Project Proposal
“Above all Else, deep in my soul, I’m a tough Irish woman.” — Maureen O’hara.
1958. New Jersey.
Debra Rose Phipps came into the world on March 5th, 1958, nine months after Chatham County High School prom night. Tony Phipps and Joan Schneider got married the September after. Joan did clerical work while Tony used his basketball scholarship at University of Indiana. Tony Phipps had a basketball game the night Debora was born. The intercom stopped the game and announced that Tony’s daughter was born. He cried.
1996. Blairsville, Ga.
My sister prayed for a friend to play Barbies with her.
“Where is mommy?” she asked thinking about my bloated mother ripe with child. She liked to rub her belly and introduce her little sister to the dog and cats.
But John Quigley withdrew Shannon to another room and told her to watch Katie. He got a call. In Fannin County, a black truck ran a red light and flipped an ambulance, leaving it in horrendous condition. Before the crash the ambulance contained a mother in labor, two E.M.T’s, and Dr. Quigley, his wife. She herself was due in one month. After the incident there was one woman dead and unidentified. His heart sank. The possible loss of his wife and baby overwhelmed him as he drove towards the scene.
2015. Waterford, Ireland.
The morning started with bagpipes. The evening ended with talks of Grandpa Tony in a local pub where rose vines and bushes grew out the roof. Tourism transformed into stories of heritage of the Phipps, Delaneys, and Quigleys. The day started impulsive and unplanned, two things my parents were not.
“Oh we should tour the old prisons,” I enthused as my finger traced down the lists of tours.
“We can’t do that.” My mother smiled, “Our family might owe them money.”
Instead we booked a last minute excursion to the cliffs of Waterford.
“Any scotch for the craig?” our tour guide asked. Craig meaning fun.
After admiring the Irish landscape for an hour or so my mother explained the accent of her grandmother Catherine Delaney. It sounded just like our tour guide. My mother explained how we should feel the land in our veins like a warm scotch. How the cold, green cliffs symbolized the large and impossible tasks that faced our family when the famine hit that plagued the country. We didn’t leave because we wanted. There was no other choice.
The tour ended on the countryside. A few locals sipped their coffee and whiskey. My mother and father decided a glass of wine would suffice.
Leaving the cliffs, mom’s eyes swelled with tears. My mother cried only three times I can remember. Once when her horse died, another when her father died, and now. But now she cried with a content smile.
“My father loved his mother, and he loved when I cooked her shepherd’s pie.”
I didn’t say anything at the risk of taking her peace. Instead I joined her and smiled into the foggy and hidden cliffs that drifted away into the distance.
Catherine Delaney was a single mother around 1920 with 8 children; one of them was my grandfather, Tony. Tony worshipped his mother. He frequently wrote her cards about how blessed he was to have a Catholic mother. Catherine’s accent derived from Ireland where she escaped a famine. Everyone remembered Catherine as direct, tough, and always putting those she loved most before her. No mountain had the ability to tire her. She could climb and challenge any border. This woman, whom I never met, proved as an example and legend in our family.
When I was around eight, six years before bad habits would catch up with him, my grandfather spent hours letting me win at chess. On the second round he told me his mother, as a young girl, jumped off the immigration boat as it neared New York. She knew she would be sent back to Ireland, and would rather freeze or drown to death than go back to the misery and hunger that waited in Ireland.
I sat in wonder playing with my queen. Before I could ask how Catherine turned out, my mother called us for a dinner of Shepherd’s pie.
As a young girl I would lay in an on-call room watching cartoons and waiting for mom to finish delivering babies. I could wait for hours or until someone else came to pick me up. I was born and raised in a small town surrounded by other rural areas. My mother was one of the only O.B.G.Y.N and Family Practice doctors in rural North East Georgia. My mother delivered at least half of the kids in the Union County School System. Having a working and busy mother who saved lives for a living never once phased me. Now that I am older I find my mother completely inspirational.
At just seven years older than I am now my mother had nine year-old girl, worked as a full time nurse, and attended Emory Medical School full time. Debora Phipps personified fire. If you ask her why she did it, she will tell you, “ I had nothing better to do”. I imagine the other women in my family lineage would say the same thing about their accomplishments. I have four single mothers from the 1800’s to the 1980’s in my lineage. My great grandmother, Glendora Schneider now ages at 102 years old and still lives alone. Catherine came alone to the new world without any man to hold onto in this country. And finally, my protagonist, received the title of Doctor as a 32 year old despite all her obstacles. I want to figure out what has formed my mother into the resilient woman she is.
Debra Rose: Mom
- How did your parents meet?
- Were you closer to your mother or father during your childhood?
- Why is that?
- Did you know Catherine Delaney?
- How would you describe her?
- You told me when you were young you spent a good amount of time with your grandparents. Were you your step-grandpa’s favorite?
- And how would you describe your grandmother Glendora Schnieder?
- Do you think these women ever influenced you in your life?
- Do you believe where you are today is fate or that you made your own fate?
- What have been your greatest obstacles in life?
- Did people ever tell you that you couldn’t be a doctor and a mother?
- Did people ever say that to Dad?
- How did you meet Dad?
- How are you two different?
- Would you call yourself a feminist?
- What do you want the most for your daughters as they grow into the real world?
Father: John Quigley
- What was your first experience with mom?
- How would you have described her?
- Why did it take you two so long to get together?
- Would you say mom is a resilient woman?
- How would you want your daughters to be like Debora?
Aunt Glenda: Debora’s Sister
How are you related to Debora Quigley?
How much older is she than you?
What is your first memory with her?
Was there anything she did when you were older that made a significant impact on you?
What was she like once she got into her 20's?
What did you think about her wanting to be a doctor?
How has she changed since then?
Do you see any likeness between her and her daughters?
