Helen Frances (Flynn) Pyle (1910 - 2003)

Until approx the early 50’s, we had no refrigerator, so we had to have ice delivered by an ice truck that passed thru the neighborhood periodically. Milk was delivered also and the empty bottles picked up by the milkman and recycled (Note that this was better than today; fresher milk, and no trash to process).

Mom bought her fresh fruits and vegetables from Larry the huckster,who drove all this stuff thru the neighborhood once a week.(Dad wasn’t keen on Larry coming around because he was a big good-looking guy, and real friendly.....most of his customers being women.)

Anyway, for many years Mom had to manage the food with this old icebox. Never had a dishwasher, of course, and for a long time she had to use a scrubbing board to wash clothes and then hang ‘em out in the yard or in the cellar when the weather would so dictate. She did a lot of hand-sewing as most of our clothes were hand-me-downs and needed lots of repairing, especially when worn by us active kids.

And the degree of house cleaning she did was amazing, by today’s standards, as it included cleaning lots of windows and all the walls and ceilings in every room at least once a year. About the time I left home for the Navy in 1958, however,Mom had started to slack off.........she decided to forget about the ceilings.

Mom was an outstanding cook, and she was totally in charge of everything re food selection and preparation. Dad lacked the time and the money for an outdoor cooker of any sort. More importantly, he felt that cooking was Mom’s domain.

And at least in their case, I know that Mom would not have welcomed Dad into her kitchen as an assistant cook. (Note......I have never owned an outdoor cooker!) We had regular family sit-down together meals.

That imposed a discipline on us we came to expect and appreciate, a regular time to be together and share news, thoughts, concerns and sometimes problems. A time to learn manners. A time to offer a thanksgiving prayer. And easier on the cook who had to do all the work.

We were poor and lived in a small row house with ancient furniture, worn old (but clean) clothing and spent little for entertainment; but two things got top priority regardless......we always ate well (quality food) and we four kids got a sound Catholic education.

The kitchen at 579 was small and you’d get the riot act if you got in Mom’s way while she was preparing a meal. Breakfasts varied from bacon & eggs & toast, to pancakes or waffles, to cold or hot cereal. Lunches at home were usually soups or sandwiches, depending somewhat on the weather.

During our grade school years at St Francis we would walk home for lunch, and then back to school, for a daily total of 5 miles. For work and our high school and college years, Mom would always pack each of us, including Dad, a lunch bag with a sandwich, fruit and some cookies.

Dinners (suppers) were always excellent, simple and predictable. Fish on Friday (being Catholic), a roast beef or leg of lamb on Sunday, then some leftovers, and chicken, pork chops or steak during the week. Almost always with potatoes and 2-3 vegetables, a salad and a dessert.

You’d better clean your plate or have a good reason why not, else you’d get a lecture about the starving children in Ireland or Africa. Any disrespect for your food at the table would trigger the wrath of my father.

As I write this I’ve tried to remember any time we went out to eat as a family, and with the exception of our occasional mini-vacations to the NJ beaches, I cannot recall any. Too expensive and considered extravagant.

Mom bore my brothers Ken and Bar, identical twins, on 29 March 1933 and me on 23 June 1935, all in the middle of the Great Depression.(You that read this may not appreciate the major adverse significance this event in American history had on most Americans.

If not, you should look into it. This economic disaster, triggered by greed and fueled by incompetent federal gov’t bureaucrats, influenced greatly how my parents viewed survival itself, the need to be frugal, to become more self-reliant, and to work hard and to stick together.

They passed these concerns onto their kids, not by expressing a gloom and doom attitude, but primarily through their example as to how they lived. In fact, they rarely spoke about the depression.)

My point is that it took a strong woman to endure the situation she faced. She couldn’t work for pay to help with expenses, but had to depend on Dad with two or three jobs to get them through. The national economy was in chaos. What a load with three kids two and under. But Mom had relatives to help out, her Irish heritage which had taught her to persevere, and most importantly, she had her faith.

Mom was a devout Roman Catholic. She believed that if she was a good Christian, in God’s eyes, that God would look out for her........that He would hear and answer her prayers and petitions. She never gave up on this approach.

