Prejudices and Racism- 5 - Miss Connie Thomas, RN

Over the years I have missed having a relationship with Connie Thomas, RN.

We lost touch with each other shortly after my wedding in 1971.  I received a few letters from her when she joined the US Army and then she went missing from my life. 

She never knew my first reaction upon meeting her at the American Red Cross on Amsterdam Avenue in NYC and for that I am grateful.  This is not an admission that I am in any way proud of.  But I feel that it might be a confession that needs to be shared.

At the urging of Susan Smith and Mary Jane Sassone, two classmates from the 1965 graduating class of St. Vincent’s Hospital and Medical Center, I applied for a position on the American Red Cross Blood Mobile.   Back in early 1967, this was a really fun job, (although far from intellectually stimulating) for three 22 year old women.    We got to travel to West Point, police precincts, fire houses, business establishments, jails, etc.  Believe me, there were a lot of single men, flat out on tables, ready to give their blood to playful, young nurses.  It was better than Match.com and E-harmony, for coming up with dates.  But, alas, I am regressing and possibly trying to avoid the main point of my story.

Back at that time in nursing, vena punctures were not part of a nurse’s training – at least not at St. Vincent’s Hospital and we were noted for being top notch and cutting edge.    I remembering being “scared to death” when contemplating that this was one of the main responsibilities of being a nurse on a Blood Bank.   Being the blatantly honest individual that I usually am (some may refer to this quality as having a big, Brooklyn mouth), I told the person interviewing me that I had absolutely no experience taking blood and I was frightened to death by the prospects of doing vena punctures.   I remember being somewhat astonished by my Interviewer, when surprisingly this disclosure seemed to work in my favor.

I recall her telling me that they actually preferred to hire people who had absolutely no experience in vena punctures so they could train them properly in their techniques.    I believe their approach was correct.  As a matter of fact I took my husband, Bob’s, required pre-marital blood sample and he was delighted with my technique. To this very day, I pride myself on doing a brilliant, top-rate vena puncture.  I must also give credit where credit is due - right before sticking the needle into someone’s arm, I have always asked the Holy Spirit to guide my hand and keep me from hurting the person in front of me.

Once again, I am digressing.   So here is the point of my story:   After all the preliminary paperwork is filled out and all the verbal instructions are given, the day comes when the nursing supervisor walks me over to this black woman and introduces her as the person who is going to train me in vena puncture technique.  She is going to be the person working with me until she considers me skilled enough to go off on my own.   She smiles sweetly at me and offers her hand.  Of course, I take her hand and smile back.   After all, I am not prejudiced.

 But- and here is the horrifying realization that is difficult for me to admit - all the while this tape is playing in my mind:  “How can this black nurse teach me anything! Why couldn’t they have assigned me someone who is more competent; someone different (meaning white) I’m thinking, “She can’t possibly know more than me.  At the first mistake she makes, I’ll ask for someone else.”

I don’t think I was ever more wrong about anything in my life as much as I was wrong about dear, Connie Thomas.

She was a marvelous woman, absolutely brilliant, absolutely beautiful inside and out.  We became the very best of friends.  One time when we shared a room together at the Thayer Hotel in West Point, the American Red Cross Truck Crew teasingly said, “You girls can’t share a room together – you’re white and she is black.  This isn’t done.”   It was 1967.  But by this time, having had the privilege and the honor to get to know Connie, I didn’t see that she was black and I was white, rather  we were just good friends     I invited her to a party one weekend and I remember her asking me if there would be any black fellows there.  I hadn’t even thought about it since our “color” no longer had any meaning for me.  She went to that party and one of the smart alack white guys at the party showed an interest and escorted her home only to come on to her rather aggressively.  Connie had the impression he thought she would be an easy mark because she was black and I’m sorry to say, from the description of the events that occurred that night, I think she was right.

