Charles at the Beach: Remembering My Mother

Charles M. Kelly

You celebrate Mother’s Day when mom is alive. You remember your mother on Mother’s Day when she’s gone.

My mother, Mary Elizabeth Montague, later Mary Kelly, was a child of the Prohibition Era. She was born the daughter of a cook and a railroad conductor in New London, Connecticut. She earned a full ride college scholarship and attended the same school as an heir to the Hershey family of chocolate fame. She was ashamed of herself for going to school among her betters.

She had a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a master’s in English lit. She had a pilot’s license and took training to be in the Women’s Air Corps, but her class was canceled.

Her jobs included teaching children in the United States and in India. She went to India after she challenged a protestant educator who said she had no prejudices by writing the woman and saying: “I’m Catholic. You would never hire me.”

The woman wrote back, told my mother to be at a certain dock on a certain date with a six month supply of clothes.

My mother also worked as a chemist for a mining company. My father once told me that my mother frightened a woman who was threaten suicide out making of an attempt by offering to obtain poison for her. My mother once worked as a receptionist for the president of the University of New Mexico. When the governor called, she thought it was someone pulling a prank. Fortunately, the governor had a sense of humor and she kept her job.

I was born with a heart defect in 1961.  Once, we were in the examination room waiting for the doctor when I suddenly stopped breathing. She pounded on my back until I resumed breathing. And then the doctor showed up.

She was diagnosed schizophrenic in 1966 or ‘67. All her life she said having me was her only achievement.

I wish she could have seen who she really was.

Charles Montage Kelly is the assistant editor of the Sun.