Cathy

LOL Brant, you so funny! Michael is a great guy, with great friends, such as you. ~Cathy~

I do want to give a special Happy New Year to Michael Stuart Kelly! Being the forum owner you could have banned me from your site thinking I was a "troll" or "sock puppet" but you heard me out and gave me the benefit of the doubt. It was pretty rough for me on this site at first, with questions, asking me dates and even saying something about DNA lol. At least I can laugh about that now. But you were always patient with me. Thank you!

Jonathan, your the one who started this post, if you wouldn't have started this, I would never have found this site. I am forever indebted to you Tmj, Its ok that you were skeptical, I would have been to, and you weren't the only one Ellen, you were the first one to believe who I was/am...I really appreciated that. Also you were the one that made me see things from my aunt and uncles point of view. You helped me think outside the box when it came to the parallel of my life and theirs at the time...you really kept me on track when my anger would get the best of me and I could only see my side and not theirs. thank you. Brant, you are so smart and witty, you remind me of my father and uncle...I think if you all knew each other, you would have been friends. I will never forget you ever, I have my uncles print that you sent me where I can see it first thing in the morning and the last thing before I go to sleep at night...it is my absolute favorite possession and I will always cherish it. Thank you.

2013 was a pretty bumpy year for me that I will always remember. February of 2013 I woke up one morning to learned that my beloved Aunt Alice was really Ayn Rand. It made me question everything about my family, after all, who doesn't know everything about their own family? When I first learned that Aunt Alice was Ayn Rand, I thought it was a mistake in identity and they had it wrong, until a friend pulled it up on YouTube, a interview with Donahue. I just couldn't believe it...it was indeed Aunt Alice! It was a day with a whirl wind of emotions for me, but mostly anger, that carried on for most of the year. It was a final slap in my face from my long departed O'Connor family, the final insult to make me feel the contemptment I had felt so many years before. At age fifty five I had to re-think my whole life, at least for my children and grandchildren's sake. I needed to know if one secret lead to other secrets. As I dug into the life of Ayn Rand, I was angry and maybe jealous that a lot of people knew who she was and I had to found out by a stranger. I re-lived my childhood memories with my favorite aunt...Aunt Agnes. Remembering her stories about my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, lead me to more memories until every waking moment my thoughts drifted back to memories of those times. It consumed my life, until my memory snapped into those times like it was yesterday. I wrote these memories and shared some of them with all of you, and all of you held my hand as I walked through some uncertainties, fear, anger and even love for all these long ago family that I thought I knew all there was to know. As I continued to uncover my family history, uncertainties became clear, fear became courage, anger mellowed away, and the love I had for them became even more. Through all of this I have found two of my first cousin's with the help of very caring people. I always say...God will take you where you need to be, and he brought me here. I am starting this new year with a new perspective and a lighter heart, with an old family that are new and a new sprite in my soul of the ones I loved and forgotten. I will never forget the year 2013 or any of you! Happy New Year to all of you with much appreciation and gratitude for all that you have helped me through! ~Cathy~

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

Mikee, every time I think of OL I think about you. You know what I know and feel what I feel. You having a sister also and being throw away children in a state system that doesn't care. I feel a bond with you, most people don't understand what children like us have been through, but you and I do. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas and many, many more ~Cathy~

I hope all of your family a wonderful Christmas to!

The three kings would be Joe, Nick and Frank. Joe would bring appreciation. Nick would bring admiration. and Frank would bring love.

I want to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and to let you know I've meet a lot of great people in the Objectivism internet world! From the O'Connor Dupler Family!

R.I.P Barbara...

I was just told Barbra Brandon died. A beautiful lady with a beautiful soul may she rest in peace...

Happy birthday to you, and I hope your day was the greatest just like you! ~Cathy~ and fifty is just a number ;)

I HOPE EACH AND EVERYONE ONE OF YOU HAVE A VERY HAPPY THANKSGIVING! I AM VERY THANKFUL FOR YOU ALL! ~CATHY~

Ellen

Awww...those parents must be very proud of their children!

