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Chapter Two Babe

Kathleen Virginia Doyle was born in 1924 in the City of Chicago. The younger of two children, Kathleen was born to an Irish family of considerable pedigree. Her great grandfather, Peter Doyle, emigrated from County Wexford, Ireland in 1848. Peter Doyle’s youngest son, Austin Doyle, was born in Chicago in 1849 and served as Police Chief for the City of Chicago 1882-1890. Austin Doyle died in 1924 and at the time was one of the oldest native Chicagoans. Other Doyles were variously successful as business men, artists, priests, teachers, and educational administrators. The Doyles lived in a number of locations in the city and their survival skills focused on Irish connections and formal educations.

Kathleen’s first year could be characterized as a city kid. Her family lived at 7310 South Princeton on the city’s south side. But things changed forever when Babe’s father, Robert Emmett Doyle (one of four sons born to Austin Doyle and Pauline Weishaar) died of a perforated ulcer in 1925.

Robert Emmett Doyle (Babe’s

father) in photo circa 1925

This forced her mother to work a teaching job at Hamline School in the City of Chicago and relinquish Kathleen’s care to her maternal grandmother, Julia O’Connell, in the country farmhouse. It was Julia who first called her Babe and the name stuck through the years. Babe and Julia became very close and Julia’s personality largely formed Babe’s. Babe developed a calm nature and learned to deal with problems as they presented themselves. Moreover Babe learned to trust that she would survive despite the chaos of any moment. This was the strength she would call on later in life to raise her own children.

Nana, Babe’s mother, in photo circa mid-1930’s.

Julia and Patrick O’Connell; photo circa 1880

The death of her father resulted in the separation of Babe from her older sister, Mary. When they did get together on weekends, it became apparent that Babe’s farm life and Mary’s city life were fundamentally different. Babe wanted to run and play while her sister wanted to sit and read. It was a classic case of country mouse and city mouse.

Babe sported blonde to light brown wavy hair and a fair skinned complexion, a combination that typified the Irish. She burned easily in the sun and her face flushed red when overheated. As an adult she would attain a height of 5 foot 7 inches and walked with a bit of a forward stoop. Babe was everyone’s friend and had a powerful presence.

December 27, 1927 was a landmark event in Babe’s life. She was only 3.5 years old at the time and the weather outside was very cold. The adults were outside slaughtering and dressing turkeys to be given as Christmas gifts and Babe was left alone. And in a moment of mischief, she accidentally ignited a broom in the oven. She then tried to extinguish it by beating it against a pile of papers left to start the oven. And when that didn’t work, she beat the broom against the curtains, greatly accelerating the conflagration. Babe knew she was in trouble so she gathered some bread, butter, and sugar and hid in the pantry, eating it in consolation.

Julia found Babe in the pantry and asked her to follow her quickly upstairs to retrieve the family money she hid under a loose floorboard. Julia found the money and her purse but dropped her purse on the way down the stairs. Julia fumbled in the smoke looking for it and out of the haze a neighbor, Ed Lucas, found Julia, Babe, and the purse and escorted/carried them safely outside.

The farmhouse erupted in flames but was spared a total loss due to quick work by the men and the fortune that heavy rains had recently filled a nearby gravel pit. Considering the grip the fire had on the house and the car garage, it is a wonder it was saved. Scorched boards can be seen today in the attic. But surprisingly, no adult criticized Babe’s behavior that day. It was considered an accident and that was the end of the matter. That is a tribute to the patience of the O’Connell family, especially to Julia. Babe admits suffering from nightmares about the fire and her role in it into her 60’s. And when Babe inherited the damaged building later in her life she said on more than one occasion it would have been better had the farmhouse just burned to the ground.

Photo of the farmhouse and car garage circa 1928 that clearly exhibits the roof area repaired after the 1927 fire.

Babe was schooled in the old Victorian way. She attended the prestigious Academy of Our Lady (later called Longwood Academy) on Chicago’s south side and learned the fine arts of piano, violin, chorale, charm, tap dancing, and manners, as well as the basic core curriculum of English, mathematics, history, and geography. She was a lady of refinement when she finished at the Academy. But her life had a distinct duality. While she was refined in her schooling and manners, she was still a farm child at heart and remembers how Guinea hens would chase her around the yard and how mink would gain access to the chicken coop and kill the lot.

