Woman of the Day:
Rosalee McReynolds
Rosalee McReynolds 1950-2002 Rosalee McReynolds, a woman with fabulous shoes, left-leaning politics, a brilliant mind and a wonderful sense of humor, was a member of the Library Faculty from 1980 until her death from ovarian cancer in 2002. She served for many years as Serials Librarian, but she found her passion in her subsequent role as Loyola's first Special Collections Librarian. She was an active researcher and an award-winning writer. At the time of her death, she was working on a book about Philip and Mary Jane Keeney, librarians in the Library of Congress who lost their positions during the McCarthy era. Rosalee was a founding member of the Women's Studies Committee. She was also a devoted city dweller who was active in her neighborhood association and the Preservation Resource Center. Rosalee would be particularly incensed and amused at many of the statements made recently by our current Interim President. During her career at Loyola, she often threatened to author a handbook for Jesuits entitled "How to Talk to Girls." Rosalee was strong and optimistic, even in the face of her impending death. She was at work a week before she died, and was planning one last trip to her beloved Boston at the time. Ever prepared, she wrote the following text, which was read at her memorial service by her sister, and again at a campus service by her good friend Nancy Anderson.
Remarks by Rosalee McReynolds
People always say that funerals are for the living, not the deceased, and I agree. It's one thing for you to talk about how you remember me, but I want to say a few words about how I remember you and the world I lived in for nearly fifty-two years. Let me make it perfectly clear that I do not intend to make remarks about computers, the bomb, communism, or the Vietnam War.
For the last five of my fifty-two years, it has been obvious that I would not live to a ripe old age, yet as my death has become imminent, no one has been more surprised than I. This is because I have been surrounded by loving and supportive people who have made me suck joy out of every moment left to me. In a twisted sort of way, my cancer has done the same thing. During my healthy spells, I have tried, more than ever before, to see and do as much as I can. Sometimes this has taken the form of little local adventures in New Orleans, sometimes father away. While I don't recommend cancer to anyone, it has made me less cautious, more mindful of how precious our time on earth is, and far more appreciative of my family and friends. Another thing about cancer is that once you have it you don't worry about getting it anymore. Or getting any other disease, being hit by a car, being in a plane crash, careening into a tank of sharks, or falling out of a trolley window. Well, you see my point. It's not that I've gone wild and crazy in the last five years. I've just had fun. It never occurred to me that I should try to recapture my youth, when I was fiercely independent and restless. I'm really quite proud of that independence and restlessness, but they drove me to make some major choices that were based on rather quirky grounds. Remarkably, however, most of those choices worked out just fine.
In 1973, I got it into my head that I needed to venture away from my family home in Colorado, partly because everyone else in America wanted to go there, and I was suspicious of all things popular. But where would I go, where would I go? I decided on Boston solely because my family had taken a trip there when I was bout four years old and one aspect of the journey stood out prominently in my memory. In the funny little North End hotel where we had stayed, our bathroom had a purple bathtub and sink. I decided that nay place that had purple bathtubs and sinks must be a fascinating place to live. My friends Jock and Ann McNulty were headed East to graduate school in North Carolina and they packed me in their back seat along with all of our possessions. After many detours through the Midwest and Canada, we landed in Boston. They went on and I stayed, scared stiff, with no job, no apartment and about two hundred dollars in traveler's checks. I managed to ensconce myself in a thirty-dollar a week rooming house (complete with bed bugs, thank you) and hit the pavement. It can get very hot in Boston during the summer, and after hours of unsuccessful job hunting, I found myself about to pass out in front of Boston University's Mugar Library. Going inside, I found a restroom where I put my head in a sink and turned on the faucet. A woman walked in and said hello to me as though she saw this sort of thing all the time. I liked that. Once my head was dripping wet, I went into the stacks and sat under an air-conditioning vent. This is where I want to work, I said to myself. And I did, for seven years. During that time I also managed to move seven times, acquiring a total of twenty-six roommates along the way. Somehow I also found the time to become active in the library union (which included walking a picket line in a blinding snowstorm), get a Master's degree in library science, and another degree in history. I have always loved being a librarian and am convinced that I couldn't have been happier doing anything else. All thanks to a purple bathtub and a state-of-the-art air return system.
At age thirty, career and wanderlust brought me to New Orleans. This time I took the precaution of having a job, a sure sign that I was becoming jaded and conservative. For the last two decades and then some, Loyola University has been my second home. This wasn't supposed to happen. I was supposed to spend two years in this strange tropical place and move on to some other city that I new nothing about. All of that changed within a few months of my arrival, when I was standing in the kitchen at a party on General Taylor Street. A young man walked in, opened the refrigerator, and took out a Dixie beer. Parroting the words of a local advertisement that had annoyed me because it was so gender specific, I looked at him and said, "Since 1907 it's been perfectly clear that what a man wants is a great tasting beer." He laughed, I laughed. Two years later, I married him. So twenty-two years have passed. I look back on my time in New Orleans and am still a little amazed that I spent the rest of my life here. But long ago I reached the point where I realized that New Orleans is my home and I didn't want to live anywhere else. Just like the people who were born here. And so many of the people who were born here have made me feel welcome. I have been blessed with an extended family of in-laws and adopted cousins that always made me feel like part of the fold, even though I went to public schools. New Orleanians may be accused of being provincial, but I have never ceased to be amazed at the number of fascinating people, both natives and transplants, who have fresh and unique views of the world. Some of my friends and colleagues have political and social views that are diametrically opposed to mine, and this is what drew me to them. Their bluntness might make me jump of my chair, but it always keeps me coming back. Could I possibly feel this way anywhere else, in Boston for example? Not hardly.
Even as I have hunkered down in New Orleans, I have had the good fortune of seeing more and more of my own side of the family, although we are spread throughout the nation, and now the world. The McReynolds Diaspora is what I like to call it. But in 1984, my late mother initiated what became a tradition of family reunions. Held in such diverse locations as Scotland and Wisconsin, these events, along with weddings, funerals, and personal visits, have enabled us to constantly reacquaint ourselves and discover new things about each other. And now it's time to say good-bye to all of it. I wish I could say something about everyone who has touched my life (only the nice people, of course), but you're probably already wondering when this is going to wrap up. There a poboys to be eaten, teams to meet, Becky Allen shows to be taken in, termites to be sprayed for. Please leave here today and have a wonderful afternoon. Live many years in health and happiness. To put a lift in your step, exit to the sounds of Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. As for me, I guess I'll take five, too. Forever. So long.