Frank's Niece!

[Brant Gaede]

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.

I sent one to Barbara Branden too, six years ago. I was the original owner. That one was signed by Frank, 6/100. I remember your uncle from several public settings.

--Brant

[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!

[Brant Gaede]

Ah, Cathy, Michael wouldn't have banned you. He's for truth, justice and the American way.

--Brant

(and beautiful women)

really

[Cathy]

Ah, Cathy, Michael wouldn't have banned you. He's for truth, justice and the American way.

--Brant

(and beautiful women)

really

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

[jenright]

Cathy, hi. I hope people will excuse me for jumping in with a sort of unrelated question, but do you have a cousin named Kyle Carroll? She worked as an actress in Chicago, about a decade ago. I saw at least 2 plays she performed in. My wife and I had a conversation with her once in which she said, if I recall correctly, that she was a grand-niece of Frank O'Connor's. Also, I apologize if someone already brought this up.

Thank you, John Enright.

[Cathy]

Cathy, hi. I hope people will excuse me for jumping in with a sort of unrelated question, but do you have a cousin named Kyle Carroll? She worked as an actress in Chicago, about a decade ago. I saw at least 2 plays she performed in. My wife and I had a conversation with her once in which she said, if I recall correctly, that she was a grand-niece of Frank O'Connor's. Also, I apologize if someone already brought this up.

Thank you, John Enright.

No john...unless it was her stage name.... but I only know of Mimi's children 1 daughter louise, Marna children 2 daughter's Abby and Marta (Marta died in the 70's) they grew up in the Chicago area...but I don't know how many children Ellen had. But Ellen has lived in Boston for a while now. I will be hearing from Ellen soon and I will ask her and post it here I hope if she is related to me she was creative and nice ha ha! Oh and beautiful ~Cathy~

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

John,

Great to see ya'!

Cathy,

John and his wife Marsha are pretty big dogs in O-Land. And they are great people.

This ain't confetti. They are hard working good solid people whom it's an honor to know.

Kat and I keep saying we need to get closer to them, but life always seems to happen.

Here's a special message to them: So hey, let us say, we'll find a way. Do you want to play? We will see you some day.

John is an eminent practitioner of the literary arts. People like that always bring out the brat in me.

And moi?

As a poet, I'm inchoate, so I might blow it.

Michael

[Cathy]

John,

Great to see ya'!

Cathy,

John and his wife Marsha are pretty big dogs in O-Land. And they are great people.

This ain't confetti. They are hard working good solid people whom it's an honor to know.

Kat and I keep saying we need to get closer to them, but life always seems to happen.

Here's a special message to them: So hey, let us say, we'll find a way. Do you want to play? We will see you some day.

John is an eminent practitioner of the literary arts. People like that always bring out the brat in me.

And moi?

As a poet, I'm inchoate, so I might blow it.

MichaelLOL Michael that's funny! Thank you for introducing me to John. Hi John and Marsha it is very nice to meet you ~Cathy~

[jenright]

Cathy, it is nice to meet you, too. I come from a big family, and I understand that it's easy not to know all your relatives. In the past few years we found some we didn't know about.

Michael and Kat are great people, but we live far south and they live way north, and Chicago is so darn long, so we only get to meet in the middle!

John

[jenright]

Cathy, I suppose I should add that Marsha and I had the pleasure of talking with your uncle on several occasions in the seventies, when he attended some public lectures with his wife. He was always friendly and charming.

[Peter]

Wow. Welcome John! We are blessed.

[Cathy]

Cathy, I suppose I should add that Marsha and I had the pleasure of talking with your uncle on several occasions in the seventies, when he attended some public lectures with his wife. He was always friendly and charming.

Thank you so much for letting me know that. He was such a great man and I love to hear nice things about him. Uncle Frank and my father were the sweetest men I have ever known. Thank you John

[jenright]

Peter, thank you, I feel blessed in return.

[Guyau]

Cathy, perhaps someone has already given you a copy of this (maybe Shoshana did), but if not, I could send you one. It is a review of the autobiography of the silent film star Lillian Gish, a review by your uncle (age 72) as told to your aunt. She published it in her journal in November 1969. The beginning is:

As a very young man—shortly after World War I—I worked my way from Ohio to New York, for the purpose of getting a job in the motion picture industry. It had been my single purpose since childhood. . . . One day, when I had reached New York, I read in the newspapers that two young actresses whom I admired in Griffith movies would appear at a flower show at a famous hotel. I went to see them.

