Me and Dad's Brothers

Dad had four brothers and two sisters. He was the oldest. George, Joe, Ed, Jack and Kate were born to their father's first wife Katherine who died shortly after giving birth to Kate. He then had Charlie and Dot with his second wife Clara. Uncle Joe died from a ruptured brain aneurysm in1965 when I was in 8th grade.

This post is about Uncle Ed and Uncle Jack. I was 19 when my father died of a ruptured brain aneurysm in 1970. They both told me I was a man and should take responsibility for the family. I was in the Navy at the time and spoke with a chaplain about getting a hardship discharge to come home and be with the family. Mom was strongly against that and wanted me to complete my service so I could go to college on the GI Bill. She must have told Ed and Jack because they stopped bugging me to come home.

After my discharge in 1973 Ed and Jack continued to try to influence my life which was a good thing and I always appreciated their concern and love for our family but sometimes they were making recommendations based on religion and politics. Uncle Jack was particularly upset that I enrolled at Temple University instead of one of the local Catholic colleges like Villanova, St. Joe's or Lasalle. He knew I had the GI Bill to help with tuition payments but I needed to carefully explain to him that Temple as a state university allowed Vietnam Era vets free tuition and fees. All I had to pay for was my books and that was on top of the federal GI Bill money. Uncle Jack also wanted to know what church I was attending and how often I went to Confession. I really tried to avoid the subject but it went on for years, decades actually.

Later Uncle Ed spent a lot of time and effort trying to convert me to political conservatism. He was always very nice about it and was very low key about it. He also never engaged in an outright argument but rather tried gentle persuasion. We had communicated a lot through the 80's concerning family history research. We exchanged letters but eventually our correspondences were through email. I saved all of those emails from him in a special directory on a hard drive and eventually copied them to a disc. I really should dig them out and read through them sometime.

Uncle Jack has continued to harp on the religion over the years. He was thrilled when I started working at a Jesuit college and assumed I was immersed in the Catholic religion. Up until a couple of years ago he was still trying to get me to talk with him about religion when I called. He liked asking me about purgatory and who I was praying for. I never gave him my reasons for not being a Catholic since I was a teenager. I never talked to him about Tom and our experiences going to Catholic schools. He is a good man and I don't want to hurt him or make him feel bad. I would always be somewhat agreeable concerning his discussions about religion and then try to move the conversation somewhere else.

The picture above is from Uncle Ed's wedding in June 1950. Left to right, my grandfather, Nana, Elmer who was a good friend of my father and his brothers, two women who were probably friends or relatives of Aunt Carol the bride, Uncle Ed, Aunt Carol, Uncle Joe, another unknown woman, Dad, Aunt Carol's parents, and the priest. The little teenager further down the row is Uncle Charlie and across from him is Aunt Kate and Mom.