Both Sides of the Line

by Kelly, Kevin

  Pulling into Science Park, we discovered that the pool had been closed for years. The doors and windows were all boarded up and the thick metal doors of the entryway were covered in rust. Untended weeds and vines had grown through the concrete sidewalks and woven themselves along the brick façade. Lechmere no longer occupied the building across the Charles, and even the clock had been removed. A Staples now was in its space. The trees, so small forty years ago, were now so thick and tall that they totally blocked our view of Cambridge. And our practice field? What had once been a wide expanse of grass was now a series of baseball and softball diamonds laid out in opposite corners.

  But there was one saving grace: our oldest practice area, the area that had held no grass until my senior year, the area that was forty feet from Storrow Drive and speeding traffic, the area that was in plain sight of the Charles Street Jail, the area where I’d learned to play football—it was still intact, unchanged by time.

  I walked the field with Max, pointing to specific areas that triggered memories and stories: getting kicked in the ass by Currier my sophomore year, remembering the dust in August, the mud in October, and the snow in November along with all that freezing wind coming off the Charles. I pointed out the tragic location of Michael’s accident, and we both paused a moment in silence.

  “And this is where Eddie Trask said, ‘Fuck ’em! Let’s start practice without them!’ and set up a pit-drill after the Malden Catholic game.”

  I was flooded with memories and could have stayed for hours, laughing and tearing up at the sight, smell, and feel of it all.

  “Kev,” Max said, reading me and all the excitement and nostalgia pumping through me, “I know this sounds like bullshit, but I’m telling you—I can feel Dempsey on this field with us. I can truly feel his energy and his presence. And he’s sending both of us the same message.”

  “Yeah, Max?” I smiled. “What message is that?”

  “Tell the story!”

  Afterword

  Michael Monahan

  In February 2014, Colie McGillivary notified several team members that Michael Monahan had just passed away. For ten years, we had tried to find Michael, only to discover that he lived outside of Boston, a two-hour drive from my home.

  After work on a Tuesday afternoon, I packed a suit in the trunk of my car and started the drive to Norwell, Massachusetts, hoping to pay my respects. I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel, turning over in my mind if this was the right decision. Is this what the Monahan family would want? Was I overstepping boundaries? Was I reopening old wounds?

  I had gotten in contact with Eddie Dominguez, our captain on the ’74 team, and he informed me that he was also planning to attend the wake. Together, we would represent the Don Bosco team. This time we would not turn our backs on Michael.

  We were apprehensive about how the family would view us, but they welcomed us with open arms and appreciated knowing, after forty years, that none of the players had ever forgotten Michael. The Monahans are a tremendously close family who cared for and loved Michael. They certainly had the right to feel anger and bitterness, and we the team players represented the anguish, sadness, and tragedy that had altered their lives. The actions of Don Bosco’s coaches, and the neglect of our teammates, had changed the course of Michael’s life, and left the Monahan family with a broken son. If anyone had a right to be angry at God, at the team, and at its coaches, it was the Monahans. But instead of carrying feelings of bitterness and anger, the family was at peace that day. They seemed the very embodiment of empathy and understanding.

  Michael’s sister looked me in the eye and said, “You have to learn to play the hand you’re dealt.”

  A freshman when I was a senior, Michael’s brother Brian felt no bitterness toward the school. “Bosco,” he said, “wrapped their arms around our family. There was total support for us.”

  And Michael had apparently remained positive and upbeat throughout his life. When we entered the funeral home, we saw a series of pictures that spanned Michael’s life. Every picture showed Michael with a smile. The strength of a family is truly tested during moments of adversity. When I looked into the eyes of the Monahan family, I saw a resounding strength, a directness, that was almost piercing.

  Eddie and I put up a good front, but we were both deeply troubled. I had attempted to find Michael ever since beginning to write this book. In 2013, after three years of hunting players down from all over the country, we finally reunited as a team at Curry College. To discover Michael was just down the road, and then to discover he had died, bothered both of us terribly. I should have looked harder for Michael. We all wanted Michael to know how sorry we all felt for not only the incident, but for not reaching out to him over the years. It’s a burden I will always carry, and perhaps it’s justified.

  It’s the hand I’ve been dealt.

  My Mother

  In January 2014, I received shocking information surrounding my mother’s death. For fifty years, I had lived with the belief that my mother’s death was a personal decision. No one had given me any information to think otherwise. My dad, at the age of eighty-four, was of no help. He had full-blown dementia, though he still lived at home in Hyde Park. My sister Ann and her husband Derick had moved into the house five years earlier to take care of him full-time.