There was a line of people waiting to get in. We were admitted to a gallery over an enormous ballroom. We looked down at a formal garden, with long walks winding among beds of living flowers. There was music playing softly while we waited for the stars to appear. I saw them come in, in the distance, at the end of the garden. It was so startling a transition from my vision of them in black and white, on the screen, that it seemed almost like a resurrection taking place before my eyes. They were so different from the people around me, so much more alive—and so beautiful . . . They walked down the garden, stopping to look at the flowers. Their movements were natural, unaffected, perfectly poised; they did not seem conscious of the audience, they acted as if they were alone in the garden, as if it was their proper, natural setting. The blonde one looked as young and frail as she did on the screen, only radiantly alive and happy; the other one seemed a little timid. On the screen, they had always played suffering heroines, persecuted, downtrodden, browbeaten. Now I experienced a strange kind of relief: the feeling that they were safe and rewarded. . . .

. . . I think I was the last one to leave; I wanted to hold that image as long as possible. From then on, I always saw these two stars as I had seen them in person, in that garden, in reality—not as I saw them in the gray shadows of the screen.

Their names were Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

Mr. O’Connor’s recollections of this part of his life return me to mine and to a sort of kinship of feeling in my parallel recollections. I grew up in Oklahoma. After college my lover and I eventually found work at the bottom. It was physical and grueling work, but we reached the point of supporting ourselves. When a job for summer months was ending, I got on a train to Chicago (1972). They carried my bike for free. I had $84 to my name, in my pocket, and the one-way ticket was $32. I arrived on Labor Day, and the downtown was pretty empty. I walked to a park by the lake, sat down by a grand fountain, and looked over my beautiful city. I have so many vivid memories from those days. I found an unskilled labor job from the newspaper, my lover came then, and we had $5 dollars extra each week. But it was beautiful, and we had our dreams and each other.

One night we got tickets to a benefit concert at Orchestra Hall. They were filling as many seats as possible. We sat on the stage. The old master pianist walked past me on my left, in an aisle left for him to reach the piano at the front of the stage. His name was Arthur Rubinstein. His entire program was Chopin, and that night is forever.

[Cathy]

Cathy, perhaps someone has already given you a copy of this (maybe Shoshana did), but if not, I could send you one. It is a review of the autobiography of the silent film star Lillian Gish, a review by your uncle (age 72) as told to your aunt. She published it in her journal in November 1969. The beginning is:

As a very young man—shortly after World War I—I worked my way from Ohio to New York, for the purpose of getting a job in the motion picture industry. It had been my single purpose since childhood. . . . One day, when I had reached New York, I read in the newspapers that two young actresses whom I admired in Griffith movies would appear at a flower show at a famous hotel. I went to see them.

There was a line of people waiting to get in. We were admitted to a gallery over an enormous ballroom. We looked down at a formal garden, with long walks winding among beds of living flowers. There was music playing softly while we waited for the stars to appear. I saw them come in, in the distance, at the end of the garden. It was so startling a transition from my vision of them in black and white, on the screen, that it seemed almost like a resurrection taking place before my eyes. They were so different from the people around me, so much more alive—and so beautiful . . . They walked down the garden, stopping to look at the flowers. Their movements were natural, unaffected, perfectly poised; they did not seem conscious of the audience, they acted as if they were alone in the garden, as if it was their proper, natural setting. The blonde one looked as young and frail as she did on the screen, only radiantly alive and happy; the other one seemed a little timid. On the screen, they had always played suffering heroines, persecuted, downtrodden, browbeaten. Now I experienced a strange kind of relief: the feeling that they were safe and rewarded. . . .

. . . I think I was the last one to leave; I wanted to hold that image as long as possible. From then on, I always saw these two stars as I had seen them in person, in that garden, in reality—not as I saw them in the gray shadows of the screen.

