This website contains fragments of the saga of how we all got here.

Your lives will take the story forward from here.

This is my Mom's family. Included in this account are details of three family members who aren't in your direct lineage but who were very close to her: her brother Jack, her uncle Frank Snowber, and her son, my little brother Tim.

Mom's parents were Timothy Aloysius McCarthy ("Poppy") and Mary Margaret Snowber ("Nannan"); since I was first-born, I got to name my grandparents at an early age. Both Nannan and Poppy had many first generation immigrants in their families. For this reason I haven't been able to go back very far in their ancestry. I hope that will change as more information comes to light.

I begin with my grandparents.

Poppy

An Extended Family
Poppy was born in New York City on January 17, 1876.  His parents were Timothy McCarthy (1832-1890) and Ellen Harrington (1839-1919), both Irish immigrants.

Poppy is listed in the 1880 Census at age 4 as a member of the McCarthy household along with four sisters, three brothers and a cousin, Mary Harrington. His father was a butcher and his mother's job was recorded as "Keep house".


As indicated by the tick marks on the right side of this census document, all the McCarthy children, including 22-year-old Honora, had been born in the U.S.  I conclude that Poppy's parents emigrated to this country sometime before 1858.

On Poppy's mother's side, there had been a great deal of poverty. His great grandfather, Michael Donovan (born 1785) was listed in the 1841 England Census as living in a poor house, the Poplar District Union Workhouse in East London.  He was shown to be 55 years old and listed as a 'labourer' and a foreigner.

Michael Donovan's daughter, Mary Donovan (1808-1897), caught a break when she married Daniel Harrington (1804-1883). Harrington was a butcher by trade, and clearly ambitious. In 1854 he and Mary, with their three boys and two girls, emigrated from Ireland to New York and established a meat packing business on Manhattan.

Documents show Poppy’s father died when Poppy was 14 years old, and he and his siblings lived with his mother’s family, the Harringtons, afterward.

The Harringtons

The Harringtons were the principal owners of a slaughterhouse and meat market located at 772-774 First Avenue in Manhattan, between East 42nd and East 48th Streets. The lot ran from the bank of the East River to First Avenue. The business was located there in the early years because livestock were delivered by river barge, grazed on the lot, and were slaughtered as needed. The family owned another property on the West Side at the foot of 59th Street, used similarly for delivery from the Hudson River.

The business was begun in the 1850's by Daniel Harrington and later was run by two of his son's—Dennis (1837-1914) and John J. (1844-1893). John J. developed the meatpacking side of the business and principally operated it until his death. Sometime after the Civil War Poppy’s father, Timothy McCarthy (1832-1890), joined the business as a principal.

Several other Harringtons are listed as butchers in the NYC Directories of that time, and it appears they all had other places of employment and most also had shops at the West Washington Market, an open air market near the Fulton Fish Market. A few of them later moved to New Jersey.

The main business was continued by several Harringtons until about 1925, when Swift Meatpackers of Chicago purchased it. The 18 acres of the site were bought by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1946 for $8.5 million ($107 million in 2019 dollars) and then donated to the United Nations as the site for its headquarters.

The current occupants of the Harrington property on the East River.

John J. Harrington died of a heart attack on September 21, 1893, having become quite wealthy as a prominent member of Tammany Hall. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx and left his money to his wife, Mary Scanlon. She remarried a man named Reisig and many years later she was buried alongside John J. Also buried in the same plot is another woman named Scanlon whom I have not identified.

In census documents, Ellen Harrington (1839-1919) is associated with both Timothy McCarthy (1832-1890)—my great-grandfather—and Timothy Scanlon (1830-1903). The three were contemporaries, and on census documents Ellen is listed as the mother of Nora (b. 1857), John (b. 1865), Daniel (b. 1867), Timothy A. (my Poppy, b. 1876), Charles (b. 1877), and Mary (b. 1887) McCarthy. And she’s also listed as the mother of Mary (b. 1873), Con (b. 1874) and Patt (b. 1877) Scanlon, contemporaries of the McCarthy children.

My guess: Back then many mothers died in childbirth or shortly thereafter.  Ellen Harrington was the biological mother of the McCarthy kids but was related by marriage to the Scanlons.  Ellen may have adopted the Scanlon children to keep them out of an orphanage.  If so she was a remarkably caring and generous woman.

A Practicing Attorney
In 1892 Poppy entered Manhattan College at the age of 16 and graduated with a bachelor's degree two years later. He then entered New York Law School and was granted his Bachelor of Laws (LLB) degree cum laude at the age of 20. He was admitted to the New York State Bar on his first try that same year.

State law prohibited anyone under the age of 21 from practicing law, so Poppy took a job as a law clerk. However, on his 21^st birthday he appeared in civil court as a practicing attorney, the youngest person ever to do so in the state of New York. That's a record that will never be broken as long as the age restriction remains in place.

In 1905 Poppy's family was living at 108 East 56th Street in Brooklyn. In addition to 66-year-old Ellen ("Widow"), there were three adult sons and two adult daughters living in the house, of which Poppy ("Lawyer") was the youngest at 29. In addition, there were four boarders living under that roof. In 1910 they were still there, but the boarders had left and Poppy's brother Charles and his wife and daughter had moved in. By 1915 Charles had a 4-month-old son and Poppy was married and living in Manhattan. This is the Brooklyn house today.

This is Poppy’s 1918 draft registration card indicating he was blind in his left eye, the result of a slingshot injury when he was a kid.  His occupation was "lawyer", employed by “myself”.

