Constable: Dying woman's final wish zings Clinton
Retired Arlington Heights teacher Julia A. Jachec died Thursday, two days after her 85th birthday. But her sense of humor and political activism are thriving this week because of the last line in her obituary: “Julia's final request was that in lieu of flowers people not vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
A suggestion that Jachec was endorsing Clinton's more liberal Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, draws a chuckle from one of her daughters.
“My mom was a conservative and a devout Catholic,” says Mary Ellen Jachec, a doctor who left her practice in Michigan to care for her mom and her dad, Stanley, who died in 2014 at age 87. “They were Depression survivors, World War II people, who took care of their families and paid their taxes.”
The political line in her obituary came up recently during a conversation while the politically active mother and daughter were watching Fox News.
“She was bed-bound and could only move her left hand, but she was enraged. All she could do is talk to me and pray,” the daughter says. A strong opponent of abortion, the elder Jachec disagreed with Clinton's support of Planned Parenthood, found the Democratic candidate “not trustworthy” and thought she was guilty of “scapegoating.” Of course, the line could energize some to work harder to elect Clinton. Adding the line to the end of Jachec's obituary was a way to make a point and be funny, her daughter says.
“She would never have said that to me except that she was dying: ‘Yeah, forget the flowers,'” the daughter recalls.
“It's the first time we've done anything like that, and I've been here for 40 years,” says Jim Murray, general manager at Lauterburg & Oehler Funeral Home in Arlington Heights. Having joined the funeral home in 1975, Murray says he once toyed with running for village trustee. His uncle told him that politicians can alienate potential customers, and “we want to bury everyone.”
On the day Jachec's family submitted the obituary, Murray saw a similar story about a Pittsburgh chiropractor whose obituary requested, “Please don't vote for Donald Trump.” Since the beginning of the millennium, several of these political obituaries have made national news. People asked that mourners vote for or against a candidate. A few requested donations to a candidate or party. Political matriarch Barbara Bush once read an obituary that pushed her into action, “In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you cancel your subscription to The New York Times,” it read. “So I did,” Bush told Fox News in 2014.
Julia Jachec was one of three children born to John and Julia Madden, Irish immigrants who worked multiple jobs to send their kids to Catholic schools in Chicago. She grew up in a family that embraced Mayor Richard J. Daley and President John F. Kennedy.
“She had been a passionate Democrat for a long time,” her daughter remembers. “She went to see Kennedy when he came to Chicago.”
She met Daley during a St. Patrick's Day Parade in Chicago.
“He told her, ‘You're a lovely Irish lass,' and it just made her day,” Mary Ellen Jachec says. “She wanted to be a nun, and her mom said no. She wanted to be a stewardess, and they rejected her because she was 5-foot-10 and too tall.”
Instead, she graduated from Chicago's Mundelein College in 1952 and taught at a couple of Chicago elementary schools, where she often used her own money to buy supplies, and even food, for poor children. She left teaching for a dozen years when she and her husband started their family with Mary Ellen, Kathleen, Kevin, Michael and Patricia. Julia resumed her teaching career in the 1970s with Arlington Heights School District 25 and received her master's degree from DePaul University in 1977 while working full time and rearing five teenagers.
“She was known as the queen of the one-liners,” says Mary Ellen Jachec, adding that the obituary barb fit the sense of humor for her mom, who wasn't a Tea Party member, a Republican or a Democrat,
“She watched all the debates, Democratic and Republican, and she watched the president's State of the Union,” her daughter says. “With the Democratic and Republican debates, she'd look at me and say, ‘Is this the best we can do?'”
While she made known her opinion about Clinton, Jachec did take one political mystery with her to the grave.
“She wasn't part of a party. She had a more complex political view,” her daughter says. “She never did tell me who she was going to vote for.”