Oh What Might Have Been-When Irish-Town Tradition Couldn't Hold A Good Woman Down-Or Could It

By Frank Jackman

Most of the time when you write stuff, particularly “slice of life” stuff it is based on a tip, maybe something you read or heard. Today though I am writing about the fate of one Delores Jamison (nee Riley) from the Acre neighborhood of North Adamsville where I grew up whose life took some small but decisive turns which despite the title of this piece did bring a good woman down. See Delores was the mother of a close friend, Kenny, who passed away from cancer many years ago but whose memory and then that of his mother got jogged when I heard a segment on the local NPR affiliate in Boston WBUR. That segment dealt with the 50^th anniversary of Life magazine’s controversial issue in which they had photographs of all those killed in Vietnam during a week in June of 1969. That segment centered on James Hickey who was several years younger than me and had grown up in Quincy a few towns over from my own hometown. His story was so familiar, so much like Kenny’s and my own that it started the memory in motion.       

I did not know Delores Riley really well since she was usually somewhat sickly (from having had four boys close together which her delicate frame never really recovered from) and overwrought with having to tend to too many children. Kenny and I would tend not to stay at his house for that very reason. Apparently though Delores had not always been so out of sorts and that is really what this remembrance is about. About decisions she made, or did not make, which led to her falling under the cracks in life. About decisions really that confronted almost everybody who lived or was raised in the Acre, in North Adamsville.

From what I could gather (Kenny never knew much and from a pretty early age stayed out of the house and over with his grandmother) about Delores’ early life it was conventionally middle class for the hellbroth 1930s Great Depression days. Her gruff, grumpy father Daniel had married late and had been an officer in the town fire department which meant he had a steady income all during the Depression. Owed the house he was born in over in the better Atlantic section of town, had married Anna and had three children with her. Anna by all accounts was “a saint” for putting up with him but also being a kind person to all in that neighborhood. That heavily Irish neighborhood, always called Irishtown by residence and strangers alike- which will play some small part in what happens later. Delores was a fairly bright and industrious student and graduated from North Adamsville High in 1942 and subsequently went to a business school in Boston.       

Normally, at least directly for a young woman, the war raging in Europe and the Pacific would not affect her as much as for the vast array of young men the military machine was eating up on two fronts. Once Delores finished that business school she got a job at the Hingham Naval Base about twenty miles from home. This is where the vagaries, maybe slightly the fog of war, came into play. Since the naval base needed protection, a detachment of Marines (really soldiers for the Navy) including rotated battle-tested young Prescott Jamison was stationed there. As things went Delores and Prescott met at a USO dance at the base on a Friday night (many details from this period are missing except Prescott must have had something since he was called ‘the Sheik” in gest by his fellows and in earnest by young women). Fairly shortly, although maybe not so for wartime, they were married since Prescott was scheduled to be discharged fairly soon after that.     

This is really where things began to fall apart (part of this from Kenny but also part from his pious grandmother when I would visit Kenny there as he sought shelter from the home storms). See Prescott was from coal country down in Kentucky, down in well-known Hazard, had dropped out of school in either the ninth or tenth grade to work the mines. When Pearl Harbor came in December 1941 he enlisted the next day in the Marines, saw the island-hopping battles of the Pacific with now hallowed names, and after suffering wounds was rotated to Hingham. He like many down in Appalachia was strict Primitive Baptist (meaning you had to take a dunking in the river to be baptized according to Kenny).   

That was the first strike. No, actually the first strike was when Daniel saw the good-looking Prescott and nixed the guy from day one. Reason: although Daniel was not a religious man he knew he hated Protestants of any kind and told Prescott so. (Anna the really pious of the pair would after a while ignore his religion but at the time supported her husband.) The second strike was that the couple under Roman Catholic doctrine could not marry in the church but only the rectory which occurred by their choice without her parents present (his parents by then both dead, he the youngest of eleven children). The third strike, the decisive strike was that he was uneducated for anything but coalmining not an industry found around North Adamsville.       

I guess they tried going down to Kentucky but that was worse than up North for work (and Prescott’s kin did not like Roman Catholic Delores anymore than her father liked Protestants) and so they returned. Returned and Delores started with much trouble having those four closely aged boys and to find shelter in the North Adamsville Housing Authority (the notorious “projects” evilly conjured up even today). Without help from her father. As the reader can imagine with work hard to get (Prescott last hired, first laid off a familiar refrain) things were always tight and Kenny believes something in her snapped early on and she decided to treat a hostile world including her sons hostilely (that verified by Kenny’s sibling recently).

We already know this story cannot end well (except Anna accepting Prescott and having them in when Daniel was not around and later when he was in a nursing home). And it did not end well. What has always intrigued me, always when Kenny would tell his tales of woe was why a young girl, probably pretty innocent as most Irish girls were, decided to forsake the neighborhood boys (some of whom were interested I gather) and stake her life on Prescott. One answer came to mind early on when I knew Kenny that grandfather Daniel drove his daughter from his door.  What has always also intrigued me is whether Delores ever regretted her decisions. According to Kenny no matter what was happening to the family Delores never regretted marrying her “Sheik.” Called his name from her death bed.