  Dad was known for never throwing anything away. Having absorbed junk for more than sixty years, our basement had lost every square inch to boxes, tools, old newspapers, photographs, National Geographic magazines, broken furniture, and appliances that he never got around to fixing. You name it and we had it. Dad was the modern Sanford and Son. Now wheel-chair bound, Ann had the green light to begin the unimaginable task of slowly sifting through the basement and once again regaining some usable space.

  During a Sunday afternoon visit to Dad’s house, Ann nonchalantly handed me a thick envelope. “Kev, I found this in the basement. I haven’t looked through any of it, but there are some old photos. Perhaps some of your mother.” At the time, I had very few photos of my childhood and only two of my mother. Starting that day and over the next five years, my sister Ann would discover seventy-seven photos taken of her from 1950 to 1973.

  I took the large envelope home and later that night, with a cup of coffee, slowly began to pull out the contents. My mother’s nursing diploma, a title to our 1963 Chevy Impala, some old stock certificates, a photo of Frank Baker, our grandfather in 1905, bare-chested before a wrestling match. Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat. On a white, 4x5” inch piece of paper was my mother’s suicide note to my father.

  Darling,

  Please forgive me. I’ve always loved you and the children. I have never harmed them intentionally. I could never prove I am innocent.

  Love,

  Chris

  I was completely puzzled. What did this mean? I frantically emptied the remaining contents. I discovered an official note from the courthouse in Boston, dated June 5, 1964. My mother had been charged with an assault and battery! On June 12, she resigned from her job at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. On June 29, she was dead.

  This is what I was able to piece together: My parents had rented the second-floor of our home to a young couple. In the beginning, everything appeared to be fine. After a year, my parents raised the rent. Even though I was young, I remember one day running out of my bedroom, drawn to the yelling coming from the kitchen. As I peeked around the corner, my mother and father were trying to close the kitchen door while the upstairs neighbors were trying to push the door open. Suddenly, when they noticed I was standing there, everyone stood still. No one said a word to me. The neighbors turned and went upstairs. “Kevin, everything is okay. Go back to your room and play.” I just looked at my mother, turned, and walked away.

  Even if the matter went to court, nothing was going to happen to my mother. Hell, my dad was a cop; this would have been a minor issue in their lives. The case woul
d have been dismissed, or a restraining order might have been issued. The worst case scenario would have been probation, and even that was highly unlikely. I sat in numbed silence. This was surreal. Fifty years of not knowing? Chemically jolted, I sat digesting a flood of flashbacks; year after year of asking if there had been any reason behind her decision. A surge of anger began to well up inside me. Why hadn’t my father come clean with Tommy and me, especially when we grew older? I get that he wouldn’t want to tell us when we were kids, but damn, I think we could have handled this information as adults!

  The note and the suicide simply didn’t make sense. Something wasn’t adding up. What did my mother mean when she wrote: “I would never hurt the children intentionally. I could never prove I’m innocent.” Were they two separate statements, or was the loud, raucous, and possibly physical dispute with the tenants connected in some way? Our mother never hurt us. So it makes no sense that the charges were connected to us. If they were, the court’s wording would have been abuse, neglect, and child endangerment, not assault and battery. Why would she take her life because of these charges? She was a very proud woman, and family image was very important to her, but suicide?

  After all this time, I had put my mother’s death neatly away in a small box in a far corner of my mind. I had moved on. My dad had started a new family. Tommy and I loved our new mother and were excited when Kathy, John, Tricia, and Ann came into our lives. We had lifelong friends, went to college, married, and raised our own kids. We had rewarding careers. Everything had turned out fine. My mother on occasion would pop in and out of mind but never in a troubling fashion. I had searched long enough for an answer, and had come to an acceptable conclusion about why she took her life at such a young age. I was at peace with all of it. Now at the age of fifty-seven, I had to try to digest this unsettling knowledge that there was an external trigger to her death.

  My brother Tommy passed in 2008, and because of my dad’s dementia, he doesn’t even know my name as I write this. There is no one to seek out for an answer. I was disrupted and out of balance for a few days, walking around in and out of a fog. My own family could only hear a limited amount of this new discovery. If I felt helpless for an answer, they felt totally unhelpful. They couldn’t and didn’t want to jump into 1964, and were unable to care about a person they had never met and who had died fifty years ago. I could see it in their eyes.

