#370 A Quietly Heroic Life

Sometimes a quiet man’s life exemplifies what our faith can mean. I delivered this tribute at my father’s funeral on September 24, 2012. My text does not distinguish between fact and folklore since, in my Dad’s case, I am perfectly content to print the legend.

For 3 years as an altar boy I was master of ceremonies for all funerals here at St. Margaret’s Church (in my hometown of Saugus, Massachusetts). Mostly it was a routine responsibility, but one day in 1960 the funeral was for a classmate’s mother, and I spent the entire ceremony imagining the loss of my own parents. I was terrified of being orphaned, and prayed from that day on that my folks would survive until I could take care of myself. My mother lived to 91, and my father to 94½, so I guess this means my prayers were answered. It also means that, in a sense, for the last 52 years I have been preparing for this day.

In fact, 1960 was the year my sense of my father became fixed in my mind. I remember the snowy Sunday in 1960 when I lost track of time playing in a friend’s house, then raced home along the dark, slippery street, so angry with myself I was in tears by the time I reach home. My father confirmed it: I had missed Leonard Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concert.” I cried inconsolably, while he tried to assure me: the show had been sub-prime, the music of no interest.  “Bartok,” he sneered—and forever after, “Bartok” became our blanket label for music we disliked.

That same 1960 I saw also my first Red Sox game.  Ted Williams homered, just inside the Pesky pole, off the bald head of a man two rows in front of me.  The hit came late in a losing cause against the Yankees, but it seemed ample reward for my long futile attempts to get Williams’ baseball card.

And when, in November of that same 1960, John Kennedy became president, I first began to picture Dad as part of a group of four men of the same place and generation: Bernstein, Williams, Kennedy, and my own father.

All had Boston ties: my father, born and raised in Boston’s north shore; Kennedy, heir apparent to two great Boston families’ legacies; Bernstein, trained at Latin school and Harvard College, protégé of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s music director, Serge Koussivitsky; and Williams, the San Diego “kid” who dominated Boston sports scene during four decades.

All four were born within 12 months, during the last year of World War I.  All were children during prohibition, all adolescents during the Great Depression, all adults during World War II.

They belonged to the generation JFK spoke of in his inaugural address: “The torch has been passed,” he said, “to a new generation, born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.” Of course, in Bernstein’s case the torch that was passed was actually a baton; in Williams’ case, a bat; in my father’s case, a gavel.

By 1960 my father had risen as far as possible in General Electric without crossing sides from labor to management. At age 42, he chose instead a second career in union leadership.  During the 1960s and into the 1970s, he served as vice president, and then president, of his union of technical engineers.

He also entered politics, becoming chairman of the Saugus School Committee.  My wife’s high school diploma bears his signature.  In 1980, after 40 years with GE and nearly 20 with his union, he retired.

By then, of course, his life journey had already followed many paths.  Born the first of  9 children, Joseph Francis Swain was baptized a parishioner of Blessed Sacrament Parish (also in Saugus) before Saint Margaret’s even existed as a mission church, but as a charter member of Saint Margaret’s he served many roles: head altar boy, Holy Name president, DJ for the Friday night junior high canteen, lector, Eucharistic minister, consulting electrician, parish councillor, and leader of the Charismatic prayer group. He was confirmed in this church, married in this church, brought all these children here for their Baptisms, First Communions, and Confirmations.

He began his schooling at the Ballard School, which still operates, and graduated in 1936 from Saint Mary’s Boys High School in Lynn, where he was violinist and concert master in the school orchestra. 

His next step was the first of many attempts to find his true vocation.  He joined the community of Trappist Monks at Our Lady of the Valley monastery in Cumberland, Rhode Island.  He became Brother Gabriel, and immersed himself in a life of prayer, contemplation, manual labor, and “perpetual silence.” Had he succeeded on this path, many of us would not be here today, because Brother Gabriel would’ve spent his life making the Trappist Jelly you can buy today in the supermarket. But he soon developed skin boils, and was sent home to recuperate.  A few weeks later he returned, but then so did the boils, and his superiors suggested that the Trappist life was not his true calling.

This was, of course, the answer to my mother’s prayers, for she had been taking the bus to Lynn twice a week for instructions in Catholicism (discreetly, lest her father find out) while praying for Dad’s expulsion from the Trappists.  Dad’s feelings about Mum no doubt also played a role.  And none of us offspring would be surprised if the boils showed he was allergic to a life of “perpetual silence.”

In any case, his search for true calling brought him back to my mother.  They married in this church in June 1940 and lived together for the next 71 years.

