Technically-speaking, this is a terrible picture. But I love it, because EVERYONE is smiling – even my great-grandmother and Uncle Frank. Margaret might be hiding his grin, but I can see the smile in his cheeks. I suppose this is 1942-1943? Mom will need to help out with this…when was Frank in the service?
I wonder what they are all so happy about???
In the lead-up to St. Patrick’s Day this year, I want to feature some favorite snapshots from my collection of family photos. These photos will celebrate the Irish in Minneapolis!
Not sure what house this is, or the date. My guess is that it is my grandparents’ house and it is about 1943. On the left is my grandma’s sister Rose McMahon (we called her Dodo) walking with her mother, Mary Foley McMahon. Trailing behind is my great-grandfather Neil Regan.
When I see this photo, I think about Neil and Mary, both born in Fisherville, New Hampshire to Irish immigrants from Kilmichael, County Cork. The connection between the Foley and Regan families survived a transatlantic journey to America followed by a move half-way across the county to central Minnesota for Mary and Neil, a generation later, to grow old under the same roof in Minneapolis.
I wonder where they were going, anyway?
I hope my mom comments on this post and fills us in on the location and date of the photo!
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my Great Aunt Dodo. Ever since I opened my hall closet and a vintage overnight case tumbled down from a high shelf, hit me on the head, and landed a few feet away.
It is a pretty cool old bag – black with a zip-top, dome-shape and two handles. There is a small window on the front of the bag where the owner could slide a slip of paper with their name for identification purposes. “Rose Oien.” Rose was Dodo’s real name and Oien comes from her husband, Bernie Oien, whom she married in 1955.
I love this photo of Dodo. It is from the early 1940s. Rose Ann McMahon was born on December 28, 1908, in Tara Township near Clontarf, Minnesota. She was four years older than my grandma and the middle of seven children. How she came by the nickname Dodo, no one could ever tell me. Nicknames are sometimes like that.
Dodo always seemed like an old woman to me, with thinning white hair, printed cotton muumuus, and sensible black shoes. And it was always “Dodo and Bernie.” I don’t think I ever remember Dodo without Bernie, and I saw them fairly often when I was growing up. Bernie didn’t do anything to make Dodo seem less old. I could never really understand what he was saying. And Bernie had a wooden leg.
Bernie lost his real one in an elevator accident. It was a long time before I realized it was a grain elevator accident. I had always pictured the doors closing on Bernie as he just makes it into the elevator car. One of his legs stays behind in the lobby, pinched off in the heavy outer set of doors while the rest of Bernie keeps going up and up…
“Don’t be silly, Annie. That couldn’t happen,” I remember my mom saying when I mentioned something about how Bernie lost his leg.
Dodo and Bernie were married later in life and didn’t have children. When I was a kid, I thought that was the only reason people got married, so I asked my grandma why Dodo married Bernie.
“I guess Dodo wanted to go to a wedding.”
What a line.
When I think about Dodo, I will now always picture her as she is in this photo, with nicely styled hair, a regular dress, and that great smile.
As promised, here is the first of Vincent Carmody’s series, Listowel Emigrant Tales. Vincent tells us about “The Man Who Defeated Richard J. Daley”. With respect to Chicago politics, this was no mean feat! Elmer Walsh, the son of Irish immigrants from near Listowel, defeated Richard Daley, descendant of Famine-era immigrants from near Dungarvan, County Waterford, in the 1946 race for Cook County, Illinois sheriff.
The Irish in America 