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In Memory

Mary Eileen McGrath

 
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08/08/19 02:13 PM #1    

Thomas Keerl (Webmaster)

 

Trish Logan, a friend of Eileen, found an interesting paper written by Eileen in 1985 while she was a Captain and attorney for the US Army which had to do with nuclear weapons and the teachings of the Catholic Church.  The attached document was edited to only include her article in a Military Legal Review document. Read if you are interested.

/000/5/9/7/35795/userfiles/file/Nuclear%20weapons.pdf

Eileen died of cancer in the late 80's


08/09/19 12:21 PM #2    

Al Lehnen

I am pretty sure Eileen died tragically in a traffic accident on Interstate 75 in Kentucky in 2008. There was an obituary in JC online. As I recall from 1989, the thirty-year reunion held on Saturday-Sunday, 7/01-7/02, Eileen was affiliated with a women’s religious community in Austria.  

I have just read her 1985 treatise on the morality/legality of nuclear weapons. It is very well written. At that time the proposed Strategic Defense Initiative (“Star Wars”) was a project being funded and under R&D. Her article pre-dates the Reykjavík Summit and eventual INF treaty. All of this makes for an interesting historical and moral perspective. The 1991 demise of the Soviet Union and the subsequent revelations of Soviet military doctrine with regard to first use of nuclear weapons makes Eileen’s thesis even more interesting. In 1991 I felt that the long nuclear nightmare was over and that lasting peace between nations with thermonuclear arsenals was almost a reality. In hindsight, that was rather naïve. For the sake of my children and grandchildren and all future generations I hope and pray that someday humans can attain a level of rationality and self-interest that would eliminate and effectively prohibit all nuclear weapons.


08/09/19 06:25 PM #3    

Al Lehnen

Corrections to my previous post: The class reunion in 1989 (thirty years ago) was obviously the twentieth not the thirtieth. Also, it was not stated in the 1989 booklet of class memories that Eileen was a member of a religious community. That information was printed in a 2004 all school alumni directory I received in the mail.


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