Rose Gallagher Rodden was born on September 29, 1928 at Doon, County Donegal, Ireland to John and Margaret McGinley Gallagher. Rose was the third child (and third daughter) in a family of seven children. As fate would have it, the man she would marry was the third child (and third son) in a family nearby.
The Gallagher family`s farm was located within a hundred yards of Doon Well, which was and remains a notable shrine in the province of Ulster, indeed one of the more famous holy wells that dot rural Ireland. During Rose`s childhood , it attracted thousands of pilgrims annually, especially on New Year`s Eve. She remembered some pilgrims returning months or years after a visit to report a miraculous healing. Given that Doon Well was on the family property, Rose`s father was the de facto caretaker of the shrine. Throughout her youth and long after, the family not only tended Doon Well but also welcomed the countless pilgrims who came on foot and by bus year-round. And every Sunday she and her sisters would spend all day preparing teas for the pilgrims, which also served to bring in a extra pounds of income.
According to tradition, the holy well at Doon was founded in the fifteenth century by a Lector O’Friel, a Franciscan ascetic renowned for his fasting regimen who was also reputed to have had remarkable curative powers. It was also famed in the fairy lore of Donegal, and Rose was told as a little girl that the base of the holy well contained a secret entrance to a fairy kingdom . Located near the well on a steep plateau is Doon Rock, where ceremonial rituals by the Gaelic lords occurred and which witnessed the last stand of the Gaelic chieftains against the invading British after the so-called Flight of the Earls in the early 17th century. So Rose had a storied history, both religious and political, on her doorstep. But the hardscrabble, rugged character of daily life on her family farm scarcely afforded the luxury of dwelling very long on this romantic and historic past.
A tragic event that marked Rose`s early childhood and decisively influenced the course of her life was the unexpected death of her mother, which occurred in May 1935, three weeks after a difficult childbirth. Little Rose was then six years old. As a result, she and her siblings grew up without a mother's care. Rose’s father did his best to balance farm work with raising 7 small children, and hired Lizzie Gallagher, who lived with the family, assisted with all domestic tasks until the mid-1960’s, and was a much-loved presence.
Rose attended the two-room county schoolhouse, the Termon Primary School, located within walking distance of Doon Well in Termon. She possessed a clever mind, excellent communication skills, a shy but pleasant manner, and a superior administrative aptitude that served her well when she proceeded thereafter to do a secretarial course at the Letterkenny Technical School, which furnished excellent training in typing and stenography. She soon began to work at Kelly's Merchants & Hardware Store in Letterkenny, along with her older sister Annie who had also completed the same technical course in the previous year. Both sisters returned home every evening to Doon Well, assisting with the chores and Sunday teas.
Rose's life took an unanticipated, momentous turn when two of her mother's sisters who had emigrated to Philadelphia sent word home that they were eager to sponsor one of Margaret's daughters to come to America. When Rose`s older sisters, Mary and Annie, decided to stay in Ireland, the offer fell to Rose. She always remembered a fateful conversation with her father, to whom she turned for advice. He knew America first-hand, because he and Margaret had been Irish emigrants from County Donegal to America, where they met (at the Donegal Ball in Philadelphia), only to return in 1924 when a summons came from home to take over the Doon homestead. “It's a great opportunity,” her father said quietly. “America. Aye, it's the Land of Opportunity.”
That was no cliche among Irish families of the 1940s, but rather heartfelt sentiment based on experience. Unlike Rose`s parents, most emigres never returned, except perhaps for a rare visit. And so, at the age of 22 in the early weeks of 1951, Rose sailed from Cork, Ireland to New York, where she glimpsed the Statue of Liberty as she entered the port of Ellis Island on a bitterly cold January day. Immediately she traveled from there to Philadelphia, where she stayed briefly with her Aunt Hannah`s family on Van Kirk Street, and then joined a maiden aunt, Catherine, on Shisler Street, who took Rose under her wing and became something akin to the mother that Rose never had. She also promptly visited Aunt Minnie, who also lived just blocks away, along with three of her father`s brothers in Philadelphia, namely Pat, Neil, and Dan. She soon felt at home in her little Donegal diaspora in Philadelphia, with her small circle living up to the city`s promise of brotherly (and sisterly) love.
Her secretarial training and office experience in Letterkenny proved its worth, and Rose immediately obtained a good job as a junior secretary at Sears Roebuck Company, which was a national firm with a large branch in in Northeast Philadelphia that was located on Roosevelt Boulevard just a short bus ride from her home. She worked there for 2 years, then took a challenging and better paying position at Reuben Gordon's, a local company that specialized in providing business services for the metropolitan area.
Early in 1953, Rose became reacquainted with a young man from Termon whom she had known from school and church. John Rodden had just emigrated himself. Within a few days of landing, he paid call on her to deliver an Irish linen tablecloth from Rose's sister Annie. Other visits quickly followed, and soon they were seeing each other regularly for evening walks after John`s late work days. (As it later turned out, much to the couple`s amusement and delight, the ``special gift for Rose`` -- the Irish tablecloth -- had been a subterfuge, just a devious little pretense devised by sister Annie to be sure that John stopped by upon his arrival--and before getting to know other girls too well.)