Babe took up golf as a youngster and exhibited some talent. She was selected from a competition at age 9 and awarded pass to a clinic teaching her the game. It gave her the opportunity to play with her mother, who picked up the game at the request of doctors suggesting it would be good for breaking up her abdominal adhesions.

Babe met her husband to-be, Bob, in 1939 when Bob came to the farmhouse to date her sister, Mary. Babe and Bob, however, discovered they were the better pair. They were married in 1943 when Babe was 18 and Bob was 23. Babe’s mother, Nana, was not thrilled that Babe was marrying before she had learned a profession. But they married nonetheless. There is an amusing report that when Bob asked Nana for the hand of her daughter, Nana was sufficiently confused (knowing he had dated both girls) and asked “Which one?”

Babe and Bob home from the hospital with their first child, November 1943.

German men and Irish women were common marriages in the Palos area. They complemented each other well. German men liked to work and Irish women liked to raise children, and together they had a herd before they knew it.

When Bob returned from the European theatre of WW2, Babe’s mother signed over what remained of the farm (3.6 acres) to Bob and Babe while Babe’s sister, Mamie, moved to Joliet, Illinois to raise her family and continue her teaching career.

Babe was purebred Irish and ultimately had thirteen children with Bob. Her children exhibited the mix of Celtic and Viking bloodlines as some were dark haired while others were strawberry blondes and redheads. And all save three had light complexions and many of these had a crop of freckles.

Babe contributed a number of genetic trademarks to her offspring, including male pattern baldness, light eyebrows, double-jointed thumbs, flexible fingers, and skin so fair it was prone to sunburns and keratoses.

Thirteen children, anyone would agree, was a heavy load and it affected Babe’s most basic decisions, like naming her children. Babe had one daughter who believed her formal name was Kathleen Mary and found out late in life her registered name was Mary Claire. Babe also had a son who believed his name was Lawrence Thomas, but Babe had actually named him Craig Michael. Likewise, she had a son who thought his formal name was William Claire but discovered it was Claire William upon filing for a marriage license. Babe was overwhelmed with demands made on her in an operation of this scale and apparently ran out of names. She used Claire as a default until she got home and then asked the family what they thought. Each time, the family reacted like it encountered a leper. “No way!” the kids would complain and proceed to choose a different name. The problem was nobody ever fixed the official records.

One may wonder how thirteen children could sleep in a three bedroom home if one of the bedrooms was the parents’ room. Mercifully, there was a sort of revolving door regarding occupancy in each of the children’s bedrooms. As older brothers left for the armed forces, younger ones replaced them. It was not uncommon, in those days, for four or more children to share each bedroom in two sets of bunk beds, with spillover into the parents’ room. Under those conditions, perhaps the biggest miracle was that Babe and Bob ever had time alone to produce thirteen children.

Neighbors and friends gasped when we discussed how Babe coped with thirteen children. To this day I am unsure whether their gasps were attributed to pity, admiration, or both. But Babe gave it all away, seldom purchasing anything new for herself. She did have a particular penchant for shoes, however. Bob would complain she was the Imelda Marcos of Palos as she had some 20 pairs, many stored in their original boxes. Babe used a few of these shoe boxes to hide cash, but quickly forgot in which box the money was stored. This didn’t bother Babe; however, as she thought this was a good savings technique for the hereafter. She claimed she would need the shoes for walking the heavenly streets and would need the cash in case she finds a Marshall Fields store.

Our mother was responsible for the task of feeding 13 children and 2 adults. It wasn’t bad enough that my mother was required to feed her fifteen; she was also called on to feed everyone’s friends. One memorable Easter Sunday our Pakistani friend, Khalid, called and asked if he could come over for dinner. He said he would like to bring along his friends as well, and in Babe’s gracious hospitality, she encouraged him. A few hours later, Khalid and his five friends arrived for Babe’s Easter dinner. When they saw the meat-of-choice was ham, they expressed their Muslim displeasure. “Well then, what would you like?” Babe asked. “We all like steaks” the Pakistani contingent responded. And Babe obliged them with steaks. Babe had a servant’s heart.