After moving from Manhattan in 1919, Nannan and Poppy lived at 131 Neptune Avenue in New Rochelle.  This is a photo of my grandparents outside "Our New Home" with 3-year-old Jack sitting on a snow sled.

This photo was taken the year before my mom was born. She grew up here.

Poppy lost almost all the family's savings on Black Tuesday, October 29, 1929. Yet somehow he was able to keep the house and underwrite both my mom's and my uncle Jack's college educations.  Poppy was my first teacher.

He died on October 5th, 1956. On the day of his funeral the local newspaper in New Rochelle published a tribute article. Here is the text:

City Court today adjourned out of respect for the memory of the late Timothy A. McCarthy, of 131 Neptune Avenue. Mr. McCarthy died Friday at New Rochelle Hospital.

New Rochelle Bar Association president James R. Rooney and secretary F. Harry Otto, paid tribute along with City Judge Christopher J. Murphy to their former fellow practitioner. Judge Murphy entertained a motion that a committee be set up to arrange a memorial service for Mr. McCarthy in City Court at a future date.

Lawyer 50 Years
Mr. Otto said the association “is proud to have had Mr. McCarthy as one of its esteemed honorary members, an award made to him in recognition of 50 years of fine and honorable service at the bar.” Mr. McCarthy was a member of the New York State Bar Association.

Judge Murphy ordered a copy of the remarks be sent to Mr. McCarthy’s widow, Mrs. Mary A. Snowber McCarthy. They will also be made a part of the permanent record of the court.

Mr. McCarthy was Democratic candidate for Supervisor from the second ward in 1935. At the time he was serving as secretary of the Citizens Advisory Board assisting the State in a survey of schools here.

He was born in New York and moved to New Rochelle in 1918. He was a graduate of Manhattan College and New York Law School with LLB cum laude. Upon his graduation he was admitted to the bar.

New York City Post
For two years he was Assistant Commissioner of Taxes in New York City and for several years he served as chairman of the Committee on Taxation and Budget of the League of Neighborhood Association and in that capacity had often appeared at budget hearings.

During the Badeau administration he was named one of five lawyers to argue zoning cases and later was named special counsel to represent the City on zoning matters. He had a perfect record, winning every case.

As a member of the Transit Commission he led the fight for substitution of buses for trolleys on East Main Street and got a five cent fare for school children.

A Requiem Mass was held this morning at St. Gabriel’s Church and Mr. McCarthy was buried in the family plot at Calvary cemetery.

After Poppy's death, Nannan sold the Neptune house in 1957 for $13,000.  (In today's dollars that would be about $110,000, a steal at twice the price.)  Here’s what the house looks like today.

It's been restored to look very much like it did 100 years ago except for the colors.  Gone are the big pillars on the front porch as I remember it, and long gone are the big maple tree in the front yard and the huge cherry tree, the concord grape arbor and the barn out back.

Nannan

On Her Father's Side
Regarding the family name 'Snowber', Nannan's father was Thomas F. B. Snowber (1843-1884) and her paternal grandfather was Leonard Snauber (1810-1860). The family was listed in the 1870 US Census as having immigrated from “Prussia” (specifically, from Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany), back when being German wasn’t the pathway to popular acceptance. We were told that the name was "Swedish".

This is Leonard's naturalization file dated 1848. He changed his last name sometime after his arrival:

Regarding Nannan's father, I found the following three documents attesting to his enlistment as a private during the Civil War in B Company, 12th Infantry Regiment, New York State Militia (NY SM), New York National Guard. In 1861 he was 18 years old. (If you click on the image below it will take you to a list of headstones provided for Union Civil War veterans.  Thomas is listed about 3/4 of the way down the page.)

This is the certificate authorizing his burial in a national cemetery, again indicating his rank and unit.

This is a file card dated November 26, 1890, six years after Thomas F B Snowber’s death. It’s in the index of Civil War pensions and again indicates his unit. It lists a dependent minor, Gabriel A. Healey, about whom I have no information.

The following is an excerpt from an account of the 12^th Infantry Regiment’s participation in the war:

April 21, 1861, the regiment, ten companies, commanded by Colonel Butterfield, left the State en route to Washington, D. C., where it was mustered in the United States service, for three months, May 2, 1861. It served at and near Washington from May, 1861, and in the Army, Department of Pennsylvania (General Patterson); and was mustered out at New York City, August 5, 1861.

After the regiment's return from this service a large number of its members entered the volunteer service, for three years, in an organization known as the I2th Militia, which was, in January, 1862, consolidated with the 12th Volunteers.

May 27, 1862, the regiment, nine companies then commanded by Col. William G. Ward, was again ordered to Washington, D. C., and left the State, June 6, 1862; it was mustered in the United States service for three months, served at Harper's Ferry, W. Va., in the 4th Brigade; volunteered to stay over its term of service, and was surrendered with Harper's Ferry; it was mustered out at New York city, October 8, 1862, and declared exchanged January 11, 1863.

June 18, 1863, the regiment, ten companies, was ordered to Harrisburg, Pa., and it left the State, under Colonel Ward on the 20th; it was mustered in the service of the United States, for thirty days, served in General Yates' command at Fenwick, Pa., and in the 1st Brigade, Dana's Division, Department Susquehanna, and July 20, 1863, was mustered out of that service at New York city.

The regiment lost, died of disease, in its service of 1861, two enlisted men, and it, or portions of it, took part in the following engagements, etc.:

Occupation of Arlington Heights, Va., May 24, 1861;

Skirmish near Martinsburg, Va., July 12, 1861;

Skirmish near Bunker Hill, W. Va., July 15, 1861;

Skirmish on Maryland Heights, Md., September 12-13, 1862;

Siege and surrender of Harper's Ferry, W. Va., September 12-15, 1862 (30 officers and 530 enlisted men were surrendered).

