October 30, 1918 - Final Entry

Today is the final entry in Mary's diary.  There are blank pages from October 31 through November 6.  The pages after November 6 have been torn out.  The reason or reasons for the abrupt cessation are uncertain, but there may be some clues in her last entry:   "I lost all my ambition....   I must say I am ashamed of myself.  Here I am almost another year gone, and still I haven't accomplished my desired goal."  Was Mary consumed by a deep depression.  Did she receive ominous news about Frank's fate in the war.  Throughout the year Mary has had mood swings, often describing the "blues" and sometimes going to bed early because of feeling melancholy.

Despite her repeated, though at times ambivalent, longing for her soldier Frank and despite her own attempts to support the war effort, Mary does not acknowledge the impending resolution of the war in Europe.  Does Frank McBrerity survive the war?  We do not know.  Details of Frank's life and fate have to date not been uncovered.

Despite her fondness for Naysh Brennan, who was to become a successful dentist in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and whose brother rose to be a Cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, Mary married pharmacist Bloomfield Sisom around 1923 and they had two sons in the next few years.  Mary remained a devout Catholic throughout her life and a teetotaler despite near daily consumption of ethanol-containing Lydia Pinkham's formula.  While her early life was marked by tragedy with the death of her mother and sister from tuberculosis in 1910 and 1914, respectively, and the death of her sister, Agnes, from the 1918 pandemic flu, Mary met with personal success in the arts.  Her love of dance, suppressed by her family in her early years, was channeled in her adult years to the establishment of a school of dance, in which she remained an instructor until just a few years before her death at age 89.

As a devout Catholic, Mary must have been immensely satisfied with her younger son's ordination to the priesthood, but must also have been devastated by his untimely death under somewhat mysterious circumstances at age 29, just three years after his ordination.  Mary's husband died suddenly just two years later.  Her other son survived Mary by just two years.  Mary had no grandchildren.

Mary's surviving sisters, Nora, Gertrude, Kathleen and Marguerite, remained single and continued to live in the family home at 4906 North 11th Street in Philadelphia, being employed as bookkeepers and/or secretaries, except Marguerite, who maintained her household duties as she had in 1918.  Mary's only brother, Vincent, married Elizabeth "Bettie" Keefe and they had four daughters.  Mary's diary eventually found its way to one of those daughters and then to Mary's great niece.  Vincent died at age 56 of lung cancer.

October 29, 1918 - More Eddie Rickenbacker

Today is only Mary's second day back at work after being out most of the month recovering from the flu.

Today's Evening Public Ledger has more on Eddie Rickenbacker: