Beverly Beckham: A patriarch, forever in shadow

By BEVERLY BECKHAM, Boston Globe

Last update: November 22, 2009 - 2:42 PM

This is what I know about my father's father: His name was James Francis Curtin. He was born May 2, 1897, in Cambridge, Mass., to Mary Callan. He had a sister, Eleanor. They lived on Portsmouth Street. He enlisted in the Army on Aug. 27, 1918. He was given one belt, one pair of gloves, a pair of underwear, one undershirt, one overcoat, one poncho, three pair of stockings and a barrack bag. He was 5-foot-7, had brown eyes, black hair, a dark complexion, was single and was a Teamster. Three months after he enlisted, World War I ended, and he was honorably discharged. On Sept. 27, 1920, his first son was born. A year and a half later, he married his son's mother, Catherine Cecilia Quinn. They had three more sons, James, Lawrence and LeRoy. They lived at 314 Windsor St. When his youngest was still in diapers, he abandoned the family.

His first son, George Quinn Curtin, born before the wedding, never lived on Windsor Street. He was a secret, given to a family in North Cambridge, and raised as Timothy George Keane. He was a Roman Catholic priest for years. His brothers never knew about him.

My father was one of those brothers. He was 76 years old and watching TV on a cold February night when he got a call from Keane. "I'm your brother," Keane told him.

Then my father told me.

We flew to Florida to meet Tim Keane and brought pictures of his mother and brothers, but not one of his father. We didn't have a picture. My grandfather had walked away from three little boys. My father and his brothers never forgave him. Whatever pictures there were ended up in a dust bin.

Keane met his mother only once. He was 27. They had lunch across from Boston Common. It was a hello and a goodbye.

It took him more than half a century to reach out to his family again. He was 79 when he finally tracked down and called my father.

They didn't become bosom buddies. Distance and too much unresolved history kept them apart. But when my father died, Keane flew up for the funeral. He was 85 and not in the best of health. But there he was in the receiving line introducing himself. "I'm Larry's brother," the words full of warmth and pride, this man we hardly knew, comfortable and comforting.

During those days, he said a few times that before he died he wanted only one thing: to see a picture of his father. To see what his father looked like.

I'd never met my grandfather or seen a picture. He could be standing in front of me, and I wouldn't know him. But I promised I'd help. How hard could it be to locate a single picture?

It's four years later, and I'm still looking.

Last week, I e-mailed some newfound pictures of my grandmother to her first-born son. He e-mailed back, "Thanks for the precious pictures -- no picture of my father yet."

Tim Keane was born as George Curtin in 1920. He is 89. I am running out of time.

My father told me just two things about his father: He remembered the time he sat beside him in a wagon pulled by a single horse. It was the wee hours of the morning, and his father was delivering milk, and there were no streetlights, and it was so dark you couldn't see the horse, he said. You could just hear his clip-petty-clop, clip-petty-clop. They pulled up to one house after another. And my father would get out and carry the bottles of milk, careful not to trip, and place them in a wooden box, then race back to the cart and to his father, the two of them sitting side by side as the day dawned.

He also told me about lying in bed with his two brothers on summer nights, listening to his father play the piano in the barroom across the street, all the strangers singing and having a good time. This was after his father left and took all the good times with him.

A single picture. There must be one somewhere.

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