Dad and Mum

He began work at GE’s River Works plant in Lynn, and used GE’s apprentice program to become first an electrician, then a draftsman, finally a planner and technical engineer, remaining with GE for 39 years.  I suspect that for many years, GE was merely a means of supporting his true life work, which was his family. Indeed, he often moonlighted weekends to pay for our camping vacations in the White Mountains, installing us at a campsite one weekend, returning to work and commuting back weekends until his own vacation week finally arrived.  I recall serving as his electrician’s helper, including that summer of 1960 helping to wire a brand new house in Andover for 30¢ an hour and all the cheeseburgers I could eat.

During these years, family life was his true calling, and his devotion especially to my mother lasted his whole life, including a near-heroic visiting schedule during her time in a nursing home.

But once he embraced union leadership he found a new, additional calling.  My mother never saw the benefit of workers striking, but on this point my father would not compromise: justice in the workplace was a matter of principle to him, and he always admired Walter Reuther of the UAW for pushing beyond contract benefits to seek more managerial power for workers.  For similar reasons, my father was a great supporter of the Catholic Labor Guild and the Catholic Worker.  For him, faith and justice were always bound together.

Perhaps the worst strike of all came in 1969, when his union joined a company-wide strike by the International Union Electricians.  The strike lasted more than four months, including a major dispute over GE recruiters at Holy Cross that triggered the exodus of all African-American  students (including Clarence Thomas) from campus (see that story at CrossCurrents #346), and also left me telling the school’s vice president that I could not pay my last semester’s tuition.

By the 1970s, Dad was torn about labor policy.  The Vietnam War was finally winding down, so GE was losing defense contracts, and while this threatened his members’ jobs, he also believed deeply that the war’s end was a good thing.

Serving in Saugus town politics provided another path for his skills and convictions, but by the end of his career he was ready for early retirement.  Statistics showed, he said, that the earlier you retire the longer you live.  He then went on to prove the point, earning more pension in his 32 years of retirement than he ever earned on the job.

In retirement he busied himself around the house, so much so that my mother sought some personal space by becoming a belated red sox fan.  He also made time for social service, serving meals at Boston’s Pine Street Inn and leading nursing home sing-alongs from his new electric keyboard.  Many of us here will never forget the stunning image of Dad at the keyboard as we all sang old standards for his 90th birthday party.

His care for my mother remained a central focus of his later years, including his project to convert the family beach house in Marshfield (MA) to year-round living, with a second floor dormitory and wraparound deck.  He planned and consulted and completed blueprints and hired a contractor, but when my mother had a change of heart, declaring 24 hours before construction would begin that she could not leave Saugus, he immediately called off the contractor, and I never heard the subject raised again. Her wishes truly were his commands.

 Since his own journey showed a strong sense of vocation but also the struggle to find the right path, he kept open mind about the lives others chose for themselves.  He was never one to push a child or grandchild along any path, yet he took great pride in all their accomplishments. 

I was well into my 30s before discovering my parents had always hoped for (and even plotted for) my vocation to the priesthood--even naming me, their firstborn son, after Dad’s favorite priest.  But dad never failed to praise the alternate path I chose. 

Three first-born Sons

That sense that we each must find our true calling was his great legacy—not just for his children but for the generations beyond.  He had a gift for recognizing the value in each grandchild’s life path.  He was proud of them all, and they knew it. Many of them were inspired by his example, and he knew that too, and he took paternal pride seeing his life’s mission touch theirs. 

And when Mum died in April, his final mission was accomplished. At the end of her life, what my mother needed above all was to see Dad across the room. When he returned home from the hospital two years ago, they cuddled on the couch like two teenagers. It was an epically romantic image. 

Those four men of JFK’s “new generation,” all 30 years my senior, have left our world a richer, more complex, place.  For many, the bell ringing in a new age began tolling the moment Jack Kennedy was shot.  And the moment I heard Bernstein was gone in 1990, I suddenly felt the same sad alarm that young boy felt, 30 years before, racing in tears down a dark and slippery road, to the consoling comfort of his father’s home. Twelve years later, Williams was gone too. My father was the last survivor.

They were all larger than life, and Dad truly belonged in their company. Like them, he was an extraordinary man—but only he lived the kind of ordinary, quietly heroic life that still inspires me today. He fought the good fight, he ran the good race, and most of the time he made it look easy. Now he has finally arrived at his life’s finish in the sure hope of beginning yet another journey. Bon Voyage, Dad.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012