Thinking about my grandfather, John McArdle, today and really all these past two weeks. He lived a long life full of children (it is hard to find a photo of him not holding a baby)–he was father to 11. He played the ukulele and made the best (beef and tomato) soup. He loved ice cream and ketchup and bologna sandwiches. He was a champion boxer and a trained painter. I will miss him, I do miss him.
In 1942, Evelyn Brennan was “a girl with bangs” standing across the room at a party.
Chris Fitzgerald saw her and thought, “There’s the girl for me.”
She agreed to dance but told him she was in love with somebody else — engaged, actually, to her high school sweetheart.
"Didn’t faze him in the least," she says. "Not in the least."
He found a way to walk her home that night and then ordered an onion sandwich — “just being playful” — when they stopped for a burger along the way. He made her laugh.
She addressed a Dear John letter to that somebody else.
A month after the party, “I asked her to be the manager of my baseball team,” Chris Fitzgerald, 86, says smiling.
"That was how he proposed to me," says Evelyn, 85. "He said, ‘I’d love it if you could be manager of my baseball team or if I could be manager of your baseball team.’ And I said, ‘What?’ I didn’t get it. But he was really asking me to marry him."
She was 20, he was 21. They met in September, were engaged in October and married in November.
"Then I sailed away," says Chris, one of the first graduates of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
He was gone for 40 days that time. The next time it was for two years. She wrote a letter every day. Every day. He lost his wallet once while in the Pacific, but somehow it was returned. It was the one “with 18 or 20 pictures of his wife,” she says.
"Are you okay? I don’t want you to be emotional, or I won’t talk about it," Evelyn Fitzgerald says as the eyes of her husband of 65 years start to well.
He came back once, in ‘44, but then was called again to leave. That morning, Evelyn and another sailor’s wife woke at dawn and stood at the water’s edge as the hulking gray vessel pulled away.
"We watched and we watched and we watched, and then, after about two hours, we saw the ship go way out. That’s when the war was really bad," she says. "With the kamikazes."
Lt. Chris Fitzgerald returned for good in 1945. Soon enough, there were five kids and a career with the CIA. Then there were 13 grandchildren and a house in Florida. Then there was a great-grandchild and a stroke and a retirement community in Arlington.
Does he like it there? “Not really.”
"But that’s okay," he adds, looking across the room at Evelyn. "I like you, kid."
"Yeah," she responds. "Well, that’s good."
I think 1944.
Eamon and I drank some moonshine to celebrate his graduation from WVU.
Reading about my ma today:
As an employee of two years in the CIA's file section and the daughter of a CIA officer; Fitzgerald paid little mind to what she considered a routine report to the proper authorities.
Belated Valentine's Day present from my mom.
The greatest love of all.
I love looking at this picture of my grandparents.
I attempt to faux-rescue him.
Best picture from my recent sojourn to Orlando and the surrounding themed environs.
When I was little I loved St. Patrick's Day. I dressed in all green, I pinched kids wearing red (because it somehow symbolized Protestants / the British??). In early elementary school I convinced two girls that I was born in Ireland. (Sorry guys.) My mom would make Irish soda bread, coat each bite in a thick skin of butter. My Nana and Papa used to play warbling renditions of all the Irish songs we all know in their boat-wide car, and when they moved up to northern Virginia we'd eat corned beef and cabbage and mashed potatoes at their apartment, Papa answering the door in shamrock-shaped sunglasses. I remember my parents and uncles taking me down the street to the 4 P's to drink green root beer while they drank other kinds of green beverages. When I was older, in high school with few white people, much less specifically-Irish-white, I was generally embarrassed by the holiday, though I still inhaled the soda bread that appeared every March. One of my classmates would also ask me to sing Danny Boy to her, which to my teenage self seemed like an offensive thing. Plus why would I know the words? When I hit 21, St. Pat's had a new dimension beyond clothes and food and music, which has made the holiday more palatable but also somehow less special. (All holidays, to a certain extent, are opportunities to drink.) Now I think a lot about family, though I have far from neglected the clothes and food and music and booze. Now, two secret family recipes to help celebrate the day:
Irish Tea, from Papa, who taught it to me on St. Pat's many years ago:
Step 1) Put a teabag of Irish Breakfast in hot water Step 2) Let it sit for five minutes Step 3) Add milk / sugar / honey to taste and drink!
He told me "It's Irish because it's extra strong. If it's not extra strong it's not Irish."
Corned Beef and Cabbage, from Nana, via my mom:
Step 1) Put a hunk of corned beef in a large pot, fill with water until covered. Step 2) Bring to boil for 3 1/2 hours, spoon off scum that collects on top in the first 1/2 hour. Let it sit. Step 3) Quarter and core a head of cabbage, set aside. Step 4) Add cabbage at the 3 1/2 hour mark, continue to cook for an additional 30 minutes. Step 5) Drain and serve.
I told my mom I thought it would be more complicated.
