A Family of Two, and Friends
By 30 October 1944, Mrs. Mary M. Dawson at 5901 Lawndale Street in Philadelphia was informed that an award of the accrued amount of her husband’s disability payment was approved and that it would soon be sent to her, as unmarried widow of James A. Dawson, Pvt. Med. Dept.
Music among Friends
Church and musical theater programs drew both Marian Frances and Paul Emile like moths to flames. They met at downtown Miami’s Gesu Church where they sang in the church choir as well as in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas led by a talented theater director and producer who would later be ordained as Father Val LaFrance and become a nationally-known lecturer as well.
Paul and Marian
We can’t be sure when they met, but it is likely that their first date was in 1947. Our mother recounts in her Grandmother’s Memories that it was on St. Patrick’s Day when our father astutely chose to take her to see My Wild Irish Rose, the story of the life of Irish tenor Chauncey Alcott. Most of their dates involved music in one way or another.