  I am still close to many of my childhood friends from Hyde Park, but what could they possibly say or do? “Geez, Kev, pretty amazing to find that out after all these years. You okay? Hey, how ’bout those Patriots?”

  My brothers and sisters would always laugh when talking about how our father would never throw anything away. That illness, or now, that gift, allowed me to learn something of the truth surrounding my mother’s death and put some closure to a lifelong question.

  Regardless of the reason or reasons why she took her life, the end result was the same. The best I could do was to look at my wife and two wonderful daughters, hold them tight, and move forward.

  Letters

  Acknowledgements

  No book can ever be written without a team of people pushing you and giving you a tremendous amount of support. The dream to write this story started seventeen years ago. Throughout that time, my team has been an important piece of this project. Without the team’s support, this book would never have been written.

  Thus, thanks to:

  My wife Xiaofeng and my daughters, Yaoyao and Michelle, who weren’t afraid to be honest or to criticize my writing when needed.

  My brother John, and my sisters Kathy and Ann, for their unending support.

  Bruce Bortz, my publisher, who stood by me for years when it would have been easier to walk away from this project.

  Michele Capobianco and Katie Mead-Brewer, whose editing skills are unmatched, and who greatly helped me bring this story to life.

  Michael Crocker, who nudged me to believe in and write this story.

  John Palmer, who spent months helping me craft language for it.

  Danny Sayer, who told me: “You have a story to tell, so tell it.”

  My teammates and Coach Currier, who spent time being interviewed, and who showed remarkable patience awaiting a final product.

  But if any one person needs to be singled out, recognized, and thanked, it’s Max Williams. Max spent an entire decade calling me and pushing me to write this book. While jumping on a 2010 flight from California, Max made me finally commit to this, in no uncertain terms. It truly wouldn’t exist without him.

  To Frank Matthews, retired Massachusetts State Police lieutenant colonel who, just in the nick of time, came to me with a lot of valuable information, and who allowed me to understand the commitment and perseverance the force brings to cold cases like the one involving Dempsey.

  Finally, thank you, everyone―family and dear friends.

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  Son of a Boston Irish cop, Kevin Kelly was born and raised in Hyde Park, Massachusetts. With the sudden tragic death of his young mother, he and his older brother Tom quickly learned how to adjust and navigate through their formative years. Fortunately, they had a rock-solid father, a tight neighborhood of lifelong friends, a beautiful and loving stepmother, and football.

  Following in his brother Tom’s footsteps, Kevin attended Saint Don Bosco Technical High School in downtown Boston from 1971-75. Approaching his senior year, he saw himself on the brink of quitting the football team, but was inspired to continue playing by his older brother’s single comment: Quitting would be a decision he would regret for the rest of his life. Undersized and unappreciated, and with a coach named Jack Dempsey who inspired a group of nonbelievers, Don Bosco went on to win the Catholic Conference Championship in 1974. On the strength of that, Kelly continued to play football at both the college and semi-pro levels.

  A rare and cherished moment came in the summer of 1976, when, by chance, player and coach played side by side for the Hyde Park Cowboys, in New England’s semi-pro league. Together, they shared a second championship and solidified a bond that lasted a lifetime. Today, Kelly continues to pass on the knowledge and inspiration of Dempsey, the coach, to his players.

  When Don Bosco closed its doors in 1998, Kelly felt the strong need to write down the Bosco/Dempsey story, lest the’74 championship team fall into obscurity. There was also a desire to try to understand why Dempsey, the boys’ mentor who did so much good for so many, could turn out to be so bad.

  Kelly received his undergraduate degree in Special Education from the University of Maine.

  Since 1980, Kelly has coached football at the elementary, middle school, and high school levels. His coaching resumé includes: Don Bosco, Madison Park, Catholic Memorial, Tyngsboro High School, Frontier Regional, Northfield Mt. Hermon, and Deerfield Academy.

  After a life as owner of his own construction company, Kelly went back to school and earned his Master of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts.

  From 1998 to 2010, he made a career switch, eventually becoming an Assistant Principal and Principal at Deerfield Elementary School. Leaving the public school system in 2012, he accepted the opportunity to return to the high school level as Assistant Dean of Students at the prestigious Deerfield Academy, a boarding school founded in 1797 and located in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

  He is married to wife Xiaofeng. They have two daughters, Tianyao and Michelle. They live in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

 

 

 
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