Shortly after Nannan was born in June of 1879, the Snowber family was registered in the 1880 US Census. Her parents were recorded on the bottom of one page…

and Nannan and her two older brothers were at the top of the next page (she’s shown having no age, indicating she was a newborn).

 

On Her Mother's Side
Nannan’s mother was Mary Flood. Mary's father, Michael Flood, was from Ireland and her mother, Catherine Baine, was from England.  When Mary was born her parents were living in New York, but after Michael's death in 1875 Catherine returned to her family home in Ashton-under-Lyne near Manchester, England. 

Mary Flood lived in New York City her entire life.

Nannan, An Edwardian Woman
Nannan graduated from the College of Mount St. Vincent in New York City, and taught in the New York public school system before her marriage to Poppy.

Poppy and Nannan were married on April 14, 1915 in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. Among their wedding gifts was a Tiffany's carving set including what my brother and I call "The Knife"—a vanadium steel blade that has an amazingly sharp edge even a century later. They also received a Tiffany stained-glass lamp for the front room, and a Tiffany stained-glass chandelier that hung in Poppy's library.

And Poppy bought his grandfather's clock a year later for their new house (on Neptune Avenue, but up the street from the house where they finally settled in 1919, 131 Neptune).  It's the clock that stands in our living room and which I spent two years restoring in Poppy's honor. It's an amazing artifact—it's accurate within a few seconds a month. Back in the day, that kind of quality was something sought and treasured.

To celebrate their 15^th anniversary in 1930, my grandparents took a cruise to Havana, Cuba.  Ten-year-old Mom and her 13-year-old brother Jack weren’t on the manifest.  It appears to have been a classic parental getaway. 

 

I’m thinking that, in view of how much Poppy lost in the stock market crash in late October 1929, he probably purchased these tickets when times were good—“The Roaring Twenties”—before the crash.  The two of them were on the list of US Citizens re-entering the country aboard the SS California. 

Fun Fact: Nannan was famously sensitive about her age, something she claimed “a woman should never disclose”.  Notice that she showed up above in the 1880 US Census as a newborn.  But look at her age as recorded on the 1930 cruise according to her hand-written passport.

She managed to lop ten years off her age.  She did the same thing 15 years earlier, just after she and Poppy were married. They were living in Catherine Spellman's house at the time of the 1915 Census, and she lists her age as '26' when Poppy's age and that of her two-year-older brother is '38'.

This was 1915; she was born in 1879.  The math doesn't fudge, unlike Nannan.

This brings to mind one of my early memories. It involves Nannan's wagging finger.

I mentioned earlier that Poppy was my first teacher. He taught mostly by encouraging me to stretch. I could read by the time I was in kindergarten and I had my first arithmetic lesson on his knee when I was three. We were sitting under the cherry tree in the back yard at the Neptune house on a summer afternoon. Mom and Nannan were in the kitchen and we were sitting under the open kitchen window when I asked Poppy, "How old is my mommy?".

He responded, "Well, let's see. Your uncle is thirty two years old, and your mother is four years younger than your uncle. So, how old is your mother?"

I started working on the problem and was deeply engaged.  Thirty two.  Four years younger.  Thirty two... thirty one.... Fingers and toes.

Meanwhile, we could hear Nannan stomping through the kitchen, stomping through the pantry, stomping out the back porch, down the porch steps and along the walk toward us, wagging her finger at us the whole time.

Standing before us with hands on hips she declared, "Timothy, NEVER divulge a woman's age."

At precisely that same moment, as she was emphasizing NEVER, I loudly and proudly yell out, "Twenty eight!!!"   Poppy and I were both in trouble that day.

Here's a portrait of the McCarthy family in 1932.  (It doesn't look like Mom was enjoying the photo experience.  I think I inherited that trait from her.) Nannan was in her mid-50s then, but to me she looks older than that.

The irony of the Nannan's fixation on age, and she'd hate for me to be saying this even forty-plus years after her passing, is that when she was in her prime, instead of looking ten years younger I think the discrepancy went in the other direction; she looked older than her years.

The double irony is that later in her life, in her eighties and nineties, she looked younger than her age. And she was in great shape in those later years—she walked several miles every day. Then it would have made sense, or at least would have been understandably forgivable, for her to fib a little about her age. As proof, here's a casual photo of her in her 90's.

When Poppy died, I was 11 and was old enough to help my mom and Nannan ready the estate for sale. Poppy had a large roll-top desk in his library that, when I was young, I'd hide in by pulling the roll top down over me and would explore the several cubby holes for treasures like pennies and paper clips. Mom and Nannan were cleaning out the desk drawers and were having trouble with the file drawer on the right side. It was jammed. So they pulled the upper drawer out and saw that the file drawer was full of large papers.

They started pulling the papers out sheet after sheet, and discovered that they were stock certificates dated back 25 years. What we all surmised was that, after the market crash in 1929, many of Poppy's clients were facing bankruptcy and were suing other businesses for breach of contract. None of them had any money to pay Poppy, so to save their embarrassment he took payment in these mostly-worthless stock certificates. In all that time he probably never opened that drawer.

Nannan had the certificates appraised and found to her good fortune that many had recovered value and over 25 years had appreciated significantly. She was rich!

Mom counseled her to keep the money and reinvest it wisely, but Nannan had always had ambitions to be part of the New York's high society. She'd loved stories of "The 400" and she read the Society pages of the Times every day. She was 77 at the time and figured she'd only live a couple more years. YOLO! So she rented a suite in a Manhattan hotel and lived royally for a couple of years, until the money ran out.

