Blessed

By Joan O'Brien

From boarding out with families to boarding schools, Joan Sprague knew no father, hardly knew a mother, but felt loved wherever she lived. She had dreams like any young girl and, like any teenager, longed for the love of a handsome young man. Whether near the ocean or in the mountains, near the jungle or in the cities, her experience of people was enlightening, inspirational, and at times, disappointing.

As Joan searched for God's plan for her life, she tolerated physical pain, bore emotional suffering, accepted disappointment, assumed obligations, discovered love. Family and friends, both near and far, remained her stable go-to. Each time she came to a fork in the road of her life, her staple remained love--love of God-Jesus, love of family, love of friends. She felt so blessed that she had so very much, even amid pain, indecision, and sorrow.

Joan was a pretty teenager with beautiful auburn hair. As she grew into womanhood, she was very attractive but didn't know it (she had to be told.) She loved movies, the beach, baseball. She especially loved music, dancing, singing, and performing. As a devout Catholic, she was edified by the nuns and priests who taught her.

After one year in college, she took, as she believed was God's plan for her, the road less traveled nowadays and entered the sisterhood. From Boston to Brazil, she loved her teaching profession and her students of different ages and various cultures... Then she met Padre Xavier, man of God, a man of the cloth. What lay ahead for this young woman who had vowed her life to God? She still felt God's spirit awakening her, pushing her, breathing his life into her soul, yet what was his message now? Could she go on this way, having these feelings each time Xavier was in the room? Prayer, yes, of course. The will of God became her mantra, but could she discern what it was? Eventually, she did.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662477157

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Blessed

Joan Oand#39;Brien

Copyright © 2022 Joan O’Brien

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-7714-0 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-7715-7 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Prologue A

Prologue B

1937–1955

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

1955–1971

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

1971–2021

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Epilogue

Afterward

Acknowledgments

To my loving sister, Jean

1939–2018

Prologue A

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

—Exodus 20:12

How many dresses are you bringing, Kitty? asked Mary, Kitty's older sister.

Three. And I hope to buy a few in Havana, responded Kitty as she packed some underclothes into a medium-size trunk.

Oh, you always say that, but never do it. Gertrude and I are the ones who shop when we get there. You're too busy sashaying up and down the boulevard, watching the young men eyeing you. Mary pushed a dark curl behind her ear then surreptitiously adjusted her corset. Her ecru-colored dress fit her perfectly, showing off the fine figure of a young woman of seventeen years, the eldest of the three sisters.

Well, Papa won't let me walk alone anymore. It's becoming too dangerous. I've even heard talk of revolution, Kitty said. She looked up to acknowledge Gertrude's entrance into her bedroom. Gertrude was smiling, as usual, a very happy girl of fourteen.

Gertrude, asked Kitty, how many dresses are you bringing?

I've already packed five, and that's it! No more. And I'm not going to buy any in Cuba. Papa may be rich, but even he has a limit. She bounced onto Kitty's bed, her baby-blue long skirt flouncing up.

Mary said, Make sure you have the dress you want to wear to church on Sunday. You know Papa doesn't want us to wear bright-colored ones.

Kitty responded, Mary, how many times have we been to Havana? Two? Three? We know by now what we should wear to Mass on Sundays.

I know, but a reminder doesn't hurt.

Mary, Kitty, and Gertrude were from an Irish-Catholic family, daughters of Simon and Mary Donovan. Their religion was an important part of their lives, and Sunday Mass and devotions were never missed, whether in Boston, where they lived, or in Havana, where their father had business.

Their father was Simon Joseph Donovan. He was born in Southampton, England, in 1853 of Irish immigrants. At age fourteen, he came to America with his father to establish a home for the rest of the family, who joined them a few years later in East Boston. Both eventually went to work for the Leyland Line, a steamship company close to their home. From timekeeper, Simon rose to greater heights, becoming superintendent of the line, all the while saving his money. Eventually, having invested wisely, he was able to not only buy a large dredging company but also real estate and to build homes in Winthrop, at that time a posh seashore island town next to East Boston.

