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Eulogy during Funeral Mass
By Jonny Meister
There are so many memories of Marjorie today, in the
cores of our hearts, and on the tips of our tongues...
One of the many memories I have is of the one time
that Marjorie tried to be something that she was not. She had come
in to my studios at WXPN with a group of colleagues from The Fair
Housing Council of Delaware County to record an audio tape that
would be used at Fair Housing Council presentations. Part of
their script included a scene where racist thugs intimidate a black
family who had moved into a predominantly white neighborhood.
Marjorie and her group were not very convincing as racist thugs, and
I tried to direct them to be more thug-like, until eventually
Marjorie smiled sweetly and said to just go with what we had. She
seemed truly relieved that she couldn't even act the part of a
racist intimidator – and the Council used the tape that we had made,
as it was.
Marjorie's longstanding, passionate commitment to
racial equality was reflected in her work for many years with the
Fair Housing Council here, and the North Hills Association for
Racial Equality in Pittsburgh before that. She took part in
marches and protest events for the cause of equal rights, and later
supported efforts to end the war in Viet Nam. She helped
organize parties and brunches for maverick Delaware County
Representative Bob Edgar, and some of us here today were present at
a number of those events. I met Representative Edgar at one of
them, and he smiled broadly and appreciatively when I told him I was
Marjorie Breedis' son-in-law.
Marjorie was a talented artist who painted
throughout much of her life. She loved to do still-life and
landscape paintings in the Impressionist and post-Impressionist
styles. Today, many of these engaging works adorn the walls in
the homes of her children. She could have pursued a career in
art. Instead, she found a calling in social work, working at
two hospitals in the New York area as a medical social worker after
college, during the years of World War II. After the war,
Marjorie married Dr. Richard G. McManus. He was in the army,
and, as they started their family – and moved frequently with his
changing responsibilities – she put her social work career on hold.
The McManus family eventually settled in
Pittsburgh, where Dr. McManus rose to the position of Chief Of
Pathology at West Penn Hospital. Then, as now, hospitals
relied on volunteers for many things – mostly activities that raised
funds for the hospital. Marjorie accepted this responsibility
with enthusiasm and volunteered actively at West Penn Hospital.
In fact, she became President of the West Penn Hospital Guild for a
while. Sometimes when she baked cookies, her kids would ask,
"Mom, are those for us or for the Guild?" Often enough, they
were for the kids.
Her biggest responsibility was that of mother for
the seven McManus kids, here with us today ... Richard, Liz, Diane,
Pat, Steve, Pete, and Jack. As a parent, she taught by example
more than by directive. She practiced what she preached, while
keeping the preaching to a relative minimum.
Liz remembers that her mother was instrumental in
finding a home in the exclusively white North Hills area for a black
physician at West Penn Hospital. The family also had a black
high school student from a poor family in Virginia, Robert Hunter,
staying with them and going to school in Pittsburgh for about two
years. Those may well have been the only black people living
in North Hills at the time.
The defining event for the family was Dr. McManus'
untimely death in December of 1965 at the age of 46.
Marjorie's courage and resourcefulness at this tragic time were
extraordinary. Having lost her partner in life, Marjorie had
also lost his income, which had supported the family of seven kids –
and she needed to become the family breadwinner. She returned
to social work and completed her masters degree – begun more than
twenty years earlier – in 1967.
In the course of her masters work, she had a field
placement in a halfway house for psychiatric patients, and her
career emphasis shifted from hospital work to working with people
outside of hospitals – troubled young people and single pregnant
women. Her warmth, compassion, and concern for people of all
sorts, in all walks of life, and the strength she had acquired in
her own struggles with adversity, made her a natural for this kind
of work.
In 1968, Marjorie married Dr. Charles Breedis, and
the family moved to the Philadelphia area. Here she worked as
a probation officer in Delaware County Juvenile Court and later as a
social worker for Catholic Social Services, specializing in helping
single parents. She was also a Child Advocate with the
Juvenile Court. Her work day didn't end at 5:00, and I can
remember meeting young people that she had helped, at family
gatherings at her home in Lansdowne, where they were welcome guests.
When Charles Breedis died in 1981 a few weeks before Liz and I got
married, Marjorie showed remarkable strength, courage, and grace
after being widowed for a second time. She did not want us to
postpone our wedding, though the loss of her husband was still fresh
in all of our hearts and minds.
Marjorie had an expansive heart and spirit.
She was always more interested in finding out about you, than in
making sure that you knew what was going on with her. Her
natural curiosity about other peoples and cultures, and her
commitment to equal rights, and respect for the dignity of every
person in the world, made her much more than just tolerant.
Although she had strong religious beliefs and political convictions,
she rarely had open conflicts with others, because she always found
and emphasized the shared ideals with other people, not the
differences.
Her expansive and adventurous spirit led her to
travel to many places, including Russia and China, our ideological
and political adversaries at that time, as well as Africa... and,
she visited Portugal to connect with members of the extended
Andresen family, her family of origin, and to renew contact and
family communication with that distant branch of her family's roots.
Marjorie also visited other places that are not on
the map for most travelers, including the State Correctional
Institution in Muncy Pennsylvania, where an inmate named Trina found
in her a much-needed advocate and friend. Trina had committed
a terrible crime at a very young age, for which she was tried as an
adult and convicted – but Marjorie believed that she should still be
respected as a human being and that she was worthy of redemption.
And she knew that Trina had suffered things in prison that no one,
not even a lifer in a penitentiary, should endure.
Marjorie opened her home to Joy Kong, a young
woman from Korea, who came here to start a new life in America, and
in the process expanded the family. Joy is also with us here
today.
Marjorie retired from social work in 1987, but she
continued, as always, to live a full and active life. Her
years with the Fair Housing Council had led to an interest in real
estate. She studied real estate, got a real estate license,
and worked as a real estate agent for a while. She loved the
opera and was a season ticket-holder at the Opera Company of
Philadelphia for many years. She also indulged another,
long-deferred, interest in her late 60s: ballroom dancing. She
danced in exhibitions and competitions here and abroad.
Videotapes that survive reveal that this seventy-ish grandmother was
an expressive and sensual dancer.
Above all, Marjorie cherished her family. As
her grandchildren grew up, she was frequently present at their
concerts, school plays, and sports events, and she often vacationed
with her kids and grandkids, including weeks at the Jersey Shore in
the summers, and most recently, just a few weeks ago, with Liz,
Travis, and Zach in North Carolina.
Those of us fortunate enough to be in her family
will always remember the frequent planned, and unplanned, family
gatherings at her homes in Lansdowne and Drexel Hill, and, in more
recent years, her annual holiday party at Lima Estates, where we
celebrated the closeness and continuity of our family.
Though she has passed on, Marjorie is still the
sun at the center of our family's solar system. A lifetime of
treasured remembrances lives in each of our hearts, a reassuring
reminder to all of us of who we are, and what we may aspire to be.
Marjorie ... Mom ... Grandma ... rest in peace now
... and thanks for everything. |
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