Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “My name is John Kennedy,” Jack said, “and my father is—”

  “Who gives a shit?” the engineer said. “No one comes into my locomotive without permission, see. Now turn around and haul ass.”

  “Do you want us to have to tell the President-elect how you have insulted his guests?” I said.

  “That boy’s not a guest of anybody,” the engineer said, pushing his finger into young Grant’s chest. He turned to us. “Tell that commie bastard Roosevelt whatever you want. He’s not my president and plenty of people in the country feel like me. Fast women, smart aleck kids, and niggers. That’s about his speed.”

  Suddenly Ed was standing there. “Come on, Nora. We have to get off.”

  “This man’s just insulted President Roosevelt and he was awful to the three of us,” I said.

  The engineer said, “Oh, I was awful,” in a high-pitched tone. “Now git, all of you.”

  “You really can’t talk to us like that,” Ed said.

  “Oh can’t I? And who are you?”

  “My name’s Ed Kelly, and—”

  “A Mick. Should’ve known. A nigger, a bitch, a Yankee, and a Mick. Sounds like the beginning of a joke. They walk into a barroom—”

  “You’re drunk,” Ed said.

  “I haven’t touched a drop.”

  “Well I say you are, and for the safety of the passengers I’m removing you from this train. I’ve worked on the railroad. I know there’s always a backup engineer handy. Come with me to the station,” Ed told him.

  “You’re nuts,” the engineer said, and took a swing at Ed.

  And Ed Kelly, the Brighton Park boxing champion for ten years running, brought his fist up and hit the engineer flush on the chin. He went down.

  “Come on, Jack, let’s get this man into the station. And you,” Ed said to young Grant, “tell your father to find the backup engineer.”

  * * *

  When I said goodbye to him, Franklin Roosevelt took my hand and held it for a moment. “Don’t think too much about last night. Move,” he said, and paused. “Move on.”

  We stood with Jack Kennedy. “Slán abhaile, Jack,” I said. He and Ed and I had watched the train to New York pull away, and he was headed toward a chauffeur-driven car.

  “What?” he said.

  “That’s the Irish language. It means ‘safe home,’” I said.

  “Slán,” he repeated, drawing the word out. “Sounds like ‘so long.’”

  “It does. A professor friend of mine said lots of phrases in American English are really bits of Irish that, unmoored from their origins, became slang. Gifts from our ancestors. Ever wonder why something new is the bees’ knees?”

  Jack smiled. “Honey Fitz, my grandfather, described things that way all the time.”

  “It comes from the Irish—béasnuíosach. Means ‘a new style.’”

  “Interesting,” Kennedy said.

  “Hundreds of examples. Mind your own beeswax.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Beasmhaireacht, it means ‘manners.’”

  Jack Kennedy shook his head.

  “Our people’s language was very expressive,” I said.

  “I never think of the Irish having a language,” he said.

  “You should. Our literature was as great as England’s, and it’s older. My professor said Shakespeare himself was secretly an English Catholic and was influenced by Irish priests.”

  “I should have known we’d find some way to claim him,” Jack said.

  “I’m not kidding. And ‘kid’ is another word that comes from the Irish,” I said.

  Jack waved his hand at me. “Too much to take in. But hey, I’ll do some reading.”

  “Try the Táin, that’s Ireland’s Iliad and Odyssey, only the hero’s a woman. And there’s a poem I’ve been thinking about since the shooting. ‘The Lament for Owen Roe O’Neill,’ about the chieftain poisoned by the English. Of course there’s great songs.”

  “Honey Fitz’s full of Irish songs and stories. Dad said it’s all malarkey.”

  “Another Irish word,” I said.

  “Well, thanks for the information. But I can’t stand here gabbing all day.”

  “From ‘gab,’ which means chat,” I said. And Jack Kennedy put up both hands to stop me.

  “Enough. But if that professor of yours ever comes to Boston, we’ll invite him over,” he said.

  I wasn’t about to tell him my professor, Peter Keeley, was dead. Killed by one of his own students during Ireland’s Civil War. Let young Kennedy discover Romantic Ireland first.

