Elsye Mahern died December 22, 2013. She was 91 and had been in declining health for more than a year. One of her daughters let me know of her death. Elsye was my third cousin and the last time I heard from her was 10 years ago when she sent me a note inviting me to call her for tea. I never got back to her.
The first time I met Elsye was about 1960. I was a freshman at Marian College and Elsye was a mother of 10 children going back to school to begin a master's in education which she eventually accomplished with a degree through Butler University. She introduced herself to me by saying, "I'm Elsye Mahern and I know we're not supposed to talk to each other but I don't see why we can't be friends."
Elsye was a writer and she produced a weekly column for the Indiana Catholic and Record on family matters that were helpful, humorous, serious, but always down to earth.
Her grandfather was Edward Cantwell and Edward had a brother named Thomas who was my great-grandfather. Thomas's daughter Mary Alice (or Mae) was my grandmother and Grandma Mae once told me that there was a branch of our family that we never spoke to but that they were really very nice people. The Cantwells were Irish and in some mysterious way that is all that needs explaining.
Edward Cantwell and Thomas Cantwell, who worked together as Western Union telegraphers had a falling out in 1894 after their mother died. Her will stipulated that she was carrying out the wishes of her dead husband (he died in 1885) by assigning most of his estate to one brother and leaving only a nominal sum to the other.
This all came to light sometime in the late 1970s when Elsye's sister Katheleen Cantwell paid a visit to my family to provide us with a copy of the genealogical research she and Elsye had been working on. Kit, as she was known, had worked diligently and thoroughly on the research. Edward's family and Thomas' family had grown since 1894 with the understanding that one did not speak to the other side. And, for the most part, no one had.
In high school I was approached by a classmate in my first year of school who introduced herself as Stephanie Cantwell. She was also the great-grand daughter of Edward. All she said was that her mother knew that she and I were related somehow.
A few years ago I came into contact with one of Elsye's sons Louis, jr., who was active in Democratic politics in Indianapolis. Some years after that I got to know a daughter Kate who is a law professor. It was Kate who let me know of Elsye's death.
After I first met Elsye, she invited me to her home for dinner. That is all a vague memory now except that I remember a household of very well-behaved children, and a very nice dinner and sociable evening. By the end of the 1960s the marriage had ended, Elsye moved, I heard, to Chicago and later to California where she remarried many years later.
When we reconnected in 2004, Elsye sent me a copy of a book she had written in recent years. I also had obtained a copy of another book of hers written in the 1950s following the death of a son. She and her first husband were very active in their parish and in the Catholic Interracial Council and in the burgeoning family movements of the 1950s that became popular in the Church. Reform in the Church affected us in different ways, however. Elsye was a woman of integrity and as her obituary stated of life, she never stopped living. She affected in a positive way the life of the local Church and she deserves recognition for it.
I regret that I never visited her for tea
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