Forever Mary

Whenever a new acquaintance asks me if I have any brothers or sisters, I always tell the same story. I say, yes, I am from a good Catholic family. I have two older brothers – John and David – and then me, Thomas, and then I always say, "Followed by a little sister named ... " And then I pause and raise my eyebrows in question and wait.

About 99% of the time, the following then happens. I watch the wheels turn in the brain of this person to whom I've presented this fun little challenge. Then after a few seconds, they inevitably brighten and triumphantly announce to me:

"Mary!"

And I smile and say, "YES!" And then I tell them that Mary was, is and always will be "The Princess" of Jack Marshall's family. And usually they chuckle agreeably and say they understand how that certainly must be true.

Mary Louise Marshall arrived on the scene on October 29, in a year I dare not mention, when I was about 2½ years old. At that very moment, the balance of power in what had been decidedly a male dominated household (with my father and his three sons easily holding the gender advantage over the lone woman in the house, Giffy) changed forever.

Gone were closets full of blue baby and toddler clothes, passed down from one brother to another. Gone were jeans with multiple knee patches. Gone were trips to the emergency room for one injury or another. Gone were boys who smelled like ... well ... BOYS!

In their place were all new clothes. Pretty pink things with satin ribbons. Sweet smelling baby powders and lotions. Lacy dresses, knee socks, patent leather shoes. Bangs and baby dolls.

And one more thing. More pictures of Mary than of all of the rest of us put together.

Jack Marshall, the father of three sons, was a great documentarian of our young lives. When little Mary came along, Jack Marshall, father of three boys and one precious little girl, was smitten. Jack Marshall was overcome by the desire to capture and preserve for all time every cute little expression, smile, giggle, flirt and characteristic of his only daughter.

The pictures you see with this post – a portrait (top), taken when Mary was not quite 3, the picture of her splashing in the puddled rain in the back yard of our then brand new house on Audubon Place (bottom) taken on June 29, 1963, and the self-portrait of Mary and Jack together (at the beginning of the post) – are three of what are literally dozens (or perhaps hundreds, I can't say for sure) of photographs of Mary that I have encountered since I began the project of compiling Dad's photographs for The Jack Marshall Collection™.

Sometimes I think, this all makes me sick!

And if Mary weren't such a wonderful person, and a great sister, and a loving wife to Larry Cobb and the super mom to some fantastic nieces and nephews of mine, it probably WOULD make me sick. But she is all of those things, so I can't really begrudge my father for wanting to immortalize seemingly every moment of her young life.

If you want to see more of my father's photographs of his precious little daughter, click here for the "Mary" gallery on The Jack Marshall Collection™ website. (Come back often to this gallery because I promise I will be adding more photos.) And if you want to see what she and her brothers and mother look like now, this photo was taken last Thanksgiving.

Today, Mary still has traces of that same impish smile, and she unfortunately has passed on to all of her children the subconscious need to stick out their tongues to "get it just

right" when trying to accomplish a difficult task. I still can see that little girl in her every day. The pictures that Jack Marshall took of his little Princess are a wonderful legacy, to be treasured forever.

(By the way, I'm totally fine with all of this. I have no problem whatsoever with the fact that Dad liked her best. Or that my older brothers beat up on me but I never was allowed to lay a finger on Mary. Over the years, I've come to terms with all of it. The therapy and medication haven't been too expensive, and the doctors say that some day I'll be 100% cured. Really. I'm good.)

– Tom Marshall, New York City