Thursday, May 6, 2021

How did Bess, Jean, Irene and Gwendolyn influence Mac?

https://www.instagram.com/macandirene/

"As if uncovering a lost work of art, author Margot McMahon exquisitely reveals the World War II story through images that originally were stored in her prisoner-of-war father's mind, escaped into his drawings and paintings, and now run across the pages of this book." –Burt Constable, award-winning columnist, The Daily Herald

Bess McMahon loved her cars, broad brimmed hats, broches, and long skirts. Her son, Mac drew cars.

“With clarity and lyricism, Margot McMahon relays the story of her parents' love, trials, and eventual triumph over the greatest of hardships. Not to be missed.” –Rachael Herron, bestselling memoirist

Susan Benjamin told at Landmark's Women's Month celebration architect Jean Wehrheim worked at Keck and Keck architects when they were building Man and Irene's home. Did Jean influence their home, or did the keck brothers influence her design aesthetic? Maybe a little of both. Below is elements of Jean's home:

Mac and Irene's eaves and hallways

“In Mac & Irene, Margot McMahon captures with subtlety, wit and an artist's vision the way the Greatest Generation saw the war-torn world that shaped their and our lives.” —Jay Winter, Charles J. Stille Professor of History Emeritus, Yale University and advisor to BBC’s Our War

Irene Leahy McMahon loved to fly. Anywhere, anytime. Irene also dearly loved her large family and found it was sometimes easier to travel with them.

“And if sun comes
How shall we greet him?
Shall we not dread him,
Shall we not fear him
After so lengthy a
Session with shade?”
Annie Allen, 1950 Gwendolyn Brooks

Mac and Irene were friends with poet, Gwendolyn Brooks who acknowledged Mac (Franklin McMahon) in her last published book. They had mutual friends; Alice and Albert Hayes of Ragdale and Bob and Alice Cromie of Book Beat and a collaborative Travel Column.

Nora Brooks Blakely and Margot met at Gwendolyn Brooks centenary planning meeting where they planned to portray her mother in Brooks Park. The Oracle of Bronzeville: Gwendolyn Brooks monument has a writing porch, Annie Allen poems etched in stepping stones leading to sphere representing Miss Brooks Pulitzer Prize and encircling her portrait.

Twitter @mmcm310

June 2021 Launch

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Mac and Irene Series: May Newsletter

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Coming out April 30, 2021.

Young Adult stories from author and sculptor Margot McMahon's coming of age in Chicago, where she discovers her passion for art, justice and the mystery of trees in a home that Irene kept.

Pre-order today with this link:

PayPal Airdrie

Happy Mother’s Day Irene!

How did an awarded travel writer,

Montessori art teacher and mother of nine children

in a home named

AIRDRIE

juggle it all?

The power of her mothering with seasonal patterns established a sound core of our family that can be discovered in AIRDRIE, a young adult book of the Mac and Irene series. Irene’s gravitational center inspired confidence for us to explore as she guided us in music, art, reading, writing, ‘rithmetic. (“check you spelling,” she’d have said) and sports. Irene graduated as an art teacher from Francis Parker Teachers’ College during the A League of Their Own era and flew with United Airlines to transport supplies and military. High school sweethearts, Mac and Irene were fascinated with airplanes and flying. Now I know why...

Tammie Davis Biddle’s astonishing explanation of the mind-boggling trajectory of aerial history captured the shared passion of teens, Mac and Irene during a brief time that redefined being American. First lets back up a bit. Eleven years after the Wright Brothers lifted Kitty Hawk, WWI wood and wire sophisticated bombers were built individually between 1914-1918. It’s hard not compare it to the robotic 2021 Ingenuity flight on Mars. Mac and Irene would be glued to each Mars tweet, FB post and newscast. What humans can do

Before Mac and Irene were born, in June of 1919, military pilots John Alcock and Arthur Witten Brown flew a Vickers Vimy twin-engine plane, converted to a NC-4 seaplane, in 72 hours from the U.S. to crash in Derrygimla bog at Clifton, Ireland. Winston Churchill presented them the prize money and George V knighted them. The 1929 stock market crash followed by the 1930s Great Depression delayed airplane development, yet the 1932 Chicago Municipal Airport was the busiest in the nation with 100,847 passengers on 60,947 flights.

Chicago Municipal Airport (Midway Airport) expansion plans in 1937In 1935 Boeing designed the B-17 bomber (Model 299). The Stratoliner (Model 307) was developed from the four-engine Boeing B-17. Mac and Irene were fifteen years old when Beryl Markham flew 20 hours from England on September 4th, 1936 across the Atlantic in a Vega Gill, The Messenger. Beryl survived the crash landing at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada. Two Boeing Stratoliners were ordered in1937. When Mac and Irene were graduating from high school, the 1938 Stratoliner took its maiden flight, it crashed in 1939. After the 1938 Munich Agreement failed, Britain and France ordered and financed the first mass production of U.S. planes. Aircraft technology for a limited number of bombers reached high speeds of 165 mph.

