Biographies of Our Forefathers

Biography

Gertrude Agnes “Trudy” Tinneny

Gertrude Agnes Tinneny was the sixth child and third daughter of James J. Tinneny and Gertrude Ann Spence. She was born on June 30 1918 in the family home on Fowler Street. The physician who delivered her was Dr. Edward Eickman who was the family doctor. Years later she remembered her older sisters Moan and Clare recalling the day of her birth and wondering how doctor Eickman was able to get a baby out of that little black bag that he had brought with him into the house. For Clare and Mona that was one of the mysteries of their youth.

Photo of Gertrude as a child. From Trudy’s photo collection.

Trudy was baptized at Holy Family Church in Philadelphia on July 4, 1918. Her godparents were John Grey and Agnes McKenna Metzinger. Agnes was the daughter of Trudy’s grandmother Margaret Malloy. Her godfather Johnnie Grey was a friend of the family. He later went on to become an Olympic runner. When he was a young boy he had a lung condition. The doctor told him that if he would run it would be good for his health and that was the beginning of his running career. He did, however die of tuberculosis.

Trudy’s mother wanted her baptized June Ann, however her father wanted to name her after her mother and he was the one who took Trudy to church for her christening. He had her baptized Gertrude Agnes. Years later Trudy’s mother told her that she didn’t like Gert or Gerty which were the nick-names that were commonly used for the name Gertrude. As a result her mother called her by the nick-name Trudy and encouraged her to do the same, which Trudy did.

Trudy was raised on Fowler Street and at 240 Gates Street. The Gates Street house was one house down from what now is the parking lot of Holy Family Church. When she was just a couple of years old the family moved to 307 Hermitage Street where they lived until she was about 10 years old. Each of these places was in the Manayunk section of Philadelphia. When Trudy was about 10 years old they moved to 462 Gerhardt Street in the Roxborough section of the city. This move caused them to move from Holy Family Parish to Saint John’s Parish.

They then moved to Windover Street where they lived for a short time before moving to a house at 4129 Pechin Street in Roxborough. Sometime after 1939 Trudy and the family moved to a house on Pensdale Street. Thinking back on all of those moves Trudy recalled that several of them were necessary to accommodate the increasing number of children in the family. Years later she had asked her father why he had always rented houses instead of buying one. His response was that he did not want his children fighting over a house when he and Gert were gone as he had seen happen with his parents home.

When they lived on Wendover Street, Trudy’s cousin Frank Sickinger lived in the house next door. Trudy remembered that her father’s sister Kate Tinneny Sickinger, Frank’s mother, would stay at Frank’s house sometimes. During these stays Kate would come and visit her house and during these visits Trudy recalled her Aunt Kate acting kind of peculiar. For instance she said that after meals or refreshments Kate would collect and take with her the cocoa, coffee and tea that was left in the bottom of the cups. She also recalls that her Aunt Kate was a very fragile woman.

Trudy also recalled what turned out to be a scary event that occurred when the family was living on Wendover Street. It seems that one of the neighbors used to expose himself on a regular basis to the nurses going to and come from nearby Roxborough Memorial Hospital. He only engaged in this behavior on rainy nights. On one such night Trudy and her older sister Moan were walking home when Trudy saw the man with the umbrella. She said to Moan “Moan, look at the man he has a balloon.” Moan told her that it wasn’t a balloon that the man with the umbrella had revealed and the two ran home as fast as they could.

They ran into the house and excitedly told their parents what had happened. Their father followed by their mother took off out of the house. A chase ensued through the neighborhood yards until Gert jumped on Jim to stop him from attacking the man who had exposed himself to Trudy and Moan.

As a child Trudy loved to read but she had terrible headaches that interfered with that pastime. Years later the headaches were found to be from a brain tumor, which was diagnosed when she was in her late 20s. In addition to reading, she enjoyed holidays very much. She fondly recalled the 4^th of July parades from Holy Family Church. The Tinneny children and all of the other children from the parish would gather in front of the church on Hermitage Street dressed in their 4^th of July best. They each had a tin cup on a red, white and blue ribbon around their neck.

