As Good as the Boys

By Helene Hennelly

Life was different in 1946 when Helene was born. Women were destined to serve within the confines of the home and support her man. Born into a conservative Catholic midwestern family of Irish immigrant stock, her destiny was sealed. A different world is offered to her brothers. This she cannot understand.  Times are changing though. Just as she enters puberty, birth control pills are approved. The Civil Rights Act is passed the year before she finishes high school. There are still no laws protecting a woman's right to a higher education or shielding her from sexual harassment. The pressure to submit to the traditional female role weighs heavy. With the help of a good Samaritan, she slips under the ropes and joins the boys to become the single woman graduate in her law school class only to face a serious obstacle on the other side.

Follow her journey as one of the first of the new breed of women – those who longed for a life outside of the home and took steps to get there. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helene Hennelly
• Release date: Aug 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215069363

Helene Hennelly

Helene Hennelly has been licensed to practice law since 1971 and holds both a Juris Doctor (JD) and Master of Laws (LLM). She practiced law in the St. Louis area for many years and became the General Counsel and Senior Vice-President of a New York stock exchange company. She is retired and living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1: GRADUATION

In St. Louis, Kiel Opera House was the venue for special occasions in the 1960s. President Harry Truman, Frank Sinatra, and the Rolling Stones appeared there. Its vaulted ceiling, rich red velvet chairs, and ornate décor provoked a sense of grandeur – a perfect setting for a law school graduation. The students, draped in long black gowns and bedecked with mortarboards, filed from their seats and queued up below the stage, waiting for their names to be called. Dean Childress stood behind the podium. Faculty cloaked in black and purple robes sat in rows on the stage behind him. I was in the middle of the waiting pack, the only woman in the St. Louis University Law School class of 1971.

When I started law school three years before, there were five women in my class. That was at another law school, the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. How I was admitted there is a story I will get to. When I transferred to St. Louis University Law School at the end of my freshman year, only one of the five women who started with me remained. A pinch of estrogen in a pool of testosterone.

I walked across the stage, the purple tassel swishing back and forth along my face. I wasn’t nervous. I was glad to have my degree, but ceremonies weren’t my thing. I would have skipped the event, but the Dean threatened to withhold my diploma.

My older brother, Joe, insisted on coming over my protestations. He had finished law school the year before and assigned more significance to this ritual than I did. And I had a new husband. I couldn’t leave him at home. After shaking hands with the Dean and grasping my diploma, I followed my fellow students down the steps toward our seats. At the first exit, I peeled off. To hell with the Dean. I waived to my husband and brother to follow me. My brother scowled. I knew what was important, and it wasn’t a ceremony.

Today, it is not unusual for a woman to finish law school. In fact, the majority of the graduates are women. That was not the case when I was born or when I finished law school. But I was raised during an era when things were changing. As it turns out, I was in the lead of a herd of females breaking out of the corral.  Let me walk you through my life, in a conservative pocket of south St. Louis, where women were destined for a traditional role of wife and mother. Watch as I eye the train the boys are on and eventually hop on, a maneuver made possible by the outstretched hands of a few kind souls.   

CHAPTER 2: A MATCHED SET

My father was an Irish immigrant, who against the odds, made his way through medical school. My mother’s family was only a couple of generations removed from the Emerald Isle themselves. Both were devout Catholics. A matchmaker couldn’t have found a better fit. They must have thought so too, as they tied the knot six weeks after they met. So fast, there wasn’t time to purchase a proper wedding dress. Unusual circumstances led to the rush, and it wasn’t the kind that normally jump-starts nuptials.

We have several photos from the wedding. Mother found a beige suit for the occasion and is clutching a small bouquet. My father is in uniform. Both have fair eyes, his blue and hers hazel. My brunette mother is blessed with a delicate ivory complexion. Not a hint of doubt can be seen on their smiling faces. There would be no honeymoon, as the next day, he will report for duty as a captain in the Army Medical Corps. It is February 11, 1942. Two months before, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and the United States entered World War II. My father at 37 and heading off to war, feels the pressure to act if he hopes to produce progeny.

Dad’s hairline is receding, but Mom doesn’t care. She loves the shape of his head. You wouldn’t call my father handsome, but, at almost six feet tall with pleasant features, he is easy on the eye. His personality matches his looks, even-tempered if a bit shy. He is too old to be drafted but insists on serving the country that opened its heart to him. He closed the medical practice he had worked so hard to build in south St. Louis and enlisted.

