‘Did you ever see something so beautiful?’

A eulogy for Peggy Foley, who died Dec. 11, 2024.

On Nov. 4, 1948, 8-year-old Peggy Clifford skipped school.

She had permission. It was two days after the Presidential Election, and her dad, Bill Clifford, a union plumber and a good Democrat, had gotten wind of the fact that newly re-elected President Harry S Truman was traveling by train from his home in Independence to Washington, making whistlestops along the way to thank supporters.

So Peggy got the day off, and she and her dad took the streetcar from their flat on Montgomery Street to Union Station. As she would tell it, Bill got her as close to the platform as he could, even putting her on his shoulders in the crowd of 20,000, according to newspaper reports.

Those of you who know history will know what was about to unfold: It was in St. Louis, on the back of that train at Union Station, that someone handed the president a two-day old copy of the Chicago Tribune, with the headline “Dewey Defeats Truman.” He famously responded ‘That’s not how I heard it,’ and smiled for a LIFE photographer who took one of the most iconic photographs in American political history. 

And Peggy Clifford, all of 8, was just a few feet away. Thus began Peggy’s Forest Gump-ian romp through political history of 20th Century, as that would not be the first time she would find herself at the intersection of circumstance and serendipity. She was one lucky girl.

My name is Leslie Gibson McCarthy and it’s my supreme honor to be up here talking about this remarkable woman. I’m Peggy’s only niece on the Clifford side of her family, the daughter of her only sister Betty.

And so to my cousins, Tom and Boo; 

to Wendy, Mary and Melanie; 

to her grandkids Patrick; Andy & Jenny, Brandon & Toni, Tim & Natalie; and Sean;

to her only brother, my uncle Jim Clifford and our lovely Aunt Cheryl;

to those 3 beautiful great-grandbabies – and one on the way;

and to the rest of you nephews and nieces, cousins, friends, neighbors, bingo partners and partners in crime, my deepest, deepest condolences.

We have lost our matriarch.

We still feel her presence

And what a presence she was. Peggy was a woman who loved God, her family, being Irish (and Democrat), a good game of bingo and a pack of Winston cigarettes, not always in that order. 

She did not know a stranger and she never shied away from making friends or finding the humor in the most challenging of situations. She did not always follow the rules. 

As a junior at St. Alphonsus “Rock” High, for example, she and a classmate snuck out one night to a club in East St. Louis to hear a group called the Kings of Rhythm, with a lead singer named Lil Annie. It would been about 1957. Peggy was class chair of the entertainment committee, and she needed a band for the junior prom.

Somehow, in between sets, 17-year-old Peggy negotiated a booking. “I got them at a good price,” she’d recall. That singer, “Lil Annie” was Annie Mae Bulloch, who would go on to become Tina Turner. Yes, Peggy booked Ike & Tina Turner to play a dance at Rock in 1957 before they were famous. I can only imagine what her parents, Bill and Helen, thought about a trek to a nightclub in East St. Louis. My guess is they never knew.

After high school, Peggy worked as a bank teller. She told me recently she applied to and had earned a scholarship to Mizzou, which she wanted to take but her dad wouldn’t allow it. The only careers girls needed a college education for, he told her, were nursing or teaching, neither of which suited her.

So she married her high school sweetheart, CBC graduate Jerry Foley in the summer of 1959 and the young couple moved to San Diego, where Jerry was stationed in the Navy. I imagine that was a great adventure for her, being outside of St. Louis for the first time (except for that trip to the nightclub).

That’s where John was born in July of 1960. By the following spring of 1961, now pregnant with Tom, she decided she needed to come home and so she and John flew TWA back to St. Louis.

At the time, there were no direct flights to St. Louis from San Diego, so she somehow had to navigate a connection in Los Angeles with a suitcase, a baby, a purse and a baby bag – all while visibly pregnant. She was doing her best making her way through the airport when a tall gentleman offered assistance. She gladly took him up on it, as she was worried about getting to the gate on time. She’d say later that she thought she heard whispers as they walked through the terminal, but the man never said anything beyond small talk as they walked. When he got her to her gate, he tipped his hat, and politely said, “Have a good flight.”

It was only when she got on the plane that the stewardess looked at her pregnant belly and whispered, “Exactly how well do you know Lee Marvin?” Aunt Peggy always had a knack of being in the right place at the right time. 

She made it back to St. Louis, and Jerry did too, a few months later, and they settled on St. Henry Street in St. Ann. That’s where they were living when Boo was born in 1964, and the Foleys would be fixtures in both St. Kevin’s parish and St. Ann for more than 50 years.

As the boys grew older, she went to work in the St. Louis office of former U.S. Rep. Jim Symington; later, she worked for the City of St. Ann; and then as an administrative assistant to the Maryland Heights police chief. In her very first week on the job, Axl Rose decided to start a riot during a Guns N Roses concert at what was then known as Riverport Amphitheater. Peggy fielded calls from media all over the world. 

