Page 28 - Always Virginia
P. 28

16                                    Virginia Day Fritscher


             patriarch upon his father’s death in 1954, his mother became the
             revered Day matriarch in the 1950s and 1960s. As a widow, she was
             highly respected in the parish as “Mrs. Day” because she was, as
             Catholics said then, “the greatest thing a Catholic woman can be:
             the Mother of a Priest.” Her popular son was active in civil rights
             in the 1960s, and managed the design and construction of the new
             church and new school buildings for his growing parish where in
             the rectory bathroom, early on the morning of May 9, 1967, while
             shaving to say Mass, he called out in distress, and died of a heart
             attack on the floor in his mother’s arms. He was an Irish baritone
             who sang a beautiful High Mass. His favorite song was “Stardust.”
             One of his sermons and his biography appear later in this book.
                 Their second son, James T., married schoolteacher Mildred
             Horn, the daughter of William Horn (German born) and Nettie
             Caroline Vahle Horn, and lived as a restaurateur in Carrollton
             where they had three children: Judge James; restaurateur Carolyn,
             and Cynthia.
                 Bart and Mary Pearl’s youngest three children were Margaret
             Norine, Virginia Claire, and Harold Joseph.
                 Norine married James Thomas Chumley, the engineer son
             of Jacksonville Alderman and building contractor Thomas C.
             and Myrtle Cannon Chumley, who helped build Eero Saarinen’s
             Gateway Arch, memorializing explorers and immigrant pioneers
             like the Day family, in St. Louis where they had five children: Ted,
             Patrick, Michael (Mickey), Rosemary, and Tim.
                 Virginia, the first of their children to wed, married Routt High
             School varsity athlete George Fritscher, son of Austrian immigrant
             farmers Joseph and Amelia Fritscher of Heron Lake, Minnesota,
             and had three children: writer and university professor John Joseph
             (Jack), Ph.D,, the first grandchild of Bart and Mary Pearl, born
             June 20, 1939, in Jacksonville; Vietnam veteran George Robert
             (Bob) who died of military-related illnesses, and psychologist Mary
             Claire, both born in Peoria.
                 Harold married Rosemary Walsh, the daughter of Maurice and
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