Her money ran out but her time didn't, not by a long shot. She spent the rest of her life, 18 years, alternately living with us and with Mom's brother Jack. And my mom remained frustrated that whole time because "it didn't have to be that way".

But Nannan sure did enjoy those two years. They just weren't her last two.

My Mom

My mom's maiden name was Margaret Mary McCarthy (alternatively, in some places her name appears as Margaret Snowber McCarthy).  As her birth certificate attests, she was born on January 22, 1920 in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  The certificate gives no hint as to her official middle name.

Mom attended The Ursuline School from elementary through high school, where she majored in biology, and then the College of New Rochelle, both all-women's institutions on the same campus just a few blocks from her house.

Despite the Great Depression, Mom enjoyed a relatively comfortable childhood and active adolescence. She was an accomplished equestrian and a very competitive swimmer. And she was no slouch socially. Toward the end of her life Mom's short-term memory failed almost completely, but she could still remember many details about her teen years.  Here's a photo of her with friends when she was 19. That's Mom, second from the left.

She could remember dating each of the guys in the photo: she knew names, dates, where they went, when she got home. She even remembered closing a bar or two. The guy on the far right is Terence "Terry" Cooke, who went on to become a priest, then bishop, then Archbishop of New York, and finally Cardinal. (By all accounts he was a good man but, personally, I had issues with his politics when he was Apostolic Vicar for the US military [the boss chaplain] and was a strong supporter of the war in Vietnam.)

In college Mom majored in chemistry and biology, and minored in French. She loved the sciences and excelled at them, but she struggled with French. To pass her final course she had to produce a 20-page single-spaced typed thesis.  She struggled with verb conjugations and spelling and where to place accent marks and so much more. The clock was ticking and she was desperate.

So to minimize verbiage and fill space, throughout her typed script she interposed pen-and-ink sketches of the subject matter. She wrote about a French peasant (sketch of peasant) from a village (sketch of village) near Paris (sketch of Paris skyline) in the Spring (sketch of flowers and birds) working in the field (sketch of peasants working in a field)....

Back then there was no word processing and there wasn't any cutting and pasting. If you made the slightest mistake you had to start all over again.  It actually took a great deal of ingenuity on her part to draw the sketches on the page in ink and then type the story around them. In its own way her thesis was a work of art.

Her professor's comment on the paper was that her French was questionable but her sketches were wonderful.   She passed French.

Here's Mom's college graduation portrait:


After graduation she worked in an organic chemistry lab and the National Youth Administration until she became engaged to Dad.

This is Mom's notice of her engagement in the local New Rochelle newspaper on Friday, November 13, 1942. (This is the way it was done back in the time of news-papers. Local papers didn't always get all their facts straight.)

Mr. and Mrs. Timothy A. McCarthy, 131 Neptune Avenue, have announced the engagement of their daughter, Miss Margaret Snowber McCarthy, to Richard E. Willis, Jr. of the Bronx.

Miss McCarthy is a graduate of the Ursuline School and of the College of New Rochelle, class of '41.

Mr. Willis attended Power Memorial High School, New York City, St. Charles Junior College, Baltimore, Md., and St. Joseph College, Dunwoodie, N.Y.

A member of the faculty of Power Memorial High School, he has volunteered for the Army Signal Corps Reserve, and leaves this week for Fort Monmouth, N.J.

No date has been set for the wedding.

Over in Dad's story I recount the reason they hadn't set a date for their wedding. But it finally did happen in August of 1943, three days after Dad received his commission. 

My folks didn't have much of a honeymoon; Dad's training started almost immediately, and Mom was with him every step of the way. Spending time in the South wasn't a pleasant experience for Mom. She talked about how biased and aggressively antagonistic white Southern Protestants were toward Catholics. It gave her a real taste of the poison of deep-seated prejudice.

Finally, Dad's training ended and in October 1944 he received orders for overseas duty. Mom was pregnant by then and she headed back to the comfort of New Rochelle to live with her parents.

Doing the math, I had been conceived in mid-summer 1944, two or three months before Dad headed overseas. It must have been a hard winter for Mom, not knowing anything about where Dad was since everything he was working on was top secret. I arrived in the Spring of 1945 and Mom and I spent a lazy Summer and Autumn without Dad.

Things livened up though, as soon as he walked through the door in late 1945 and dropped his duffelbag. In fairly quick succession my sister Kathy and then my brother Kevin arrived. By then we were living in the Levitt house in Carle Place on Long Island.

Mom lived a busy but ordered existence caring for the house and for us kids. I fully attest to the fact that mine was a joyous childhood. Everything about it—school, friends, sports—every aspect was idyllic. It was a golden time to be a kid, and Long Island was the perfect place.

Mom was a phenomenal long-distance swimmer. She had the most effortless stroke, just gliding through the water like some sort of mythic sea creature. She taught us to swim and dive.  I don't know who taught her, but I think if there had been a 1940 Summer Olympics (there wasn't because of the war in Europe) Mom might have competed at that level.

Long Island was heaven for swimmers. There were the calm Long Island Sound beaches on the north shore, and on the south shore there was ocean surf at Jones Beach and the Hamptons. And in Summer the water was delightfully warm and salty. Each morning Mom would pack a lunch and we kids would pile in the car. Where do we want to go today? North to Bar Beach or south to Jones Beach? It was heaven.

I should mention here Mom's children. I was the first (born April 15, 1945), and then there was my sister Kathleen Mary (born December 24, 1946) and Kevin Joseph (born May 23, 1948). Mom had a series of miscarriages after Kevin, each one of them difficult and devastating. And then came her miracle baby, Timothy Joseph, her father's namesake (born February 10, 1954). I write about Tim below: his charm, his brilliance, and his deadly disease.

