Mrs. Esther McCabe - Lilly, Pennsylvania - Citizen Memorials on Waymarking.com

Mrs. Esther McCabe - Lilly, Pennsylvania

This memorial is dedicated to Lilly resident Esther McCabe, who was a widow and had 12 children, 11 of them boys, who all enlisted in some aspect of World War II.
Esther Scanlan, a native of the Scanlon Hill section of adjoining Washington Township, married Emmett McCabe, a active coal miner who had his life taken away early due to an apparent train accident and made Esther become a widow of her 12 children during the Great Depression relining on crops from their family plot on Scanlon Hill to feed herself and the children.
During Wartime, most of her children were coming of age and she encouraged them to join the military as stated by this quote she told each of her children as they joined the military:
"It is your duty to serve your country. Go and do the best job you possibly can, and God bless you"
McCabe’s first public recognition as the quintessential war mother came in 1943. It came during a gathering in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to support a war bond promotion by the Blue Star Mothers of America. McCabe shocked other attendees by naming her sons in the service (10 at that time), along with their ages and locations around the world. On Mother’s Day the following year, when still a mere 10 of the McCabe boys were serving their country, the organization War Mothers in the United States named McCabe the Nation’s Number 1 Mother. Soon afterward, another McCabe signed up for service, and his mother earned the unique distinction of having 11 sons in the war. Eight were in the army, two in the navy, and one in the merchant marine. Before long, McCabe received another award, Pennsylvania’s Number 1 War Mother, from the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publisher’s Association. Soon, she began appearing as a guest on regional and national radio shows.

This marker was placed here by the Lilly-Washington War Memorial Association on May 29, 1999

Marker Text
In recognition of
MRS. ESTHER McCABE
Wife of Emmett McCabe, for being
Designated as the nation's No. 1 war
mother, by the American War
Mothers,who had 11 sons in the
Armed Forces during World War II

Dedicated this 29th Day of May 1999

SOURCES FOR INFORMATION

• America in WWII Magazine (December 2007 Issue)
• Reading Eagle Article: "Widow Has 10 Sons In The Armed Forces"