BONNIE Ella (Rissky) HARRINGTON grew up in Chicago, Illinois’ Southside Pilsen neighborhood and La Grange, Illinois. She is a graduate of the Catholic Parochial School System and Nazareth Academy. Though she had graduated from Nazareth with excellent secretarial skills, she faced rejection and ridicule because of her weight during job hunting. With the help of her dad and his saying, “Don’t Lift Up Your Hood and Cuss, Call Us!”, she was hired as an Executive Secretary for Bosler Supply, a Southside Chicago tool jobber. There, she determinedly lost 60 pounds and volunteered as a hostess for a USO dance sponsered by the YMCA. There, at the March Sadie Hawkins Dance, she met Navy Petty Officer Patrick Harrington and immediately fell in love. They dated during the civil unrest of the 1968 Democratic Convention and after the Martin Luther King assassination.

 

She married Pat in December 1968 and, on his Navy transfer, moved with him to Pensacola, Florida. There they lived in a tiny garage apartment and survived Category 5 Hurricane Camille. Soon she found out she was pregnant. When Pat was transfered to Adak, Alaska, she returned home to La Grange to have her baby, Brian. After six months seperation, she traveled with Brian to Adak to unite with Pat. After surviving savage weather, multiple earthquakes and a tsunami caused by a US nuclear test, the Navy transfered Pat to Misawa, Japan. 

 

After days of flight and bus difficulty, they arrived in Misawa. There they enjoyed a wonderful friendship with Air Force neighbors John and Rosemary Baker. Misawa offered lots of natural beauty, fun festivals but also earthquakes, rough winters and a major health scare for Bonnie. At a medical checkup, a lump was discovered in her left breast and it took a terrifying week to learn it was benign. Bonnie also found that she could not call her family in the States, as she had on Adak, but had to use cassette tapes and letters with long delivery times. Finally, after 2-1/2 years, Pat was mustered out of the Navy and they got to return to her family in La Grange, IL. 

 

At Bonnie’s triumphant attendance at her 10^th High School Reunion, it became evident to her and everyone else that so much had changed in her life; no one recognized her with her slimmer figure and when she was presented with the most traveled award the room buzzed with, “That’s Bonnie?”