In August 2020 when the world was rocked by Covid and we were all still “socially distancing,” our Gram quietly turned 100 years old. The pandemic muted what otherwise would have been a fabulous celebration of Gram’s life with nieces and nephews flying in from across the country. Instead of throwing her a big “pahhh-ty” (as Gram would say), I made her a book --- a book full of photos spanning a century and accented by letters from children, grandchildren, distant family members, and family friends. Amidst the pages of that book is the story of our matriarch, a woman who put God and family first, loving both fiercely, enthusiastically, and unconditionally. Today I will share some of those stories and the themes of a life well lived.

Our Gram was born on August 23, 1920, in Riverside, Rhode Island – a place she often referred to as “Gaahd’s Country”. Born to Anthony and Mary Ethel Galeone, she was the third of seven children. She and her siblings – Leo, Marie, Gertrude, Mickey, Paul, and Jimmy – were raised in a home on Catalpa Avenue where they kept a dish of holy water on the table to bless themselves when the weather got bad. She told me as children she and her siblings never fought (a memory of hers which I now find highly suspect as the mother of two young boys). They were lifelong friends – and what a life they saw! Women’s Suffrage. Prohibition and the Great Depression. World War II. The Kennedy Years. The Moon Landing. The Civil Rights Movement. The Cold War. Computers and the Internet. There will never be another generation quite like theirs.

Gram attended high school at St. Mary’s Academy – Bay View and upon graduation enrolled in a Yale-affiliated nursing school. She worked for several years at the Homeopathic Hospital of Rhode Island as a labor and delivery nurse. She reminisced fondly of her beautiful starched white nurse’s uniform, her fellow nurse friends, and the days she spent caring for newborn babies and new mothers.

In 1945 she married Herman Howell, a businessman from Mississippi. There is an old sepia-toned photo of a twenty-something year old Gram at a New England beach that my great grandfather had mailed home to his brother, soon after meeting her. On the back he had typed, “This is the girl of my dreams.” They lived together in Queens, New York and had their first child, Suzanne, there. Their second child, Steve, was born in Marion, Indiana. And in 1956, they moved to their final home in Grenada, Mississippi, where their third child Deborah was born.

Despite her nostalgia for her New England roots, Gram made that house on Pass Street the center of our family’s life for decades. It was our safe space, our comfort zone, our 24-7 all-you-can-eat diner. Family friends knew this as well, even from the earliest days. Her neighbors the Passers who grew up as playmates of Suzy, Steve, and Debby reminisced in a letter to Gram, “We had mothers in every house [on Pass Street]. Mothers who looked after us and made sure we were safe. You were one of those mothers. You settled disputes and put on band aids. We remember the wonderful smells coming from your yellow kitchen. You were a true homemaker and cooked ‘big time’ every day.”

If we all closed our eyes now and thought of that yellow kitchen, old gas stove, and big wooden dining room table, what scents and tastes would come to our memory? Her spaghetti and meatballs. The hot Italian sausage. Spinach squares. Chicken Pot Pie. Sausage and peppers. Day-After-Thanksgiving Turkey Soup. Pastina. Poached eggs on toast. “Gahhlick” Cheese Grits. Pumpkin Bread or Irish Soda Bread. Red Velvet or frozen Coconut Cake. Yellow Cake Cookies. Tuna Wiggle.

So many of our core memories were formed around Gram’s table. She hosted big family spaghetti dinners, and every Christmas and Thanksgiving family lunch. She’d start clinking glasses of champagne with us as soon as the first person arrived at her house on those joyful holiday mornings. She cooked weekday lunches daily into her 80s just in case a hungry family member dropped by. We always did. She had me trained like Pavlov’s dog to begin salivating and go straight to her refrigerator whenever I walked in her house. “Are you hungry?” she’d ask, then regardless of whether I responded yes or no, she’d go on to list about 10 different homemade options that were stored away in old plastic butter tubs or coffee canisters in her jam-packed fridge. Feeding us was her love language.