My father had a history that none of us appreciated. He spent the first 17 years of his life in a poor, rural area of Ireland. The only remnant of this past was a charming bit of a brogue. He pronounced three as if it were tree, trilling the r with a hint of a whistle. Government was goov′ arrn ment with a roll of the r. Arithmetic was air ith me′ tic. This distinctive accent gave my father an old-world charm.

Dad spoke little of his upbringing. I had no idea how disparate his was from mine until after his death. In the late 1970s, my younger brothers and mother took a trip to Ireland. Armed with directions to two houses that had been in the Hennelly family for several generations, they went in search of roots. The first was in a rural area on the west coast near a bridge over the Black River, which marked the boundary between Mayo and Galway Counties. Remnants of an abandoned mill most likely worked by the family stood nearby, its wall now serving as a handball court. The dilapidated one-story clay and stone home lay lifeless, the roof punctured with holes. The rolling hills and pastoral setting served as landscaping. Although deserted, someone cared enough to lock the door. The entire scene was fully absorbed in a moment of silence. They munched on their packaged lunch outside as they planned their next stop.

My brother Michael, still curious, wandered around the back of the house and peeked into a window. He could make out the original hearth in the center of the room, a stool, and not much more. Then something caught his eye. Hanging inside was a portrait. It was a black and white framed photo of a young man. Michael waited until Mom finished her lunch and escorted her around back to show off his discovery. She, too, missed the picture at first. When she saw it, she was floored. Although many years younger than when they had first met, she knew this young man. It was my father.

Michael knocked on the door of the nearest house and asked who owned the cottage down the lane. As luck would have it, they were the owners. A bachelor who lived there deeded it to them in exchange for their care during his old age. They unlocked the door, and my brothers and mother got a peek at life in this poor rural area of Connacht Province where my father was raised.

The dark and dreary interior appeared to be one big room of about 800 square feet. A cauldron hung over the hearth, the only apparent means of cooking. The room was almost barren. The last owner, Tom Hennelly, my father’s first cousin, had passed away a few years before. His mother, Honora Hennelly, my grandfather’s sister, had married another Hennelly and raised her family there. Even as late as the 1970s, Tom Hennelly enjoyed almost none of the amenities we all took for granted. There was no sign of a stove, dishwasher, furnace, washing machine, or even electricity. The owner asked if they would like to take anything. It was the picture of my father that went home with them.

Years later, my brothers, who attended the same high school as my father in St. Louis, came across a composite photo of my Dad’s graduation class. There they discovered the identical image of my father as the one in the abandoned home in Ireland. He had probably sent a copy to his relatives back in Ireland. As a high school graduate with thick dark hair, my father was a handsome young lad.

Although Dad was born and raised in Ireland, his father made it to America many years before. After training as an engineer in England and a stint in the British navy, my grandfather Michael worked for 10 years on steamships in the Klondike District of the Yukon, Canada, during the gold rush. He would stay with his sister, Mary Teresa, in St. Louis when he had time off.

Mary Teresa had married her cousin Thomas Francis Eagleton, whose mother was also a Hennelly. Thomas had hoped to be a priest but left the seminary and fell in love with Mary Teresa. Abandoning priestly standards, he absconded with two of his father’s sheep, which he sold to finance passage to America. She eventually joined him, and they settled in St. Louis. Around 1901, my grandfather gave up the arduous work as a steamboat engineer. He moved to St. Louis and opened a corner market on Sheridan Street near Mary Teresa’s home on the north side of town. Her two children, Winnie, named after her paternal grandmother Winnie Hennelly Eagleton, and Mark Eagleton, occasionally helped out at the store.

My grandfather must not have had a way with women as he went all the way back to Ireland to fetch a bride. There, on January 2, 1902, he married my grandmother, Mary Rochford, his cousin, whose mother’s maiden name was also Hennelly. Marriages between cousins were not unusual among my paternal ancestors. At 32, this union should have been a stroke of good luck for her. Upon boarding the ship to the States, my grandmother suffered a panic attack. They disembarked. Soon my grandfather returned to the States without his bride.

