***Of This And That In The Old North Adamsville Neighborhood-In Search Of….. A Few Good People

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

For those who have been following this series about the old days in my old home town of North Adamsville, particularly the high school day as the 50^th anniversary of my graduation creeps up, will notice that recently I have been doing sketches based on my reaction to various e-mails sent to me by fellow classmates via the class website. Also classmates have placed messages on the Message Forum page when they have something they want to share generally like health issues, new family arrivals or trips down memory lane on any number of subjects from old time athletic prowess to reflections on growing up in the old home town. Thus I have been forced to take on the tough tasks of sending kisses to raging grandmothers, talking up old flames with guys I used to hang around the corners with, remembering those long ago searches for the heart of Saturday night, getting wistful about elementary school daydreams, taking up the cudgels for be-bop lost boys and the like. These responses are no accident as I have of late been avidly perusing the personal profiles of various members of the North Adamsville Class of 1964 website as fellow classmates have come on to the site and lost their shyness about telling their life stories (or have increased their computer technology capacities, not an unimportant consideration for the generation of ’68, a generation on the cusp of the computer revolution and so not necessarily as computer savvy as the average eight-year old today).

Some stuff is interesting to a point, you know, including those endless tales about the doings and not doings of the grandchildren, odd hobbies and other ventures taken up in retirement and so on although not worthy of me making a little off-hand commentary on. Some other stuff is either too sensitive or too risqué to publish on a family-friendly site. Some stuff, some stuff about the old days and what did, or did not, happened to, or between, fellow classmates, you know the boy-girl thing (other now acceptable relationships were below the radar then) has naturally perked my interest.

Other stuff defies simple classification as is the case here when a fellow classmate felt  compelled to honor another classmate who had spent his life doing good works while a member of a Catholic clerical brotherhood. This one can stand on its own and needs no further introduction by me:  

 

In Honor of Brother Ronald Kelly  

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?” Or have used it as a slang word when I have addressed one of the male members of the eight million political causes that I have worked on in my life. Here, in speaking of one of our fellow classmates, Brother Ronald Kelly, I am using the term as a sincere honorific. For those of you who do not know Brother Ronald is a member of the Xaverian Brothers, a Catholic order somewhere down the hierarchical ladder of the Roman Catholic Church. Wherever that is, he, as my devout Irish Catholic grandmother would say (secretly hoping 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 several 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). Moreover, except for a shared youthful adherence to the Catholic Church which I long ago placed on the back burner of my life there are no religious connections that bind us together. At one time I did delight in arguing, through the 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 that fact of Brother Ronald’s doing 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 for what I want to say, but not on this one. All honor to Brother Ronald Kelly.