Prejudice was alive and well in 1967.  I’m embarrassed to say, it was alive in me.  But I thank God that I met Connie and I lament that I have lost her.  She was a very wonderful friend to me.  If anyone knows her whereabouts or how I could find her again, please share this information with me.  She lived in Queens, NY (I believe in Jamaica) with her family in the late 60’s.  I remember being at her home during a party. I was accepted like one of the family.  Connie Thomas is not an easy name to find through the internet or on Facebook.
Below is the crystal pitcher that Connie sent us for our wedding even though she was in the service and unable to attend.  It has always been one of my prized possessions, specifically because it was a gift form Connie.  It is all I have left of her besides my fondest memories.

The Greatest Love of All

65 years ago on October 13, 1951 a young man, not yet 30 years of age, sacrificed his life on a far away hill in South Korea.   First Lieutenant Joseph T. O’Donnell died defending the rights of the South Korean People.   This week, six and a half decades later, Joe’s youngest grandchild, Michael O’Rourke, celebrates his marriage to a beautiful young woman from Korea.   Her name is Yoonmi Lee and she seems to me to be a person worth defending and even, if need be, dying for.  I am now witnessing first hand a flesh and blood consequence of Joe’s ultimate sacrifice.   I am delighted to see this fruition of love between Michael and Yoonmi.   And, for the very first time in my life, I have finally gotten a sense of meaning, a sense of understanding and a sense of peace.   I realize now that Joe did not die in vain, he died in an act of the greatest love one man can show another.

“This is My commandment, that you love one another as I loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  “ John 15: 12,13 

The Gold Star that is given to a mother when her child is killed in action is a symbol of this ultimate act of love.  This Saturday I plan to give Michael and Yoonmi the Gold Star that belonged to Joe’s mother with the hopes that it will continue to be a visible symbol to them of the supreme love that it represents.  May  this extreme, supreme love remain with them,  and bring them peace and happiness, shelter and protection  all of the days of their lives.  

45 Years of Marital Bliss - More or Less

I laid awake half the night thinking of many things which is a sometimes annoying characteristic of my very active brain cells.  There is no question about it; I would have been diagnosed as having ADD or ADHD if I had been born 50 to 60 years later.

Probably one of the biggest videos that played through my mind all night was the review of the years that have transpired since the night before Thanksgiving in 1969 when I met a guy from Astoria by the name of Robert William Buchner at “The Desert Inn” in Queens, NY.    I went to this rather ordinary “pick up joint” along the Van Wyck Expressway in Queens, NY to meet friends and of course, to meet a guy or two.  I was going to be 25 years old on my upcoming birthday in March of 1970 and had just passed the date (November 8^th, 1969) that should have been my wedding!   This is another complicated story – not for this time - but needless to say the day came and went and I was still single, unattached and looking for Mr. Right. 

I met Mr. Wrong and Mr. Right that Thanksgiving Eve night, but luckily after a date with Mr. Wrong, and just one month later, I was lucky enough to accidently /coincidently run into Mr. Right at another famous “pick up joint” of this era, “Pep McGuire’s” .    Now I ask you, what were the chances of this happening in a city over 8 million people?   That night in December, 1969, Bob and I drank a couple of martini’s (each) and ended up making out passionately at the bar.  Tacky, right?  I thought so too, but after two martinis, I somehow didn’t care.

The video that I watched all night was rather lengthy; after all it was covering 45 plus years.  It was and is difficult to understand all that stuff and even more difficult to condense it all into a neat, concise package.    Nonetheless, I guess I felt it was worth reflecting on.   I tried to tell my mind,

“Let’s shut down for the night, get some sleep and think about it another time”, but my mind wasn’t buying it.  After all our relationship, our marriage and our life together is a monumental part of who I am, and who I have become, and it seemed important to me to look over the years and reflect on some things.   

There is so much to think about that my reflection “conclusions” could fill multiple pages. Also my blog entries would be complicated and not very easy to understand.   Possibly they might be helpful to others since they would be as honest as I could make them without too much negative exposure on anyone. 