Babe would shop at the local Royal Blue food store in Palos Heights. Her modus operandi was to shop with several of her children in tow. When finished, she and the children typically would push 4 or more full carts toward the checkout line. The store manager, witnessing this scene would announce “Attention! Attention! All baggers to the front!” This was intended, of course, to alert store personnel, but for all practical purposes, it told others in the store “Stop what you are doing and notice this family!” Growing up in our family was a constant spectacle. And the military-scale efforts to feed the lot usually relied more on simple repetition than culinary sophistication.

Cooking with Babe was a trip. Babe used recipes and took advice from Grandma and the older girls. But somehow, the kids thought they needed to keep a watchful eye on her. On one particular Thanksgiving morning, Babe put a very large turkey, complete with its bread crumb and celery stuffing into a double broiler at about 8:00 AM. After a few hours, she opened the oven door, lifted the upper broiler pan and through the steam the one of the boys noticed the bird was snow white and sighed, “Look Mom, you boiled it!”

Babe sheltered Bob from most of the bad news of the family, including the money situation. In fact Bob was unaware of his total financial outlays until he woke early one morning and saw Babe handing out money to every child leaving for the school’s weekly hot dog day. It was staggering and Bob was a whole lot better off not knowing. Thank God Bob made enough money to feed us.

The bad news for Babe in living on the hill was the scourge of dust. When farmers plowed and when they harvested, dust would waft over the terrain and settle on our house. A sod company owned the area immediately surrounding our home and needless to say they contributed their fair share. But Babe could not keep up. It was like forever being in a construction site. To complicate matters, we paved our own road with crushed dolomite. This in time became (you guessed it) dust. “Close the doors, the trucks are coming!” was Babe’s desperate cry from the hill. Exacerbating the problem, Babe’s youngest child, Edweird peddled his tricycle down the road dragging a rake. We would ask, “What are you doing, Ed?” “Makin’ moke,” he would respond. As if Babe needed more!

The most embarrassing thing about being in a big family was being late for virtually every engagement. We were late for school, late for church, late for parties, late for graduation, late for everything. My mother did the best she could, God bless her, but the job was too great. We may have been within minutes of leaving en masse when Babe would notice one child with dirt under the fingernails and that would derail the train. “Get in the bathroom and scrub your nails!” she would say. We exhausted the patience of the school district, the church, the Cub Scouts, the Little League, the school bus drivers, and every agency with which we had dealings. To make matters worse, we typically pulled in late with a very noisy diesel car announcing our tardiness, even to the deaf. No sneaking in un-noticed with our family! We children, of course wanted desperately to blend in like everyone else but that was just impossible. One day Babe may force the bus off the road and the next day she may run into a snow bank and we were forced to run to the bus. These mad rushes occasionally resulted in fingers being smashed in car doors, and such an accident typically set the departure back a half-hour or more. So embarrassed were the children by our repeated walks of shame into waiting buses, classrooms-in-progress, and Catholic masses near their end that some of us wished we could just fade into the wallpaper and go unnoticed. And if the diesel car noise didn’t shake passers-by with its decibel level, they would surely notice that the car smelled like a chicken fry as it passed them, as Bob was experimenting with bio-diesel way back in the early 1960’s. Heck, Babe was even late going to the hospital to deliver her babies and was forced, on one occasion, to push the baby back so she didn’t deliver in the car.

A dream one of the children experienced as a teenager summarized our collective frustration. In it, the dreamer dreamed he was the back of a short school bus. The bus was driving by the farmhouse. Normally the bus would be obligated to wait for our family. On this occasion, however, the dreamer sensed an option. Seeing one of his brothers coming down the hill struggling to put his tie on, his mother flagging the bus down, and his sister running and spilling her lunchbox contents, the bus driver looked into his rectangular rear view mirror and asked, “Does anybody know these people?” The dreamer made eye contact with the driver and said “No!” and the bus passed them by. One does not need to be the Biblical Joseph to interpret this dream.

A lesser but still memorable embarrassment for the children involved our Catholic school uniforms. As the word uniform implies, there was little room for individuality. That worked well with most families. But Babe, on occasion, did not have the regulation blue plaid shirts and the skirts cleaned and pressed. So at the last minute, just before the bus arrived, Babe may say, “Here, put this on, nobody will notice.” “Are you joking? There must be some mistake! You want me to wear this pink shirt on class picture day?” The embarrassment was sometimes too much to bear.