  “I’ll send you some books,” I shouted after him.

  He didn’t turn but started trotting and cut through the knot of people still standing behind the barriers.

  “The Kennedys,” I said.

  Ed smiled. “Joseph Patrick’s a piece of work.”

  “A friend?”

  Ed shrugged. “I liked the kid,” he said.

  “Me, too,” I said.

  “So now you’ve met the great man,” he said.

  “I have. Roosevelt respects you, Ed. And that punch didn’t hurt. I’m sure someone told him.”

  “Mmmm.”

  I wondered if Ed were thinking of Colonel McCormick. Was Roosevelt another WASP fascinated by an Irish tough guy?

  The Miami train pulled in and we headed back to the hospital and Anton Cermak.

  5

  JACKSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL, MIAMI

  MARCH 4, 1933

  Nearly three weeks since the shooting. Ed, Pat Nash, and I were with the mayor in his hospital room listening to the radio broadcast of FDR’s inaugural address. Cermak’s slow recovery was worrying Kathleen Quinn. “Should have taken that bullet out,” she’d said to me.

  Ed had asked me to stay down in Florida. No hardship not to return to Chicago in the teeth of winter. I was acting as Cermak’s press agent and helping Cermak’s secretary, who’d set up an office in the adjoining room to answer his mail. His daughters visited every evening but today, only Pat, Ed, and I were with the mayor.

  Roosevelt’s voice was almost too big for the small Philco radio, pushing the tubes to their limit.

  “So first of all,” the president started, “let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  “Great line,” Ed said to me.

  “Says it all,” I said. “He can really make the language work for him.”

  Cermak said, “Shush, listen.”

  “Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” the president continued.

  “By God, he’s right,” Cermak said. “The whole city’s been paralyzed, Pat. When I pay the teachers, that’ll send a message. Right, Ed? Show that Chicago’s coming back.”

  “Easy A.J.,” Ed said to him.

  Cermak had pushed himself up in bed, and was struggling. “Nora, help him,” Ed said.

  I eased the mayor’s shoulders back onto the pillows as Roosevelt went on talking about the dark hours in national life in the past, when the people had supported leadership of “frankness and vigor.”

  “And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days,” he said.

  Cermak’s eyes were closed. I nodded over at Pat, and Ed and turned down the radio. Cermak opened his eyes.

  “That’s what we have to tell the people of Chicago, boys,” he said to Ed and Pat. “They have to support me.”

  “They will, A.J.,” Pat said. “The whole town is with you.”

  “They are,” Ed said. “There’s a photograph of you on the front page every day, thanks to Nora here.”

  “Yes,” Cermak said. “They’ve been good. In fact, Nora, why don’t you snap one of me listening to Roosevelt on the radio. Push it over to me.”

  I unplugged the radio and put it on the tray near his bed and lined up the shot in the viewfinder.

  “Do you want Pat and Ed to stand on either s
ide of you?” I asked.

  “No,” the mayor said, “after all, Roosevelt wouldn’t be giving a speech if I hadn’t stopped the bullet.”

  He leaned close to the radio, acting as if he were listening with great intensity. He looked up at me. “I’m getting the hang of this,” he said. “We make a good team. And, of course, if you hadn’t told me to move closer that night in the park … So you get a little bit of credit for saving Roosevelt too, Nora.”

  “Generous of you, A.J.,” Ed said. Pat and I laughed. Cermak didn’t.

  “I suppose that was a joke, Ed. Never sure with you Micks. You’re not mocking me, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Ed said. Silence.

  “Though maybe if I hadn’t told you to move in, the bullet might have missed both of you,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Cermak said. “The FBI told me Zangara was a sharpshooter in the Italian Army. Jesus Christ, he hit five people with five shots. Some shooting.”

  Cermak stopped. “Unless, of course, he was aiming for me all the time. Then what you said, or didn’t say, Nora, wouldn’t have made any difference. The FBI told me the guy was just a nut. But I don’t know. Nitti hates me. Said I was a marked man. I may still be.”

  “You’re safe enough here, A.J.,” Ed said.