Simon's first dredging contract was for the Muddy River in Boston so that what is known today as The Fenway could be built. Today it has universities, hospitals, residences, and Fenway Park, home of the famed Red Sox baseball team. Years later, Simon received the contract to lay an international cable between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba. Later still, he built the sewer system in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

In 1876 Simon married Mary Harrington, whose Irish father had also come to America to find a home for his family while they remained in England. Born in Hammersmith, England, in 1855, Mary finally came to America with her younger brother to live on a farm in Brookfield, Massachusetts, with her father and grandmother. Her mother had died in England. Refusing to marry the man her grandmother had chosen for her, Mary fled to East Boston and so, through mutual friends, met and married Simon Donovan.

Within a short number of years, Mary and Simon had five children: two died at an early age, then Mary, Katherine (Kitty), and Gertrude. Kitty was my maternal grandmother. The three girls grew up amid wealth and prestige, affording them the opportunity to travel and attend excellent schools.

I do not know where my grandmother or Aunt Gertrude had their education. I know that Mary attended Notre Dame Academy in Rittenhouse Square, a center of wealth in Philadelphia. Her best friend was Ethel Barrymore, with Ethel's younger brother, John, in elementary school. Later Ethel and John became famous in films.

Their Catholic faith was important to the Donovans. Sunday Mass and devotions were never missed, whether in Boston, where they lived, or in Havana, where Simon had business and was sometimes accompanied by the family. An example of Simon's faithfulness and generosity toward the Church occurred when Kitty, married and living in Winthrop, learned that her parish priests had no transportation. Simon gave the priests a horse and buggy.

As friend of politicians, bishops (even a pope!), and businessmen, Simon rose to international fame in the Roman Catholic world and in the world of business. It was on one of his trips traveling back to the United States that he met Bishop Broderick, an envoy of Pope Pius X in charge of arrangements for the collection of Peter's Pence in America.

While strolling along the deck of the steamship Esperanza as she was heading out of Havana and toward the Caribbean Sea, in confidential and friendly chat, the bishop and businessman generated a friendship of truth, warm-heartedness and generosity of desire on the part of each which has resulted in the dispatch to Mr. Donovan of a personal letter, now in his hands, received a few days ago, in which Pope [Saint] Pius X, over his own signature, warmly extols Mr. Donovan for that act of generosity. (Boston Sunday Post, June 4, 1905)

And what was that act of generosity?

Upon March 1 [1905] Mr. Donovan drew this now famous check, payable to the order of Bishop Broderick… There exists a story, remarkable in its significance to the mind of the Vatican officials, relating to Mr. Donovan, father-in-law of Congressman John A. Sullivan, both of them laymen and generous givers to the Roman Catholic Church.

While walking the decks of the Esperanza, enthusiasm, contagious always with successful men, gave birth in the mind of Mr. Donovan to lay at the feet of the Pope the first and most notable contribution of the year 1905. Bishop, will you allow me to make the first contribution for your fund? Name the sum you wish; I will give you the start on your mission in the United States.

In reply, the youthful diplomat and bishop of the church, said: I cannot name any sum to urge from you. Mr. Donovan drew from a breast pocket his checkbook, and said, Let us step below to the cabin. My contribution is to be made this instant. If you will accept it in the name of Mrs. Donovan and myself.

Below to the cabin they went. Pen and ink were secured and without hesitation the check for $1000, a sum sufficient to support a family for a year, was handed to Bishop Broderick by Mr. Donovan.

Those of the clergy in Boston who have but lately learned of the gift to the Pope…have vied with each other in congratulating the Boston man for his unselfish and spontaneous act of the March day.