And so she tried to be a good Christian, and that she was, and she prayed a lot, mostly privately, for specific help from God or via certain saints for herself, her family, sick relatives or for something at the moment affecting one of us kids. At 579 she had a small altar in the upstairs hallway with a statue of Christ as a child..........the Sacred Heart of Jesus.........and with a couple of candles, and a place to put her written notes, often petitions to God or a saint to help one of us in some special test at school or for an application we had made for a scholarship or maybe a job.

Her faith was remarkable, inspiring and surely helped to sustain her during the tougher times in her life. In sharp contrast, Dad was not religious (for his own reasons), but he certainly believed in God and respected Mom’s thinking on this subject, in that he agreed to support the Catholic Church with periodic donations and to send all his children through the Catholic school system.

by Ron Pyle

Both my parents pushed us to do well in school and to get a college education, and they were unrelenting. Dad worked to pay the bills for school expenses and fully supported Mom all the way for her every decision for each of the four of us. And when she needed him to exert some discipline re homework, time to bed before a school-day, or whatever, she had only to ask Dad and it was a done deal, and we knew it. We towed the line, mainly because we feared the wrath of our Dad; but also to a lesser degree because of a concern for the potential disappointment to them, and for a slowly growing awareness of how much they both were sacrificing for our benefit. Net result? We all four graduated with college degrees!

Getting four kids through college is tough for any parents. There are three requirements: 1) the kids have to want to go, 2) they have to be qualified (accepted), and 3) it costs a lot of money. In our case, all four of us kids met the first two (although brother Bar needed some extra prodding from Dad to go to college) and Dad and Mom met the last one for Ken, Bar and Helen. But at a great price......they had to re-mortage the house twice (going back into debt) and Mom got a job as a secretary/typist (which led to a nervous breakdown, and she had to quit).

The added debt meant that Dad would have to continue working two jobs longer than they had hoped for. Since Helen was 9 years younger than my brothers there was enough of a break in time so that money could be saved up to cover her college costs. In my case, there was no money left to allow me to go to Villanova out of high school in 1953. I had worked two jobs that summer but only came up with half the required tuition. I had applied for several scholarships, including the Navy ROTC, but was rejected. So I made plans, with Dad’s help, to become a carpenter’s apprentice, join their union and start union supported training. But Mom hadn’t given up. Her prayer petition was still on the altar upstairs, so she got on a trolley and went directly to the big-shots at Northeast Catholic High where I had just graduated in June 1953 in a class numbering 929. Result?

The brothers at North Catholic awarded me a half year’s scholarship to Villanova (allegedly based upon my relative class standing, in the top 10%). So I became a freshman at Villanova. Then won a full NROTC scholarship, so that took care of the next four years at Villanova. (The engineering courses plus the Navy courses required five years to complete.) In June 1958 I graduated with a BSME and was commissioned as an Ensign, U.S.Navy. Mom’s faith and perseverance set my life’s course!

Mom stayed with my wife Joanne to help out following the births of our Kathy (March 1963) and Patti (April 1964) at Patuxent River, MD where I was stationed. (Our Mark was born in Fort Ord, California during my stint at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, which was just too far away for Mom to travel.)

All four of us kids lived at home during our college years (1951-1958, 1960-1964) and therefore had to commute on a daily basis from home to school. We couldn’t afford the college room & board. So this placed an added load on my parents, but which they accepted without complaint. After Helen left home in 1964 is when my parents started their annual September vacations to Ocean City, New Jersey and these were like yearly honeymoons to them......very happy times. But there were three attempted break-ins at 579 by blacks just before and then after Dad’s death in 1980, so Mom decided to sell 579 and she and my sister Helen moved into an apartment on Henry Ave in NW Philly. Mom stayed with Helen until cancer claimed my sister in 1992, the same terrible disease that had taken my Dad. Those years together with Helen were mostly happy years for Mom as she and Helen became very close and dependent upon one another. But she found herself once again caring for a loved one who was slowly dying. She had given devoted care to Nanny (my Dad’s mother), her own mother, her brother Joe, Dad’s sister Marion, and of course for my Dad. Helen was diagnosed with multiple myeloma 8-10 years before she died, so Mom shared that severe burden with her all that time, including the many cancer treatment sessions. Again, her faith, compassion and love helped her through these stressful events in her life.

