Jim Walsh
My father was a working-class guy and an entrepreneur. I think. But he, like all of us, defies categorization. He was both those things and more. Much more. Like all of us.
He was born in 1903 and grew up across the street from a fire station in Hartford, Conn. As a boy, on Saturday mornings he would open the apartment window and climb out onto the fire escape to watch the fire horses go through their paces across the street. Fire horses! Some 50 years later, he saw Neil Armstrong exit his spacecraft and step onto the surface of the moon.
Dad had health problems growing up and, as a result, attended a “fresh-air school” where classes were held outside or with the windows open. Sometimes, the students wrapped themselves in blankets as they were being taught. In the opening decade of the 20th century schools were often designed to circulate as much fresh air as possible. The Valley Road School in Nahant had that kind of design.
Dad had a bachelor uncle, Francie, who owned a tobacco farm outside of Hartford. Even before his teenage years began, Dad worked on Uncle Francie’s farm. There was an implicit promise that the farm would be one day his. After high school, he attended Storrs Agricultural College for a year. It would later become the University of Connecticut. His life was unfolding before him. He was one happy guy… until, while he was at Storrs, Uncle Francie decided to get married, and dad’s agricultural future slipped away. Then his mother died. On her death bed she made him promise to never drink. She was too aware of the Irish Curse and feared for his future when she was gone. Around that time too his father was laid off from the Otis Elevator factory. He was replaced by a younger, cheaper fellow. There was no union. It was the heyday of capitalism, just moments before the stock market crash of 1929, which signaled the end of that form of capitalism.
Elements of chaos and uncertainty began to define his life in that period. His only sister had run off with a sailor. But he made friends with Jack Kerwin, whose family ran a beach hotel in Milford, Conn. Jim Kerwin, Jack’s father, had fathered 13 children, eight of whom survived, but he was not a reliable fellow. The Irish Curse may have played a part in that, but it resulted in his oldest daughter, Flora, making a commitment to her mother to stay with and support her until her youngest sister, known as Woofie, graduated from high school… something Flora was never able to do. This promise came to the fore when my father, Harold, proposed marriage to Flora, my mother, and she turned him down. “I made a promise to my mother,” she told him, to which he responded, “Fine. I’ll wait.”
And he did. For 15 years.
They married in Milford in 1942. They were both near 40. Flora was not ready to have a first baby at that age at that time. It wasn’t done. Meanwhile, in a town not far away, Rita gave birth to Little Johnny into a very unhappy family. So unhappy that a year later, Rita decided to put Little Johnny up for adoption.
Meanwhile, Flora and Harold decided that they really wanted to have and care for children. That’s when I entered the picture. With the help of Mary Farr from Catholic Charities, little Johnny Ullerup became little Jimmy Walsh. One loving mother handed off a boy to another loving mother. It was jackpot time for me.
A few years later, Flora and Harold adopted a little girl, Margaret. The war had come to an end. Harold was a factory worker at the Bridgeport Brass Company. He and Flora also had an auction business to supplement the household income. They worked hard to take care of my sister and me. There was no extra money. As a family, we went on two vacations, one to a lake in Maine and the other to Atlantic City.
Fast forward to 1973. On dad’s 70th birthday we had a small gathering in the kitchen of our home in West Haven. I had gone through a variety of changes. I had been a construction worker, then a college student, then a father myself and then, painfully, a divorced father. My former wife took our kids to Florida to start a new life. I had worked in a program at Yale University and then as a community worker in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. My father had always worked the second shift at his factory and on many weekends, he was doing or preparing for auctions. We did not spend a lot of time together. He was never home at night during the week. Yet, when I was in high school he was the one that made breakfast for me as my mother slept in. It worked for both. Some combination of his job shift and, perhaps, the fact that I was adopted, resulted in our not being close. Like so many fathers and sons, I think, tensions can arise. I loved him and he loved me, but, always at a physical distance. On his 70th birthday, I decided I wanted that to change.
When the birthday cake and the stories were done, I announced that I really wanted to hug my father. We had never been huggers before. We were not kissers. But in the late 1960s there had been an evolution in the way colleagues encountered each other physically. The program I worked in at Yale had made physical contact normal. If I could hug the friends I’d made at Yale then, dammit, I should be able to hug my father. And I did. Right there in the kitchen that night. It was transformative.
I moved to Massachusetts some months after that birthday celebration. Not long after, my ex-wife moved back from Florida and I would travel to New Haven every other weekend, stay with my parents, and spend time with my daughters.
My father lived for nine more years.
Every single time my father and I parted from that night on, we hugged. We kissed each other’s cheek. His discomfort had disappeared almost instantly, as had any reservations on my part.
The last time we saw each other, he dropped me off at the railroad station in New Haven. We hugged and kissed and said goodbye. It is a beautiful, loving memory to have.
Jim Walsh is active in the Nahant community.