Now, after all these travels, after months of passage through clearinghouses, many countries and bankers' hands, that this check of mine should come to life has become most displeasing to me, he said when interviewed by the newspaper. I gave as my means permitted. There was absolutely nothing about the gift which should be considered remarkable.

Humility! Indeed, my great-grandfather had it! The check to this day is in the possession of Gertrude's family. I have never seen it, but I have seen the original page 29 from the Boston Sunday Post and I have a copy of it hanging in my living room.

Simon had diabetes. A few years after this incident, he had a leg amputated because of the diabetes. He died in 1911 at fifty-seven years of age.

Before this notable occurrence of the check, the three sisters had married. Mary wed a US congressman from Boston, John Sullivan, and had nine children. They had a large summer home on the shore in Scituate, Massachusetts. I recall family gatherings there when I was a very young child.

My grandmother, Katherine (Kitty) Donovan, married John Joseph Donovan. Despite having the same last name, they were not related until they married. They had five children and lived in a large house at the entrance to Winthrop. I know nothing more of Mr. Donovan except that he pronounced his surname dun-a-van, whereas Kitty and her family pronounced their own name don-a-van. Research proved Kitty's pronunciation correct, and it became don-o-van for generations to come.

After her husband died, Kitty married Austin McCormick Jr., about ten years her junior. Kitty had three children by Austin. I don't know much about this grandfather, but I've been told diverse things by various relatives: He was an alcoholic who spent all the inherited money; he was a playboy and a gambler; he loved to party and enjoyed costume parties with my grandmother. Some of this I believe to be true and some I judge to be exaggerated. Shortly after he returned from World War I, where he was a sharpshooter, my grandmother divorced him. A short time later, he died from complications due to gas poisoning from the war.

Simon and Mary's youngest child, Gertrude, married William J. Dwyer, MD. He gave his services to the Army in World War I and later worked in Chelsea, Massachusetts, at the Old Soldier's Home. They had two children and lived on the Brookline-Boston line, a walking distance from Fenway Park. This was the branch of the family I knew so well, visiting them once a week and enjoying holiday dinners with them on Montfort Street.

My grandmother and two great aunts had a fine inheritance, but the Great Depression depleted the coffers of Kitty and Gertrude. Mary went to live in New York City, where we visited many times in a tall apartment building opposite Central Park. When I was older, I knew some of her children who lived on Fire Island and Cape Cod.

Kitty bought a tavern somewhere on Huntington Avenue in the South End of Boston close to Roxbury, at that time a vibrant commercial and residential area. It is said that her accountant stole her money.

Kitty died of diabetes like her father, Simon. It was in 1940 when she was sixty-one years old. (My only recollection of her was at her wake. I was brought up to the casket and surprisingly asked, Where are Grandma's legs? I was three and a half years old.)

Simon Joseph Donovan

1853–1911

Prologue B

The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life.

—Job 33:4

Of Kitty and Austin's three children, Gertrude, named after her aunt, was the eldest, and she was my mother. Born in Winthrop in 1914, she grew into a vivacious child, the apple of her eldest brother's eye. Joseph was sixteen years older than she. He and his wife, Blanche, had no children. As far as he was concerned, his kid sister could do no wrong.

Being the eldest of Kitty's eight children, Joe had the advantage of attending college then law school. Young Gertrude had him on a pedestal. Because her father, Austin, was in the war as an Army sharpshooter, Joe became Gertrude's father figure. When Gertrude was still small, Austin died. When Gertrude was about fourteen, Joe died at age thirty, once again depriving her of a father.

Gertrude's other older siblings were Simon, John, Katharine (Kay), and Mary Pauline (Ena/Pauline). Her younger sister was Elinor (Ellie). The sisters experienced many losses while young. Gertrude's younger brother, Austin, known as Jack, died of pneumonia at age ten. Then Simon was killed in France during World War I at age seventeen.

