Jo's girls

Jackie's daughters

Five beautiful daughters. Debbie, Jan, Stephie, Diana, and Jennie. All of them blondes -- a fact that would have been of importance to my father, who was so proud of his three beautiful blonde daughters (dedicating The Stopped Clock to them and to all blonde women everywhere).

Most of Jackie's kids and most of their kids, with a few other folks thrown in for good measure. [33 kb]

They all got together at Jackie's place in Kensington for a memorial gathering on July 16, 1996, a few days after her death, and the next day the four younger girls and their families (and Joey and Tanya and Winibee and Jay) went to the Chesapeake to celebrate her life at a place she'd always loved.
The photos on this page, which are all from those two days, came to me from Jan and Joey and Winibee. (Unfortunately there seem to be no photos of Debbie, who I think was at the gathering in Kensington but wasn't able to get to the Chesapeake the following day.)

Jennie and Jan in Jackie's kitchen. [15 kb]

Missing Them

Shadows play on the picnic table,
deserted in the summer afternoon;
the shadows are memories, all that remain
of people chattering, a constant refrain
of summers past, gone too soon.
Would I bring them back, if I were able?

No more teenagers sprawled around
playing their records clear and loud.
Gone are the children, yesterday's noise,
gone are my girls, gone are their boys.
All that remains is a shadow crowd --
memories never make a sound.

-- J. R. F.

Above: Jennie and Jan in Jackie's kitchen.

Right: Stephie and Diana on the patio.

Beth, Jan, Stephie. [15 kb]

Above: Beth, Jan, Stephie.

Right: Diana and Jennie after scattering Jackie's ashes in the Chesapeake.

All of the dear treasures
she has made me,
sparkling in the sun.
I reach up and take them
from the kitchen shelf,
touching them, one by one.
-- J. R. F.

From my distant vantage point, the three middle sisters always seemed the closest. They seemed to be a minisorority of three, bracketed by Debbie and Jennie.
Jan and Stephie married a pair of brothers, Mike and Steve Carmody, who play in the same band, and they live in Silver Spring within a few blocks of each other. Diana and Jeff don't live far away. And Debbie too lives in Maryland.
Jennie, like me -- both of us the tails (appendixes? cedillas?), so to speak, of our birth families -- has wagged herself all the way out to California, and the third of her four children is named Jackie too: Jacqueline Phaedra Hernandez.

Jacqueline Phaedra Hernandez with Jan's third son, Jamey Carmody. Jackie is almost a year old and Jamey almost nine months.
Since Jackie's death, Jan and Jennie both had baby boys: Dylan Michael Carmody and Desmond Nile Hernandez. And in 1998 Diana and Jeff adopted a blue-eyed little russian boy named Nicky.
And so the generations approach and recede again, like waves lapping momentarily at the shore.

Jacqueline Phaedra Hernandez with JameyCarmody. [20 kb]

Jacqueline Phaedra with Jamey. [23 kb]

They took Jackie's ashes out in the canoe to scatter them on the water of the Chesapeake, which she had so much loved.
After they scattered the ashes a single wave passed across the water, seemingly out of nowhere. To the girls it seemed that Jackie was blessing them and signaling her gratitude and love.

Some other photos from that day:

[Nota bene: This page, like all the others in this site, is in progress. Please let me know if you find anything false, misleading, offensive, or intrusive to your privacy. Let me know too if there's a photo or something in the text that should be removed or something that should be added. I have not set up this site primarily for my own sake but for my family and friends -- and I welcome all corrections, additions, and suggestions about how to improve it!]

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