Tim's suffering and death changed Mom profoundly. In subtle ways she became withdrawn, somber. She was in her mid-forties by then and tried for another baby but miscarried. There seemed to be no way to comfort her. She still had her religious faith, and her friends, mostly religious friends, but from my perspective Dad was her only true source of support. She was most fortunate in that respect.

Dad was there for her for almost thirty years after Tim's death. They became a team when they moved to Canada and started the business. She was his office admin and bookkeeper and keeper of correspondence. She stayed busy with all Dad's business and with her three horses and with gardening and with her art and with all her little workbench projects in the basement.

But eventually Dad was forced to retire and his health slowly declined. Mom took on more of the burden of maintaining the house and acreage, which was considerable.  When cancer finally overcame Dad, Mom was bitter about his passing.  "He left me," she said angrily after the funeral.

After a while, Kevin and I thought it would be good for Mom to get out on a date. There were several widower friends in town but she would have none of it. She lived alone in the Terra Cotta house for almost 15 years until the place required too much upkeep for her to handle. Also, she drove to church in Georgetown daily, five miles each way in all sorts of weather, and her eyesight was beginning to fail due to age-related macular degeneration.

She finally gave up the house and bought a condo in town. While it was a convenient move, it wasn't altogether a happy one. Unlike at the house, there were no deer or foxes wandering through her section of town, and she could only grow vegetables in pots.

Mom showed a remarkably strong will, right to the end. As one example, which I find amazing to this day, she'd been a chain smoker for over 40 years. Growing up I remember the house always full of smoke. Pall Mall unfiltered. A pack a day, easily. For her birthday and for Christmas we always knew what to get her as a present: a carton of cigarettes wrapped in gift paper and tied with a ribbon. It showed we really cared.

Then in the middle of a phone conversation somewhere around 1995, when she was in her mid-70s, she casually mentioned to me that she had quit. "What do you mean, you quit? You mean you're not smoking anymore?"   "Yup. Cold turkey."   "Well, what was the cause? What made you quit?"   "Nothing. I just decided it was a stupid habit."  After 40 years of having a smoke first thing in the morning and a smoke the last thing at night, a smoke while reading, a smoke while cooking....  And she stuck with it.  Once decided, she never smoked again.

She did pay a price though for all those years of tar build up in her lungs: COPD. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. She developed a serious cough, and over time her breathing became labored. She couldn't walk more than a couple of blocks without getting winded.  She required a pacemaker, and she spent her last couple of years on oxygen.  It was a difficult end to a full and active life.

After taking a bad fall at the age of 92, Mom spent several months in the hospital in Georgetown.  Eventually she needed to move, and since she would need intensive care the condo wasn't an option.  I had found a care facility for her in Oakville, but shortly after she moved there her condition faded rapidly.  She was moved to a nearby hospital.

Kevin was with her.  By that time Mom was comatose but he very thoughtfully put a phone to her ear and enabled me say good bye to her.  I told her that in a moment she would be in eternity with Dad and Tim and Poppy and Jack, and that in another moment we'd all be joining her.  While she couldn't speak, she was able to acknowledge hearing my words.

For that I was most grateful. We'd had our closure.

Mom died on September 25, 2012 in Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital, Oakville, Ontario.

My Brother Tim

For someone who only spent nine years in this world, my brother Timothy Joseph Willis made a tremendous impact on many, many lives.

Tim was born into unseasonably warm weather on February 10, 1954 in Hempstead, New York. Named in honor of his grandfather (to Poppy's unending delight), from the start it was obvious to everyone in the family that Tim was special. He was a remarkably happy baby, and though he was born with a displaced hip and had to live in a cast from his waste to his toes for the first six months of his life, the only time he cried about it was when he heard the sound of a saw about to cut into his cast. And that happened often because he grew so quickly and needed several cast replacements.

Tim was off-the-charts tall for his age. His eventual height was projected to be over seven feet. Because his legs were bound by casts for so long, and then by a brace to straighten out his ankles, his ability to walk was delayed, but once he started there was no stopping him.

He had a small chair that was his favorite thing—he'd push it or carry it around the house, and when he got to where he was going, he'd sit in it. It was a fixture. Wherever he went, the chair went.

One day he tripped and fell into the chair and cracked his right front tooth. The damage was so severe that it killed the permanent tooth, and for the rest of his short life he had a gap that he displayed unabashedly. On the right is his First Communion portrait at age seven.

I don't know if you can see a bit of the leprechaun in that face.  I sure can.  Tim had a great sense of humor, and that ranged from jokes to bad puns to outright tricks. From an early age he was a gentle prankster.

The family moved to Chicago Heights, Illinois, the summer of 1961, when Tim was seven. That year he attended second grade at Infant Jesus of Prague Catholic elementary school in Flossmoor, Illinois, and he had a difficult time with the rules there.

This is his second grade report card...
Several of Tim's strengths jump off the page but his teacher, Mrs. Carollo, declared them to be deficiencies (indicated by L's on the left, check marks on the right).

1. On the left side, his interest in science was very strong, even in second grade.
2. He was lacking in Christian doctrine. Basically his curiosity, objectivity and critical thinking were seen as faults.
3. His seat work needed work. To me a sign he needed intellectual stimulation.
4. On the right side, his lack of 'self-control' just meant his mind wandered.
5. The biggest clues were that he didn't keep busy and that the quality of his work didn't "measure up to ability".

