Posted on: Tuesday, June 28, 2005
The McCarthys return
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| The McCarthy siblings surround their mother's portrait at a reunion last year. The brood is returning to Kailua to honor her.
McCarthy family photo |
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By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer
Remember "Father Knows Best"? In the McCarthy family, mother knew all.
Elizabeth "Jenny" McCarthy, who died late last summer, raised her brood at the family compound off Kailua Beach nearly a half-century ago. Her offspring are gathering from across the Mainland for a trip home this weekend, to pay tribute to the woman who held the heartstrings taut, no matter where you fell in birth order of 10 kids.
Yes, you read that right. Ten. As in, two handfuls.
"I really cherished (growing up in a large family)," said youngest son Joe. "Just between me and my brothers, we'd have a football game. We didn't need anybody else."
And Mom would be just as likely to don her catcher's mitt for a baseball outing as any of the boys, he recalls.
This will be the first time all 10 of her children will be back in the Islands since Christmas 1981. While there have been reunions and get-togethers, this gathering, a memorial for their mother, will have a decidedly different tone.
"It'll be tons of emotions," said Tom McCarthy. "I'm going with a suitcase full of Kleenex, and I'll come back with all the mementos."
The McCarthys were quite the show-stoppers of their day: Dad was a well-known surgeon with a busy practice in Kailua; mom was a petite former nurse; the 10 little McCarthys almost all had sunkissed blond hair. During the 1960s and '70s, feature stories on the large family appeared now and then in The Advertiser. "It Takes a Firm, Fair Hand To Rear a Big Family, Says Kailua Mother of Ten Children," read the headline on July 2, 1967, over a story that went on to note, "A weekday for the McCarthy bunch begins at 5:45 a.m., when Jenny gets up for early mass. ... "
As they grew up and moved to the Mainland, the children still held a special place in their hearts for the beachfront homestead, and the rack of surfboards and brigade of bicycles that filled it in their small-kid time. Tom McCarthy contacted his hometown paper to let them know the brood would be back for the special occasion.
Families are shrinking, according to the U.S. Census, even in Hawai'i. The average family size is 3.14 people, though in Hawai'i, that number was 3.42 in 2000. Utah, holds the top slot with 3.57. By any standard, 10 kids was a lot.
Just one McCarthy went on to have a large family. Californian Sheila Low, the eldest, has seven children; the rest have three or fewer.
Advertiser library photo • 1972 What lessons did the McCarthys learn, growing up in a big family?
• Sheila Low: "It was never boring or dull. I learned family is very important and the material things aren't as important. The love in a family lasts a lifetime." • Sharon Ramey: "Love unconditionally. (Mom) wouldn't compare you to others. (She'd) encourage you to (do your) best. She'd never look at me and say, 'Why can't you sing like sister?' And she was always present to us." • Ann Migliaccio: "Empathy. When you come from a big family, you have to be able to treat each one equally and understand the impact your words and actions have on others. I can remember as a little girl, Mom coming up and saying, 'You shouldn't have said that to Sharon. You hurt her terribly.' I learned to put myself in someone else's shoes ... also, how to compromise." • Joe McCarthy, now father of three: "Communication. And discipline. Let (your children) know you're their friend, but still yet, you're the parent. That's what I've taken from my mom and dad." • Chris McCarthy: "When you're in a larger family, you tend to be more tolerant. You learn to roll with the punches more in life." • Tom McCarthy: "Family loyalty, honesty to one another, supporting each other. Big families have strong reliance on each other. ... Also, you can't keep secrets in a big family." True, not all their days were shave ice and heliconia. Tom remembers one day in particular. ...
"Paul was out surfing," Tom McCarthy recalled. "He got skegged by a surfboard — what happened was, the surfboard shot back at him, made a gash that needed stitches."
Dad had gotten home from work and wrapped up the wound. Before taking Paul to Castle, he sat down to try to grab a bite of dinner. Then Tom arrived — his foot bloodied after stepping in some glass in the sand.
"Dad got done eating dinner, here I come in the house, I've got my foot wide open," Tom said. "He looked at us and said, 'Well, let's just get you both fixed up.' He sewed up Paul first, because his gash was bigger. Two birds with one stone."
Then there's also the story of the missing surfboards. With a rack of them available, inevitably some — usually the nicest, Tom recalls — would go walking off. It could be your brother, his pal, one of your pals, who knew? One learned not to be too attached to material things.
"Yes, it was a blessing to get to the dinner table first. It still is, to this day, that way," Joe McCarthy said with a laugh. "You'd turn your back, and 'Where'd that go?' You'd come out and go, 'Hmm, where's my surfboard?' You didn't go asking, you'd go straight to the beach and start scanning, then swim out to get them off."
And while Chris McCarthy, a hearing aid specialist who lives in Texas, is just as apt to wax poetic about brotherly and sisterly love, he's also cognizant of the downside to living large:
A memorial service for Elizabeth "Jenny" McCarthy will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at her grave at Hawaiian Memorial Park (check in at the reception shack for maps).
Information:
Tom McCarthy, (985) 778-1822. McCarthy family photo Their father died in 1979 at age 57. His wife was 55, with teenagers still in school.
"He was a very busy surgeon, had a big patient load," Chris said. "So the drawback was, he worked so hard in supporting a large family, he didn't have a lot of time for the relationship I'd like to have (had with him)."
But their faith played a big part in the upbringing, with their Catholic parents saying the rosary nightly before dinner.
"Mom was very strong in her faith," said eldest daughter Low.
Her just-younger sister, Ramey, agreed about the spiritual connection. Though some siblings left Catholicism or joined other denominations — she's a member of the Church of Religious Science, one brother is a Jehovah's Witness, another sibling joined a nondenominational Christian church, "everyone has a real deep connection (to God)," she said.
"We know there's a power greater, (that's) there for us. ... And we have a huge religious tolerance for who we know God to be."
Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8035.
The McCarthys: Back row, from left: Chris, Elizabeth "Jenny" McCarthy, Dr. Mor McCarthy, Tom; front row, from left, Tim, Joe, May and Paul; with the family dog, Yellar. The four older children were not pictured.
"One thing in a big family, I didn't get to see a lot of my dad. He worked so hard, and was always on call," he said.
McCarthy memorial