Babe had a lot on her plate, however, and between washing the clothes, picking up kids, and preparing meals she occasionally got flustered. Such was the case when she was arrested by store security for inadvertently putting something in a bag. Store authorities recognized she was just confused and advised her to go home and get some rest.

Similarly, a traffic policeman once stopped Babe and asked, “Maam, may I see your driver’s license?” After several minutes of searching through her purse, the policeman then asked, “Maam may I see your vehicle registration?” Babe continued to search through coupons and other materials muttering, “Oh they must be here somewhere!” In utter desperation, the officer resigned and told Babe to be more careful next time. She’s much the same today. Just ask her to find something in her purse!

Babe tried many times to do the wash in Palos but complained the well water was of poor quality and the clothes were being ruined by it. Instead she bundled the wash, packed it into her car and drove to her mother’s home in Beverly, where she had high quality water from Lake Michigan. Perhaps she also needed to get away for a few hours and be with her mother. Then there was the safety issue. Back then the washers had dangerous wringer devices that pulled wet clothes through them. If children’s fingers just happened to get caught in those wringers, Babe would be there to strike the release.

Babe tried to set up a system whereby the older children, raised entirely by her, assisted in the care of the younger ones. But the job was too great and she asked for outside help from an African American lady named Leola, who lived about 20 minutes away in Robbins, Illinois. Leola dug Babe out of the farmhouse’s accumulated trash and grime once a week. All of us can remember the fried potato and onions she would prepare while listening to White Sox games. But an even more amazing event occurred one day as Leola was waiting in our car to be driven home. She was in the passenger seat in her coat and hat. Then the car, apparently left in neutral, began to roll backward down the hill’s driveway. Leola had no clue how to stop this eventuality and just froze, slack-jawed and white eyed. The car ran into a tree half-way down the hill and Leola stepped out. Never again would she sit in the vehicle unattended.

Babe was quick to remind the children that our most important duty before we left the home for an evening was to change our underwear. She said we had to have clean underwear should we end up in a hospital. This is one reason why we all ended up slightly screwy. We were led to believe someone would inspect our underwear should we leave home. It was a lot easier just staying home.

Bob occasionally sent Babe on errands for parts to keep the shop going. She reflects that these driving trips brought her some sanity. She could drive away from the hubbub of the hill and leave it all behind.

Our mother had a very Catholic outlook and one of her hang-ups involved children being exposed to sex before their time. To say the ‘s’ word or refer to a ‘s’- related issue in our home was a cause for blush. We felt Babe’s embarrassment and tried to shelter her from it. A daily issue she dealt with, for lack of room in the family car, involved girls sitting on the laps of the boys. This was a no-no in inner Catholic circles. Hard core Catholics, we were told, carried phone books for the laps of the boys. No one remembers how Babe dealt with these issues. But the expediency of everyday life, in all its imperfections, no doubt superseded such lofty guidelines.

Babe’s uneasiness with sexual issues came to a zenith one particularly cold morning. Looking out the frosty kitchen window, the children observed a very unusual phenomenon. Our very large and thick Shetland pony, Bubbles, was enveloped in a dense fog. On closer inspection we noticed the steam was radiating from his highly enlarged male member. Babe, noticing a number of faces staring out the window snapped, “Get away from those windows!” We’d walk away from such a shameful experience citing “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa,” convenient Latin phrases we learned as altar boys to deal with our shame. If that didn’t come to mind we could repeat the prayer “Lord I am not worthy” about a gazillion times.”

Babe was an advocate of a number of Catholic practices such as burying St. Joseph statues upside down in lawns to sell homes and sprinkling holy water over her lottery tickets. These actions gave her a distinct advantage over non-believers, or so she thought. And she prayed to a number of saints of whom the children never heard. In fact, if Babe cared to share her thoughts about a relative that had passed on, she would gather her box of funeral holy cards and speak to you about them. Photos were not required!

But if God loves the person who gives their all in this life, then He surely has reserved a place for Babe. We distinctly remember the look on Babe’s face when she heard the account of the witnesses to the miracle at Knock, Ireland. When asked how the witnesses knew for certain the identity of Jesus, Mary, Mary Magdaline, and Joseph in this apparition, they replied in typical Irish logic, “Because they looked exactly like the statues out front!” Babe knew logically this popped the balloon on the miracle but if it’s good enough for the Pope, it was good enough for her.