For that, Mrs. Carollo found him unfit for promotion to third grade. Everyone in the family was incredulous. Tim was always the smartest one in the room. There had to be a serious mistake.

Mrs. Carollo gave my parents an alternative to having Tim repeat second grade: have him attend summer school and hope that he shows improvement.  No one in the family thought this was necessary, but since Tim was already the tallest kid in his class my folks chose summer school in hopes that whatever was creating these behavioral issues could be resolved so that he could remain with his cohort.

For Tim, this was the break he needed, because the summer school teacher saw brilliance where Mrs. Carollo had seen dullness. The new teacher asked my parents if Tim had ever taken an intelligence test, and he hadn't. So they scheduled one for him.

The results cleared up the entire enigma. His IQ was rated well above 140; at that level in a 7-year-old, the number is practically meaningless. It simply indicates the child is borderline genius. Tim wasn't dull, he'd been bored silly by the second grade curriculum. He needed to be challenged.

His summer school teacher took him to the public library and let him choose a book to read. Tim chose a college-level geology textbook. A week later he returned it to his teacher saying he'd read it, and he asked if they could go back to the library and get another book. That's how the summer went.

If Tim's illness hadn't made its appearance shortly afterward, there's no telling where his life's path would have taken him. But we were grateful for the wisdom of that summer school teacher.  She'd found Tim's spark.

On an evening sometime the following winter, we were all at the dinner table when Tim let out a sudden scream and clutched his chest. He was in severe pain. My parents rushed him to a hospital, where an X-ray showed a mass in his chest. The diagnosis was pneumonia and he was prescribed antibiotics and sent home to rest.

In the following days, when it became clear the antibiotics weren't lessening Tim's condition, more tests were done. The mass was biopsied and the result showed a malignant tumor of lymphatic tissue in the thymus, called at the time lymphosarcoma. My parents were devastated.

Fifty years ago the science of chemotherapy was in its infancy and radiation treatment of tumors was brutal. Tim bore all the pain and all the fear with remarkable courage and good spirit. As the disease progressed to leukemia in the spring and summer of 1963, we all donated blood and did whatever else we could think of to make this evil go away. My dad went on a desperate but fruitless search for rumored miracle cures. I cannot imagine his or my mom's despair as they witnessed their child's condition worsen day by day. Their faith in a loving God must have been sorely tested.

In late August I went off to school in Detroit. In September, Tim wanted to see me and so my parents drove the five hours from Chicago Heights to Detroit. Tim was in severe pain and in a wheelchair, but he carried on a lively conversation while his energy lasted. After an hour, it was clear he was spent and we said a tearful, brotherly good bye. It was only decades later that I was able to see how my love for Tim, and the reality of his loss, distorted all efforts on my part to focus on academics. As a student I was terribly distracted and, until my senior year, didn't perform well at all.

On Tuesday evening, November 26, Dad called me and told me to catch a flight home—Tim was in a coma. I don't recall the details but I managed a reservation for a Wednesday evening flight to O'Hare. That morning I had gone to my math professor—I was doing poorly in Calculus—and apologized that I was going to have to miss his test that afternoon. I assured him I had studied for it. He asked me what my excuse was, and I hesitated at the word 'excuse'.  Did he see me as that bad a student?

I was surprised and a bit shocked at his response at my telling him my brother was dying. He broke down crying and said he understood.  (I felt suddenly numb and confused; if he's crying and I'm so much closer to Tim, what should I be doing? Should I be standing here sounding rational?)  He said he'd get the word to all my other professors.

The next day, Thursday, would be Thanksgiving and travel was challenging. Also, it was the week after the Kennedy assassination and everyone traveling was in a somber, irritable mood.  This was my first experience flying and it wasn't a happy one.

I didn't make it home until after dark, somewhere around 9 PM. When I opened the front door my mother greeted me with a finger to her lips, pointed to the family room where there was a hospital bed.  She told me Tim was in a coma and they were trying to keep the house quiet. She walked with me to the kitchen and began to bring me up to date on his condition. I must have asked her a question, because from the family room we heard clearly, "Is that Dick? Get in here, Brother!"

I walked in and saw Tim sitting up in the bed motioning me to sit there with him. We commenced a rather lengthy conversation about death as I recall. Pope John XXIII, his favorite, had died the previous summer, and JFK's funeral had been a couple of days previous on November 25th. Tim joked, "All the good guys are dying. I must be next."  And he weakly punched my arm.

I was amazed at how much his physical condition had deteriorated. He was so thin I could see all his skeletal bones, and he was frequently coughing up or vomiting blood. It was a terrible thing to witness in a loved one.

After a short while he lapsed back into the coma and became delirious, or so it seemed. Twice he woke up and asked what time it was. The second time, when we told him it was midnight, he responded, "Good.  Only six more hours."  We kept watch all that night.

At exactly six o'clock Thanksgiving morning, Tim took his last breath.

I thought it was a coincidence that it was six hours after midnight. How could Tim have known?

After Tim's funeral, one of the nuns in Tim's school, his favorite, told my parents that the previous spring Tim had had a premonition of his death. She said he was very conversational and not at all dramatic when he told her he was going to die on Thanksgiving. She hadn't given it much thought at the time, but remembered when she got the news.  She thought my parents should know, although as a nun she didn't know quite what to make of it.

Then a month or so later one of Dad's fellow executives told Dad he had just learned about a conversation his son had had with Tim over the previous summer. The two boys, roughly the same age, were sitting on the loading dock of the company warehouse when the other boy asked Tim, as 8-year-olds are wont to do, "Do you think you're gonna die?" And Tim said, "Oh yeah. For sure."