Rose paid a three-week visit home in the summer of 1953, traveling with Aunt Catherine. While Rose was home, a letter arrived from John, in which he said that he wished her a lovely time and missed her very much. Later Rose mused that, perhaps if she had not already met and become deeply fond of ``this Rodden boy,`` her love for Doon Well and her family at home might have induced her not to return to America. But after just a few months, she had begun to have serious feelings for him -- her ``quiet man,`` a la the wonderful John Wayne movie of the same title that had just premiered in Philadelphia a few weeks before her own John`s arrival.
So return she did, and Rose and John married on September 25, 1954, four days before her 26th birthday. Ever after, the last week of September was her Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one, a time of celebration. During the next decade, the couple had four sons: John, Edward, Thomas, and Paul. Nothing was more important to Rose and John than their new little family and the well-being and education of the boys. Virtually all of their energy and thoughts owe're focused on the boys. Rose left her job after becoming pregnant and became a full-time homemaker and round-the-clock homework coach. It was nothing special for her to take two or three buses and trolleys late in the evening to hunt for school supplies at the slightest mention by a six-year-old that a special piece of colored paper or type of crayon might be good to have for a particular homework assignment. Nor was it too much effort to rise at 5:30 a.m. and wake a son to practice penmanship. Or maybe it was spelling or arithmetic in which he struggled. She gave nothing less than her best to the boys at all times. And she came to accept nothing less than their best. On signing a report card graced with all A`s and a single B, she would devote her lion`s share of attention to that lone B--always with much love and good cheer, yet also with the serious resolve to remove that blemish.
It was as if she was always mindful of her father`s words that she had gone to `”the land of opportunity,”and she wanted her sons to make the most of their opportunities. Ultimately, however, what counted for her most was less her sons` successes than their happiness, and nothing fulfilled her and her husband more than to feel that her children all did well at school, and that they all went on thereafter to college and made their way in life.
After living in the Northeast section of Philadelphia for many years, the family moved in September 1972 to Feasterville in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Rose became active in her Catholic parish of Assumption B.V.M. and volunteered for more than a decade on various projects of the Mother’s Guild at Holy Ghost Preparatory School, the local high school staffed by the Spiritan priests and brothers. She also enjoyed seeing her aunts and her many Irish friends in the Philadelphia area, most of them immigrants from Donegal like her. When John retired in the early 1990s, they finally took a few vacation trips abroad, seeing places of which she had always dreamed, ranging from Hawaii and the Caribbean Islands to Austria, Germany, and England--and of course, back to Donegal on several occasions. She and John would sometimes muse, on hearing from an American neighbor rave about all the wonderful tourist sites they had visited on the Emerald Isle, that they themselves had seen virtually nothing of Ireland outside their native county of Donegal--and that the ``sacrifice`` was their own happy choice, because ``Ireland`` represented for them a special feeling of ``home.`` That feeling was experienced in the form of the smiles and hugs from beloved family and friends there, and so they wanted to spend every minute of every visit with them.
After residing 30 years in Feasterville, Rose and John relocated in 2003 to a smaller home in Ivyland, just a few miles away. In 2008, they moved one last time to Sun City in Georgetown, Texas, in order to be closer to two of their sons, John and Paul, and to the latter`s children. She never quite adjusted to the sweltering summer heat in central Texas, but otherwise she adapted well, making new friends, attending Mass faithfully at the small Church in Andice nearby, visiting the local gym or walking regularly, and enjoying the proximity to the Texas family members as well as her occasional visits to the other sons and their families in California.
In 2011, her husband, who had bounced back from a serious heart attack and major stroke in his 60s, began to develop congestive heart failure, which ultimately led to his death at the age of 88 in July 2013. Rose followed him 5 years later on August 4th, 2018, just two months to the day before she would have turned 90.
Rose was much admired for her diligence and sense of commitment, and she was also deeply loved for her thoughtfulness. Especially in her later years, she mellowed into an even sweeter and gentler soul and was a wonderfully enjoyable companion to all. Her husband John, whom she missed terribly during her last five years as a widow, cherished her for all this and far more.
Rose is survived by her four sons and their families, which include her four grandchildren, namely Kailey, Charlie, Diane and David. She is also survived by her 3 dear sisters in County Donegal, namely Annie, Nuala, and Kathleen, along with her younger brother Charley, along with numerous nephews, nieces and cousins in Ireland and Britain.
Visiting hours will be held on Sunday, October 21, 2018 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at Cook-Walden Davis Funeral Home in Georgetown, Texas. The family will celebrate Rose’s life at Santa Rosa Catholic Church in Andice, Texas on Monday, October 22, 2018 at 10:30 a.m.
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