'Please Tell the People This'

Cardinal's niece shares family memories and a message he gave her

By EILEEN WARD CHRISTIAN

The day after my uncle died, one of New York's daily newspapers, in tribute to the cardinal, was soliciting stories of its readers' memories and personal experiences of how the cardinal touched their lives. This got me thinking. My brothers and sisters could fill volumes.

I am the youngest of eight children. My mother, Mary O'Connor Ward, is the cardinal's youngest sister. They were always very close growing up...best friends. He introduced her to my father, Hugh. My father and his brother-in-law soon became best friends, too.

The Wards flourished into a family of 11 before long: my parents, the eight of us and Uncle Jack. Holidays and family vacations were arranged around Uncle Jack's ever-challenging schedule during his military years. When he was stationed at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., during the early 1970s it was to be our first Christmas without my grandmother, Dorothy O'Connor. Because "Father O'Connor" would never consider leaving his flock behind on Christmas to satisfy his own wants and needs to be with his family, my father quickly made the decision that Christmas had to be moved from our home in suburban Philadelphia to Newport. Cars and airplanes with packages packed into every nook and cranny transported the 10 of us to have our usual family Christmas.

There were his other Christmases at "home." That is, the Ward household. He would join us to test out the new skates on the pond next to the house. He would try the new sleds Santa brought. But, inevitably the next day, he'd pack up and be off to bury a Marine killed in a military exercise, head to the South Pole for confirmations of dependents of military personnel or to Washington to get back to his studies.

There were the early morning daily Masses in our living room when he was home, complete with the altar boys (my brothers) and the rest of the "congregation" clad in pajamas and with rumpled hair.

There were the two days or one he would take to catch up with us on our typical summer vacation to water ski with my brother Jerry on his shoulders. There was the time that my brother John and I--naive teenagers at the time--drove to New York because he was taking us to see a show on Broadway, only to have the car towed from a no-parking zone. Even while he was bailing out the car and paying the ticket, he kept insisting to us that it was a mistake anyone could have made. My sister Joanne smashed up his car once only to smash it up a few days after it came back from the body shop. Undoubtedly angry, he would only shake his head and remind us that we were the best argument for celibacy.

There were pre-Cana sessions with Uncle Jack and the weddings that followed, the many baptisms that followed still.

There were the tough times for our family. Our father's sudden death marking the loss of Uncle Jack's best friend, his little sister's husband and our dad.

There were the days, only a few years ago, of our brother John's bout with cancer and subsequent death at the all too young age of 36. During those very difficult days, he traveled to wait, with the rest of us, in the hospital waiting room after each of John's surgeries. During John's last week, Uncle Jack and Bishop Jim McCarthy made the trip down from New York to Philadelphia for Mass every day of that week at John's bedside. He told me in the early morning when he arrived from New York after John had died that he could not feel John's loss more deeply if he were his own son.

I could go on and on. The Daily News could fill volumes of the Wards' stories of our memories of John O'Connor...our mentor, our counselor, our mediator, our third parent, our own priest.

I spent many years near my uncle while I lived in the Archdiocese of New York. Although we were close before he arrived in New York in 1984, we grew even closer during those 16 years here.

Because of our great affection for each other, I had the most profound privilege of spending many hours with him during these last and difficult months. A reporter asked me the day after the cardinal died whether he was reflective during our conversations in those last weeks. I simply answered yes. However, I would like to expound upon that answer in one last story of goodness, humility and love embodied in the man.

Msgr. Gregory Mustaciuolo, his friend and associate who, most lovingly, helped his cardinal to endure the challenges of his illness, and Eileen White, his other devoted friend and assistant, called me several weeks ago on a Sunday morning at my home outside Philadelphia to tell me that my uncle was quite weak, and it was their opinion that I should come to see him that day. When I arrived a few hours later, the cardinal was much stronger and told me he had something important he wanted to tell me. With a strong, clear voice and in his most eloquent tone, he told me that when he first learned that he had a brain tumor, he decided at that moment that he, more than he ever had before, would devote the rest of his life to the only thing in the world that matters...love.

"I want," he said, "to remind the people that we must be kind to each other, we must be gentle. Our world moves so fast but we must never forget that love is truly the only thing that matters." In his too humble manner, he reflected, "I do not know why my life led me to any sort of prominence. I am not special. I am only an ordinary man. But if my position now permits me to be heard in some way, I want to spend the rest of my life devoted only to love, to doing good, to being prayerful. And we must never forget that we must help each other. We must all spend our lives in love. Please tell the people this."

Thank you to Anne Buckley for allowing me to use this forum to "tell the people."

On behalf of my mother, Mary, and all of the Wards, I would like to thank Catholic New York for its great support and devotion to the cardinal during all of his years and to all of its readers for their love and condolences. As he told you so many times, he loves us, too.