Memories of Dennis and the Humanity Reflected in a College Financial Aid Application

Can it Really Be 43 Years Since Dennis Passed?

Today is April 20, 2015 and it marks the 43^rd anniversary of my brother Dennis’s untimely passing at the age of 19. It’s always a sad day for any Kirnan and a time of great reflection with all of the endless questions that will never have answers. Simple, straightforward questions like why? Why did it have to be Dennis who died and not me?  What would Denny be doing if he were alive today at the age of 62? Would he have married and had children? Where would he and his family be living?

It has taken me a long time to understand the full impact of how his passing affected me. I realize now after many, many years of denial that I had never really worked through all of the stages of grief that come with such a significant loss in your life. I can’t tell you how many times I would replay the anger I had inside of me for what happened, the guilt I felt over not being able to do something that could have prevented this from happening, and the incessant fear that something awful would happen to me or someone else in our family.  I actually believed that I myself would die exactly two months before my 20th birthday, just like Dennis had done.  But its mostly the “why” questions that I still struggle with. I don’t know how many times I have relived what was the longest summer of my life, the summer of 1972 after Dennis had passed away.

All of the questions that came from others who didn’t even know Dennis — the gossip and the rumors that people had spread about the cause of Denny’s passing – all of it categorically untrue I might add. I would relive the awkwardness of my senior year in high school at Paramus Catholic and the feeling that everyone in my world was watching me to see how or why I would act in a certain way.  I remember how I began to pull away from those I loved because I couldn’t find any easy answers to what had happened and I had a foreboding sense of what the future might bring for me, a future that would leave a big void without my big brother to watch over me.  I struggled to fully comprehend what I was feeling or why I was so angry and sad. Why did I continually resist the opportunity to open up to anyone even my closest friends, my girlfriend Sherry during that time, or in later years my wife Jean and our three children.  There’s also the painful memories of getting into fights with others when I knew they were talking about Dennis and didn’t have the courage to confront me directly with whatever stories they were conjuring up about him. All of these memories are so ingrained inside of me it’s as if they happened yesterday even though its been 43 years since that awful day in April 1972.

Fortunately, through a lot of introspection, some incredible love and support from others and the goodness of mother time, I can more fully understand what happened to me and that all of the feelings and emotions I experienced over these past 43 years were actually quite normal.  I can now appreciate why it took until the late 1990s to get up the courage to see the movie Ordinary People even though I could have seen it as early as 1981 when it won the Oscar for Best Picture that year. I would have saved myself a lot of internal pain and anguish but the simple truth was that I just wasn’t ready to deal with all of the emotions and the processing of those emotions that grief entails. I have also realized that whenever you lose something very important to you in your own life, you tend to relive all of those previous losses in your life.  Some losses are greater than others but loss is just that, its something that’s just not there anymore like it used to be, whether the loss is a job you used to have (I’ve lost some jobs in my lifetime) or a relationship dynamic with a family member, a friend or a colleague that has changed in a fundamental way.  You experience loss when your children move from childhood to adulthood and when your parents pass on like Dad did in May 2011 or when they begin to lose their independence, their faculties, their way of life.  It’s all a part of the arc of life and its easy now in retrospect, to see how unprepared you can be for some of these shifts. Yet as painful as each loss is in your life, reliving all of that grief can also bring with it incredible personal growth, a greater understanding of yourself and how others relate to you, and even more awareness of what other people go through during the course of a lifetime.

The Parents Confidential Statement

But on this the 43^rd anniversary of Dennis’s passing, I wanted to share the humanity behind a simple document that Mom and I found last month when we were moving some things around in the apartment at the Atrium. It’s amazing to me that with all of the moves that we went through with both Mom and Dad over the years – especially the final move from the apartment in Ridgewood to the Atrium – I thought I had seen every personal document, photo, and memento in Mom’s personal belongings. But then on that March afternoon I came across something that was both old, yet new to me. It was the original copy of the Parents Confidential Statement (popularly referred to as the PCS) that Mom and Dad submitted to the College Scholarship Service during the fall of 1971. This document profiled the financial situation of a family when their son or daughter was applying for financial aid to attend a particular college or university. I had seen many other documents from Dennis over the years – his report cards from Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (always the highest grades in Math), some test papers from St. Joseph’s (he was awesome in Accounting which was his major), the last check Dennis had cashed literally minutes before he died (his signature on the back of the check was no different than all of the other times he signed his name), and even the autopsy report which showed no determinable cause of death. But, never had I come across the PCS form.

So when Mom and I found the form back in early March, I began to pore over the specific numerical details that were contained in the form – i.e., the salaries, expenses, tuition, and mortgage payments.  In an instant, my mind was flooded by the humanity behind the numbers on the form and the story that was taking place behind the scenes if you will. I have always been fascinated with numbers and made a great career as a highly trained financial analyst by understanding and interpreting what numbers really mean for a company. I would read things like “Revenues were up 15%” or “Net income declined 10%”. Numbers have always connected with me because they usually can tell a story and I have always loved storytelling. For companies, there is always some natural tension between their revenues and expenses. That interaction can help you determine whether things are going well or poorly for the company and understanding that dynamic can help build a case for investing in the company or avoiding an investment in the company.