When it became apparent that his wife was not coming to America, my grandfather Michael liquidated his assets in the States and returned to Ireland. He constructed the first two-story building in the tiny hamlet of Headford, in County Galway, Ireland. There he opened a pub and a retail store selling hardware and staples. The family lived upstairs. Their first child, my father, was born in 1905. In 1912, fertilizer kept for sale caught fire. They were wiped out and had no insurance. My grandfather was able to secure credit and rebuilt. He then headed back to Canada to earn money to pay off his debts by working on steamboats. Leaving what was left of his business in the hands of my grandmother did not work out well. When he returned in 1915, they were bankrupt.

The family moved to a small farm about 10 miles away that my grandmother had recently inherited from her mother. The stone cottage on the property was dismal, with no windows, indoor plumbing or electricity. At about 400 square feet, it looked more like a shed. Their four children and the two adults managed with just a kitchen, a single bedroom, and a loft. My father quit school at 14 to help his ailing father on the 15-acre farm which flooded during winters. I doubt the poor of America’s Appalachia lived a more deprived existence than my father and his family on this forlorn farm in The Neale in County Mayo, Ireland. At this point, my father’s prospects appeared grim. He would have no education or trade. As luck would have it, a breath of fresh air blew in from the States.

In 1921, my grandfather’s niece, Winnie Eagleton, set off for Ireland to offer passage to America to Eagleton relatives. None were interested. She stopped by to visit her uncle Michael. There she discovered the dire circumstances his family faced. She implored him to let her take the two oldest children to St. Louis. My grandmother strenuously objected. However, my grandfather Michael could see that his children’s only possibility for a decent life was to leave Ireland. Passage was arranged for my father and his sister Mary Ellen. In the meantime, dear Winnie Eagleton fell in love with an English lord she met on her travels. She now planned to live in England. Her gallant brother Mark stepped in. He was then a young bachelor recently returned from World War I. Mark became not only the two children’s sponsor but their guardian angel.

My father had now been out of school for three years. His first year at a military academy in Alton, Illinois, was challenging. He was teased and called Mick, a derisive slur for Irish immigrants. For many years, impoverished Irish Catholic refugees poured into the States. They were grateful for any work and often held the least desirable positions on the lowest rung of the social ladder. In the 1920s, discrimination against this group was still strong. He transferred to St. Louis University High School and lived with Mark Eagleton and his bride in their home at 4608 Tower Grove Place his last year. He finished his secondary education in two years just before he turned twenty. He then anticipated entering a trade school, but a kind priest provided a different path.

During his last year of high school, without notifying my father, a teacher entered his paper on forestry in a contest sponsored by the American Chemical Association. Dad won first prize and a scholarship to college. After two years, he entered medical school. Still living with his cousin Mark Eagleton, he worked long hours when not in class.

Our family often drove past a large brick building with rows of broken windows on Kingshighway. One day I asked my father what it was. It was an abandoned automobile assembly plant where he had worked during the summers. It must have been hellish with no air-conditioning in the blistering hot summers in St. Louis. During medical school, he also had jobs as a filling station attendant and as a lifeguard at a swimming pool. He so hated being a burden on his generous cousin.

The demands of medical school while working took its toll. He almost flunked out. What saved him was something most penniless immigrants to this country do not have, a magnanimous relative. His benefactor Mark jumped in again, resurrecting my father’s medical school ambitions. Dad became a general surgeon and practiced medicine in south St. Louis, a few miles from Mark Eagleton’s home. When Dad married, Thomas Eagleton, Mark’s son was my father’s best man. Thomas went on to become a famous U.S. Senator from Missouri.

During World War II, Dad served in the south Pacific in Australia, New Guinea and finally in Japan. His unit patched together a hospital in the jungle in ungodly heat. He caught dengue fever.

He loved America. Had he not come to this country, he would have been an impoverished farmer in Ireland, barely squeaking out enough to eat. He knew how blessed he was. As a child, I remember him standing in his underwear saluting while the national anthem blared on our television before the baseball game. He was a patriot.

My mother, although also an Irish Catholic, had a blessed life compared to my father. She was the fifth of six children. Her father, Robert Emmet Keaney, a neurologist, married his secretary, a widow with two children, when he was in charge of the State Mental Hospital in Farmington, Missouri. They had both grown up nearby, he in De Soto, and she in Potosi. Grandpa Keaney’s parents both emigrated from Ireland. His father was a homeopathic physician and surgeon and owned a bank. He was the richest man in De Soto. My grandmother, Ellen Shields Keaney, was also Irish on her father’s side.

