***Another Way To “Seek A Newer World”-For Brother Ronald Callahan Who Has Done Good In This World-Take Six  

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A few years ago when I began to reconcile myself, reconcile myself the first aborted time, with my roots, with my hometown roots that had been abandoned by me some forty years earlier for a a whole bunch of reasons but let’s leave it as I needed to blow the dust of the town off of my shoes, I had an occasion to write a short piece honoring the work of a fellow classmate from the North Adamsville High School (Massachusetts) Class of 1964, Brother Ronald Callahan. Brother Callahan had the “calling.” Had as my old maternal Irish grandmother, Anna Riley, would say hoping against hope for this poor sinner to see the light, to have the Riley clan which had survived the storms and stresses of America since the time of the “famine ship” give back to the church one of its own, would say moreover looking at me directly with those steely sainted blue eyes that brooked no lies, “the calling” to serve the Mother Church as a glad tidings bringer of the word.

This classmate had devoted himself in his chosen way to “do good” in the world as a Catholic Orotorian brother, an order pretty far down in the church hierarchy but close enough to the wretched of the earth to do earthly good rather than from some fiery fire and brimstone pulpit like some latter-day Billy Sunday raining down hell and damnation. Brother Callahan doing good as he recently related to us at my prompting (he is far too modest to have tooted his own horn) in the Message Forum section of our North Adamsville Class of 1964 website put together by the committee organizing the 50^th anniversary reunion by ministering to the sick, the needy, those who have no other recourse, those who found themselves for whatever reason behind jail bars, and the “olvidados,” the lost and forgotten of the earth. He too has done such work, has as they say labored in the vineyards for almost 50 years as well only recently backing off a little and concentrating mainly on those in prison (an interest I share from a different perspective, that of political prisoner support so I know what he is up against in his ministry).  

This year as we celebrate our 50^th anniversary of graduation from old North as the class reunion committee created the website to facilitate communications among us and round us up for probably one last time collectively. I, after a little editing, placed that piece on the Message Forum page for all his fellow classmates who have joined the site to see. I also hoped for a response in his own words and he graced those pages with a very interesting reply about the work he had done over the years. He also sent me a private e-mail (which he said was okay to make public, although I am only making my responses public) discussing a very different subject-our growing up poor in the old working class. Those remarks follows the sketch:   

For Oratorian Brother Ronald Callahan- North Adamsville High School Class of 1964- Another Way To Seek A Newer World

 

Frank Jackman , Class of 1964, comment:

Usually when I have had an occasion to use the word “brother” it is to ask for something like –“Say brother, can you spare a dime?” And have cursed, under my breathe of course, when I have not received recognition of and, more importantly, dough for my down and out status which required the use of that statement. Or I have used it as a solidarity word when I have addressed one of the male members of the eight million political causes that I have worked on in my life-“Brother Jones has made very good point. We should, of course, storm heaven to get this government to stop this damn war (fill in whatever war is going on at the time and you will not be far off).” Here, in speaking of one of my fellow North Adamsville High School classmates, Brother Ronald Callahan, I am using the term as a sincere honorific. For those of you who do not know Brother Ronald is a member of the Oratorian Brothers, a Catholic order somewhere down on the hierarchical ladder of the Roman Catholic Church. Wherever that rung is, he, as my devout Irish Catholic grandmother, the one who lived over on Young Street and was regarded by one and all as a “saint” (if only for having put up with a cranky, I am being kind here, grandfather), would say (secretly hoping, hoping against hope, that it would apply to me), had the “calling” to serve the Church.

Now Brother Ronald and I, except for a few sporadic e-mails over the last couple of years, have neither seen nor heard from each other since our school days. So this is something of an unsolicited testimonial on my part (although my intention is to draw him out into the public spotlight to write about his life and work of which I have a glimmer of long time ago recognition). Moreover, except for a shared youthful adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which I long ago placed on the back burner of my life there are no religious connections that bind us together now. At one time, I swear, that I did delight in arguing, through the dark North Adamsville beach night, about the actual number of angels that could dance on the head of a needle, and the like, but that is long past. I do not want to comment on such matters, in any case, but rather on the fact of Brother Ronald’s doing some good in this world.

We, from an early age, are told, no, ordered by parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers that while we are about the business of ‘making and doing’ in the world to do good, or at least to do no evil. Most of us got that ‘making and doing’ part, and have paid stumbling, fumbling, mumbling lip service to the last part. Brother Ronald, as his profession, and as a profession of his faith, and that is important here, choose a different path. Maybe not my path, and maybe not yours, but certainly in Brother Ronald’s case, as old Abe Lincoln said, the “better angels of our nature” prevailed over the grimy struggle for this world’s good. Most times I have to fidget around to find the right endings to my commentaries, but not on this one. You did good, real good, Brother. And from the ragtag remnant of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys in the old North Adamsville hang-out good night- All honor to Brother Ronald Callahan.

 *******

“Brother Ronald –thanks for note-[A note which referred to the fact that some of the scenes in the movie cited below  which he was using as a point of reference for growing up poor in this world which led him to devote his life to the “forgotten ones.”] I loved that the movie (and book), The Friends of Eddie Coyle, with Robert Mitchum and based on George V. Higgins novel (and probably based as well on the now captured Whitey Bulger’s life or one of his crowd, or close to it) although I did not know the movie had scenes filmed in North Adamsville. I do remember Dorchester, Boston Garden, and downtown Boston scenes.

Funny thing that movie and your reference to the scenes reminded me that in our Irish working-class dominated neighborhoods it was as likely that a guy would turn out to be a gangster (I came perilously close to that category in sixth grade but it was a near thing, as the later careers of my corner boys then confirmed), a priest, a politician (something I also came perilously close to in my Robert Kennedy days) or a cop as anything else. Our boy Eddie Coyle was just running to form, running what he knew from growing up wild on the streets of Cambridge in Whitey’s time. (I won’t speak for the gals because they were either to be nuns, very reproductive wives, or if youngest daughters to stay at home and take care of the old folks, or that is what I remember.)

Funny that your area of town was called the “poverty pit” [part of the film had been shot in his old neighborhood and his father, maybe rightly, had been upset that the film company had called the area that name] because I grew up in a shack of a house (with my two brothers, one who dropped out and should have been in our Class of 1964 and the other was Class of 1966) on Maple Street near Donegan Brothers Garage on Fillmore Street and people called that area “the wrong side of the tracks” too (including my grandparents who were born and raised on Sagamore Street-but that is another story, the story about how they thought my mother married the wrong guy). That was a tough burden to overcome, my brothers didn’t and I only make it out by fleeing the place as quickly as possible without looking back.

All I know was that it was a tough dollar growing up poor, with hand-me-downs (from the “Bargie” if you remember that institution and worse from older relatives who took us on as their family charity work) and big wanting habits that never got satisfied, when a lot of our classmates were a step above I think (although recent trips back make me thing that was just a relative thing). Those wanting habits seem kind of odd now, a car, some spending money, and a few baubles, but among the wanting habits please include that desire to get out of the house, out of the town and out to search for the great blue-pink American night which while I still have not found it loomed large, very large indeed in my life.

I carry that mark of po’ boy with me (as you do) but I have not forgotten, unlike others who moved up in the world, my roots and on the questions of war and peace, social and economic justice I know I have stood on the “right side of the angels.”

As you have, my brother Brother.  Later- Frank

P.S. Don’t forgot those Ms. Sonos memories when you get a change [our senior year English teacher].”