Irene flew in Boeing (307) Stratoliner Mac flew Boeing (299) B-17

In 1940, Mac and Irene were learning to drive a car when FDR ordered 50,000 aircraft, then another 50,000. Relentless sleepless nights increased strain for the required ingenuity of allocation and coordination of false starts, struggles, redesign and retraining for every nut and bolt, rivet and angle. The revolutionary B52 giant bomber, with a range of 5,000 miles, armor, armaments, and self-sealing gas tank, was developed. Aeronautic history took a giant blind leap in 1941 as the newly named Chicago Midway Airport became the nations refuel hub. Every Midwest firm had an immediate need for finite sources of aluminum, steel, copper and glass. Bent Plexiglass allowed peripheral vision for pilots and navigators to say “twelve o’clock high” with standardized mass production. Manufactured planes waited on guns, radios and propellers. Making trucks to transport fuel competed for shortages of materials. Between 1940 and 1942 300,000 aircraft were produced on Ford’s mile-long assembly line.

Irene’s Chicago flights took off from crisscrossing runways with a train track down the middle. At Molesworth, Mac navigated in the Flying Fortress that took off on intersecting runways for missions in formation.

January of 1942 Illinois Reserve Militia guarded Midway Airport in WWII

January of 1942 Boeing converted its Model 307 to military service for overseas flights. Irene graduated from Francis Parker Teachers college (near Midway Airport) after Congress cut the education bill and joined teachers to fly with United Airlines in the the Stratoliner, that cruised at 20,000 feet and held 33 passengers. Airplane production rose 16-fold from 1942’s 6,806 planes to 1944’s 96,318 planes. By 1945, overseas passenger flights were commonplace. Who wasn’t fascinated?

In 1942, Mac was a cartoonist for Chicago’s Extension Magazine when he entered training with the US Navy Air Force and service with the US Army Air Force based in Molesworth, England. He might have been influenced by Bill Mauldin’s 1930-1941 cartoons. “Bill drew six cartoons a week that were funny, original and insightful. He didn’t transform the art of cartooning but he did create camaraderie amongst soldiers,” said Todd Carpestino author of Drawing Fire. Mauldin would visit the front lines and foxhole for a week, jot down sentences and sketch images. Returning to the rear he reworked the cartoon sketches for Stars and Stipes.

A military survivor, Charles Shultz paid tribute to Bill Mauldin on Veterans’ Days.

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Franklin (Mac) McMahon’s cartoons while in US Air Force training.

Happy Centenary Birthday Irene!
May 27, 1921-1997

In 1942 High school sweethearts, Mac and Irene starting flying in the same plane. He was over Germany in a B17 Flying Fortress, she was traversing the continent with the new United Airlines. The were married in July of 1945 and, though they had nine children, never stopped taking off and landing in far away places. Published by Aquarius Press in May 2021. Read more about their WWII service in Mac and Irene: A WWII Saga.

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Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Mac and Irene Series: April Newsletter

Happy Earth Day!

Mac and Irene series: If Trees Could Talk will launch in August. Would you be willing to write a review? After one hundred years in the Adirondacks and one hundred years in Chicago, this artistic family knows how to bounce back.

For More Information Visit https://www.margotmcmahon.com

Join us for Earth Day in-person, and virtual events, to launch Green Blocks Initiative

Saturday April 24^th Gwendolyn Brooks Park, 4601 Greenwood, Chicago, IL

10:00-12:00 ASAP! Adopt Sapling Project Workshop with Green Blocks Initiative Announcement by TreeKeepers: Cynthia Quick and Margot McMahon

11:00-12:45 Poetry for Peace Workshop with Color of Change

YaleBlueGreen Judith Singleton, YBG & YChicago:Margot McMahon

ybgchicago@gmail.com

12:45 Poem in the Round: Cynthia Quick

Alternatively, ASAP! Adopt Sapling Project will Live Stream

on Facebook Wednesdays April 14th and April 28 5:30-6:15 with Q&A

https://www.facebook.com/margot.mcmahon/

ASAP! Video https://vimeo.com/416453557

EARTHRISE Amanda Gorman- reading to inspire poetry writing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92XFwAoJn6w

With 100 years in Chicago and the previous 100 years in the Adirondacks, our family's domiciles have improved while the love of trees has united five generations. Saint Francis (Frank) is a wood carved trunk Dad carved that was at our front door on Greenbay Road, Mayflower Road and Devonshire. Frank may have been who inspired me to carve wood starting in elementary school? Or, is it just what my family does?

I'll never know...

Mac's Saint Francis on Greenbay Road. Bess McMahon and Saint Francis at Airdrie on Mayflower.

Margot's ash carving of "Queen" of "Checkmate" on

Belmont and Lakeshore Drive

Please visit The Chicago Tree Project: https://www.chicagotreeproject.org/

Bess McMahon hunting in the Adirondacks (right) c.1919

Mid-1800s loggers camp in the Adirondacks. Wood was energy for heat and cooking, made paper pulp for the new printing presses and walls of homes throughout the United States. These slides are from Franklin County, NY and the AuSable River where my family lived for 100+ years. In 1894 Teddy Roosevelt protected the Adirondacks from clear cutting by designating a state park. Our great grandparents had already moved to Chicago to help build the Worlds Fair. The Adirondack forest is now past fifth generations of growth.