| Photo Album: First Communion Day, 1933
For the Byrne family all the important occasions brought them to a spot
under the Hellgate Bridge in Astoria, Queens for a snapshot. First Communion
Day for Joan Byrne in 1933 was no exception. From the serious looks on the
faces of this gathering of family and neighbours, it is easy to see that
times were tough. It was the middle of the Depression and Eugene Byrne,
an electrician, was getting only four days of work a month from the WPA.
Born in Tyrone in 1899, and raised in Dundalk, Eugene Joseph Byrne had
been hastily sent to live with relatives in New York City following the
death of his mother, Catherine Dunne, in childbirth. Arriving in 1914, he
enlisted in the Navy in 1918, and was shipped off to France to fight the
Great War. When he returned to the States, he met and married fifteen-year-old
Evelyn Miller and settled down in the mixing bowl of Astoria, Queens. Four
girls quickly followed. Although the Navy taught him a trade, steady work
was hard to find until he landed a job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the
1940s..
However, fate was not kind for the couple, and Evelyn Byrne died in 1945
at the age of 43. Eugene never remarried. In his later years, he dreamed
of one day returning to Ireland to see the father and five siblings he had
left behind. However, he never travelled back to his beloved motherland.
Perhaps he was unable to face everything that he had been forced to leave
behind as a child.
The young girl in the Communion dress grew up to be my mother. The family
had a hard time during the Depression and my mother talked about it often
when I was growing up. In fact, she used to remark that she’d seen a man
jump in desperation from the bridge in the picture, but I have never been
able to find anyone who could corroborate that information. (She could tell
a story).
– Submitted by Nan Byrne, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Please send photographs along with your name, address, phone number,
and a brief description to Declan O’Kelly at Irish America, 875 Sixth Avenue,
Suite 2100, New York NY 10001. If photos are irreplaceable, then please
send a good quality reproduction or email the picture at 300 dpi resolution
to Irishamag@aol.com.
No photocopies, please. We will pay $65 for each photo that we select.
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