My maternal grandmother, May O'Connell Henry,
from a larger family photo, taken in Chicago about 1892

Mary Ellen O'Connell, or "May," as she called herself, my maternal grandmother, was the fourth of Sinon A. and Mary Ann Kane O'Connell's ten children and was born in her parents' home at 1004 (now 1234) West 32nd Street in Chicago on 22 December 1884.  Early in her life she unoffically adopted the name "May" to replace Mary Ellen.  She was educated at St. Bridget's Elementary School on Archer Avenue and at Holden Public Elementary School on 31st Street.  Unlike her grandson, she was a capable mathematician.  Shortly after the above picture was taken, she received an award for excellence at a children's arithmetic competition at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.  She also loved to cook and entertain guests, and she apparently acquired these interests at a young age.  For example, because her mother had recently given birth and couldn't prepare the family dinner for Thanksgiving Day 1895, May prepared the entire dinner--at the age of ten.

May was a good pianist and made sure there was a piano in her home.  Later, she insisted that her children take piano lessons, too.  She also was fond of animals, and an appealing picture of her with the family's German shepherd dog Chicken, taken about 1908, has survived.  (Sadly, Chicken, who was devoted to May's mother Mary Ann and remained by her bedside during her last illness, vanished mysteriously the morning of Mary Ann O'Connell's funeral in January 1910 and was never seen again.)

Around 1902, May began  working at the Illinois Bell Telephone Company as an operator.  Always working the night shift to leave time for cooking the family dinner, May nonetheless also nursed her parents and her younger sister Loretta during their final illnesses.  After the deaths of her parents and sister, she continued to work and maintain a home for three of her unmarried siblings.  In June 1915, she married my grandfather, John Augustine Henry (1881-1932), at St. Bridget's Church on Archer Avenue.  My grandfather, the son of immigrants from County Mayo, Ireland, also was born in Bridgeport and lived nearby at 2953 S. Elias Court.  The couple honeymooned at St. Joseph, Michigan.

Shortly after their marriage, May and John A. Henry moved from the house on 32nd Street to a home at 7541 S. Peoria Street in Chicago's Auburn Park neighborhood.  Their first child, Thomas Raymond Henry (1916-1968), was born there on 4 May 1916.  Around this time, my grandfather, who worked as a conductor for the Grand Trunk Railroad and traveled between Chicago and Toronto, transferred to a job at the Elsdon Yards of the Grand Trunk at 51st Street and Central Park Avenue, and so the family relocated to the Marquette Park neighborhood.  About 1917, they rented a second-floor apartment at 6112 S. Fairfield Avenue, where my mother, Loretta Mary Henry Flannigan (1918-1996), was born on 16 March 1918.  May's three unmarried siblings, Sinon C., Claribel, and Henry L., continued to form part of the Henry household.  During the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, Claribel, bedridden by the disease and too ill to stand, was married to her fiance Francis McGinnis, on leave from the army, in a bedroom of the Fairfield Avenue apartment. May's brothers Sinon C. and Henry L. O'Connell eventually married in the early 1920s, the former to Marguerite Berngen and the latter to Cecelia Morris.

In 1921-22, while John and May's new home was being built, the Henry family moved briefly into the home of May's brother Joseph O'Connell and his family at 7814 S. Eberhart Avenue.  During this time, the eldest child Tom attended St. Dorothy's Elementary School.  Real estate development in the Chatham neighborhood had reached only as far south as 79th Street in the early 1920s, and my mother recalled an incident when, as a child, she and her brother Tom wandered off without telling her parents so they could explore the vast prairie south of 79th Street, causing much consternation at home.  In 1922, construction was completed on the Henry family's bungalow at 6137 S. Talman Avenue, and the family moved in that fall.  John and May's third and last child, Rita Kathryn Henry McCullough (1922-1973), was born on 3 November 1922 at St. Bernard's Hospital.  During their residency on Talman Avenue, May and John Henry were members of St. Rita of Cascia Catholic Church on 63rd Street, and their three children attended St. Rita's Elementary School.  May's sister Kathryn ("Kit") O'Connell Wiggins lived with her husband and children one street away, at 6215 S. Rockwell Street, and the Henry and Wiggins families saw each other nearly every day.

May O'Connell Henry (third from right), with two of her sisters, Kathryn O'Connell Wiggins (second from right) and Claribel O'Connell McGinnis (far left, holding her daughter, Mary Ann McGinnis), with several sisters-in-law of her brother Henry O'Connell, in the latter's backyard, 7351 S. Prairie Avenue, Chicago, summer 1928

Throughout her life May was devoted to her friends.  A group of her friends from childhood, the so-called "Nanny Goats," kept in close contact throughout the years, and as late as the 1930s, May and other surviving members of the Nanny Goats would assemble for annual picnics in Jackson Park.

Some of the "Nanny Goats" at their annual picnic, Jackson Park, early 1930s. May is third from right; her sister, Kathryn O'Connell Wiggins, is second from left

My grandfather and grandmother were close companions even though my grandfather worked odd hours, seven days a week, as assistant yard master for the Grand Trunk.  His death on 12 July 1932 was a blow to the family, particularly because it happened in the depths of the Great Depression.  The family gave up their home on Talman Avenue, lived for a time in an apartment on South Campbell Avenue, and about 1936 moved farther east to an apartment near the home of May's maternal aunt Ellen Kane Swengber and her family in the Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood.  My grandmother went back to work at the telephone company as a "B-Board" Operator, and from 1936 until shortly before her death she worked at the Illinois Bell office near 63rd Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.  May Henry died at her home at 4033 S. Drexel Boulvard in Chicago on 26 May 1941 and is buried with her husband, parents, two of her siblings, and two of her children in Chicago's Mount Olivet Cemetery on 111th Street.

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