  The same two police detectives who had guarded the mayor’s suite in the Morrison Hotel were on duty in the hospital corridor.

  “Yeah,” Cermak said, “I’m okay here, but what about when I go back? What do you think, Ed?” Ed looked over at Pat. “What, you guys heard something?” Cermak asked.

  “Nitti’s not stupid,” Ed said. “He won’t try again.”

  “He’s been spoken to, A.J.,” Pat said. “You’re okay.”

  “You know, if the city didn’t need me so bad, I’d quit the whole thing. Let you find someone to take on the damn job, Pat.” He closed his eyes, twisted his face, and grunted.

  “What? What?” I asked.

  “It’s the damn colitis. Dr. Meyer says the pain I’m feeling is from that, not the bullet hole. Though, I’d say, getting shot didn’t help any.”

  “We should go,” I said to Pat and Ed. “I’ll send Kathleen Quinn in to you,” I told Cermak. That was Saturday. By Monday, he was dead.

  MARCH 7, 1932

  MIAMI TO CHICAGO

  “Me become mayor? Thanks, Pat, but it’s not for me,” Ed said to Pat Nash.

  The three of us were in the hotel dining room of the Eden Roc. We were having an early breakfast before the 10:00 a.m. departure of the train that would carry Anton Cermak’s body back to Chicago. The waiter didn’t even bother to take our orders. Regulars now, after three weeks—bacon and eggs sunny-side up for Ed and me, oatmeal for Pat and his own pot of tea, while Ed and I drank cup after cup of strong black coffee refilled, with our slightest nod, by the waiter, who told us he was from Havana.

  “You were Cermak’s choice,” Pat went on.

  Ed only shook his head and speared the egg yolk with a corner of his toast.

  “If Nitti wants to kill the mayor of Chicago, why would Ed want to risk his life?” I asked.

  “I’m not afraid of the Outfit,” Ed said.

  “You get along with Roosevelt, Ed. He likes you. You saw that didn’t you, Nora?” Pat asked.

  “I did, Pat.” I had noticed how Roosevelt eyed Ed’s navy blazer, his gray flannel trousers, the pocket handkerchief. Ed could have been a guest on the Astor yacht also. I’d watched Roosevelt set Ed against Joseph Kennedy and smile when Ed held his own without being unpleasant. Here was an Irish pol who was well-spoken, but still tough.

  Yes, Ed could connect to the president and probably do the city some good. But Margaret would hate being the wife of the mayor. I looked at Ed, pressed my lips together. He knew what I was thinking.

  “And my wife is a shy woman,” Ed said. “Not really fair to land her in the spotlight.”

  “You mean Margaret wouldn’t support you?” Pat said. “She seems very loyal.”

  “Well, of course, she’d support me,” Ed said, “but…”

  “I always thought she had a strong personality,” Pat said.

  “Margaret’s strong, Pat, but she has the kids now, and…,” Ed said.

  “Are you saying being the First Lady of Chicago would be too much for her?” Pat asked. “What do you think, Nora?”

  “Margaret’s able for anything, but…” But what? The woman I knew nursing soldiers in France could handle anything. But if Ed became mayor, Wilcox wouldn’t be able to contain himself. All the malted milks in the world wouldn’t keep him from attacking our family. And Ed … he had been off the drink ever since that time in Wisconsin, but what would he do under this kind of pressure?

  Pat Nash would not let up.

  “Listen, Ed, you’re the only one who could talk all those businessmen who are withholding their taxes into paying up. You could make them see sense.”

  And that was true. The rich people in Chicago, who had gone on a tax strike, liked Ed for the same reasons Roosevelt did. They were comfortable with the way Ed dressed and spoke. Not that my cousin ever pretended to be anything but an Irishman from Bridgeport proud of his heritage, but he didn’t make the businessmen nervous the way old-style pols like Hinky Dink and Bathhouse John did.

  After all, he’d raised millions of dollars from the likes of Shedd and Adler, Rosenwald, and Buckingham. He’d remade Chicago, which benefited everybody. Surely he’d earned the right to talk them into paying their taxes.

  “But I’m not a politician, Pat,” Ed said. “I’ve never been elected to any office.”

