SNIPPET: Born in Co. Longford, Michael DOYLE has become a priest, ministering in Camden, NJ. His book, written some yeras ago, is entitled, "It's a Terrible Day, Thanks Be to God." His grandmother, Mary McKenna CREEGAN died in the townland of Drumkeeran, near Cloone, in Co. Leitrim, July 18, 1944. She passed away in her home where she had lived for nearly 60 years, ever since Michael CREEGAN took her as a bride of 23 over the few small fields the separated her family's farm from his own. Together they raised their 13 children - five daughters and eight sons: Matthew, John Francis, Patrick, Michael, Mary Ann, Hugh, Kate, Jimmy, Bridget, Rosetta, Peter, Elizabeth and Terence, between 1886 and 1906. Rosetta, born in 1901, was Michael DOYLE's mother. Mary also tended to hens and chickens, cows, calves, and sows, while her husband worked the land, and his elderly father, Hugh helped with the children. Mary hung her pots of potatoes and porridge on the iron crook that swung like a gate over the hearth fire. Her hands kneaded loaf after loaf of bread and churned the milk of cows into butter . She tattered and carded the fleece from the sheeps' back and her spinning wheel whirred softly .. as the little ones slept, she eased out the wool she would knit to clothe them. Michael DOYLE remembers his grandmother saying she had been the happiest when baking, using a hundred pounds or more of flour a week. She was a woman of prayer and ingenuity, with her stories and her laughter, and the sorrow, too, that had its place in her heart . Before her twins were born in 1903, her firstborn, Matthew, was on a ship leaving Ireland for Ellis Island. He was just the first of eight children who would leave for the U. S. - three returned to stay, three she never saw again, and two she saw only once. Fortunately, she was able to tend to her daughters as they gave birth to her own children. Michael DOYLE wrote in 1994, "Today, as I think of her slipping from this world in a birth to a new, I feel grateful that she was there with her hands and her kindly wisdom when I first saw the light of day." Soft-headed then I slithered on to linen sheets Beneath the dripping roof of thatch My grandmother there with soothing words Knowing well herself, the pain and sweat-wet joy of birth Her own baker 's dozen up and out Five heads of hair she plaited in her time Eight sons she washed and fed There now to welcome me and lend a holy hand She cleaned the wrappings from my face And found the traces of her own. Michael's cousin from home, Maggie CURRAN, who worked in Katie O'Brien's, a restaurant five miles from Camden, reminded Michael DOYLE that Mary "was never bet" - that is, never beaten for a plan. When there was no cradle yet for the infant son of daughter Mary Ann, Mary McKenna CREEGAN laid him on a blanket tucked safely inside a horse's collar by the fire. . -- Excerpts 2004 issue of "Leitrim Guardian" yearly periodical. --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.701 / Virus Database: 458 - Release Date: 6/8/2004