In Memory of her father, Frank McLaughlin

I gave Donna a sympathy card on her father’s passing away which reads Nothing Loved Is Ever Lost. She had a doctor’s appointment today after which we went to lunch in an unfamiliar suburb. During a walk before going home we found a museum devoted to the American Revolutionary War. It was the house of a soldier that died during the first shots of the Revolutionary. The garden was fairly beautiful and there are outdoor guided tours during the week- in fact the house itself looks empty, so we gained as much as anyone would. Donna’s father was the prinicpal of Pleasant Point High School in New Jersey and she likes anything to do with the American Revolution here in Boston and near Harvard University. The church library where she worked before Co-Vid 19 in fact had a window to an adjoing graveyard where John Hancock, John Adams, Paul Revere and James Otis were buried. Since her father passed way this week, the musuem after hours provided a meditaive place for seenity that combines with the curiousity which life itself affords, ie. the wonder of prayer. In that way the afternoon, despite being a romantic date, was spent in the memory of her father.

The above is a photo of Donna's father from the Point Pleasant Beach Highschool year book from when Donna was attending highschool at nearby Tom's River High School, North, both on the New Jersey Shore.