Cavanaugh, 90, was ‘queen of the Omaha Irish'

The daughter of Irish immigrants came to know the Kennedys in the 1960s, glorying in their victories and grieving in their deaths.

A year ago in Omaha, Kathleen Munnelly Cavanaugh sat next to Nebraska native Theodore Sorensen — confidant, adviser and speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy.

A “Kennedy for President” poster hung on a wall. A nearby cake was topped with the words “Ask Not,” widely believed to have been penned originally by Sorensen for JFK's inauguration speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you. . . .”

In her 90 years, which ended with her death early Wednesday, Kathleen asked not. As the matriarch of a widely known Democratic family in Omaha, she surely asked for votes — for her husband, her brothers, her sons and others. But she asked little for herself.

Former Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, now president of the New School University in New York City, said she was among the kindest and most charitable people he had ever met. She was often introduced as “mother of,” Kerrey said, which he deemed “as good and honorable a title as could be bestowed.”

John Y. McCollister, a former Republican congressman, recently wrote to Kathleen that her six children's achievements are a “perfect testimony of your success.” A seventh child, Michael, died as an infant.

But she was much more than a mother, a force in her own right.

“She ran a raucous household full of kids, dogs and guests,” a family biography says, “while helping run a dynamic political organization in a male-dominated political world.”

In many ways, hers is the Omaha story, repeated in different ways by others. Her parents arrived in the city's traditional gateway, south Omaha, and worked themselves up. Her father was a packinghouse union organizer who died when Kathleen was a girl, and her mother worked for a meatpacker through the Great Depression.

Kathleen grew up in a two-story frame house at the corner of 39th and R Streets and raised her family there — finally leaving a few years ago to move in with daughter Cathy Amdor. If the walls of that old house could speak. . . .

“It was jam-packed,” said son John Cavanaugh, a former congressman. “Politics central. Everybody had to come through on election day for coffee and tea before voting.”

When her children cleaned out the house, they found thank-you notes from President Kennedy, whom she got to know when he campaigned in Nebraska. She also spent a day in 1960 campaigning with his mother, Rose Kennedy.

Kathleen's late brother, John “Red” Munnelly, who later served as Omaha postmaster, acted as co-chairman of JFK's 1960 Nebraska campaign. The family also was active in the 1968 presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, including a memorable rally at Christie Heights Park, 36th and Q Streets.

Red Munnelly's bar, Duffy's Tavern at 38th and Q Streets, was the scene of many Democratic political gatherings. Many were for Kathleen's husband, Jack Cavanaugh, a top vote-getter for the Douglas County Board when candidates ran countywide rather than by district, as they do today. He died in 1977.

Their son, John, was elected to Congress in 1976 and served two terms. Another son, Tom Cavanaugh, is the elected Douglas County clerk. Her brother James Munnelly was a longtime member of the Nebraska Public Service Commission, and brother Red Munnelly had served as a state senator.

Kathleen graduated from South High and worked in the telegraph office at the old Cudahy packinghouse. In 1942, she married another Cudahy office worker. Jack Cavanaugh joined the Army, and they lived for a time in Washington, D.C., where he was assigned to the Pentagon.

She was pregnant with her son, the future congressman, as she watched President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral cortege pass by. She and her husband returned to Omaha after the war.

Her family was so close-knit that she lived with her mother and, for a time, within a block of each of her two brothers. Though she herself didn't run for office, she organized campaign rallies, receptions and sign-making and attended numerous wakes, weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Six years ago, after the death of a south Omaha barber whose shop has served as a kind of political chat room long before computers, she lamented the passing of an era.

“It's never going to be like this again,” Kathleen told me. “As old-timers, we're witnessing a great change. I used to know everybody for blocks around. Now I don't know people on my own block.”

When Ted Sorensen visited last year in a house crowded with 100 visitors, she said it reminded her of past political rallies: “In gatherings like this, I would be making the rounds to talk to everybody.”

But she looked forward, too. South Omaha long welcomed Irish, Czechs, Poles, Croatians, Belgians and other immigrants, and a few years ago she noted that today it welcomes Asians, Hispanics and more.

Kathleen, known as “queen of the Omaha Irish,” even noted the similarity in the name of her parents' ancestral homeland to that of a celebration observed by Mexican immigrants — County Mayo and Cinco de Mayo.

In later years, Kathleen Cavanaugh served as an advocate for the elderly with the Omaha Housing Authority and volunteered to help care for Alzheimer's patients at the Douglas County Hospital's Cavanaugh Care Center, named for her husband.

Son James Cavanaugh said her heart had been failing, but her family celebrated her 90th birthday on Oct. 13 as she was in hospice care. She received hundreds of cards.

“She sat up smiling and enjoying herself, a kind of last hurrah,” he said. “She was never happier than when she had all her clan together.”

That was true to her last day.

With four generations in the room, granddaughter Machaela Cavanaugh arrived from Damascus, Syria, about midnight. Kathleen died at 1 a.m. Wednesday — as her family noted, it was about dawn in County Mayo, the top o' the mornin'.

She is also survived by daughters Mary Anne Lucas of Omaha and Dr. Margaret Mary Cavanaugh-Boyer of Mullen, Neb., as well as 23 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Visitation will begin at 2 p.m. Friday at West Center Chapel, with a wake service at 7 p.m. A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Saturday at St. Mary Catholic Church.

Although politics naturally involves conflict, James Cavanaugh said his mother disdained personal conflict.

“Everyone always commented on her smile and the glint in her eye,” he said. “She was constitutionally incapable of hating people. She didn't like it if anybody around her couldn't see past whatever difficulties they had.”

Contact the writer:

444-1132, michael.kelly@owh.com

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