We All Fall Down
a story worth preserving

MARY DUNPHY held tightly to the rose bouquet in her 12-year-old
arms.  As the handful of other specially chosen girls tittered nervously,
Mary focused on the gravity of the moment, waiting for the signal.  On
cue she and the other schoolgirls processed solemnly across the Long
Island tarmac toward the United Airlines DC-3, an impressive airship in
1936. Each girl gracefully genuflected and presented floral greetings to
the plane’s devout passenger, until Mary.

“I wasn’t frightened, I don’t even think I was that nervous, but all of a
sudden I twisted my right ankle and there went the flowers and there
went me, falling right on my face,” she said. The next thing she
remembers the gracious Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, the
Vatican Secretary of State, reached down to help her up, gather the
flowers and bestow a special blessing.  Three years later that same
Cardinal Pacelli would be elevated to the pontificate as Pope Pius XII.

“So you see, weak ankles run in the family,” my mom, Mary Dunphy
Patronik, told me 34 years later when, as an awkward 12-year-old
myself, I was lamenting the clumsy fall I’d taken in the cafeteria that
day.  Mom died a few months after sharing her tale about our family’s
rickety limbs and the future Pope.

Her tales about living in a two-room cold-water flat with her mom and
sister; skipping school to swoon over Frank Sinatra at the Apollo; and
falling instantly in love with a sailor “on liberty in New York,” who
would later become my dad, comprise a priceless legacy.  

Every family benefits from recording its stories in print, electronically or
both. I founded Preserve Your Story to help families document the
details of their lives and create an inheritance that enriches an
understanding of ourselves.

Christine Patronik-Holder
Preserve Your Story