My grandmother was born Leona Erma Van Dusen in upstate New York, at 10 minutes before the hour of midnight on Dec. 31, 1880. She nonetheless celebrated her birth on Jan. 1 so she could claim to be a year younger.
She was 20 when she married my grandfather, Charles Scott Wright. They lived with their two sons in Somerville, N.J. Grandpa Charles, a stock broker, died of Thrombosis at the age of 39 in 1918 when my father, DeForeest, was 8 years old.
Grandpa left some property, and Grandma soon found herself in business selling real estate. Moving to Southern California in 1935 during the Great Depression, she continued buying and selling properties at night while making ends meet by hiring herself out as a housekeeper during the day.
Grandma was quite thin, white-haired, with pronounced Pennsylvania Dutch features. She was very dignified, never leaving home without being well-dressed. She not very affectionate; she was always Grandma Wright, never Grandma Leona. Nevertheless, while not at all given to silliness, I recall the merry tinkling of her laughter quite well.
In California, Grandma picked up the quirk of moving every two or three years. By 1957, having lived in houses all her life, she took up residence in an apartment in Inglewood.
Early in 1957, Papa, Mom and I were in the family car — a white ’53 Pontiac, the Chief’s stylized head mounted on the hood gravely scouting the terrain. We were on our way to pick up Grandma Wright, who was to spend a weekend at our home in Hollywood. Returning north on Wilton Place, Papa and Mom were in the front seat, Grandma and I in back.
At the corner of 8th Street, just below Wilshire Boulevard, was a cheery little white frame Presbyterian church with a front porch. Although a short, squared tower perched on its tarred, green shingles, it looked every bit like the made-over house it was. Comfortably settled on a sloped lawn, the marquee in front proclaimed the Reverend Danny Hart as its pastor.
Grandma was a good Methodist, but she wore the title easily, having no qualms about visiting other Protestant churches if she heard the minister had a friendly smile and delivered a good, down-to-earth sermon.
Leona Wright prided herself on being a lady, always carefully attired in a dark dress, her gray hair simply coiffed. She always wore a pair of short white gloves and, often, a kind of flat white hat with white lace veiling tucked above her forehead.
Well, this day I nearly shocked Grandma out of her veiling.
Sr. Mary Theodore, IHM, had begun to explain to her second-grade students at Immaculate Heart Elementary School how only bishops and priests in the apostolic succession could validly consecrate bread and wine so it became the real Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Every Catholic church, therefore, had a tabernacle to house the Sacred Host. Alas, without the apostolic succession, she told us, no Protestant church contained Our Lord’s Sacramental Presence.
Approaching the little Presbyterian church, newly armed with this theological data, leaning over in a confidential manner, I confided, "You know, Grandma, God's not in that church."
Behind her glasses, Grandma Wright’s eyes widened in alarm.
"The very idea!" she exclaimed. “Kenneth! David! DeForeest!” (my father, her second son, always ended up last in her litany of names when she became annoyed or flustered), “did you hear what your son just said?"
"Now, Mother,” Papa began soothingly, “Sean didn't mean what you think. You know we Catholics believe that Jesus is actually in the tabernacle on the altar in our churches."
"Yes, I know," she replied flatly, drawing her lips into a thin line while settling her ruffled feathers. When Papa converted 17 years earlier, Grandma had had a few scruples about his defecting to Rome, but told him to follow his heart. Still, she found it hard to conceive of anyone actually wanting to become a Catholic.
"He's seven, Mother. He's learning about the sacraments. He's going to receive his First Holy Communion later this year."
"But DeForeest, to say God is not in a church. It sounds just terrible. The very idea, to say such a thing!"
I remember this conversation quite clearly, fascinated that Grandma didn’t know about the Hidden Jesus. Papa was right. It was all about the Blessed Sacrament. What was the problem?
"But I know God is in our church, Grandma, I can tell."
"What do you mean 'you can tell'?" she asked, arching her brow at me.
"I don't know, exactly" I reflected, “I can just feel Him. Jesus, I mean, when I go in."
I don't think that statement exactly mollified Grandma. Once again, albeit with a subdued air of dignified resignation, she drew in her breath, then said, "The very idea."
I never knew until much later when Papa recounted the incident to friends that he and Mom were quietly biting their lips in the front seat, not wanting Grandma to think they were laughing at her. The incident passed into family legend. "You should have heard the outrage in my mother’s voice," Papa would laugh, “when Sean said God wasn’t in that church!”
My father was no fanatical convert demanding everyone get saved by believing as he did. He considered such behavior boorish. He was quite at ease with his Catholicism, never shying away from an explanation of doctrine if asked, but never wearing his faith on his sleeve.
He was embarrassed by people like Clare Booth Luce, for instance, the playwright and diplomat famously converted by Archbishop Fulton Sheen. Newly converted, she began a well-publicized search for stray lambs to lead to Rome for salvation. “A professional Catholic,” Papa would sniff derisively. Let me say again, Papa was happily Catholic. He also believed what Jesus said about not letting your right hand know what the left hand is doing.
Two years after this incident, Grandma Wright died suddenly, one day before her 79th — or two days before her 78th birthday — in 1959. She’d been aware for quite some time that she was would be buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, a situation which made her laugh in her musical, ladylike way. She always told us grandkids that it was going to be a fine joke on the pope, planting a good Methodist from upstate New York among all those Hollywood Catholics.
Papa would chuckle and say that it might be good for her to hide out among all those Catholics until Judgment Day. At least until God got through with the rest of the Methodists. And Grandma laughed along with the rest of us.
A final note to parents: the great, three-year-long Eucharistic Revival will soon end. All the preaching; all the articles written about the Blessed Sacrament; all the hoopla surrounding the 10th National Eucharistic Congress won’t mean diddly if you don’t show your children by word and by deed that you believe in and love Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.
When was the last time you entered a Catholic church with your children just to “make a visit” to Jesus awaiting you in the tabernacle? Why not take a few minutes to drop in while shopping and talk to Jesus directly, confiding in Him, thanking Him, adoring Him?
That way you and others can experience and be in the company of the Real Presence of Our Lord. The church itself will feel better, too. For, where God the Son dwells, there His abiding Presence can be really quite tangible.
As my grandmother might say, “The very idea!”
The very idea, indeed!
Sean M. Wright, award winning journalist and Emmy-nominated television writer, is a Master Catechist for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is a member of Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Santa Clarita, CA and responds to comments sent him at [email protected].