Thus, by the late 1920s, Gertrude had lost her father and three of her four brothers. Her remaining brother, John, quit school to help support the family. He was her only brother to have children and the only brother of hers I knew.

As Kitty was often busy at her tavern, the care of the youngest children was left to Kay and Pauline. They were only ten and eight years older, respectively, than my mother. Gertrude and Kay butted heads on many an occasion. I can imagine that a lot of resentment built up in my mother which helped to mold her feisty temperament.

By her early teens, Gertrude was very aware of Hollywood and all the glamour it posed. One day she announced she would no longer answer to the name Gertrude but only to Joan, a name popular in Hollywood at the time. She was enamored of every star and collected signed photos of actors, singers, and actresses. When I was quite young, she had a barrel full of photos; I especially remember seeing one of Jerry Lewis who was just beginning his career.

Because of this love of show business, Joan quit high school, unbeknownst to her family, and got a gig singing on the radio. Kitty, by some odd circumstance, heard Joan one day on the radio and realized what had been going on. But she thought Joan sang beautifully, so she at least tolerated this new lifestyle. Joan's older siblings, John, Kay, and Pauline, did not tolerate it at all.

When Joan was about nineteen, she changed from singing over the radio to traveling with a band. And that is how she met Johnny Sprague, the talented and handsome trumpet player.

John Everett Sprague was born in Kittery, Maine, in 1916. He was the youngest of several children. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a Protestant radio evangelist who broadcast programs throughout Maine.

By the time Johnny was in his teens, he was six feet, five inches tall and an accomplished trumpeter, traveling with the band across states east of the Mississippi. Joan was not with this band too long when the bandleader told her that a member of the group was interested in her. Her response: Well, I'm not interested in him, but I am interested in the trumpet player. And so, eventually, Johnny, twenty, and Joan, twenty-two, married in January 1934. Because he was a Protestant, they had to be married in the rectory of the family's parish church, Saint John the Evangelist, in Winthrop.

When my mother became pregnant in 1936, she quit show business, as she called it. I do not know when she returned to the workforce, but my recollection is that she was a waitress until retirement age.

1943

Kitty's girls

Ellie, Pauline, Kay, Joan (Gertrude)

1937–1955

Chapter 1

When our days there were ending, we left and started on our journey… After

kneeling down on the beach and praying, we said farewell.

—Acts 21:5

I was born on February 5, 1937, and baptized that summer at Saint John's, christened with the name Joan Elinor Sprague (Jo-El). My parents lived in Winthrop in an apartment house on Moore Street, around the corner from her mother and three sisters (Kay, Pauline, and Ellie) at 5 Shore Drive.

I do not know when my parents' marital problems began, but it was a short-lived marriage. When they argued, my mother brought me to my grandmother's to spare me whatever was going on. Johnny went home to his parents in Kittery, Maine, while I was still a baby.

On June 5, 1938, Johnny came down from Kittery to celebrate his twenty-third birthday and to see me. I was sixteen months old. He remained overnight, and my sister was conceived that night.

Jean was born on March 3, 1939, the same day that Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli was elected Pope (as Pius XII), so my mother named her Eugenia Marie after him.

As America was gearing up to enter World War II, Winthrop was abuzz with soldiers coming and going from its two army forts, Fort Heath and Fort Banks. One day, when some troops were about to be sent overseas, Winthrop had a parade to show its appreciation and honor the boys. My mother brought me to see this and gave me a balloon. On the way home, we were walking on the sidewalk along the shore beside a three-rung railing about ten feet above the ebbing tide. The wind caught my balloon, and before my mother realized it, I had climbed up to the middle rail and fallen onto large, jagged rocks.

My mother screamed, and some construction workers scurried down onto the wet rocks to rescue me from the rolling tide waters. They rushed me in their truck to the hospital where doctors operated on my head. They sewed about forty stitches from my forehead to the middle of my scalp and across it, forming a cross. Then they wrapped a cast around my entire crown, which became my crowning glory for many months. This was the first of several near-fatal events during my lifetime.