Ellen, thank you. I hope your right that I will have Marna around for along time! I just got done putting up a family tree on Ancestry.com, since I know more now and put Marna's and most of the families pictures on the tree. Maybe my grandkids will get on there when I am gone. BTW, Marna doesn't know a Millie or Rosalie...she said that Uncle Joe had a long time girlfriend he lived with in Texas...which is what Aunt Agnes told me growing up. Do you know what years that was, because Marna lived in New York for awhile. I think her first child was born there. I wish there was more I knew about Joe...he seems to be the one I know the less about. Oh, did you know Uncle Frank played in the movie Frankenstein in the 30's and the is a good shoot of him rolling out the corpse through the door. Its on youtube, because someone sent it to me...its pretty cool ~Cathy~

I went and visited with Marna, she is doing great for being 86 years old. She meet us at our hotel room and we took her out to dinner. We came back to the hotel and visited until her son Mark called worrying about her. Mark said he knew she was out to dinner, but he said, he didn't think she could eat dinner for five hours. She left soon after Mark called at eleven...but we could have talked for hours more. Its like we have always known each other...and I hope I have her for many more years. She found some letters that Uncle Nick had written in the 1940's she is going to copy and send to me. Also Fabe (her husband) was a photographer/ magician and she found old negatives that he had taken of Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice that she is going to get developed for me. She said I was robbed in life for not knowing Uncle Nick. She said he was one man that was hard to forget by anyone who has ever meet him. We talked about Aunt Alice, and I told her that the interviews I have watched isn't her personality that I remember. She said she had the benefit of know Aunt Alice as a child and as an adult...Aunt Alice expects more out of the adult. I told her that I read up on them and articles say that Uncle Frank was a house husband, and I feel like the articles in some way are saying Uncle Frank was a kept man that lived off his wife, and made out to be less of a man. She said that Uncle Frank had many jobs in his life, but he had told her once...the hardest job he's ever had was being the husband of Ayn Rand. She said that Aunt Alice had to have him close by her always, and that anyone who really knew them knew that Uncle Frank was her strength. She also told me of my father. Marna is 30 years older than I am. When she was growing up, Aunt Agnes was a single mother. She said my father would come and help with Aunt Agnes and the kids. He tried to be a father figure to them. He was very upset that Marna started smoking at 14, and was angry at Aunt Agnes for letting her. Aunt Agnes and my father didn't smoke. But my father taught Connie (Papurt) Aunt Agnes's youngest daughter and (Marna's youngest sister) to play poker. Connie as an adult gambled away a lot of money. Marna said that Connie would have to borrow money from her and Mimi to keep the lights on because she lost big at poker. So Connie had a problem not knowing when to leave the table...I by the way know when to leave I can tell if Marna and I would have been born in the same generation, we would have always been up to something! Sometimes I feel bitter that I didn't grow up with Marna, and then I have to remind myself that I am blessed that I have her now. What surprises me the most, because I didn't know I would...I love her. ~Cathy~

I got my first hate mail today on facebook. I don't know this person. This is what he wrote me, You being the niece of Ayn Rand, you are not even worth saying anything to because of your IMMENSE incompetence, its hopeless. id like to call you a sorry xcuse for a human being, but that would stooping to your [incredibly low] level. good day, stupid bitch. I had to laugh because he said I wasn't worth saying anything to...but he preceded to say it anyway. But on the flip side of this, I have had some very nice, appreciation messages about my aunt. I think back, and I know my aunt had to have gotten letters like this or worse...no wonder she always seemed defensive in some of her interviews I've watched. ~Cathy~

The footnote doesn't say if anyone connected with the "Voices" project tried to find out if "Ian Maclaren" might have been a stage name Joe used. Possibly Marna might know. The flow of the family, generation to generation. I always liked reading family sagas, and here's a real-life one. Ellen Yes, Ellen is Aunt Bess's only daughter. I will ask Marna about Rosalie and if Uncle Joe had a stage name. I am writing notes as I go along...I don't want to forget anything again. Family sagas lol thanks to Aunt Agnes, now Marna...I suppose the next one will/or is me. Next weekend I am visiting Marna, I am also going to Wis. to visit another cousin on my mother side...I am feeling like Aunt Agnes more and more. I wonder which one of my children will carry on and make this family live forever :)And the saga continues...~Cathy~ p.s. I am going to have to get that book!