When the boy asked him how he knew for sure, Tim told him he could see it clearly, "Six o'clock in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. That's when I'm gonna die." Then Tim told him not to tell anyone until after he was gone.

And the boy didn't.

This is a Christmas letter with my mom's sketch at the bottom that she sent out to family and friends the following year (the note at the top is to her mother). Despite it's cheerful busy-ness, Mom and Dad were still devastated a year later. I don't think Mom ever really recovered.

My Uncle Jack

Mom's older brother, John Timothy McCarthy, was born on February 24, 1916.

In the photo at the right, he's standing with his mother, my Nannan, and her brother, my Great Uncle Frank, in the winter of 1920-21. Jack was four at the time and Mom was an infant.

Mom used to tell stories about how great an older brother Jack was and how much she learned from him. From an early age Jack was a tinkerer, and Mom would be tinkering right along with him.

They had an old Model A Ford in the barn behind the Neptune house, and that's where they both learned about the mechanics of cars. I don't know if they ever got the 'flivver' running, but they learned a lot taking it apart and putting it back together.

I think that's where they both gained an interest in the sciences. Mom, as I mentioned, loved organic chemistry and later had a job in a medical lab. Jack went to Iona Prep, an all-boys college preparatory school in New Rochelle, and then attended Manhattan College, his father's alma mater, where he majored in engineering and the sciences. 

During his summers between semesters he was employed on cruise ships that sailed the Atlantic to Europe and back; that's probably where his love of the sea began. In 1936 he was on the list of crew members of the steamship Washington as "elevator operator" on a cruise from New York to Hamburg, Germany via Channel Ports.

Jack graduated with a bachelor of science degree in civil engineering in 1938.

When war broke out in the Pacific, Jack joined the Navy and earned his commission in October 1942. He was an officer in the Seabees, Navy construction battalions (CBs). (For me as a kid the Seabees logo and the play on words simply fascinated me—I thought it was really cool. Maybe that's were the thought of me becoming an engineer first percolated.)

Jack was responsible for construction efforts in Kodiak, Alaska and points west for much of the war. It was damned cold in the Aleutians. Toward the end of the war he was assigned farther south. When it was over, he stayed on in the Navy Reserve for the next several decades.

After the war Jack settled into a very ordered life: he worked at a nondescript engineering job, he lived at home with his parents, he was active in the Navy Reserve, and he sailed on weekends. There was no woman in his life. As time went on, family members whispered among themselves about poor Jack, will he ever be happy?

Then there was word that a friend of the family, Kay Glassing, had hooked Jack up with someone, and it was looking serious. I remember the day we all piled in our car and drove up to New Rochelle to meet the new woman in Jack's life.

I especially remember as our car rolled into the driveway that Jack was sitting on the front porch steps with this really cute woman. She was very exotic by our (Irish) standards—she had black curly hair and was wearing a most colorful dress. But her most endearing feature was her smile that just lit up her face as she stood to meet us. We were all immediately smitten. Way to go, Jack!

Laura Alicia Lopez (1914-2001) was instantly our whole family's favorite. She was the third among five Lopez girls (Blanca, Carman, Laura, Lucrecia and Aida) who all came before six boys (Charles, Carlos, Richard, George, Robert and Armand). All the girls were born in Venezuela, and all the boys in New York City.  Their parents were Carlos Arturo López Bustamante (1890–1950) and María Emilia Lares Echeverría (1888 - ?), whom everyone called "Mamacita".

If you go to the link on his name, you'll see that Carlos Arturo was a writer and publisher, and a staunch opponent of the current government in Caracas.  After he was prisoned, tortured and exiled, he brought his family to New York where he started a publishing firm here.  Originally he was publishing his Spanish-language journal critical of the regime back home, but his daughters expanded the business by contracting with US publishers to translate and publish popular English-language periodicals into Spanish. It became a flourishing business and Laura was managing editor and business manager of The Carlos Lopez Press. Carlos Arturo died before we came to know the family.

Both the McCarthy family and the Lopez family were overjoyed when Jack and Laura became engaged, and their wedding and reception on August 6, 1955 were spectacular.

Jack and Laura were both career professionals with no prospect of raising children, so they were free to do whatever pleased them with their free time. Laura preferred skiiing. Jack was a sailor. So Laura taught Jack how to ski and Jack taught Laura how to sail. And during the winters we'd get post cards and photos from Vail and Whistler and Zermatt and Telluride and St. Moritz, all showing the same two snow bunnies in white scenery. And in the summers we'd receive accounts of how much better sailing was with an experienced mate.

From about the time I was born Jack had had his own sailboat, the "Kathy", which he named after my sister. The Kathy was a 110 class boat, small, sleek and fast.

I have fond memories of being a member of Jack's "crew" on racing day, carrying all our stuff down Neptune Avenue, crossing Pelham Road and heading down Weyman Avenue to Glenn Island. There we'd catch a launch ride over to the Echo Bay Yacht Club where The Kathy was moored. We'd sail out into Long Island Sound and into a day of sun and salt water and racing.

In the races I loved all the craziness of tacking and coming about, and hiking out when the boat felt like it was going to tip over in the wind.

Once Laura was a permanent part of the crew, she prepared all the lunches. And again we were treated to the exotic recipes of South America, with herbs and spices we had no idea existed. Everything was delicious and made the whole experience that much more memorable.

The Neptune house was sold in 1958 and then Dad got his promotion in 1961. With Nannan living in Manhattan, the whole family had gone their separate ways. Jack and Laura moved to Blackwood, NJ, a suburb of Philadelphia. Blackwood is less than an hour from the ocean, so they were able to continue to sail.