Mr. Connolly, who owned a candy store on Ripka Street, was a member of the Fraternal Order of Redmen. He would lead the parade on horseback dressed in full Indian garb, including a “magnificent” full feathered headdress. Trudy was among the others in the parade who would follow him up Hermitage Street to Ridge Avenue then up Ridge Avenue to Harmon Road and down Harmon Road to the Fox Farm where the annual July 4^th picnic was held with games, patriotic music and plenty of free lemonade for all.

Photo: Trudy (left) continued to march in the traditional July 4^th parade throughout Roxborough well later in life. From Trudy’s photo collection.

Trudy, her sisters and friends enjoyed playing with the full-scale dollhouse that her father had made for her. It was the talk of the neighborhood. To the present day, when people speak of her father Jim’s woodworking skills that doll house is talked about. It was complete in every detail was fully furnished, had a bathtub and even a miniature Christmas tree with all of the trimmings.

Trudy has childhood memories of a Mrs. Fox who played the organ for services at Holy Family Church. Seems that Mrs. Fox had some sort of illness that from time to time caused her to suddenly drift off from playing appropriate music on the church organ to just making noise. Then after awhile she would revert back to playing the proper music as if nothing had ever happened.

Mrs. Fox liked children very much and adopted a boy who was about Trudy’s age. The boy would taunt and tease Trudy at and on the way home from school. She told her brother Joe about the teasing that the Fox boy did and Joe told her that the next time he did it that she should call him a waif. In those days, especially in the Fox boy’s situation that term was viewed as very derogatory.

As was his habit, the boy followed her home from school with the usual taunting. Acting on Joe’s advice she called him a waif. That evening Mrs. Fox came to the Tinneny home complaining very strongly about Trudy’s comments hurting her adopted son. Although Trudy wasn’t punished she was told by her mother not to use words when she didn’t know what they meant.

Growing up, as brothers sometimes do, Trudy’s brothers gave her a rough time. For several years they had her believing that she had a very big nose. They regularly told her that it was big and teased her about it. When they walked by her they would say “Ha Cha Cha” which was the phrase that Jimmy Durante, the American entertainer who was known for his extraordinary large nose, used. They would also tease her by putting a knife or a broom handle in front of their noses when they walked in front of her. Trudy says that it wasn’t until she got out into the working world that she realized that she had a normal nose.

She also recalled an incident when her brother Joe and her father accidentally ripped out her eyebrow. It seems that zippers had just come out and Trudy had one on a new dress. Her eyebrow some how got caught in the zipper and her father and Joe came to her rescue. By the time the ordeal was over they had gotten the dress free and her eyebrow was gone.

Trudy remembered her older sister Moan taking her and her brothers Jack, Joe and Tom to the Empress Theater every Saturday. By the time that she was 6 years old Trudy liked swimming. She would walk to the bathing house at Main and Crescent Streets in Manayunk to swim. Her father, an excellent swimmer himself, frequently took Trudy and the other children to swim in the Schuylkill River for swimming outings.

As a young girl Trudy’s place at the dinning table was next to her mother. On more than one occasion using the terms “go to the devil” or “nuts” at the table got her a quick backhand from her mother.

Trudy remembered going to her Aunt Manny Weir’s house along with her sisters Clare and Moan to take hot baths. She said that the water was heated in pots over the wood- burning stove in the kitchen and carried up stairs. It was then placed in a round metal tub and the girls took their turns bathing in the tub.

From time to time Manny would send Trudy to Berger’s Grocery Store with instructions to buy anything that she wanted. On those occasions Trudy would get a veal loaf and cheese sandwich. Trudy recalled that her mother used to send her to the local store to buy Hamburg Molasses Candy. As a child she and her brother would go to that same store and treat themselves to chocolate covered cherries.

For Trudy as a child, Sundays were filled with church and visits to relatives. After Mass in the morning, the family would have lunch, then Trudy along with her brothers and sisters, would go back to Holy Family to attend Sunday school from 2:00 to 2:30 p.m. During that time they would study the Bible. Later, throughout her high school years she attended vespers on Sunday evenings.

