still demonstrating, holding placards that said “Roosevelt, Roosevelt.” Finally he made it to the stage. Truman spoke for about a minute. He said that he appreciated the honor his nomination meant for Missouri, and that he would continue the efforts he made in the Senate “to help shorten the war and win the peace under our great leader, Franklin D. Roosevelt,” he concluded. “I accept this honor with all humility. I thank you.”

  I imagine that everyone in the hall was thinking exactly what I was. This man is not a politician. He’s just an ordinary guy. He could be me. God help him.

  I was stationed under the stage snapping away when Harry Truman turned to Ed, who was standing next to him. He took Ed’s hand and held it in the air. I took the photograph. The Life magazine reporter said they’d pay me one hundred dollars for the picture. No credit. They said their photographers were all anonymous.

  “Fine,” I said. A way to have history show Ed’s role in getting Truman the nomination. I also collected another twenty-five for a shot of Spencer Tracy, who was also celebrating with us that night. They had done it. Ed and the bosses had put in Harry Truman.

  The Roosevelt–Truman ticket won, but only four months after the election, FDR was dead. Harry Truman was president.

  “Shorten the war and win the peace,” Truman had said. On May 8, the Nazis surrendered, but the Japanese vowed to fight on to protect their homeland. An invasion would have terrible casualties. When the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan one after the other, the American people had no details on how many were killed. We only knew that the most terrible weapon ever invented had ended the war. But Ed remembered that experiment at the University of Chicago and Roosevelt’s fear at what was being unleashed. Still, I was relieved.

  Mike had been within days of being sent to the Pacific, assigned to an aircraft carrier at a time when over half of all fighter pilots were being shot down or killed in crash landings. Ed had tried to intervene, but Mike would have none of it. He’d gone through rigorous training at Cherry Point, North Carolina, and was ready. They were the elite and he was honored to have this chance to lose his life. I’d tried to dissuade him. Using the best of arguments. “Mike, you’re a father now.” Because Mary Patricia Kelly had been born on November 18, 1944. Mary Pat.

  “Both of our mothers were Mary,” Mariann told me. “I added Pat so when we have our son they can be Pat and Mike.”

  An innocent. Didn’t even know that all those so-called jokes about Pat and Mike were meant to be insulting. Ah well, maybe that’s progress. Celebrate what they think we should be ashamed of. Giving birth had exposed Mariann to what it means to being in Mayor Kelly’s orbit. Ed was holding a big Bond rally in mid-November and Tyrone Power was scheduled to attend. I looked forward to photographing him and wondered if he’d remember how we’d met in Sally Rand’s dressing room. Power was a Marine aviator now stationed at Cherry Point where Mike was training. So what could be more natural than that Mike would be assigned to fly Power to Chicago? I’d like to think that the Navy was sensitive to the needs of a father-to-be and decided Mike should be with his wife as she gave birth to their first child. But it was Ed who made the call to Mike’s commanding officer and also to St. Anne’s Hospital. “Give her the best,” he’d said.

  Except the press got mixed up and a Sun-Times headline said it was Tyrone Power’s wife who was in St. Anne’s Hospital giving birth.

  “Are you Annabelle?” the nurses asked Mariann.

  The spotlight can be a mixed blessing, but there was nothing mixed about the announcement on August 15, 1945, Feast of the Assumption. The war was over. There would be no invasion of Japan. Mike and millions more were safe.

  A terrible price paid, as we learned later. But the day the war ended I could only be glad that Bess Truman had put aside her fears and told her husband that it was alright to seek what he secretly wished for. And if Margaret Kelly and I had influenced her decision, good. One definite contribution I made to Harry Truman was when I told Bess after the convention that Harry’d better find a decent secretary. I was only half joking when I told her that the ideal person would be an Irish Catholic woman who’d graduated from a college run by nuns. And guess what? His brother, Vivian, had just the woman working for him. Rose Conway. She went to Washington with them and was Truman’s private secretary in the White House and then worked with him at his presidential library in Independence. Missy LeHand, Grace Tully, Rose Conway. Irish above all.

  So the war had ended. The world was settling down. With my checks from Life magazine, my savings were up to four hundred dollars. I longed for Ireland. No grave to visit but maybe I could find Peter’s home place. Meet his family. Then go on to Paris. Peace.

  11

  AUTUMN 1945

  The returning veterans seemed determined to repopulate the world. Mike and Mariann would have a second child in early 1946. Not a boy to be Mike with their Pat, but a girl they called Rose Ann. Very appropriate because it was Rose who was the honorary grandmother. After all she was Mame’s sister and the one who had ra
ised the Kelly kids. Even now the youngest, Frances, lived with her in the same South Side apartment on Yates Avenue where they’d moved after the bank had taken Michael’s house in Argo. Mike and Mariann would go on to have three more girls, Margaret, Susan, and Nancy. Then in 1957, Michael Joseph Kelly, who carried the name of his great-great grandfather, was born.

  Granny Honora. “We wouldn’t die.”

  Marguerite and her husband, Tom McGuire, had returned from the Army base in Texas where he’d been stationed. They came back to Chicago with their baby daughter, Kathleen, who soon had a brother named Thomas, then Carol, Sheila, Michael, and Jeanne. But that was to come. Still, a new generation had begun.

  In 1945 the two families had bought a house together in a new development, built on a stretch of prairie just within the southernmost limits of the city, that was designed for burgeoning young families—rows and rows of duplexes with common backyards that seemed to stretch for miles. I was out there visiting the day when a dozen trucks pulled up, full of black dirt. One crew of men spread the soil over what had been prairie while the other followed tossing out handfuls of grass seed.

  Merrionette Manor, the neighborhood was called. The developer, Joseph Merrion, named it for himself. He promised that there’d be a shopping street but so far the only thing besides the houses that had been built was a Catholic school. The archdiocese had slapped something together fast to contain the expected explosion of children. No church. Mass was held in a storefront while the parishioners began to raise funds. Their flesh and blood was the future. Stone and mortar could wait. The Depression was over. The war was won. Time for a victory lap, I said to Ed when I described this booming new development.

  “And all bought with mortgages financed by the GI Bill,” he said. “Now the Republicans want to destroy all these programs just because Roosevelt put them through. My God, Nonie, these fellows know how to hold a grudge.”

  A nasty campaign was shaping up already against Harry Truman, who had decided to run for his own term as president against the party’s wishes. Even Democrats didn’t think he had a chance against Thomas Dewey. But Ed was sticking with Truman. After all hadn’t he done the same thing? Run for the office he’d been appointed to. “You’ll win,” he’d told the president when Margaret and Ed had been invited to a White House dinner in September of 1945. Bess Truman had surprised everyone by restoring the presidential social calendar and insisting that the White House be renovated.