Out Of The Old Black Bag

 

OUT OF THE OLD BLACK BAG

 

The Heavenly Christmas Card — Part 1

By Anthony Kovatch, M.D.

 

Musical accompaniment: “I Remember It Well” — an old classic from “Gigi” sung by Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold.

 

“When an old person dies, a great library burns to the ground”

— African writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ    

 

I agued to myself over and over about how I could return the Christmas card; I finally concluded that writing her story for the world to cherish was the only possible way.

Although I have begrudgingly admitted to myself that I am a writer who is “over the hill,” I believe that I have preserved a penchant for irony and for the conviction that “miracles” are more than chimerical figments of the imagination. For example, was the so-called “Immaculate Reception” of Franco Harris a miraculous event? And if not, was there at least some irony in the fact that Franco passed on just days before its solemn 50^th anniversary? Do we humans have any prerogative to claim to know the truth in these matters?

So I must confess that I may have been privy to an event bordering on the spiritual or supernatural that took place the week before this past Christmas — an event not distorted by the drinking of too much spiked eggnog or by personal existential dread common to old age or premature senility.

I firmly believe that irony is a kind of symbolic magic, like the kind that occurs when a down-and-out, bewildered human soul surprisingly crosses paths with a dragonfly or a fluttering cardinal. On the other hand, was it irony when Jack Donohue and Rhodora Jacob met around their freshman year of high school, and Jack — who I suspect was a classmate of my father-in-law, Jack Lyons (father of 12 children, 13 if you throw me in) at Central Catholic High School, where they either cut classes or paid no attention to instruction on family planning — took a streetcar by an aberrant route to school that detoured him through Rhodora’s neighborhood and on to Oakland Catholic High School which she attended? I also believe that the two of them sat side-by-side on the old streetcar and read (like I did in New Jersey) the tender poem “The Rhodora” by Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why

This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,

Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,

Then beauty is its own excuse for Being;

Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!

 

 

I was taught by my sometimes overbearing Jesuit teachers at Saint Peter’s “Prep” High School in New Jersey that in analyzing this famous poem, the rhodora is presented as a flower as beautiful as the rose, but which remains humble and does not seek broader fame. And so it was with Rhodora Donahue!

“I knew that I was going to marry him when I was 14 years old!” Rhodora repeated candidly until she passed away at the age of 97 on December 12, 2022. Jack would counter with his own conviction: “We got on that wonderful track (of the streetcar) when we were 14 years old and stayed on that track — we never got off.” Jack attended West Point and served as a pilot in the Air Force during World War II before co-founding Federated Investors, a groundbreaking financial corporation which also specialized in magnanimity and philanthropy of the highest order.  

“When we started out in Pittsburgh after the war, we lived in a drawer,” quipped Jack. “At one point, we had 5 children and one bathroom — and that was mine!” As with most members of the “Greatest Generation,” growing up during the Great Depression left a lasting legacy. Loving discipline and attention to detail were prerequisites for domestic order. Sunday morning mass was the high point of the week, and the children were quizzed on the content of the gospel readings at lunch; our family, including myself, would have had to learn the catchword of today: intermittent fasting.

As the family grew, Rhodora played a pivotal role in the growth of the burgeoning corporation, hosting dinner meetings with potential clients and collaborators at their new home on Beechwood Boulevard, while the antics of the growing family and the pets were held at bay.

The fury of their love and devotion to each other and to their Creator recognized no bounds. The eventual marriage of 70 years produced 13 children (without fudging for in-laws), 84 grandchildren with their 46 spouses, and, at the time of this writing, 168 great grandchildren! I was privileged to be pediatrician to many of the noble 168. I say “noble” because the Donahue family was loved and respected as Pittsburgh royalty, if not international royalty, because of their generosity. Life was guided by 3 pillars: Faith, Family, and Federated, in exactly that order. The family heirloom was the creed: “Always remember that your goal in life is to go to Heaven and to help others in every way possible get there too.”

 

A fixture in the Downtown Pittsburgh skyline since 1986, the Federated Building motions toward Heaven.

I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.

— From my favorite poem, “Birches”, by American poet Robert Frost (1874-1963)

 

To be continued…

 

source https://www.thepediablog.com/2023/01/25/out-of-the-old-black-bag-36/