Comments:
The ’57 yearbook says “future ambition is to do a lot of traveling,” but the kind of traveling that meant she put off for almost 50 years. The traveling she did do was on horseback, leaning left and right, kicking up dust and racing through a course metal barrels. The summer following graduation Lasz was part of Marlene Lynn’s wedding, then a few weeks later she married Robert McDonough of Glen Cove. His father had a stable and soon Rita and Robert were on the barrel racing circuit on Long Island and in upstate rodeos. Crashing into one of the metal barrels and coming near ruining a leg didn’t stop her. When her children became old enough, they also began riding.
She always had a desire for distinct transportation, and while other kids in school were engaged in sports or cheer leading and twirling, she left the twirling squad and started work at Lord and Taylor’s, taking the bus from St. Boniface’s corner after school and on weekends. Meanwhile her friends were having a good time at Cozy Corner. She says she thought of them and “I used to eat my heart out.” But she knew why she was working and in the senior year she got what she was after—a red ’49 Ford convertible.
Rita and Robert also occasionally rode motorcycles. Their first child, born in January 1960, would grow up to become a motorcycle policeman. Their second daughter was born in December of the same year, and another daughter a few years later. Robert drove a tractor trailer before working in the post office. Rita worked in the administrative office of the St. Christopher’s children’s home in Sea Cliff, then for Helm Industries. Robert, unfortunately, died in 1984.
When Rita remarried to Glen Harvey in 2006 she began traveling—in her own style, of course. She and her husband drove a rented truck full of her son’s possessions to his home in Lolo, Montana, driving headlong into a South Dakota blizzard that stranded them for two days. They also took on the Arkansas River in Colorado on a rafting trip that she says “was like a death wish.” They both came out whole, but only after her husband pulled in their guide who had been washed overboard.
Although her son has moved off the Island, both daughters are on Long Island, Kim close by in a house behind hers in Glen Cove, and Rita enjoys her two granddaughters. She has one granddaughter in college in Oswego, a grandson who is a policeman, and a grandson in the Air Force who saw service in Afghanistan. She continues to be a close friend of her kindergarten classmate Pat Tenke. She misses horseback riding, but she says, “Having grandchildren is the most wonderful thing.”