She helped her boys start the floral business on St. Charles Rock Road, busted her buttons when Boo was elected state representative and started his lobbying career in Jeff City. She hosted Gov. Mel Carnahan in her backyard in St. Ann, just a few months before his tragic death in a plane crash.

But despite her talent for showing up on the fringes of political pop culture, it was her family who remained the center of her life. Her family and her friends. “She would literally give you the shirt off her back,” her friend and bingo partner Judy told me.

Once, on a trip to Las Vegas, a place she loved to visit, Judy’s luggage was damaged so badly her clothes were torn and shredded. The airline gave her money to buy new ones, but neither one of them wanted to spend money on clothes in Vegas, so Peggy shared her wardrobe with Judy for four days. 

She loved those Vegas trips and she traveled the world too, seeing Italy, France, Germany, England and Ireland, with her beloved Aunt Florence and with friends and family. She never let setbacks get her down, even finding herself suddenly single and having to start over at the age of 45. The only event that dimmed her spirit was losing her beloved John in 2010. I know he was the first one she hugged the moment she got to heaven.

She centered her life in her boys and her family, in her friends, in her travels, and in bingo. Peggy had easily a 75-year relationship with the game of chance. It didn’t matter if she won anything, just being there brought her so much joy. Bingo was a love affair that started at church picnics and VFW halls, from north St. Louis to St. Ann, from covering bingo cards with beans and tokens to the modern electronic version she’d play Friday Nights at the Wentzville American Legion.

She’d get there early to get her spot – 3:30 on a Friday for a 5 p.m. door opening. She had her tokens and tchotckes, her routines and her mantra. And she brought along as many friends and family as she could, and was not above using her grandsons as distractions for the “old ladies” surrounding her. “Oh look, my grandsons came to play tonight.” To Peggy, bingo was a competitive sport. Especially in her later years, she was happiest when her friends and her family were with her in a bingo hall or a casino, enjoying the surroundings, the hot dogs, and calling out winning cards.

If Peggy told you she was going to do something, she did it. Her heart was as big as it was strong. Another example: She was known in the family for being the one strong enough to take the family dogs to the humane society when they were too sick to carry on. But first, Peggy would take them through the drive through at Steak N Shake. She’d buy them a steakburger and feed it to them in her car, because, she said, every dog deserved a good last meal. But after a while everyone knew that if Peggy asked you to go to lunch and she said “Steak N Shake,” you best be taking two cars.

She loved holidays, family recipes and cooking. She tried to teach all of us girls how to make chicken and dumplings, not with a recipe but by demonstration. I never got that gene – or that recipe. But what I wouldn’t give to eat those chicken and dumplings one more time.

She loved her boys, and our branch of the Clifford family is pretty good at making them. She especially loved those grandsons. When those boys came over, she would make, as Andy said, “dippy eggs,” and also give them no limits on the amount of chocolate syrup in their milk. She taught them the value of money by offering them a quarter if they’d rub her feet. And she loved to brag on her boys, every last one of you, starting with John, Tom and Boo, and skyrocketing when those grandsons entered the picture. She loved all the women who came along to the Foley Family, too. Ladies, you know there was a litmus test: Are you Irish? Catholic? Democrat?

In the end, it didn’t really matter. What did matter is that she knew you loved her boys as much as she did, and that you would continue loving them when she was gone.  

And her love knew no boundaries. Among the gifts Aunt Peggy gave to my family was stepping up when our mom Betty died in 1994. Betty only got to see two of her nine grandchildren, but Peggy never once missed sending each of them $2 in a birthday card until they were 18, along with showing up for First Communions and graduations. To all the Foleys, thank you for sharing her with us. She gave us her presence, and in doing so kept our mom’s spirit alive for so many years.

Another gift Aunt Peggy gave me was a trip to Ireland in 2008. It was magical and life-changing to step foot in a place where your soul felt it had been before. One day, early in the trip, we got off the bus and all you could see for miles of the Irish countryside were rolling green fields, tiny sheep grazing and a majestic castle on top of a hill. 

Everyone just stood there, soaking it all in and she came up to me, put her arm around me and said, “Did you ever think your eyes would see something so beautiful?”

No Aunt Peggy, I never did.

And now I ask you: Have we ever seen a life so beautiful?

Have you ever met someone who lived so vibrantly and loved so vivaciously? Have you ever met someone who looked misfortune in the eyes and said – well I can’t say in church what she said, but you can fill it in.

Her last nine months of her life were the most difficult, when a spinal stroke left her unable to walk yet unbreakable in spirit. Every time I’d visit, she’d first ask me how I was doing, and what my boys were up to. And I know for a fact she was the most beloved patient on the wing of that rehab center. 

Peggy Clifford Foley packed a lot of life in 84 years. She would understand our tears but she would make sure we had a handkerchief to dry them. And instead of letting sadness linger, this is what she would want you to do:

She’d want you to put yourself out there because you never know what almost-famous person you might meet;

She’d want you to live in faith instead of fear;

To face adversity with humor;

To arrive early, and stay late;

To play the games of chance;

To dance the dance and lift the glass;

And to toast the Irish every day.

Slainte! Aunt Peggy. Until we meet again