MARY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
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Web-Master's note: The essay below was written in 1982 by Mary O'Donnell Montague. It was a particular writing assignment for a graduate class at Syracuse University.
Mary Montague
MAG 506
September 16, 1982
FIVE HUNDRED WORDS
Circumstances have given me a lengthy if somewhat narrow experience in time and space. I was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania and when I was 3 months old, my mother and father returned to Syracuse to live among aunts and uncles and both sets of grandparents. I was educated at Most Holy Rosary School through the tenth grade and finished my last two years at The Convent School, a private girls’ school staffed by the Franciscans. I entered Syracuse University’s College of Home Economics in the fall of 1938 during my father’s 25th reunion year from the College of Engineering. My interest in lifelong learning was fueled by the cultural and educational opportunities available in Onondaga County. Syracuse Stage, the Symphony, Opera, Theater and the museums as well as the educational institutions, all add to the wonderful quality of life in beautiful upstate New York.
My undergraduate days at Syracuse were a bit difficult since, as a city student, I spent a lot of time commuting. Cars for students were somewhat scarce during the depression, so I felt quite disconnected from the college social life (I did, however, date a Med student who drove a model T ford with a gravity gas tank and when the gas was frequently low we had to back up the hills; and, we lived on a hill). As time went on, I also discovered that I was not terribly excited about Home Ec; the choice of this course of study had been made for the admiring, obedient daughter by her father in consultation with his dean, and Dean Annie Louise McLeod, an ikon in the College of Home Economics. Domestic Science was really a neat field for a female in those days BUT very boring! However, with Dietetics as a major, I did manage some interesting courses in the Arts and Sciences and one memorable one, Magazine Article Writing, in the School of Journalism which was based in that grandest of all the lost local architecture, Yates Castle. Newhouse is elegant, but the ghosts stayed in the valley when the school moved on up.
When I finished college at the beginning of World War II, I received an appointment to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC for a dietetic internship. A lot of famous people were patients there at that time including some well-known war heroes (Lt. Ted Lawson of "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" fame comes to mind) and General of the Armies, General John J. Pershing whose sister and he were patients on my floor. This was a very exciting time for 21 year old me. I was commissioned in the Army Medical Corps with an opportunity to serve in a large American medical center in the midlands in England. A few months before I left for the European Theater I, as an intern of very low departmental standing, was directed to placate a badly wounded captain, a survivor of the First Division’s Sicilian campaign, who was not pleased with our meal offerings. We were married after the war and settled in on Syracuse’s west-side where I had been raised and had our family of four boys and a girl. After several years on the volunteer circuit, I finally took a paid position and after a few years found myself employed at Syracuse University in the Gerontology Center. With six remitted tuition hours available to me each semester, I took and few courses and happened on a course in Adult Education, Lifelong Learning and I was hooked. I applied for and was accepted in the M.Sc program in the School of Education. I received my master’s degree in 1983, the same year that son Jerry received his Doctorate in Biology. We proudly attended the graduation ceremonies together.
And, so into the "golden years" – I’ve traveled with children and grandchildren, 16 in all, and, finally, a glorious trip to Galway with everyone, except Pat, who broke his leg on the Saturday night before we left playing soccer and his father Jim, our accountant son in the middle of income tax time. (Do see the Journals which some of the travelers kept.). We had a part ownership in an Irish cottage, a source of great joy to all of us. Now in my 79th year, I am happy to stay at home and be visited by the kids at our monthly Sunday brunches and catch up on some reading (over the years my motto has been " When I have a little money I buy books and if any is left I buy food and clothes").
So I do have enough reading material.