All four of us kids lived at home during our college years (1951-1958, 1960-1964) and therefore had to commute on a daily basis from home to school. We couldn’t afford the college room & board. So this placed an added load on my parents, but which they accepted without complaint. After Helen left home in 1964 is when my parents started their annual September vacations to Ocean City, New Jersey and these were like yearly honeymoons to them......very happy times. But there were three attempted break-ins at 579 by blacks just before and then after Dad’s death in 1980, so Mom decided to sell 579 and she and my sister Helen moved into an apartment on Henry Ave in NW Philly.

Mom stayed with Helen until cancer claimed my sister in 1992, the same terrible disease that had taken my Dad. Those years together with Helen were mostly happy years for Mom as she and Helen became very close and dependent upon one another. But she found herself once again caring for a loved one who was slowly dying. She had given devoted care to Nanny (my Dad’s mother), her own mother, her brother Joe, Dad’s sister Marion, and of course for my Dad. Helen was diagnosed with multiple myeloma 8-10 years before she died, so Mom shared that severe burden with her all that time, including the many cancer treatment sessions. Again, her faith, compassion and love helped her through these stressful events in her life.

by Ron Pyle

After Helen died in 1992, Mom was taken in by my brother Ken at his new place in Ocean City, NJ where he had retired. Thanks to Ken she received very good care for most of the rest of her life. He earned a slot in heaven for what he gave up and for all that he did for her. Mom’s health, however, gradually declined to the point where she became wheelchair bound and was in and out of the local hospital. She had osteoporosis, broke her wrist and hip, and had other ailments. But during her final 10-11 years or so, her mind was still as sharp as a tack. She enjoyed the TV news and sports, all Philadelphia teams of course, especially the Phillies, the Flyers and the Eagles. Years ago she could tell you the batting averages of the Phillies players.

by Ron Pyle

On 29 September 1998, I interviewed Mom and asked her to touch on the highlights of her life. She said that she had a happy childhood, thanks to her hard-working strong-willed parents. Her neighborhood on Folsom St in Philadelphia consisted of small row houses and was all-white (Irish, German, Polish and Italian). She attended Catholic schools, with boys and girls separate, and uniforms required. Mom played the banjo and ukulele, her sisters the piano and the family often sang popular songs together on Sundays.

by Ron Pyle

The depression was the most significant historical event in her life because it caused national chaos with rampant unemployment, rationing and bank closings; and it refocused her and Dad’s thinking on survival itself and the necessity to work very hard and make sacrifices. Her greatest satisfaction in life was just being part of and raising her family which involved having a good husband, pride in her children, overcoming the many challenges in raising the children, and most importantly being loved. The best presidents during her lifetime were Truman (“he called it like it was”), and then Reagan. What she missed most was Dad and his love........”He was really in love with me since I was 16,” and his expressions that made her laugh, like “Step Down,” and “He missed the boat.”

by Ron Pyle

Mom outlived her parents, both sisters and both brothers; Dad and his parents, both his sisters and his brother; and her daughter Helen and her eldest son Ken, who died on 8 July 2002 with little warning to the rest of us . I know that she basically accepted these losses as God’s will, but losing Dad was devastating, and so unfair she said for Helen and then Ken to die before she did. Due to his declining health, Ken had placed Mom into a nursing home near Ocean City in April 2002 where she seemed fairly content as she lived out the remaining months of her life. My wife Joanne and I, by divine coincidence, were with Mom when she died there on 27 October 2003, this itself an act of God’s goodness to ensure that Mom would die peacefully in the arms of precious loved ones.

Mom had some wonderful memories to help sustain her during her final years, but I know that she really looked forward to finally being relieved of pain and lonliness; being rejoined with her loved ones in heaven; and being in the eternal presence of Almighty God. If anyone I’ve ever known deserved the reward of heaven it was this wonderful woman, my Mom.

by Ron Pyle