Their names were Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

Mr. O’Connor’s recollections of this part of his life return me to mine and to a sort of kinship of feeling in my parallel recollections. I grew up in Oklahoma. After college my lover and I eventually found work at the bottom. It was physical and grueling work, but we reached the point of supporting ourselves. When a job for summer months was ending, I got on a train to Chicago (1972). They carried my bike for free. I had $84 to my name, in my pocket, and the one-way ticket was $32. I arrived on Labor Day, and the downtown was pretty empty. I walked to a park by the lake, sat down by a grand fountain, and looked over my beautiful city. I have so many vivid memories from those days. I found an unskilled labor job from the newspaper, my lover came then, and we had $5 dollars extra each week. But it was beautiful, and we had our dreams and each other.

One night we got tickets to a benefit concert at Orchestra Hall. They were filling as many seats as possible. We sat on the stage. The old master pianist walked past me on my left, in an aisle left for him to reach the piano at the front of the stage. His name was Arthur Rubinstein. His entire program was Chopin, and that night is forever.

Thank you Stephen, its funny that you brought this up because Shoshana just sent the booklet to me a few weeks ago and I had just read it last week. My uncle thought very highly of the Gish sisters. It must have been amazing for him coming from the silent black and white screen to seeing these sisters he had admired in living color. What a transformation that would have been for him and I can see how it stuck out in his memory, just how your memory of the orchestra is so vivid in yours. I had to laugh when he took in the scenery and mentioned the live flowers...it is so typical him. But I love that kind of thing to and can plant and grow anything. By reading this article I knew how much integrity my uncle had, but I had always known this, and in my father also. They were good men in their own right. I am also learning my aunt's philosophies (never to late, right?), its funny, now that I am giving her a chance, I am agreeing on almost everything...except Atheism. Not that I totally disagree, I can understand her logic of evidence, or lack of any. But to me, there is enough circumstantial evidence to at least makes me realize there is something there. Its enough for me to weigh the scale in that favor anyway. I do however believe religion is a controlling factor in the world today and through out history that I don't believe in that aspect of it. I do believe in Capitalism and individualism...laissez faire and all that. I have just started reading "Atlas Shrugged" (God help me) and I wish that my father would have made all this known to me at a young age, my train of thought is so different just knowing the little bit I know now...Thank you Stephen, I love hearing about my uncle, it gives me a break from hearing and reading all about Aunt Alice (Ayn Rand) ~Cathy~

[Cathy]

How do I get an attachment that was sent to me by email on here. There are some pictures of Uncle Frank I would like to put here. HELP! ~Cathy~

[9thdoctor]

How do I get an attachment that was sent to me by email on here. There are some pictures of Uncle Frank I would like to put here. HELP! ~Cathy~

Set up a Photobucket account, it's free:

http://www.photobucket.com/

If you want you can email them to me, and I'll load them to my account and then post them here. Not that it's hard to do yourself. I'll send you a private message with my email address.

[Peter]

Ninth Doctor wrote:

If you want you can email them to me, and I'll load them to my account and then post them here. Not that it's hard to do yourself. I'll send you a private message with my email address.

end quote

Hello Ninth. I haven't read you in a while. Cathy might be afraid to answer someone with an avatar like yours. What happened to the better one?

[Cathy]

Ninth Doctor wrote:

If you want you can email them to me, and I'll load them to my account and then post them here. Not that it's hard to do yourself. I'll send you a private message with my email address.

end quote

Hello Ninth. I haven't read you in a while. Cathy might be afraid to answer someone with an avatar like yours. What happened to the better one?

Nothing scares me `Cathy`

[9thdoctor]

Hello Ninth. I haven't read you in a while. Cathy might be afraid to answer someone with an avatar like yours. What happened to the better one?

I haven't posted much over the last, I don't know, year probably. I'm still around though.

I like my avatar just fine, you big scaredy cat.

[9thdoctor]

Here you go!

[Cathy]

Here you go!

This is great Ninth...thank you so much! As most of you know, my father and Uncle Frank looked like twins when I was growing up. My father was 56 when he had me, so I never knew him young. By the time I could remember any of them, to me they were really old. This gives me a chance to see what my father may have looked like young. I never seen pictures of my father...ever...but I found 2 that I didn't know where they came from or how I got them. But he was with me and my sister in the picture...so he was old. Thanks again Ninth for all your help ~Cathy~ p.s. I was very exited to get these picture!

[Cathy]

Happy Birthday Aunt Alice and Ayn Rand...

[Cathy]

Happy Valentines Day!

[Selene]

Happy Valentines Day!

Same to you Cathy - yu have been a real gift to OL...