Even though my mother was not a churchgoer, she was prayerful, and so she prayed night and day for my recovery. I believe my introduction to prayer was initiated then by my mother.

During these early years of my life, there is not much I remember. My feeling is that we lived mostly with our mother yet also with my aunts and grandmother, until Kitty died in 1940.

When the United States entered World War II, Johnny was inducted and served in the North African Campaign. As the American Army trudged across the desert to Tunisia, the heat became unbearable, and the soldiers had to leave behind what was not really necessary to carry. The last item Johnny threw away was his trumpet. While in Tunisia, he and another soldier were separated from the rest of the troop, and the Germans captured them. Johnny was sent by ship to Italy and then by train to Germany. In three POW camps, continually moving westward in advance of the approaching Russians, he survived the hunger; the cold winters; his frostbitten toes; dirty, smelly quarters; and depressed spirits of his fellow prisoners. He was freed at war's end and sent to a hospital in England. After his rehabilitation, he was sent to his parents' home in Maine.

By the time I started kindergarten, World War II had started. Two of my aunts relocated because of military service and Mommy needed someone to watch us while she worked. She found a lovely family in the Point Shirley section of Winthrop. It was on a peninsula, surrounded by the dark-blue Atlantic Ocean waters. It was attached by a single road to Winthrop's main land. In the 1700s and 1800s, Point Shirley had been a summer resort for well-known figures, such as John Hancock. Many artists, poets, and authors found inspiration on its shores, as rolling waves and an immense sky inspired their creativity. In the twentieth century, many middle-class inhabitants from surrounding towns Boston had summer cottages there. The Catholic church, Our Lady of the Seas, opened only during the summer months. Today The Point is totally occupied by four-season residents.

The family my mother found were the Coughlins. They consisted of Mrs. Coughlin, whom Jean and I called Aunt Jessie. Her very quiet husband we named Uncle John. They had three daughters and a son: The eldest, Virginia, who lived two houses up, was married and had a daughter, Ray, who became our friend. Dorothy was about twenty, and Peggy was a teen. David was a soldier in World War II from its onset in 1941. We never met him, but Aunt Jessie put his photo in our bedroom, which was actually his room. He was an older teenager, and every night we prayed he'd be safe and return home someday soon to Point Shirley.

Jean and I lived there for three years, from my kindergarten through grade two. The beach, one block behind the house, was our playground. It was on the ocean side of The Point. We loved the sand, the waves, the sky, and being able to see miles away. I went by school bus to the Shirley Street school at The Beach, another section of Winthrop, closest to The Point. I loved every minute of life at Aunt Jessie's.

I loved school too. At the end of my first grade, my teacher, Miss Bean, wanted to double promote me to third grade. Mommy gave a firm no.

In the summer of 1943, with the war still raging in the Pacific and in Europe, we had to leave Aunt Jessie's. We were quite sad to go, for our life there had created wonderful memories: sitting on the floor in the parlor (living room) in the late afternoon with the family, listening to fifteen-minute radio serials like Stella Dallas; getting our nails painted and hair curled by Peggy, our big sister; sitting at a small child's table for our meals; in bed by seven o'clock in David's room, looking at his handsome face, hoping we'd meet him someday. Well, God ordained otherwise, for David was killed in France. Aunt Jessie's grief seemed irreparable. She announced to our mother she could no longer keep us. She gave my mother the name of another woman who probably could take us in.

This woman, Mrs. Heath, lived a quarter mile down the street. Here Jean and I spent first and third grades, respectively. I hated it at Mrs. Heath's. It was a dark year for me. One day I either said or did something to Jean, something I should not have, for I was angry at her. Mrs. Heath made me stand for about an hour in the side yard as a punishment. Wild rhubarb grew there, so I spent my time pulling some apart and eating a stalk or two.