After Sunday school, Trudy along with her brothers Jack and Joe would visit the home of her Aunt Maggie Tinneny McKenna. Each Sunday Maggie and her daughter Helen would make one chocolate and one white cake. Trudy recalled how her aunt used to give her a hot piece of cake and a cold glass of milk during these visits.

After a short visit and refreshments Trudy and her brothers would add their cousin Rose, Aunt Maggie’s daughter to their numbers and the cousins would all walk across the river via the bridge at Belmont Avenue and visit the homes of her Aunt Rose Tinneny Yeakle and their Aunt Kate Tinneny Sickinger. On Sundays when she didn’t visit her aunts she and the McCormick kids who lived across the street from the Tinnenys on Gates Street would go into the fields in back of her house and pick daisies when they were in bloom.

As a young girl Trudy remembered many fun filled days when she, her brothers, sisters and neighbor children would ride their bikes and sleds from the top of Fountain Street, where it intersects Ridge Avenue, down to Smick Street. This is a distance of nearly a mile all of which is steeply down hill. Such feats would not be possible today due to vehicle traffic.

The summer that she was 15 years old Trudy didn’t get to do much out doors with her brothers sisters and neighborhood friends. That summer she spent indoors recovering from surgery for appendicitis and a severe bout of phlebitis, which required she stay off of her feet.

Trudy attended Holy Family School for 10 years. During the first 8 years there she completed her elementary education. Her favorite nun was Sister Rose Amata, I.H.M. During the final two years she was trained in commercial subjects. She was 15 years old when she completed her schooling at Holy Family.

Photo: Holy Family School graduation 1934 with Trudy in red circle. From Trudy’s photo collection.

She then went on to Saint John’s High School for the next 2 years where her days were filled with French, Latin and Chemistry. During her school years she developed a love for poetry and became quite accomplished in writing poems.

Trudy graduated from Saint John’s High School in 1936. She applied for a job with the Container Corporation of America, which was located along the canal in Manayunk, but they wouldn’t take her. The reason was that they had a policy against hiring relatives of current employees and Trudy’s brother Jim was already working there. She did, however, find a job with Eastern Waste and Wiper Supply Company in downtown Philadelphia.

Photo taken on graduation day. From Trudy’s photo collection.

The other jobs she had were with Ornamental Iron works, working with claims for the United States Department of Veterans Administration on Wissahicken Avenue in Philadelphia. Next she worked for Strawbridge and Clothier, which was a large department store in center city Philadelphia. She was working there one day, using a pole with a hook on it to get a box down from a top shelf, when she snagged the toupee off her boss’s head. She was so embarrassed that she didn’t want to go back to work. Her mother said that she didn’t have to go back. At about that time the personnel office of Sears and Roebuck’s called and had her come in for an interview as a result of a job application that she had submitted sometime earlier. As a result of the interview she was hired and worked for Sears and Roebuck’s for several years. During World War II Container Corporation of America called her to work.

About 1943, Trudy met Vincent Joseph “Vinnie” Gallagher. He was the son of Bernard Gallagher and Ann Collins. His father was born in Dunfaglinay, County Donegal, Ireland. Trudy’s mother had encouraged her to go out with “the Gallagher boy”. Vinnie courted Trudy on Friday evenings after work at Striffling’s Tap Room in Roxborough and at the Manayunk Club.

Photo: Trudy and Vinnie in front of the Manayunk Club in Roxborough. Courtesy of Mary Pat Tinneny.

Trudy and Vinnie were married at Saint John the Baptist Church in Manayunk on June 22, 1946. Sponsors at the ceremony were Sarah Gallagher and Joe Kelly both of who were friends.

Photo: Vinnie and Trudy cutting their wedding cake with her father James J. Tinneny looking on. From Trudy’s photo collection.

Photo L: Trudy and Vinnie standing with her mother Gert Tinneny seated left and his mother. The men standing to the right (L to R) are her brother Joe, brother-in-Law Ed Houghey, and her brothers Jack and Bruce. Her sister Clare left side.