Her house was always the grandkids’ second home, and we knew there was a bed or a comfy green couch for us whenever we needed a night away from our parents or just a quick nap in between classes. This was clear to us even at an early age – as is evident from the time my mother who at about nine years old – without telling anyone – walked all the way from her home in Whitehaven to Gram’s in the dark of night. Sometimes we just needed our Gram, and it couldn’t wait.

And when we couldn’t have our Gram, we each had an afghan that she had meticulously and lovingly crocheted for us. So many of us, our friends, and our cousins still have her afghans today, and I’m sure we will snuggle down in them thinking of Gram this week.

Today we honor Gram’s life in the church where she devoted so much of her time. She spent decades as a eucharistic minister at this altar, and she found a circle of friends and likeminded believers at the daily masses she attended for years. She brought me here from the time I was small enough to crawl beneath the pews during mass, empty her purse of all its contents, and thoroughly embarrass her in front of her friends and the priests. She served as my Confirmation sponsor in high school. My moral compass was established here in St. Peter’s with Gram as a spiritual guide. It is due in no small part to Gram’s strong faith that I know God demands we be decent toward one another, and that we should be thankful to Him and say grace for all we have.

As any good Irish Catholic should, Gram loved Notre Dame football. Gram’s Saturdays were for Touchdown Jesus. And it was because of the many Saturdays I spent at her house seeing this that I knew there was no other option – I was going to Notre Dame. “Be Smaaaaht!” she’d say, never doubting for a second that I could get into our dream school. Gram helped move me into my dorm freshman year. I’m sure everyone here can imagine it – my 81-year-old great grandmother carrying boxes up four flights of stairs in a dorm without air conditioning in August. That’s just who she was. But my poor college roommate Lindsay and her parents initially thought we were subjecting Gram to elder abuse. They very quickly realized Gram wasn’t one to sit idly by, and by the end of our move-in day Gram was a new honorary member of their family. 23 years later, Lindsay was the first person I messaged when I learned Gram had left us. Her two boys never met Gram but talk of her regularly as their “Mississippi great grandma” and her love of Notre Dame. Thus the legend and legacy of Gram carries on.

And I am so thankful that her legacy will carry on in my boys as well. Gram’s devotion to family made me want to be a mother, and having her know Taylor and Bentley – even for a short time - meant the world to me. A common theme among the letters in Gram’s 100th birthday book is that we have all looked to her as our gold standard in what a loving mother should be, and we try to emulate that in our own parenting.

Debby wrote: “I have always known that I am loved. I used to tell Casey that no matter what happened, he should know that he is loved. I can’t imagine how people live without that knowledge. I’m one of the lucky ones – I never have lived without it. It has been my security blanket, my cocoon against the challenges and sharp corners of the world. I’ve always had a port in the storm. I have always had my mother.”

My cousin Matt said, “You taught me patience and forgiveness. You taught me to cook and how to say no when I needed to. You were honest when I needed honesty, even if I didn’t want to hear it. You were a role model parent to my father and aunts. I want to be that way for my girls and hopefully for their children one day.”

And I wrote, “You made me understand the importance of family each time we gathered around your table, each time you cheered us on at a ball game or band performance, each time you comforted us when we were sick or sad, each time you helped to mend broken fences between us, and each time you overlooked our flaws and still loved us unconditionally. I hope I can be a fraction of the mother you have been to all of us.”

What we wouldn’t give to have one more moment with our Gram – to cuddle in her lap as children while she read us a book, to throw a tennis ball with her over the roof of her house, to sit at her kitchen table with a smorgasbord of leftovers, to taste the spagoot sauce she spent all day stirring, to have a glass of wine or beer with her in the Gram-zebo, to laugh at her quick wit, to share the joy of a Notre Dame victory, to hear her call us “My Dumpling” one more time.

Today we say goodbye to our matriarch and role model, whose unconditional love and devotion shaped each and every one of us into the men and women we are today. But the goodbye we say to her now is only to her physical presence. Gram’s love is her legacy, and through that love she will live on in our hearts for generations.

Thank you Gram, for everything. We love you.

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