Mina P. Shaughnessy - Married Life and Early Career

Married Life and Early Career

During this time, Mina met and married Donald Shaughnessy in September 1953. Though they were physically apart for much of their married life, their first few years were filled with excitement and mutual appreciation. A native New Yorker, Don was familiar with city life, race, and politics. Much of this was transmitted to Shaughnessy, who would deal with New York City politics and different races with Open Admissions. With Don living abroad for multiple years at a time, Shaughnessy was able to plunge herself into her studies, teaching, and directing the writing program at City College.

As Shaughnessy and Raymond Fosdick were wrapping up the Rockefeller manuscript, Mina and Don were also preparing for a move to Italy, where Don had secured a position teaching history. In Italy, Raymond Fosdick’s office had arranged a part-time job for Mina. Perhaps comparable to the student writing she would later defend, Shaughnessy, at this time, complains of the pastor’s remedial writing skills: "I have this rewriting job. But what a pain. I try to devote most of my afternoon to it but it is so awful. An assistant pastor’s recollections of his experiences at Riverside Church – badly written and permeated with that sort of limp and pallid good will which one associates with assistant ministers in Protestant churches. I have done very little except read it and stew over the impossibility of making anything decent out of it" (60). In addition to her rewriting of the pastor’s recollections, Shaughnessy also involved herself in literary circles, most notably receiving a scholarship to the Salzburg Session on American Writing and Publication.