Let Them Fly

Jeanne was born at the end of the first quarter of the 20^th century. She was born to two people who were the children of immigrants, and who had bought very deeply into the American Dream. For their daughter, their second child (they had a son, two years older), they had a five-fold vision: it was most important that she follow the rules, look pretty, be popular, marry well, and keep a good Catholic home for her husband and their children. Nothing else was as important as that five-fold vision.

A good fairy smiled upon Jeanne at her birth, and she was given many gifts: beauty, artistic talent, joy in life, athletic ability, a quick mind, a vivid imagination. She was a happy child, who idolized her older brother Jack. But she wasn’t satisfied with the world her parents deemed appropriate for her. Her mother may have sent her to ballet class at the age of 3, and stuck her in toe shoes, but at the age of 5, Jeanne was swinging after Jack as he played Tarzan between the tree and the garage roof—and she wasn’t the one who fell and broke an arm. When she went to school, it took her one day to see that kindergarten was a fraud—she wanted to learn to read! She refused to go back until the nuns let her into first grade—which they did the next day. She was a bright kid, and a stubborn one, who was going to play with the boys. Her mother and aunts encouraged her to read girls’ books, but to her Tarzan and John Carter were much more interesting than Honey Bunch and Nan Bobbsey. Although Nancy Drew and Dorothy of Oz were OK, because they had adventures, and did things. They gave her a doll-house, which she had to keep dusted. OK, she did that—but she also took golf lessons, and horseback riding lessons, which she did better than Jack (who was plump and sedentary). She trailed along after Jack and his chums to the Saturday horror matinees (although Frankenstein so scared her at 6 that she hid behind the seat). Finally, in desperation her parents sent Jack to military school, so he could toughen up and she could learn to be a girl. Even that didn’t work too well, because Jack ran away from military school (he hated it), so they gave up. But Jeanne finally discovered that boys could be more than pals, and in high school, since she could speak their language about sailing, swimming, and cars (Jack learned to drive at 14, so 12-year-old Jeanne learned right along with him), all of Jack’s friends thought she was OK (and did I mention pretty?), so they all dated her. She was popular, and she was a good girl, who obeyed the rules, and she was pretty—but what about the rest of her parents’ vision for their daughter?

World War II began when Jeanne was in high school. Jack enlisted in the Navy, and was sent to OCS, and then aviator training. Jeanne went to college. Although she commuted to Northwestern, she was popular and active on campus—helping to run the blood drives, taking riflery and fencing in gym, and dating all the naval aviators from Glenview and Great Lakes NAS. Her parents expected her to join a sorority, and she did—but she also took flying lessons, charging them to her father, and phoning him to confess just before she soloed. (She didn’t want to die without telling him she loved him.) She applied to join Jackie Cochran’s WASPs (the Women’s Air Service Pilots), and was accepted—but the WASPs were disbanded before she could complete the training, and it was back to Northwestern. She and her sorority sister and best friend, Polly Ann, continued to date the naval aviators, but most of them were Protestant, and her parents were worried. They were even more worried that her major was speech, and when she talked of going on the stage instead of teaching after acting in an Alvina Krause production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler opposite Ralph Meeker and Chuck Heston, they were horrified. Good Catholic girls didn’t go on the stage! Good Catholic girls married well.

Jack came to the rescue. There was a fellow aviator on the Saratoga with him—a Catholic who had received a "Dear John" letter and was very depressed. Jack encouraged Jeanne to write Tom. He wrote beautiful, romantic letters. And although she had received 17 proposals from assorted Lutherans and Methodists, Tom was the first Catholic to propose. Jeanne was 19, and in love with love. They were married soon after her 20^th birthday; then he went back to the Pacific, and she returned to college. Their first daughter was born when Jeanne was 21.

There wasn’t a lot you could do in the way of a career while you were keeping a good Catholic home. Jeanne painted and sold watercolors, and did some commercial art. Although only 5’4" she did some modeling, and arranged for her daughter and son to model as well. She was really living through her children until the Korean War started, Tom re-upped, and was assigned as a flight instructor to Pensacola Naval Air Station. Once they were settled, with the children in school, Jeanne found a job appearing on local television ("Jeanne’s TV Kitchen")—but this was before I Love Lucy, so she quit when she became pregnant again. She started a charm school, but there weren’t at lot of potential models in rural Florida in the early 1950s, so when that failed, she ended her marriage and moved her children back to Illinois.

There she sacrificed to keep the kids in parochial school, while working as a buyer for Marshall Field’s, a model, a secretary. Through her NU contacts, she was offered a motion picture production job in Europe—but she couldn’t drag 3 children under 10 to Europe, and she wouldn’t leave them behind.

She remarried, had another child, worked as a substitute teacher, bank teller, Welcome Wagon Lady. (She always said it drove her crazy to sit at home.) And she lived through and for her children. She decorated the most beautiful May altars, baked cookies and cupcakes, was homeroom mother. She always got the muffins there on time. But there was no time to paint, no time to write.

After the children were grown and gone, she tried again. At age 60, she completed a travel agent course. She had never been to Europe, to New York, or west of the Missouri River. And she wanted to see! Well, she did. She traveled, with her husband, or a daughter, to Hawaii, Alaska, England, Ireland, Scotland and France. She began to paint again, and had a few shows, sold some of her watercolors. She took tap-dancing lessons. But she’s frustrated--not bitter--frustrated. She brought so many gifts to this life—and she wasn’t allowed to use them.

This summarizes it for me—when her brother Jack soloed, he received naval aviator’s wings. When Jeanne soloed, she received a silver airplane for her charm bracelet.

So what I have to say, to all of you who have daughters: let them fly;!