Commentary by Jim Walsh
Among Christians there are two major holidays: one that celebrates the birth, Christmas, and the other, Easter, marking the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. What follows is the story of a man who lived a Christian life, a man it was my good fortune to have known, Bob Casey.
Some thirty years ago, in that part of Nahant once known as Irishtown, in a coffee shop called Captain’s Seaside, Bob Casey and a circle of friends were a daily presence in that place. As was I. We called it “Chris Black’s Breakfast Club.” Its story was one of social and political—if not racial—diversity. The conversations were among millionaires and truck drivers, lawyers and firemen, male and female, social workers and entrepreneurs; Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Agnostics and others; all willing and able to engage with one another respectfully, to differ, to laugh together, to discuss serious topics of the day, books, gossip, and everything in between.
Bob Casey was the spiritual heart of our small group. We did two things; talk and listen. It was a club without borders, with a floating membership that welcomed all who followed its basic rules; listen more than talk, be respectful of other’s opinions, articulate your own on serious topics, but have a sense of humor ready to be deployed at a moment’s notice. If the riposte was fast and clever, it was admired and appreciated. But cruel sniping was not in any conversation, especially if Bob Casey was around.
Joe Klink was an officer in that breakfast club. Not that there were officers. But he would have been if we’d had them. A retired firefighter from Buffalo who took full advantage of the Harvard Extension School, he defined himself by his reading, his writing…and by the art of conversation. Joe and Bob were very close.
In 2016, at the end of a long illness, in his Bass Point apartment, Joe died, surrounded by devoted family and friends from Chris Black’s Breakfast Club. In his final months, Bob Casey was a constant presence at Joe’s bedside, as was Hugh Samson, Maureen Edison, Billy Edwards and others from the club. When his end came, we comforted his wife, Ellen, and the Klink daughters, Connie and Patty. In the following months, Bob became even more important in the lives of Ellen, Connie and Patty. They all loved Bob. We all did.
You didn’t have to be Irish to be in that club, but it didn’t hurt. Bob was Irish and Joe was more Irish than his name might imply. Bob’s father had been a cop in Lynn. His brother Jack, a Maryknoll priest who spent much of his life in Tanzania. From 1952 to 1975 gentle Bob Casey was a Catholic priest in Ipswich and Arlington. Years later, students from the Arlington Catholic School remembered Bob braving insults and dodging thrown debris while marching with the Catholic Interracial Council in South Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
But, at a certain point, Bob felt he could better practice the teachings, beliefs and values of his Catholic faith without the formal constraints of the priesthood. Actions were more important than status. In his note to Cardinal Medeiros, he also expressed his dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church’s attitude toward, and treatment of, women. It was a time too when Cardinal Medeiros, new to town, was not taking a lead role in support of school integration in Boston. In one sense Bob Casey was ahead of his time. In another, timeless. The Cardinal granted his request for a leave in 1975, and Pope John Paul II accepted his resignation in 1979. No longer a priest, his collar was plain, but he was a very good Catholic.
Bob Casey became a social worker and a writer. He helped people of all faiths every hour of every day in every way he could. As a writer, he wrote a novel, The Jesus Man, still available online and also at the Lynn and Nahant Public Libraries.
When I read The Jesus Man I did it as a duty, as something I should do out of respect for the gentle man I’d come to know. Ah, but Bob Casey was a very good writer. The book was a pleasure to read with characters both familiar and new, a plot that was surprising, touching, funny and clearly Catholic. The lives of priests are not often depicted in novels. My two favorites are Bob’s The Jesus Man and Edwin O’Connor’s The Edge of Sadness. I sent Bob’s book to a priest friend I’ve known and loved since my teenage years, Douglas Morrison. Bob was pleased to receive a note from Father Morrison saying how much he’d enjoyed it.
When Bob Casey died on June 26, 2018, he was 90 years old. As is often the case with someone that age, most of his longtime friends and colleagues had predeceased him and, for a time prior to his death, with his mobility restricted, despite the heroic efforts of his closest friends to care for him, to support him, and to bring some modicum of happiness to his everyday life, as dementia creeped in, he’d become a lonely man. The unwelcome companion to creeping dementia is creeping loneliness.
When he could no longer care for himself—even with a live-in companion we had searched for, interviewed, and hired—we found it necessary to move him to the Bertram House in Swampscott, hoping that increased daily stimulation might return his joie de vivre. It worked, but only intermittently. On his good days he entertained the ladies in the “memory unit,” singing with them the old songs they all knew. Too often, I fear, he sat alone in his room. His friends stood ready to do what they could. Hugh Samson was the leader. In his professional life, Hugh had been a tough, confrontational defense attorney. When caring for Bob Casey, though, he revealed himself as a gentle, attentive, tirelessly loving friend. In Bob’s final years we all worked through Hugh.
Everyone on the “memory floor” lived in a constant present and, for some, there seemed to be a modicum of happiness. Not for Bob. He’d once kept a whole novel in his head, playing with it, shaping it, bringing it to fruition. He knew he’d once been a free, strong and independent man, providing care to others, those in need, those who depended on his moral strength and wisdom. He didn’t want to be a “taker.” He couldn’t do it. He had always been a “giver.”
Soon…he gave up. He withdrew into himself. He stopped eating. On the morning of June 26,, 2018, he left…quietly, unobtrusively, peacefully, in his sleep. He did not want to be a burden on any of us…and he never was. Far from it.
Chris Black’s Breakfast Club is gone. Joe Klink, Bob Casey and Billy Edwards are gone. But memory is a great gift. Bob, Joe, and Billy still live in the memories of those who knew them. Bob, especially, was a Christian man of faith who had learned and practiced the most important and eternal lessons from the life of Christ…feed the hungry, house the homeless, heal the sick, welcome the stranger.
Jim Walsh is a Nahant resident.
