Rita Mary Agnes O'Donnell Fries

Today is the day that my mother left this earth for places unknown.   She always loved an adventure so I feel she is happy and smiling.  I also believe that her spirit is still with the people she loved so well on this earth.  Rita Mary O’Donnell was born on March 25, 1917 to Margaret Coleman O’Donnell  and Thomas Joseph (TJ) O’Donnell .  She was Margaret and TJ’s first child and as you can see from the fancy-dancy photo, they thought she was pretty special.  

I just returned from the Siena College Chapel.  My Dad and I went to the 12:35 PM Mass in honor of my mother.  I remembered one other time when, as an adult, I sat between my mother and father at Mass and I felt grateful to have both my parents with me.   I felt sad for those people who lose their parents at an early age.   Today I imagined my mother on the other side of me and it warmed me to sense her there.

I thought about some of the many things my mother gave me and I decided to share a few of these memories with her family.

• Rita loved to go to “the country” especially in June.  Her grandmother, Hannah Byrne Coleman, had a home in Friendsville, Pa. and her mother, Margaret Coleman O’Donnell, would spend summers there with her children.     Rita’s father, T.J. O’Donnell, was a NYC Policeman; he would drive his wife, Margaret, and his kids up to the country at the beginning of the summer and come back at the end of the summer to bring them back to Brooklyn.  Rita and her siblings loved their time in this little tiny hamlet of Friendsville (Friendsville was a Stage Coach Stop in times gone by) and a house nearby (Aunt Bridge’s Farm) in St. Joseph’s Pa. was a part of the Underground Railroad for run-away slaves).    Her father, TJ, referred to the area as “God’s Country” and the “Garden Spot of America”.    It was and still is a beautiful place.
• Rita went to her senior prom (Girl’s High School) with a guy she had a crush on by the name of Johnny Ryan.   But seated at the same table at the prom was the brother of her friend, Rosemary Fries.   This was apparently the first time she laid eyes on her future husband, Charles A. Fries.    She told me that she eventually attended parties at Rosemary’s home on Vermont St (aka Interboro Parkway and Jackie Robinson Parkway) and she had a difficult time getting Charlie up out of his basement where he liked to tinker with radios and electronics.    Eventually she got Charlie to notice her – it had something to do with a game where you would shine a light on the person you liked (a form of spin the bottle).
• Rita spoke very highly of “making love”- in fact her “birds and bees” discussion with me, her eldest daughter, was so very ethereal that I finally had to ask her, “Mom, does skin have to touch skin?   I was glad she “liked sex” as her thoughts and feelings helped to counter balance the message about sex that I picked up in Catholic School which was foreboding and frightening.
• I never heard Rita complain about childbirth.  She seemed to love having children.  She encouraged creative play and didn’t seem to care that the house was getting all messed up in the process.   I remember painting snow scenes on the kitchen windows, baking cookies, throwing blankets and sheets over the dining room table in order to create the neatest tent house underneath, digging up the backyard to make a swimming pool or building cars and boats out of leftover pieces of wood.   I remember her welcoming all the neighborhood kids to play at our house.    I also remember her inviting “the world” to have dinner at her table.
• Rita liked to write but just like me she was always trying to finish something.   She was very smart and as an adult attended Queens College (until she fell at the college and smashed her kneecap).  For one of her classes she wrote a term paper about a stimulant drug called “Peyote” that was far superior to most other term papers I have ever read including my own.
• Rita also was an amazing genealogy researcher.  I only wish I had half her talent in that area.  She wanted her family to know about the people who came before them.   Many of you may remember her push to have everyone in the family attend the “Curley Reunion” held in Friendsville, Pa in 1989. Sadly, she died before the Curley Reunion that was held 10 years later.   I know she was the force and spirit behind the 2008 O’Donnell Reunion and I know she would want me to share her stories with you.   
• Rita didn’t much care for sewing or cleaning house. 
• She made the best apple pies I have ever tasted.
• She enjoyed a good cocktail once in awhile.
• She loved to go out to dinner.   One day near the sea she had a Lobster.
• She dearly loved her family and her heart broke and never completely recovered when her “baby” brother was killed on Heartbreak Ridge in Korea.
• She wanted to go to Ireland in the worse way.
• She wanted to learn to drive a car.
• As far as I was concerned she was a better Catholic than any of the ordained clergy.
• She often told me that when she looked around at other women’s husbands, she always came to the same conclusion; she would never trade her husband for any of them.