THIS DAY IN 20TH CENTURY HISTORY, PERSONALLY AND POLITICALLY..........

In the previous century January 9, was a day of significant births in my mother's family and in the political family and history of our country. On January 9, 1900, my maternal grandmother, Claudia Frances Francis (Corey), was born in Sacramento, California. Of Portuguese ancestry, my great Granfather Francis, had been among the early Portuguese persons to have settled in Sacramento. When my grandmother was nine years old, the Portuguese National Parish, St. Elizabeth's was founded in Sacramento, the church in which in the coming years Claudia was married and her children were baptized. It was not unusual a century ago for young, teenage Portuguese girls to marry. At age 13, my grandmother met and fell in love with Manuel Lawrence Corey, a 1907 immigrant from Portugal, who then was working for the Southern Pacific Railroad. He was nearly ten years older than Claudia, and my great grandmother and her oldest daughter felt that Manuel was too old for their Claudia, so to split up their romantic relationship, they arranged to send Claudia to a nuns convent in Los Angeles, where she lived cut off from Manuel and away from her family, for a year and a half. Returning to Sacramento in early 1915, having weathered the storm of separation and their love persisting, Claudia and Manuel were married by Rev. Fr. John Azevedo, in St. Elizabeth's Church at 12th and S Streets, on April 26, 1915. Their marriage, into which nine children were born, including my mother Josephine Virginia, in 1922, lasted 61 years, until my grandfather Corey's death at age 95, in May 1986, just four weeks after I was ordained a transitional Deacon. My grandmother Corey survived my grandfather just two and three quarter years, when she passed away in February 1989, at age 89, when I was less than two years a priest. From the moment I re-entered her house after my priestly ordination on May 2, 1987, until her death on February 26, 1989, one facet of our loving interpersonal relationship changed. She insisted in the latter months of her life to address me happily as Father Troy David, which became apparent she proclaimed, with pride, respect, and joy...>>>The political history birth of significance on this date, interscts not only wit my grandmother's birthday, but the year her Los Angeles convent experience began. For just a short distance from Los Angeles, in Yorba Linda, California on January 9, 1913, Richard Milhous Nixon was born. Becoming the 37th President of the United States, in 1969, for five and a half years, did he ever make unforgetable history in The White House !!!!! It is time for me to prepare my Sunday homily for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, as I preside at the 5:30 pm Saturday and 9:30 am Sunday, Masses at Sacred Heart this weekend ..........
Have Yourself A Happy Penultimate Day of Christmas, Fr. Troy