Mary Helen McDonald

I'm Greg, her oldest son. My mom was known to everyone as Mary Helen. All adults always addressed her that way, except Dad who sometimes varied it with "Hon." She - like Dad and many other adults of their generation had a highly developed sense of duty. No matter what her responsibilities, she endeavored to discharge them as perfectly as possible - which in her case was usually right on perfection. In their later years, it was she who filled out all the medical forms for Dad's hospital visits and kept their Medicare accounts correctly; balanced the check book and regularly put money into savings.

Quote: "I wish I had known it was our last summer together: I could have made it so much more pleasant for him." Fall, 1985, on the death of her husband, Donald.

Biggest family joke: We were sitting in the Hot Shoppe in Hyattsville, about early to mid 1950s, when Mom began to realize there was something very familiar about the woman in the booth behind her. She rotated in her seat andsaid, "Excuse me, aren't you Ruth Green's sister?" The other lady rotated in her seat to face Mom. We saw her heavy makeup, her redish eyes. Suddenly I realized she was drunk. This was an experience none of us kids were accustomed to. "Why, Mary Helen, how are you" she asked, in a slow, melo-dramatic, loudly pitched whiskey baritone? In the stunned silence that greeted her, she went on without waiting for an answer, "No, Ruth Green doesn't have a sister." Mom was outrageously embarrassed and intimidated in front of us and carried on a hesitant, "How do I get out of this conversation" style that only ended after they sorted out relationships and the lady's friends took her out of there. Once they were gone, Dad began laughing, then Joy got the giggles, mimicing in a sing-song voice "Why Mary Helen, Ruth Green doesn't have a sister." That set off my brother and I. Even Mom laughed as hard as I ever saw her laugh. We sat there for quite a while until we had exhausted ourselves. In the years after that, one of us would occasionally set us all off again by simply repeating that one line that Joy had seized in the Hot Shoppe. We had a lot of fun mimicing the inebriated lady's voice. What I always found intriguing about the episode was how it went against Mom's usual sense of decorum: she was laughing at herself - and allowing us to laugh too. Neither of these were normal occurances in our family.