  “But, that’s good,” Pat said. “You’ve a record of real accomplishment, built actual buildings. The people of the city will respect that.”

  “I don’t know, Pat. I’ve been thinking of starting to retire, spend more time in the Northwoods.”

  “Ed, the city needs you. Finish out Cermak’s term, and then you can do anything you want. The very fact you don’t want the job will make the boys support you. You’ll be a placeholder, while they fight among themselves to be the next candidate.” Pat smiled. “When A.J. and I were going through a list of names of possible mayors, he said, ‘Ed Kelly would make a good mayor, but if he gets in, you’ll have a hell of a time getting him out.’”

  I laughed. Ed didn’t.

  “If I do accept the job, let the boys know that while I’m in office, I’ll be the boss. Understand, Pat?” Ed said.

  The boss. Our Ed. I watched him pick up the last piece of bacon on his plate. Two crunches and it was gone. Edward Joseph Kelly, mayor of Chicago. Oh, Granny Honora, when you went running for your life from Galway Bay, could you ever have imagined such a thing?

  Some comfort for me when the autopsy report came out that morning, and Cermak’s personal physician told the newspapers colitis had killed him, not the bullet. But still I couldn’t stop thinking about those two words, “move closer.”

  “Put it out of your mind,” Ed said to me when I told him I was still haunted by that night, as he, Pat Nash, and I rode the special train carrying Anton Cermak’s body back to Chicago. Had a five-foot-nothing drifter really almost brought down the president of the United States? What if two words from me had changed history? Ed had no patience with such speculation.

  “Did you fire the gun, Nonie?” he asked me.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Well then,” he said. “Might just as well blame Jim Bowler. He’s not torturing himself.” He stood up from the seat next to me on the train and walked down the aisle to join Pat Nash and Cermak’s son-in-law, Otto Kerner, in the back of the club car. “Zangara was a crazy loner. The end.”

  They knew that back in Chicago there were ructions. The members of the city council were holding very public secret meetings. John Clark, a West Side alderman from a rich district, who was chairman of the finance committee, had more or less appointed himself mayor. He argued that when Mayor Harrison was assassinated in 1893, the then finance chairman h
ad taken over. He had precedent on his side, Clark claimed. A few of the Irish aldermen, who thought it was time for them to regain power, agreed with him.

  MARCH 10, 1933

  The combatants paused to bury Anton Cermak in one of the biggest funerals the city had ever seen. Five hundred thousand people stood along the route the hearse followed from the train station to the Convention Center. Ed was one of the pallbearers who accompanied the casket up the aisle to the very stage on which Roosevelt had accepted the nomination seven months ago. Cermak had belonged to no specific church, so a rabbi, priest, and Protestant minister delivered the eulogies.

  * * *

  Then the battle began. The city’s lawyer, William Sexton, told the council members they couldn’t elect a temporary mayor themselves. There would have to be a citywide election, and the earliest it could be held was June 9.

  The council did not like that. A special election would cost five hundred thousand dollars. The city couldn’t spend that kind of money. Better to pay the teachers and policemen. And besides, couldn’t risk Big Bill Thompson throwing his hat into the ring. They voted down the election but did agree on one thing: according to law, the new mayor had to be selected from the members of the city council, so technically Ed could not be a candidate. They appointed one of their own members, Francis Corr, as acting mayor.

  Ed was lying low. What I didn’t know was that Pat Nash was at work in the state legislature in Springfield. Pat had sent word to the leader of the Democratic Party there that the Illinois law requiring that the mayor of Chicago be chosen from the city council should be suspended. It was.

  A committee of five aldermen was selected to make a recommendation for mayor. And now they could choose any Chicago citizen. Given the importance of this decision, the men decided they could not just discuss it in the Morrison Hotel, nor over lunch at Henrici’s. No, the five set out on an all-expense-paid trip to a resort in Hot Springs, Arkansas—on the principle, I suppose, that a race track, mineral baths, and two casinos helped concentrate the mind. It took only three days for them to send a telegram with their recommendation. Pat Nash was the chosen one.