Mom
My Mom, Phyllis Mary Teresa O’Connor Dahlman, better known as “Babs” would have been 99 years old Sunday. She passed away at 93, and had a hard way to go for the last couple years of her life. But the rest of her 91 years were well lived and exciting. She wasn’t part of Trump World (what she would say about him would make us all blush) but she taught and lived an example that I hope lives on in all who knew her.
Mom was British, and fiercely proud of it. She fought as a spy during World War II, going behind enemy lines to help the Underground Resistance to the Nazis. She met Dad, brought in by the US Army, on a blind date. Mom and Dad fell madly in love as the bombs fell in London, and she returned to the US as a war bride in 1946.
http://www.uc.edu/info-services/spy.htm
She became as fiercely patriotic about the United States as she was about Britain. While she never gave up her British citizenship, she was always deeply interested and involved with what went on here in the United States. She had strong opinions about everything, and she was perfectly willing to discuss and defend them. At our dining room table we (the kids, friends, Dad’s new employees) were expected to participate in the political debates of the time. (The only out of bounds topic, the Queen!)
I had a Kennedy button (that’s John F Kennedy for President, 1960) when I was four years old. We visited our friends the Shrivers, well known for their Republican views, and I wasn’t allowed to enter their apartment in the Vernon Manor Hotel. Mom let me sit out in the hall rather than take off my JFK button. All was finally made well, as the Shrivers gave me a lead elephant (I don’t think they worried about poisoning back then) to play with. It’s still around here today.
She encouraged us to care – about our neighbors, about the community and about the world. When my sisters went to protest the Vietnam War, when I became involved in local and national political campaigns, Mom was always curious and a great sounding board for new ideas. She wanted us to be a part of the world, as well as a part of our own lives.
She was able to listen to different views. At her dining table there was no problem with having a liberal Federal Judge, a conservative engineer from Proctor and Gamble, a founder of Planned Parenthood, and even a couple in communication with aliens from outer space. Mom and Dad enjoyed the diversity of opinion. When the new political rhetoric of the Rush Limbaugh’s and Glenn Beck’s came out, allowing no discussion without attack; she felt it violated the “rules” of civil discourse. It wasn’t that you couldn’t disagree, it was that you needed to be able to listen as well as speak. She didn’t understand people that she knew were intelligent, attacking that way.
She would have hated the politics of Trump World. She would have been appalled to see the cold heartedness of the Muslim Ban and Trumpcare. She would have argued the case for compassion and love, not self-centered isolationism. I hope, and I think, that her children channel her ideas and love through our work today. We miss you Mom.
Mom was completely supportive of us kids in our lives and careers. Gosh do we miss her. I was always especially touched how Mom was so supportive in the work I did to help get Obama elected. I often think how she would have been horrified at Trump’s Muslim Ban.
Thank you Marty.
Your mom, my aunt, was one of the kindest and considerate women that I have ever met.
I agree that she would have been appalled at the antics of the current regime in your wonderful country.