An event I remember is that we heard on Mrs. Heath's radio that our president had died. It was April 12, 1945. I was shocked and saddened because everyone I knew seemed to love Franklin D. Roosevelt. I ran out of the house and up the sandy road to my girlfriend's house. She lived three stories up, so I yelled, Betty! Betty! She threw up the window and stuck out her head. Betty, President Roosevelt has died! Even a child of eight could feel a part of a nation's sorrow. He would be the first president I would cry for; the second would be John F. Kennedy.

Indeed, when I think of Mrs. Heath's, I cannot recall who lived there with her. My memory presents a house with dark rooms, so dark I can see nothing in them. It was such a dark year.

I do not know why we left Mrs. Heath's a few months later. Maybe we had told our mother how much we hated it there, or just maybe she had her own unhappiness. Mommy found a Catholic boarding school for us in the neighboring city, Boston. A new era in my life was about to begin.

1937

My father Johnny, me, my mother Joan

Chapter 2

Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

—Matthew 18:4

Mother Ann, a nun at my new school, stood at the top of a grassy, terraced hill. Her long, billowing white habit and veil danced in the wind. She grasped the hands of two anxious girls who were about my age, eight. Giggling, the three of them ran down the top terrace, faster and faster. As they reached the lowest terrace, Mother Ann tripped, and she and her two charges rolled down the hill, stopping just short of the grape arbor at the bottom. The nun jumped up to help the girls as I stood transfixed by the spectacle. In the tumble, Mother Ann lost her veil. She was bald!

I had arrived at Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in East Boston, a boarding school for girls in grades K-4, the day before. It was a day I will always remember. Mommy was working nights as a waitress, and no one in the family was able to care for us, so my sister and I entered our first of two Catholic boarding schools. I was entering fourth grade.

Mommy had a friend who drove us to the school high up on an East Boston hill. It was a rainy day in late July 1945, about six weeks before the end of World War II. Anxiously I watched the landscape unfold out my window. At one end of the school property a huge, ominous brick mansion with strange architecture loomed.

My mother wanted to make a good impression. Always a fashion icon, she was dressed in a black dress with a white collar, a black hat, and matching gloves, bag, and heels. She had even brought a black-and-white striped umbrella. Jean was wearing a flowered dress with a dark-pink patent-leather belt. I had on a navy-blue skirt and a white blouse with short sleeves and a lace collar. We both wore new white socks and patent-leather Mary Jane shoes.

Approaching the farther end of the property, we came upon a wooden estate house, testimony to the wealthy who once lived there. Beautiful trees—maple, oak, elm—stood majestically between the two mansions. Jean and I noticed slides, swings, and seesaws—a playground. Our car stopped at the second mansion, with black shutters, a high wrought-iron gate, and a bell tower pointing up to God and heaven. My mother, holding onto her hat, alighted and raised her striped umbrella. Jean and I jumped from the car, ran up about seven steps, and waited for Mommy to ring the doorbell. I noticed a huge black barn halfway behind the mansion. With rain falling, a shutter clattering against the wall, and the wind howling, chills crept up my spine. I did not want to be there.

As we were ushered into a medium-size room by an ancient-looking woman in a long black dress and black hat, I smelled smoke. At the far end was a large, colorful painting of a woman with a crown holding a little boy, also wearing a crown. They were drawn strangely, I thought; they didn't look like real people. Even their clothes were weird, and the boy's sandal was falling off. Later I learned that this was a print of the famous Byzantine icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Rome. Beneath the painting was the source of the smoky smell. Many tall, round candles in red glass containers were burning.

As I stood transfixed by the painting, a nun entered the room. She was all in white, from the top of her head to her feet. Her veil was long, and a small board, covered in fabric, was across her forehead. Her entire head and neck were under the veil. She also wore a large bib, and under it a panel of white cloth about ten inches wide hung to the bottom of her habit. Her white sleeves were extremely long but doubled back at