Happily ever after stories make people who don’t always feel happily after sense that their marriage, their relationship, their story is a failure when in reality it is not.  Emotions are fleeting; they peak and wan, and peak and wan again, over and over.  There are great moments, there are ordinary moments, there are boring and angry moments.  There are times when love feels so strong and powerful.  And there are times when apathy and lack of interest overwhelm us.   As the years pass, we begin to get a grasp of what words like “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health “really mean.   Who really knows what they are committing to when they speak those vows as young, healthy and robust individuals?

Forty-five years ago today, on September 18, 1971,I stood in the vestibule of St. Michael the Archangel’s Church on Jerome Street  in Brooklyn, NY waiting to walk up to the altar on the arm of my father, Charles A. Fries, Sr.   There at the front of the church stood a guy I met the year before in a bar in NYC.  In the sanctuary, before family and friends, we made a public promise to each other.  The more meaningful vow we had made in private both before and after the wedding when we promised that our love would be different, it would last “no matter what” and that when the going got tough, we wouldn’t get divorced but would stay together and work it out.   Sometimes, we have had to recall that promise.

I think we made a good choice in each other.  I think our love is different even though it is by no means “perfect” (many of our family and friends can attest to this!).   We still like to be together, but we are OK with having our own interests and pursuits and being apart.  We still like to share our love with the rest of the world.  

So, Happy Anniversary, Robert William Buchner.  Thanks for being my life partner.  Thanks for all you do for me and our family and friends.  I am proud of you and I love you. 

The Glenn I knew died on 9/11

The Glenn I knew died on 9/11.

Not everyone died as the World Trade Center towers collapsed and fell to the ground on September 11^th, 2001.  Many others crumbled slowly and painfully to their untimely deaths.   I believe this is what happened to my cousin, Glenn, a fireman from the theater district in midtown Manhattan.   Although he was considered “one of the lucky one” because he was off that day and physically survived the Terrorists’ attacks, the events of that horrific time period killed him as surely as if he had been hit in the head with one of the steel beams. 

I knew Glenn since he was born in November 1950.  I was a flower girl at his parents’ wedding.  I got to stay overnight at his parents’ apartment in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn when he was a newborn.  As a baby, Glenn stayed with my family at our house in East New York on days when his mother, my Aunt Margie, was unable to care for him. I was barely 6 years older but I always felt a certain type of motherly affection towards him.     On September 11^th, I was relieved and happy when I heard he was “safe”.

I had not yet realized that the toxic effects of this experience were going to drag him down, tear him apart and lead to his premature death.  He was exposed to the physical, environmental and emotional pollutions of ground zero.  The constant pounding of intense grief battered him brutally and left him weakened and exposed.   For an individual as gentle and sweet as my cousin, Glenn, it viscously took its toll.   

Approximately a year after 9/11, Glenn made the decision to retire from Engine 54, but later shared that he regretted this choice and wish he had stayed.   His long-standing marriage to the “Love of his Life” fell apart when he made other choices that were totally out of character.  He also left the next job he took as a school bus driver when the turmoil in his brain led to confusion in his assigned routes.   He shared with me that he felt he was going crazy and his anxiety and fretfulness were truly heartbreaking to witness.     He was eventually treated medically for a rather mysterious problem with his brain, and gradually but steadily deteriorated.  Little by little and then faster and faster, he reverted into a nonresponsive state.  It was never really clear to me what killed Glenn.   I don’t believe it was ever really satisfactorily explained to his family and those closest to him either.    Glenn died on December 10^th, 2013, and although it was a full twelve years after the World Trade Center attacks, I honestly believe 9/11 killed him.  His passing was perhaps, less dramatic, but in many ways more painful simply because it was a slow, torturous downward path of anguish and suffering.    In my mind he is as much a Hero as if he had fallen in the line of duty when the Towers collapsed.

After thought: I asked Glenn once before if I could share his story and he gave me his permission at that time.  I think he would want his story to be told.      The picture above appeared in the Albany Times Union newspaper on Sunday, Sept 12, 2010.  with an article I wrote entitled, One of the "lucky ones" - 9 years later.  Glenn sent me the photo and gave me permission to write the article.