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Faith & Fortitude: Mary Jane's Story Concludes

  The read this series of posts from the beginning, click here: https://myleavesonthetree.blogspot.com/2025/03/from-buffalo-to-evans-new-york-mary.html .   As Mary Jane Sheridan Cassidy navigated the waters of widowhood and single parenting after her husband Philip’s death , she likely relied on her faith to hold her family together and to provide a framework to her life. It was still her job as a Catholic parent to be the first teacher of her children and she no doubt felt a keen responsibility for their faith lives.    Coming of the Christian Brothers One outside force which might have helped her in this regard were the Christian Brothers, a Catholic religious order which was founded by Jean Baptiste de La Salle in 1680 in France. 1 The Brothers arrived to minister in St. Catharines, Ontario, in 1876, just a few years after Philip’s death, and took over a parish school there. The Brothers focused on education, and they trained their pupils to be faithful Cat...

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Generational Photo

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021

Generational Photo - January 12th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey


 

BOOMER! 

I love this three-generation photo of my husband, son and father-in-law, for a few reasons. 

All three are died-in-the-wool University of Oklahoma fans. Jim and Papa (the kids' term for their paternal grandpa), both born and raised in Oklahoma, grew up rooting for OU. As far as football was concerned, OU was the most important football thing going. James was quickly initiated into the OU fold as soon as he was old enough to hold a football. So when it was time to pick a theme for a multi-generational photo, an OU-theme photo it was.

Ironically, our son now attends OU. OU may have been his last college visit of three, but it was the school that quickly rose to the top, the dream school. Somehow it just felt right that he would choose OU, and fulfill the unspoken generational dream that someone from the Casey family would attend there.

It's also not lost on any of us that another Casey family favorite—the Cleveland Browns—now possess a former OU quarterback in Baker Mayfield. It came as a complete shock to me to learn in the early days of my relationship with Jim, that both he and his dad were not only lifelong OU fans, but also lifelong Cleveland Browns fans as well. That's right, these Okies had been rooting for this gal's hometown team for years. A marriage made in heaven? In more ways than one!

OU is inextricably woven into our life as a a family. 

And that's OK.

  SOONER!



 

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