Childhood memories. My father drove the family car along the waterfront on the West Side of Manhattan. I sat in the right-hand back seat. As the traffic crawled along, I enjoyed a prolonged view of the Hudson River passenger ship piers. Great vessels rested quietly at their berths, giant steel cliffs rising majestically from the water. The names painted on their bows identified them as the grandes dames of the North Atlantic. In the 1960s, many of these names were household words. I distinctly remember seeing the United States, the America, the Independence, the Constitution, and the Atlantic. I’m sure I enjoyed these great ships much more than my father enjoyed the traffic!
My father also drove us along the aptly named Shore Parkway in Brooklyn. Just south of the then-new Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, this road skirted the Lower Bay, and from my back seat I gazed upon this wide expanse of water with its anchored cargo ships and oil tankers. Occasionally, in the channel beyond the anchorage, I could see a vessel entering or leaving port. It was a fascinating view. Even at my young age, I knew this water and this fleet of ships stretched from New York to the very ends of the Earth. How exotic and other-worldly it all seemed!
Another route that my father drove took us out of Manhattan via the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and then on the elevated Long Island Expressway through the inaptly named Woodside section of Queens. At night, this lofty but traffic-clogged perch afforded a grand view of Brooklyn and Queens, blazingly aglow with light. For about a mile, however, the road ran adjacent to a zone of total darkness. From my back seat window, I observed this island of complete blackout surrounded by a vast sea of artificial light. The contrast was blatant and mysterious. Something about this expanse of blackness seemed intriguing and other-worldly, but my child’s mind could not formulate any idea of what it might be. I wondered about it but did not give it any serious thought.
Little did I know then that one day cargo ships and oil tankers would take me far from my native New York, and that after my return, a small spot in the black ground of Woodside would become supremely important to my family.
As I later learned, this black ground was Calvary Cemetery. Operated by the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, it was and remains the largest cemetery in the United States, with just under two million interments. Someone with great foresight acquired this large tract of land for the Church in the mid-nineteenth century, and it has been filling up steadily ever since.
Still later, Miss Patty and I pursued the history of my great-great-grandparents, Daniel O’Connor and Honora MacDonald. This was a slow and laborious task, as much of their personal information had been lost in the mist of time. Furthermore, variations in the spelling of their surnames created confusion and caused setbacks in the research. Finally, though, Miss Patty found Daniel’s military records from the American Civil War, and these documents clinched the case. Briefly, Private Daniel O’Connor served as an infantry soldier in Company K of the 164th New York Volunteers. He lost his life in the Battle of Cold Harbor, Virginia, on June 3, 1864. Family tradition held that his widow Honora travelled South afterwards to collect the corpse and return it to New York for interment. Daniel was then laid to rest in Calvary Cemetery on June 25, 1865.
One hundred and fifty-seven years later, on a bright and sunny Thursday, October 6, 2022, Miss Patty and I travelled to Calvary Cemetery and located Daniel’s grave. A well-worn white stone marked the spot. Many of its inscriptions were illegible, but his name remained clear enough. Written records from the cemetery archives confirmed that he was indeed buried there, along with his wife Honora and several other family members.
I found it especially striking that the O’Connor grave lay in very close proximity to the elevated Long Island Expressway. This structure dominated the skyline to the north, and the thunderous racket generated by the traffic bordered on overwhelming. Nonetheless, visiting the grave was a tremendously sublime spiritual experience. A feeling of supernal peace and almost-quiet permeated the atmosphere, the adjacent noise and commotion notwithstanding. Also, it amused me somewhat to think that so many years ago I had sat in that very traffic and unknowingly looked down at my great-great-grandparents’ grave site. I felt that I had truly come a long way.
The culmination of this journey took place a month later in Belmont, Massachusetts. Several temple ordinances had been done previously for Daniel and Honora, but not all of them. So on Saturday, November 5, 2022, in the Boston Temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I served as proxy for his endowment, and after that, Miss Patty and I stood in for both of them as they were sealed for time and eternity. Like the visit to Calvary Cemetery, these events were sublime spiritual experiences, but happily they took place in a much more tranquil setting!
A long span of years now separates my childhood observations from the back seat of the family car and my adult participation in temple ordinances for family members. It’s still an ongoing voyage filled with experiences which, like sea water, stretch from New York to the ends of the Earth. But they don’t stop there. When the voyage in this life is complete and we ring up “Finished with Engines,” we will go ashore in our celestial home port and join the many family members who are waiting for us there on the pier.
Now let’s look at a few photographs:
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