From Trudy’s photo collection.

Photo R: Trudy with her father on her left side and husband Vinnie on her right with their wedding sponsors left.

Trudy and Vinnie lived in and apartment in Germantown then moved to another apartment at Hermit Lane and Ridge Avenue in Roxborough where they lived until 1955.

About 1947, when she 29 years old, the doctors wanted to put a hole in her head to relieve the pressure that was causing the terrible headaches that she was experiencing. They said that if they didn’t do it she would be blind or paralyzed. Although she opted for less radical treatment, when she was 31 years old she underwent surgery during which a minangenoma tumor was successfully removed from her brain. Following the operation she went to live with her sister Moan and her family on Haughton Street in Roxborough while she recovered. Fortunately, she fully recovered from the surgery with no disability. However, from the time she was a child she always enjoyed bowling. She was a left hand bowler. Following the operation she was never able to regain her skill at bowling.

In 1955 she and Vinnie moved to Lindenwald New Jersey where they lived until 1960. They moved into the house in Jersey to better their chances for adopting a child, which Trudy wanted to do through the Catholic Adoptive Services. However, based on her doctor’s advice they did not adopt. They remained in New Jersey until 1960 when they moved back to Roxborough and lived in an apartment at Markel Street and Ridge Avenue. Trudy lived there until 1994 when she moved into an apartment in the Andorra section of Philadelphia.

Trudy joined the Third Order of Dominican nuns and was professed in the order in 1965. Unlike the regular nuns of the order, those in the Third Order are called Dominican laity and instead of taking vows when they are professed make promises. In addition to the promises they have a religious office to say each day, generally lead religious lives and meet as a community regularly. Trudy’s group met the third Sunday of each month during which time they pray, share community life, meet with their priest spiritual adviser, do good works such as making scapulars and take up a collection, which they sent to a needy foreign mission. Trudy, as are the other members of the order, was entitled to be buried in the religious habit of the Dominican’s. Trudy’s name in the order is Sister Rose Michael, T.O.P. The TOP stands for Third Order Penance.

Photos of Trudy as a young woman from her photo collection.

Trudy served as godmother for her Sister Moan’s daughter Susan Houghey and for her brother Tom’s daughters Karan and Mary Patricia.

After leaving their home in New Jersey, Vinnie and Trudy lived in an apartment at Hermit Lane and Ridge Avenue in Roxborough. In 1974 she was hired to work for the government’s Social Security Administration. When she started she worked only two days a week then when she was 60 years old she got on with the agency full time. While she worked there she did administrative tasks such as typing and stenography. When she retired from Social Security, Trudy worked at Saint John the Baptist Church in Manayunk as a volunteer.

Vinnie died at Roxborough Memorial Hospital on April 15, 1981. He is buried in Westminster Cemetery next to the grave of Trudy’s first cousin Rose McKenna McCaully and her husband Harry.

Trudy had her share of health problems. In addition to the brain tumor she had Legionnaires Disease in 1988 and contracted Limes Disease while walking in the woods during her vacation in 1990.

Trudy always enjoyed poetry and wrote some of her own. Following are several that she wrote in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

GROWING OLD

Though not as spry as I used to be

that really doesn’t bother me

As it’s no longer required of me

Arthritis, Asthma and High blood pressure, just to name a few

Are some of the aging ailments

that are changing my point of view

Since it happens to most

though not all of us

We really can’t question why

as we know that regardless

Of who we are or should know

we are born to die

Since acceptance is the key

to peace after all is told

It won’t matter much if

we mind a bit if we accept

The fact that we will grow old.