A scandal at the State Hospital left the community aghast. A female resident became pregnant, and the father was unknown. Dr. Keaney was the man at the top. He had to go. They moved to St. Louis, where he opened a medical practice. My mother was born at home on Maple Avenue in central St. Louis, in their large two-story frame house. She arrived two months premature without sufficient time to fully mature. Consequently, she was missing the second digit on her second toe on both feet. She was lucky to be alive.

Mother was the most docile of the six children. She was close to her half-sister, Julia. Red-headed Julia was well into her teenage years when my mother was born, and her relationship with my mother was more maternal. From my mother’s telling, her own mother was consumed with the care of her sister, Margaret, who suffered from manic depression. Her sister Frances garnered attention, too, as she was inclined to bend rules. Her younger brother, Bobby, was the favorite. Mom told me she felt abandoned. Unlike her older siblings, she did attend college – at Fontbonne, a Catholic girls’ school in St. Louis. After her second year, she was forced to withdraw. Her father couldn’t afford the tuition for both her and her younger brother. This was a loss that would end up shaping my future. Mom made do. She found a position in a physician’s office and lived with her parents until she married.

My father was discharged from the army in time for Christmas, 1945. When he left in 1943, he was deeply in love. He now harbored serious doubt. He didn’t act on this. After his death I would learn what cast a shadow over his marriage. From a practical point of view, as a devout Catholic, he was entitled to only one ride on the marriage-go-round without risking damnation. He soldiered on, meeting his two year-old son and namesake John Joseph Jr. for the first time. Soon, I was on the way.

My mother chose my name, Helene Frances. Her given name was Helena Anne, and she went by the nickname Nellie. In French class, she was addressed by the French version of Helena, Hélène. She loved the name. She had it printed on her checks, but I have to say I never heard anyone call her Helene. It did stick with me, though. I assumed my middle name was after Aunt Fran, my mother’s sister. Mother corrected me. I was named after St. Francis Assisi, the saint who specializes in returning lost items. My mother refused to tell me what she had lost or if she had found it. That led me to believe that St. Francis had not been much help. Could my mother’s prayers and my father’s doubts be related? Many years later, I would hear a story that suggested they were.

The stork picked a great chimney for my drop-off. My father was a physician, and so was my mother’s father. My family had some means and valued education. Had my name been John, Michael, or Kevin, you would predict a promising career. I, though, was Helene Frances. A woman’s fate was not molded by the same rules as a man’s. Not in 1946. Not in Asia, Africa, Europe, or the Americas. Not in my family. At least not before I came along.

CHAPTER 3: THE NEST

With its advantageous shipping location, on the confluence of two rivers, St. Louis was a center of Native American Mississippian Indian culture well before the Europeans arrived. After French fur traders founded the city in 1764, naming it after King Louis IX, the area was nominally ruled by Spain. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, St Louis became part of the United States. Other than a few landmarks and the city’s name, the early French and Spanish roots were eclipsed by the influence of migrants from Ireland and Germany who began pouring in during the mid-1880s.

The construction of the Eads bridge in 1874 connecting St. Louis, Missouri, to East St. Louis, Illinois, increased the trading opportunities of the region. My mother’s maternal great grandfather, Alexander Nicholas, a French immigrant, helped build this bridge. We have a letter of reference from the engineer who designed the structure, James Buchanan Eads, commending him for his service. Eventually, the metropolitan area spilled over not only the Mississippi River but the Missouri River into neighboring St. Charles County, Missouri. By the time my father arrived in 1923, St. Louis was the fourth-largest city in the country.

When I was born in 1946, the population of St. Louis was at its zenith, 850,000. The land was fertile and vegetation lush. Gently rolling hills smothered in trees and framed in vibrant sunsets were the norm. The city boasted a professional baseball and football team, a symphony orchestra, an international airport, and two large universities, St. Louis University and Washington University. Several large corporate employers, including Peabody Coal, McDonnell Douglas, Emerson Electric, Monsanto, Anheuser-Busch and Ralston Purina, were headquartered there. All this meant little to me as my life began and ended in the charming little enclave known as St. Louis Hills on the southwest edge of town.

The area is less than two square miles with a population of around 5000 back then – a small town, you might say. Everything in the neighborhood was new. Not long before, this had been farmland. The cornerstone of the community was a 60-acre park on land donated by a former mayor and named after him, Francis Park. The park was anchored on three corners by churches and a public grammar school on the fourth. Our parish church and school, St. Gabriel the Archangel, was one of these. We lived in three homes in St. Louis Hills, and all were only a few doors