Remembering mothers, the foundation of families

My mom was more than just a Saint. She was the foundation that kept the family together as all moms do. I remember my mom who built a family and struggled to keep it together after dad died

By Ray Hanania

FREE/Mother’s Day, Mom/Friday, May 9, 2025

The one thing that binds everyone together in a spirit of kindness, “the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” We all have mothers.

Moms had the toughest jobs in a family when I was growing up. The fathers worked all day, earning the money and dealing with their job responsibilities. Fathers would come home from work and relax with the kids.

Mothers worked all day. Far more than 8 hours, and had to deal with so much more. Moms dealt with everything else, including keeping the house together, cleaning, washing the clothes, managing the unruly kids, cleaning, and preparing the meals, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

When I think about it, I only knew my mom, Georgette, for 33 years before she passed away in August 1985, a few days after we enjoyed ChicagoFest along the city’s lakefront.

I was the City Hall reporter and Page 10 columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times at the time, and I got a chance to introduce her to then-Mayor Harold Washington during the festival.

When your mother is present, politicians tend to show a kinder, gentler spirit, and Mayor Washington told my mother, “Your son is a fair reporter, one I enjoy reading.”

Mom introduced herself to Washington’s predecessor, Mayor Jane M. Byrne, during an Ethnic Festival held at Chicago’s Navy Pier in 1979, when I was the City Hall reporter for the Daily Southtown Newspaper.

Byrne was touring the many ethnic displays and came across the Palestinian and Arab display that my mom helped put together. When she saw her, Mayor Byrne said, “You are very beautiful.”

My mom smiled and said in more of an innocent way because she didn’t really follow Chicago’s rough and tumble politics. “Thank you. You know my son, Raymond. He is a City Hall reporter.”

Byrne and I had been feuding that whole summer over stories I wrote that she felt were unfair to her, asserting that I favored “poor little Richie” (Daley), as her husband, Jay McMullen, described him.

Without saying a word, Byrne angrily spun around on her three-inch stiletto heels and walked away in a huff, followed by Jay and a contingent of four bodyguards, her press aides, and the weekend media horde.

Years later, I came to reconcile my differences with Mayor Byrne. She was a good person who had to fight for political equality and respect, the first woman Mayor of the second-largest city in America.

Moms were always the source of comfort for children as they grew up, dealing with school, comforting after falls, cuts, and bruises. Buying the clothes became more important as kids grew into the older elementary school and high school grades.

Kids spend more time with their mothers. So, I have the most memories with her than with my father, who died when I had just turned 17.

I had some great moments when I was very young.

Walking up Michigan Avenue with my mom and dad, George, and little sister, Linda, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower came out of a building with a few aides. My dad stopped him and they spoke, with my dad sharing that he had served under Eisenhower during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA.

Then there was a time we were walking downtown past a large hall where the Rev. Billy Graham was preaching. As we looked into the hall through the door, an organizer encouraging us to join learned my mom was born in Bethlehem, and became so excited he had the security inform Rev. Graham right away.

Graham brought us onto the stage, where he introduced my mom as a Palestinian from the Holy City of Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. My mom talked with Graham on stage and described her life, attending the Church of the Nativity where relatives served as the pastors, and how important religion was to her.

There was the time right after I was born that Dad took Mom and my older, half-brother John, to Riverview, the amusement park on the west side of Chicago. Mom had never been on a rollercoaster. It looked like so much fun watching it from the field below. But when she got on, holding me, swaddled in a baby blanket, it was frightening for her. And it might explain why I never could ride on a rollercoaster. Ever!

Not every moment was so spectacular as those. Some were challenging.

When I was in elementary school, the principal called my mother into the school and told her, “If little Raymond tries hard, he could be a C student someday.”

Back then, a D was a 70 percent grade, followed by a C, B, and an A. I never got an A in any class. And I flunked English Composition at every turn through high school and college — and yet, something my mom gave me helped me persist and succeed in becoming a journalist. Although she had hoped that I would become a doctor like my “Uncle” Nadeem.

And there was the low moment when mom and I were arguing in the kitchen, and she said to me the words I wish I had never heard, but that I can never forget: “One day, I won’t be around,” she said.

We take our mothers for granted. They are with us more than anyone. And when they are gone, they leave a huge hole in our spirits that can never be filled.

My mom was always the nicest person to everyone. She had a great demeanor. She helped cousins and relatives who immigrated to America to get settled and establish their own lives. Only one time was she betrayed by one of my aunts, an ugly, dark, and evil spirit, jealous of everything everyone else, including my mom, had.

My mom’s brothers and sisters lived overseas, so we traveled with her many times to see them, while my dad stayed home working. Bethlehem. Jamaica. Venezuela. Columbia, where my mom and dad had married in 1952.

When my dad died, I was young and stupid. Just turned 17 and consumed with my very first girlfriend, Jeanne. It didn’t impact me the same way, although I loved my dad. He worked so hard and gave us so much. I have some great memories, fewer maybe, with him than with my mom.

But when my mom died, it was painful, especially because she was in her 50s and had suffered a traumatic combination of asthma and pneumonia.

I had just gotten married, had a baby girl, Carolyn, and was hired by the then-weekly Southtown Economist Newspaper. We bought a nice home in Tinley Park, where she passed.

I go to her grave a few times each year. The headstone has an image of Jesus holding a lamb carved into the marble, and the words “Born in Bethlehem.” It was something she and all of us were proud of. Bethlehem, the origins of Christianity, long forgotten by American “Christians.”

When I remember something about our lives, I try to write it down in a journal. You want to pass them along to those family who follow.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I do miss you.

And happy Mother’s Day to every Mom.