I would like to borrow a small amount of time to tell you about a wonderful woman from Chicago who provided the title to this essay. The story really starts in February, 1953 at 4919 West 69th Street Terrace, located in the thriving metropolis of Prairie Village, Kansas. We did not have zip codes at that time but had they existed, I am sure that they would include the number 9 in my address.
One Sunday morning I answered the doorbell to find my former boss, Harry Livermore, standing on my doorstep. Harry had just recently been promoted to a much bigger job running the AT&T Traffic Office in Chicago. When Harry entered our living room, he got to the point quite quickly. He told me that he wanted me to join him in Chicago. I thought Harry was a great boss and a good man, so I immediately agreed to prepare myself to move to Chicago. The Prairie Village house was put on the market and after six weeks or so it sold for nearly $15,000. That was the price that I had paid for it excluding all of the improvements that I had made in the 18 months that I had lived there.
In Kansas City, we had only two full-time Chief Operators. In Chicago, there were perhaps 25 Chief Operators, which will give you an idea of the size of the promotion that Harry Livermore received. Among the chiefs was Kay McCormick, whom I judged to be a woman perhaps ten or twelve years my senior and who ran one of the offices there, as switchboards were then called, that served the downtown business section. Within a short time, I found out that Kay was a first-generation Irish woman who had a knack for making other people feel important.
In point of fact, however, Kay McCormick was not her proper name. During the early stages of the 1929 Depression, Kay had borrowed the birth certificate of her older sister named Katherine. So AT&T hired this under-age operator under an assumed name and gave her the title of junior operator. She was known henceforth as Kay McCormick, not Helen McCormick her proper name, for the rest of her long career. In succession, Kay became an operator, a junior service assistant, then a full service assistant, and then an assistant Chief Operator. Eventually she was given the title of chief, with the responsibility for running one of the most important traffic hubs in Chicago.
When I visited the operating room, I always made it a point to spend some time with Kay McCormick. Putting it quite simply, I liked her and she had the knack of making people around her feel better. In 1955, I was transferred to a labor relations position in New York City, which limited my tenure in Chicago to the 1953-1955 time span. When business took me to Chicago, as it often did, I made it a point to have dinner with Kay McCormick. She was a delightful dinner companion. Then we lost touch, as Kay proceeded to age 65, at which age AT&T required everyone to retire. After a span of several years when there had been no communication with Kay, one of the former managers gave me her address. By this time, I assume that Kay was well into her eighties. After a time, Kay replied to my year-end greeting.
Essentially what she told me was that her family had died over the years, and that her friends had moved away or had also expired. She had never married and for all the years of her life she was basically alone. In the gentlest fashion available, Kay told me of her unhappiness with the divine creators who had let her stay here so long. My educated guess is that Kay was about my current age. This letter was all done in a spirit of good fun and she found that rebuking Jesus and the Holy Ghost were well within her province as a former Chief Operator. Among the lines in Kay’s letter was the thought that “there is no reason left for me to stay here.” Curiously, those words are repeated in a recent Irish love song called “Steal Away” which only came to my attention this year.
Kay McCormick’s relatives and friends had departed and she was alone, which made it logical for this lovely woman to say, “There’s no reason left for me to stay here.” I have a great understanding for Kay’s viewpoint. The vicissitudes of aging, such as aches and pains, leave me sometimes wondering whether there is “no reason left for me to stay.” On the other hand, I quickly remember that I have a devoted wife, two daughters and two sons-in-law, and five grandchildren. Kay had none of those advantages.
In spite of the ailments and illnesses that advance aging brings, I think I will hold on for a while. When I ride my stationary bicycle in our makeshift gymnasium in the basement, the daily mileages tell their story. It is not a matter of improving but of merely holding my own. But in the final analysis, as my age grows larger, I still keep my medical appointments, of which there are many, and hope for the best. All the while, I will treasure Kay McCormick for her realism in telling me, as she approached somewhere near her nineties, that “there’s no reason left to stay here.”
Kay was a wonderful person, even though she carried an assumed name for all of her adult life. Subsequent letters to Kay drew no answer so I assumed that Kay had died and that she had made peace with the celestial powers who had left her here a bit too long. I simply hope that her passing was peaceful. A wonderful person such as Kay McCormick should have a happy ending to her existence in this vale of tears.
E. E. CARR
July 16, 2009
Essay 395
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Kevin’s commentary: The standard search terms turned up nothing in the way of obituaries, which is either a good thing or a sad one. They also tell me that I should say “Ezra Carr” or “Ezra Edgar Carr” more in these essays (instead of just Pop) so as to boost our search engine results. Oh well.
Kay seemed like a special woman and it is a shame that she wound up alone. That’s a hell of a scary way to go.
As a side note, I’m still fascinated by inflation. Combined with real estate bubbles and the geographic locations in which I’ve opted to live, it is almost nonsensical to think that if I brought my current life savings back to Pop’s time I could almost buy a house with them. Right now they’d barely be 1/100th of the requisite amount.
For more on Livermore: https://ezrasessays.com/?p=693, https://ezrasessays.com/?p=179, https://ezrasessays.com/?p=428, https://ezrasessays.com/?p=974, https://ezrasessays.com/?p=350