I believe this is Grandma Margaret Coleman O'Donnell

Lawrence Darius Coleman's Store

Remembering Mary Jane

Reposting this 2014 blog entry in memory of my dear friend, Mary Jane

Mary Jane Sassone was a perfect candidate for SVH's Drama Club

On December 16th, it will be 10 years since our classmate, Mary Jane Sassone Jarkowski, left this earth for a higher realm.  She was one of a kind.  The mold was discarded after she was wonderfully made.  I think of her often and remember all her antics.  She was  marvelous combination of spirituality and sexuality and sensitivity.  She was probably the most dramatic person I have ever known. The last time we walked together in late November 2004, she leaned over to hold on to a large rock.  I felt she was hanging on tightly to a piece of the earth so as not to leave the people, and the sights and sounds of the earth that she loved so well.   On that last visit with her, she had me dye her roots.   I felt she was too ill that particular evening, but she insisted that the dye job be done.  I imagine she wanted to look "just so" when she was laid out in her coffin.  But we didn't really acknowledge that fact.  Oh, for sure she knew that death was approaching, but she wanted a little more time and she tried her best to keep it going.   Who could blame her?  She was way too young as far as I was concerned.   But sometimes death creeps up on us even though we are not ready to go, and in spite of what we do,  or how we feel about it. 
I often ask, "Mary Jane, are you near?  Do you watch from afar?"  I often say, "thanks for planning that 6 week trip through Europe for Eleanor, Susan & Me."  I also add, "thanks for always listening to my woes, for never being my judge, for sharing your deepest thoughts and dreams with me and for giving me unconditional love. 
 Here is a poem Mary Jane wrote about her feelings surrounding Nursing School.  I am certain many of us can relate!
                                                               "Nursing School"

Saturday stretches out ahead of me

Like a delicious

7 cent caramel sucker

The kind to be savored all day

As I curl up in my dorm bed

Terror strikes suddenly

As I awakedn fuzzy headed

Remembering

A black hole awaits me

Where I labor over the pitiful sick

While the birds of prey

In starched white linen

Peck their blue capped young

And I am 

A particularly appetizing fledging

I bolt upright

Journey 40 years in a flash

Find myself home

In my own bed

It's long over

But

For the nightmares

By Mary Jane Jarkowsky, 2002

" Lakeside" near Friendsville

My Mom wrote that this was the home of Christopher Byrne & Mary Anne Welch, parents of Hannah Colemen.

Really Old Family History Darius Coleman, Sr.

This was extracted from a book entitled, "History of Susquehanna County Pennsylvania" by Emily C. Blackman originally published in Philadelphia, 1873.  It was gotten from the Susquehanna County Historical Society and Free Library Association Regional Publishing Company by my mother, Rita O'Donnell Fries who seemed to live and breath and love genealogy.   I plan to bring the book back to Montrose, Pa and donate it to the Historical Society unless a family member claims it quickly!
Darius Coleman, Sr's son, Darius Coleman, Jr married Margaret Curley and they had a son named Frank Coleman who married Hannah Byrne who then had a daughter named Margaret Coleman who had a daughter named Rita O'Donnell who then had a daughter named Mary Beth Fries Buchner, i.e., me.

Rita

16 years ago today my Mother died.  That is the word we use when the heart stops and breathing ceases.
But although her heart stopped beating and her spirit left the flesh and blood space that we knew as Rita Mary Agnes O'Donnell Fries, she continues to exist for me.  She isn't gone.  She lives on in all the journals she wrote. She lives on through my arms and hands as I stand at the kitchen counter and prepare "Apple Pan- Dowdy" or as lament about "what should I do with my hair?'  or as I enjoy the people and activities in my life or as I prepare, with joyful anticipation, for this or that next social get-together.   I know where I learned all these things.  I know that she remains with me in  immeasurable ways as I walk through my days on this earth.  I know when I fill up with love for the people in my life that she is the one who gave me this most marvelous gift. 
Thanks Mom, for loving me and showing me the way.  

Hannah Byrne Coleman's Parents, Christopher & Mary Ann Welch Byrne- 1898

This photo was given to me by Mary Bahan who was a first cousin to my maternal grandmother, Margaret Mary Coleman O'Donnell.  Her father, Patrick, was a brother to Hannah, making Margaret & Mary Bahan first cousins.    This photo was taken in approximately 1898 and I can only assume that it was taken in the farmhouse in Friendsville, PA.  The house is no longer there but it was on the right side of the dirt road when you take the road in Friendsville that leads to Carmalt Lake where the O'Donnell children and other family members went swimming in the summertime. In 1994 my mother, Rita O'Donnell Fries, used some of the money she inherited from her sister, Anne O'Donnell to reprint the poetry books, "Idyls of Lakeside" (copyright, 1909)by the O'Byrnes (the O'Brynes dropped the "O" and became known as the Byrnes.  She also reprinted a small book by the same authors entitled, "Susquehanna and Other Poems" (copyright 1914).
My mother told me that there was a little "ditty" or small poem about her great-grandmother, Mary Ann Welch.    It was a play on words that went like this - "She got her M.A. at Oxford",  and then the reader would assume that Mary Ann went to Oxford University in England and got her Masters Degree there.  But the last part of the ditty told the truth of the matter when the verse read, "when they baptized her there "Mary Ann".   You see, the truth of the matter was that she was baptized Mary Ann (M.A.) in a little town in upstate New York known as Oxford.
My mother was very proud of her ancestry and was thrilled by poetry.  My sister, Meg, read some of these poems to our dear Mother as she lay on her deathbed and hearing them once again, this  familiar poetry brought a smile to my mother's face.
In case you are wondering, I don't have any photos of Christopher and Mary Ann's parents!!