Happy to hear your back safe and sound

There's a lot I think you'd find interesting in the interview, some of it maybe envy-producing because of the amount of memories Rosalie tells of staying with Frank and Ayn. (She says she always called Ayn "Ayn," btw, though she called Frank "Uncle Frank" and Joe "Uncle Joe.") A significant detail regarding dates discrepancy is that Rosalie says the incident when her mother made the remark about Jews happened in late 1951. She says that she'd come back to Southern California in September, 1951, after not living there for years. She was by then in her late 20s - she was born December 26, 1922 - and was "raising three little kids by [her]self." Thus the incident happened just about the same time or shortly after Ayn's late-September, 1951, decision to move back to New York City, where Barbara and Nathaniel had gone to continue their schooling, not in the 1943-1946 time frame Heller's placement of the tale makes it look as if it happened. Ellen Wow, all the other brother's always were clean shaven, and the pictures of Uncle Joe, he was clean shaven to. But of course she would know better than me. I am going to have to ask Marna about that. No, I didn't get 100 voices. I have a lot of the books and started reading "Fountainhead" then decided to watch the movie My eyes aren't as good as they use to be But I have watch a few movies and have listen to some of her interviews. I am not surprised that everyone else knew her as Ayn. Marna said that my father would never have allowed us to be involved with any of her philosophy or what she did for a living. I didn't even know my father was a bookie until years and years later, and he did that right under my nose. I was so naïve! Ellen is also still alive. Shoshana was suppose to get us together, but I haven't heard from her for awhile now. She's up in her 70's but if she is anything like Marna, we may have years left with her. I talk to Marna about once a week and I wish I could visit her more. She's very bright and so funny...I hope I got many more years with her...God willing (sorry). As you know, I never knew any of my relatives young or my father...Marna can tell me stories of my father and how he was with them growing up. Its kind of like where Aunt Agnes ended, Marna continues...and I am loving every minute of it! ~Cathy~

Sorry, I misremembered which brother. Joe, not Nick. The girl's name, according to Heller, was Rosalie Fitzgerald. Heller says that Joe and Ayn became the girl's godparents. Here's the story as Heller tells it: Here are the endnotes for the passage: Ellen Ellen Ellen, I knew Uncle Joe had a long time girl friend, but he never married. I knew he lived in Texas for a long time and my father stayed with him a while. But this would have been much later then the 20 and 30's. I cant find to much about Joe, only what the family has said growing up and what Marna has said. But by everything said, he was one of the favorite brothers, very sincere, very caring and sweet. All the boys had a very unique sensitive, passive, tenderness about them, that was a charming and endearing influence on the people around them. My father played poker with Marna's father A.M. Papurt, so they were very good friends. When Papurt died, they had an all out Jewish funeral, all in homica's. Papurt was laid in the casket with a white satin rob and a homica on his head. Marna said, in walks uncle Billy(my father), a Catholic and the only one not wearing a homica, only a brimmed hat. As he walked up to the casket to pay his final respects to his brother in law and good friend, Marna said he bowed his head and tipped his hat to say goodbye. Marna was fourteen and said that she will never forget the most sweetest and honorable way her Uncle Billy said goodbye...I am so happy Marna is still around! ~Cathy~

I talked to Marna today and I asked her about the little girl that was Aunt Alice and Uncle Franks god daughter, whose mother was a friend of Nicks. She said she had no idea. I was born after Nick died, so I wouldn't have known. Louise who is Mimi daughter has most of the letters and signed books of Ayn's that Mimi had before she died. Marna also never knew of any contemplating divorce and wonder if Aunt Alice was just angry with him when she said it. Uncle Frank was very soft spoken, when he said anything, you wouldn't be able to tell if he was ever angry except for the look on his face. But everyone would know if Aunt Alice was angry. Oh, and she did use the term parasites and leaches, they all did...it might have been a popular term in those day, don't know. I am going to be visiting Marna this month on the 15th. She just turned 86 in Sept. I didn't grow up with her, but we have so much in common, I wonder if genetics plays a part in that. Hope everyone is doing well ~Cathy~

Cathy, the time in question was early in her writing the book, and before she met Nathaniel and Barbara. No one at that stage anticipated that the book would need twelve years to write. Ellen I need to learn, that marriages have their ups and downs...even theirs. When I heard about the affair...it shook my world. I always looked at all of them, Uncle Frank, Aunt Alice, Aunt Agnes, my father and mother as perfect people. I guess because I was so young and didn't know them in adult life, where I could rationalize that no one is perfect. I guess I still try to have that mind set about all of them. I hate thinking that any of them would be hurt in anyway. ~Cathy~

Frank wasn't disabled (with advancing senility) under after the break between Rand and Nathaniel (and Barbara), and the affair had been on hold from the time of Ayn's post-Atlas depression. The source for that is Nathaniel's memoir, something Ayn supposedly said to him. No way to know if it's true. My belief, if it is true, is that it was during the stretch when Ayn was working on the start of Atlas Shrugged and Frank wasn't being as enthused as she wanted. There's a reference in one of her letters about that. I don't remember to whom the letter was written and don't have time now to try to find the letter. She goes on to say that then she wrote a passage which left Frank shaking and he changed his evaluation. -- Carol, where does Rand compare humans to insects? (See your post #1025.) Ellen Thank you Ellen, I would think Uncle Frank's lack of enthusiasm might be due to the 12 years of writing a book...maybe he just thought she would never finish it. ~Cathy~