Beverly Barry was smart and pretty, and in 1938, at the age of 17, went off to a small nearby Catholic women’s college. My mother, of Irish descent, was from Lynn, Massachusetts, north of Boston.
The story I’ll share now, and save for the girls, goes like this.
When a couple kiss on the TV screen, the reaction is, “Ewww!” I have reason to suspect that will change. But right now, romance has a limited appeal to the girls - especially the five-year-old. We - Pops and Nana - will tell her and her sister when they’re of age, especially because it involves a dash of romance. But this wasn’t the moment to tell her a family story about her own paternal great grandmother.
I wanted to lighten the mood, perhaps talk more about family history. “Yes,” I said, “your Baba is very, very courageous.” She is the most inspiring profile in courage our family is likely to see in our lifetime. She would go back, alone, to help in any way possible, to assist her family members navigating to safety and resettling in the safest parts of the country - if such parts exist anymore. But this gentle-spoken widow in her mid-60s had determined she could not remain here while her family was struggling in war-torn Ukraine. Baba is her maternal grandmother, Ukrainian-born, who until recently divided her time between Tampa and her relatives over there. It was an apt, poignant connection to make. “It’s about people who were brave enough to do the right thing - even if it was hard.” (There was controversy about how much help he had from his future “Ask-not” speechwriter Ted Sorensen. I thought about how to describe the 1956 book about political courage which won JFK the Pulitzer Prize the next year as a young senator. The best way to pique a bright kid’s interest, I’ve found, is to tell them something’s too grown-up for them. “I read that book when I was young, honey.
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