Jean O. Beattie

Regina O’Connor was born August 19, 1919 in Pittsburgh PA, amidst an earlier pandemic, to Tom and Catherine (Neè Flynn) O’Connor. Her father was a postal worker, her mother had been employed as a housekeeper. Jean was the middle child in of her eight siblings: Sisters: Rosemary, Florence, Rita; Brothers Tom, William, Donald, Frank and James. She was the last and longest survivor of that family.

At the early age of 14 she witnessed the sudden death of her father due to an aneurysm. In the years following, she learned the lessons of thrift and hard work amidst the Great Deprssion, as all nine O’Connor children creatively drummed up work throughout their neighborhood to support the family.

When arguments over spending arose growing up we often heard mom retort that she gave every red cent to her mother during those years.

At the age of eighteen she was employed as a secretary making $15 a week at the Addressograph-Multigraph corporation in downtown Pittsburgh. It was there she first met her future husband and first generation Irishman, Francis Martin Beattie, who was employed in the camera department. At the start of World War II, dad had joined the Army and had quickly been promoted to the rank of captain. Stationed in California, mom and dad married there in 1943(?) and their first son Marty was born the next year. Over the next twenty years. eight more of us would be carried full term to birth. Six of us are her survivors today. Returning to Pittsburgh after the war. dad went back to his old company this time as a salesman. After a few years, dad was promoted first to the Erie sales office, and then in 1955 to the one here in Birmingham. For us, and especially for mom, it was an introduction to the customs of the deep South. We had sleds but little snow. A busload of black maids and housekeepers passed by our house almost every day, but mom was not one to hire help like our neighbors. Deep fried food was rarely seen in her kitchen. Nor was grits or cornbread. Ours was oatmeal and cream of wheat. Among other burdens she bore was managing Dad’s diabetes and then soon also to some of her children. She was ever vigilant over the amount a sweets she brought into the house. Cake, unfrosted, was a common dessert after dinner. She did find identity however in the church and belief in a Catholic education.

All but one of us attend elementary school here at OLS. Four of us graduated from John Carroll. As her children matured and life become more comfortable here, dad was suddenly transferred again, this time to Knoxville TN. Dad could see the his future with A-M was not ascending. In fact the company itself found itself floundering, bypassed by more innovative businesses. Memories of Birmingham lingered and dad left the company and returned here. Ever industrious mom found secretarial work at the City of Birmingham and worked there long enough to earn a pension. Dad died in 1998, with mom faithfully supported him through his last difficult years. She spent the majority of the years following dad’s death self-sufficient and independent.Now we are here to say our goodbyes to mother. I take from her, of course, her thrift and hard work to earn one’s keep, and the value of education, but also her love of reading. The newspaper was a daily means of relaxation for her. She was forever scribbling notes and adding numbers in the margins. She was always telling us to not to read in the dark; you’ll hurt your eyes that way, she’d say.

Mom, as much as we’d argue with you, we did learn your lessons, sometimes the hard way. Rest in Peace.