Somewhere in the mid 1990s Laura began to lose her memory, and was diagnosed as having early-onset Alzheimers.  Since Jack was a retired Navy officer he qualified for residence in Air Force Village West, a care facility in Riverside, CA.  They moved into a condo there where Laura could receive the care needed. As her condition worsened, she had to be moved into the skilled nursing facility on the grounds.  Jack refused to be separated from her and so he moved with her.

Laura died on March 2, 2001. Jack lived on in Riverside for another ten years.

Jack's political conservatism belied his deep, deep concern for others, especially family and friends, of whom he had many. Patience was Jack's modus vivendi; he was quiet and easy-going, but if things got tight you knew you could depend on him. In later life he wore bow ties and loud sport coats when socializing but he much preferred windbreakers and deck shoes, comfortable attire when out in the wind and surf.

Jack died in Riverside on March 13, 2011.

Mom's Uncle Frank

Mom's Uncle Frank, Michael Francis Snowber (1876-1964), was Mom's favorite, and mine too. Frank was a wonderfully positive and gentle soul, always quick with a smile and an easy laugh. He, like my mom, loved vegetable gardening and would work in Mom's garden whenever he'd stop by our house in New York. Frank was also very close to his brother-in-law, my Poppy.

My great uncle Frank and his brother John Leonard Snowber were in the US Army during the Spanish-American War (Apr 21, 1898 – Aug 13, 1898).

Frank was in the 71^st New York Infantry Regiment.

A bit about the 71^st NY Infantry Regiment
On July 1st, 1898 the largest and bloodiest battles of the Cuban campaign were fought for possession of Santiago. Santiago itself sat among a collection of hills and mountains bristling with Spanish fortifications. Over the course of five years the Spanish had built up a system of defensive trenches and blockhouses among the hills that had few rivals. Their defensive line extended for three miles, starting with San Juan Hill in the South and proceeding north in an unbroken line of fortifications terminating at the sea. The 71st and the two regular regiments toiled along the small thin mountain road that led to San Juan Hill having been preceded by the Rough Riders.

The firing along the road was severe and the Spanish troops concealed in the heavy thickets used a smokeless powder, which made their positions very difficult to discern. Their sharpshooters were concealed in many of the tall coconut trees along the path and their artillery from the hills poured fire onto the road, which they knew the U.S. troops had to use.

The fighting for possession of San Juan Hill itself degenerated into a series of successive charges by individual regiments, battalions, and companies. Among the units to reach the top first were the 6th, 13th, 16th, and 24th Regular Infantry Regiments along with Company F of the third battalion of the 71st Regiment. Much of the rest of the 71st was also heavily involved in the fighting sustaining heavy casualties in the face of galling Spanish rifle fire from a system of blockhouses on the right side of the hill. Shortly after the fall of San Juan Hill the Spanish launched a heavy counterattack on the captured trenches at night, but they were badly mauled and forced to retire after losing an estimated 3,000 soldiers. The 71st remained in the trenches for the remainder of the fighting at Santiago, conducting the siege duty.

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At age 22, shortly after he returned from the War, Frank campaigned for election to local political office in his New York neighborhood. He ran as a Republican, which back then was the more progressive of the two major parties—think Teddy Roosevelt. This blurb, transcribed below it, features rather prominently his involvement in the war. The prose is flowery, as was the custom back then when writing about war.

Michael Francis Snowber, the candidate in the 7^th District, went through the Santiago campaign with the 71^st Regiment.  He was born and brought up in the 7^th District, his parents having lived in West Sixteenth Street for more than thirty years.  Mr. Snowber is in the real estate business, but when war became likely he lost no time in volunteering for service.  Having served throughout the war, he was among those who marched up Broadway amid the cheers of their fellow citizens.  Patriotic fervor and bravery are characteristic of his family.  His father was a veteran of the Civil War, and his brother is now serving with the 22^nd New York Volunteers, stationed at Fort Slocum.  Mr. Snowber’s popularity with the younger men of the district assures him of their support irrespective of party affiliations.  A vigorous campaign is afoot among the Republicans of the district and speakers are nightly extolling the manly qualities and merits of the “soldier boy” candidate to the residents of Greenwich Village.

Note the appeal to men only.  The 19^th Amendment to the US Constitution granting women the right to vote wasn’t fully ratified and enacted into law until August 26, 1920.

Here’s Frank’s 1918 draft registration card (he was 42 at the time, and as it says he was tall, slender, brown eyes, brown hair, with all his limbs intact).  It was 20 years since he had served.  At his age his draft card should have declared “women and children first”:

Note in this record:

Uncle Frank’s occupation: Real Estate & Insurance. 

His business name: Snowber & Smith.  (It wasn't a happy partnership.)

Snowber & Smith and Smith v. Snowber

I have obtained a 1921 New York Court of Appeals record of the final decision in a case originally decided in the New York Supreme Court.  It involved partners in the real estate firm of Snowber and Smith, Snowber being Mom’s Uncle Frank (the partnership originally also involved Frank’s brother John Leonard Snowber, but John had quit the partnership before this case), and one R. Telfair Smith.

The original suit found that Smith had defrauded Frank by operating outside the partnership and pocketing the income from sales that rightfully should have been shared by the partners.  Smith appealed the ruling, and the court upheld the lower court’s judgment in Uncle Frank's favor.

Family fact:  Frank was successfully represented before the court both times by his brother-in-law and my Poppy, Timothy A. McCarthy, who was licensed to practice before the superior court, the highest court in the State of New York. This case was cited in several old casebooks on New York tenant law. You can Google Smith v. Snowber or Snowber v. Loeb if you wish to delve deeper than I have into the legal minutia.