MOM IS COMING

Several year ago, 1977 I do believe , having just started a new business, my dear Mother was coming to visit us. She was coming to see her first girl grandchild receive her First Holy Communion in the Catholic tradition.

We were going to pick her up at O’Hare airport in Chicago, approximately 60 miles North of where we lived at that time. There was one problem: We did not have any cash money to pay the tolls on the Illinois Toll Road nor to pay for food while she was visiting us. We were living on credit cards and did not want her to know it was not easy starting a new firm. As now senator Mrs. Clinton said some twenty years later. “I don’t give a dam for under funded companies.”. My wife was a school teacher in the Catholic school system and my firm has been growing constantly for 30 years now-Praise the Lord. I had a second job on second shift, as the chief electrician second shift, at Schwinn bicycle manufacturing and assemble plant in Chicago which is now closed.

So my dear wife decides to cash in a present which she was going to give at a wedding at a later date. So while I was waiting in the car with our three children and she was inside the Zayre’s department store as it started to rain. This summer thunderstorm which was approaching us from the Southwest got real ugly, real fast. During the downpour I noticed a middle aged woman going from occupied car to occupied car. Most other folks were opening their windows to listen to what she had to say. So when she was approaching my car I open the vent window on my Plymouth to see what was so important to her being she was sacrificing herself to this horrific storm to include the chance that a lighting bolt could end her mission at any time.

Upon opening my vent we learned that she was in dire need of a sump pump. I told her to get into my car and out of the storm. Then I told her of the old Boy Scout motto “Be Prepared”. I informed her that I always kept and extra sump pump in my home nearby. During our friendly discussion I told her the cost of this sump pump which I had purchased at a good price at Grainger’s and that she could have it at my cost.

This is the first time in my life that it really hit me that this was a true blessing. I was always thankful for my three brothers safe return during the Viet Nam war while I was always warm in Germany being my wife baked cakes everyday for either the first Sergeant Hooper or the CO Capt. Cramer or my boss SSG Richard E. Charbono to keep my you know what from filling a levy for my MOS for Nam.

My 87 year old Mom visited us again this Thanksgiving 2002. Her four sons surprised her by showing up unannounced on Mother’s day this year also. When told her of this story she was shocked.

When I told her how much I loved Mokena and Frankfort, Illinois. She leaned over and whispered: “Are there any Democrats here.” Her dad was shafted my Eleanor Roosevelt when my grandfather’s secretary Mrs. Perkins was hired as the first woman cabinet member as Sectary of labor. When her dad had written the first Workman’s Compensation regulations and laws in Ohio and then Governor Dewey had him move to New York to do the first Workman’s Compensation Review and laws in the State of New York.