                                                                     Trudy [Tinneny] Gallagher

CHANGING LANGUAGE

Since I was a child, there’s been quite a change

in many ways in our language range

To be happy and mirthful meant you were gay

a shameful existence is it’s meaning today

At one time, aids meant to help or assist

now aids is a plague we want to resist

Once a cut up was a joke employer

now it’s a reputation destroyer

The use of than for that we hear every day

and “you know” and “like” are in words of the day

Di int and wou int for didn’t and woudn’t

display a lazy tongue

But it doesn’t matter, so what, who cares

is the attitude of the young

Ignore the plural they seem to say

as they drop the S that gets in their way

Ten cent is how they ask for a dime

correct punctuation equals a crime

Four letter words which are unfit to print

roll off tongues like coins from the mint

I could sure cite more examoles of that I’m sure

so let’s hope for our language we soon find a cure

Good money is paid for a good education

It’s really an insult to a teacher’s dedication

Change comes with time, it’s a fact we expect

but language changes deserves more respect.

                                                                             Trudy (Tinneny) Gallagher

THE NINETIES

The nineties are here bringing the fear

that many had thought the eighties

if this decade continued on its immoral way

the end in sight would be Hades

It started with killings, holdups and rape

and continues each month like a never ending tape

knives and guns, fire and cars

are the culprits used in these deeds

crimes of all kinds with drugs at their source

to get money to care for their needs

With no thought for the innocent lives that they take

or how very unhappy others they make

with their distorted minds they keep on killing

and to show remorse they are really unwilling

Something has to be done, what will it be

before the victims are you and me

only nine years are left for their ways to mend

before Hades becomes the predicted end.

                                                   Trudy (Tinneny) Gallagher November 1990

THE WAITING GAME

Though Aids is the curse of the eighties

there’s another claim to its fame

This other claim of the eighties

is that of the waiting game

Express lines mean nothing at all

we have to wait just the same

The waiting game can’t really be won

and one game that isn’t ever fun

Doctor’s office and supermart

banks and buses although worlds apart

Seem to operate the very same

that’s to make us play the waiting game

In department stores no help is seen

until it’s time to leave the scene

Even then the cashiers make you wait

the waiting game seems just our fate

Ulcers I’m sure are more prevalent

because your anger you find hard to vent

Since all are going through the same

the agony of the waiting game

What the nineties will bring is another thing

let’s hope it’s not more of the same

And it’s not aids I’m thinking about

but that frustrating waiting game.

                                                    Trudy (Tinneny) Gallagher February 1989

THE AGE OF AIDS

The eighties is the age of Aids

a plague with no regards for age

Innocent or guilty it matters not

when this disease strikes

Both share the same lot

The gays suffer because of their acts

not so with poor hemophiliacs

Who need transfusions to keep on living

but not the blood some donors are giving

Bisexuals infect their wives

who in turn infect their babies

With this insidious disease

which is worse by far than rabies

Since rabies can be cured if caught on time

but contact aids and death’s the bottom line

The druggies too must have their fix

but dirty needles and good health don’t mix

In the time it takes to let out a sigh

they infect themselves and will surely die

Aids has spread to the straight community

and who knows how long it’s going to be

To find a cure to protect you and me

the answer to this it seems to me

Is the resurgence of the virtue of chastity.

                                                                 Trudy Tinneny Gallagher 1989

Trudy also wrote several poems in memory of her parents. They will be found in the section on her father James Joseph Tinneny, the son of “Yankee Pat.”

Photo: Trudy (front row in rose colored dress) and her classmates at the 50^th reunion of her high school graduation reunion.

Obituary

Gertrude A. “Trudy” (Tinneny) Gallagher

GERTRUDE A. “TRUDY” (nee Tinneny), Third Order Dominican, May 27, 2004, age 85, of Roxborough, wife of the late Vincent, sister of Donald Tinneny and the late James, Joseph, Jack, Thomas and Bruce Tinneny, Clare Kelly and Mary Haughey, sister-in-law of Marie, Helen, Betty and Dot Tinneny; also survived by many nieces and nephews. Relatives and friends invited to viewing Tues 8:30 A.M. at THE KOLLER FUNERAL HOME, 6835 Ridge Ave. (cor. Of Livezey) Funeral Mass 11 A.M. Sacred Heart Chapel at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church. Int. Westminster Cem. In lieu of flowers donations in Trudy’s memory to IHM Church Memorial Fund, 819 Cathedral Rd, Phila, PA 19128 appreciated