The Fall of 1971 — “It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times”

When Mom and Dad prepared the PCS document during the Fall of 1971, none of us had any idea of how things would change for our family in April 1972. As I peered through the document, I was immediately struck by how that period in our family really resembled to a large degree that famous quote from the Charles Dickens classic A Tale of Two Cities — “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.  The “best of times” because Cathy and Jack were married in September of that year and it was one of the happiest moments in our family’s life — a beautiful wedding Mass, a reception, and then another party after the reception at the Kirnan house on Overbrook Road.  I remember how happy everyone was and how beautiful Cathy looked in her wedding gown.  I remember the excitement even after the wedding when Cathy and Jack moved into their first apartment with Jack finishing up his studies at Manhattan College where he would graduate that December.  I remember Jack teaching me how to drive a car that fall as I prepared to get my drivers license in January 1972.  I had always loved cars since I was a young boy and driving Jack’s 1963 Pontiac Tempest was like going to the moon because of the power steering that came with that car and that really comfortable bench seat.

Dennis was an usher in Cathy’s wedding party and was home for the weekend from St. Joe’s College in Philadelphia, Pa where he was just beginning his sophomore year. He was as handsome as Robert Redford – the biggest movie star at the time – with beautiful sky blue eyes and the best reddish blonde hair you ever saw. And then there were those mutton chop sideburns that were perfectly manicured to go along with his mustache. I can still see him coming up the stairs from the basement that wedding night with a huge smile on his face carrying a case of Budweiser beer. We were never sure how many Budweisers Dennis had that day or for that matter any of the other times there was some fun going on in our house but he was legendary for being able to more than hold his own.

I was a junior in high school at Paramus Catholic that fall with excitement for what I knew could be a breakthrough season for me as a returning point guard on the basketball team. Although college recruiting was nowhere as predominant as it clearly is now, I knew I had a chance to play in college even though I was only 5’6” tall. I was the team’s second leading scorer as a sophomore and I could shoot that two hand jump shot better than most and especially from long range. Matt and Dad used to remind me years later how many total points I would have scored if we had the 3-point shot in place back then.  I had great court vision and could throw a “no-look” pass with the best of them and even an occasional behind the back pass. I could drag dribble or dribble through my legs. I could head fake with the best of them to make up for my lack of height and many would say I had the quickest “first step” they ever saw and really quick hands that would allow me to steal the ball from opposing players.  I had gone to Cardy Gemma’s basketball camp each of the previous two summers and ever since I was in the 6th grade I had wanted to be like Bill Bradley and play basketball at Princeton.  I even devoured John McPhee’s book A Sense of Where You Are that detailed Bradley’s upbringing in Crystal City, Missouri and his total dedication to the sport he loved and his studies.  Dennis and I would play countless imaginary basketball games in our backyard and on the Franks court on Beverly Road and there was never any excuse not to play.  In fact, we would often shovel the basketball court before we shoveled our own driveway and walkway.  Dad even installed a spotlight for us so we could play our imaginary games at nighttime.  We would come inside, grab a bowl of cereal or a jelly and bread sandwich and then park ourselves in either the den or in the basement watching our favorite shows on the 9 inch Admiral Black and White TV we had.

But even back then, I knew that in some ways it was also “the worst of times” and that was of course before Dennis died and our whole world was turned upside down. All of these feelings I had back in that moment in time– the best with the worst of times — came back to me from simply looking at that PCS form last month. Perusing the form,  I was drawn  to the salaries listed for Mom and Dad in 1969, 1970, and then their estimated salaries for 1971. When you look at Dad’s salary of $11,591 in 1970 you quickly realize how much things have changed over the past 45 years. But at that time, Dad’s salary had provided us a great life complete with all of the trappings that come with a home like the one we lived in on Overbrook Road — a big backyard, a tree which was great for climbing and on a good day you could actually see the other side of town, the dark and mysterious basement that flooded a couple of times, the den, the screened in porch where Dad would listen to the Notre Dame football games on WOR Radio, and that tiny bedroom on the third floor that Dennis and I shared for many years.  Dad’s career as a highly skilled lithographer was going really well throughout the 1950s and early 60s and enabled us to move from the first house we had in the Ridgewood Lawns.  His annual salary in 1970 would be equivalent today to a salary of about $50,000.

Mom’s salary had been growing steadily ever since she took on a full-time position in the Admitting Office at The Valley Hospital. Mom had begun that position in the fall of 1966 when Matt and Mary Claire were enrolled at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel School and she had progressed steadily to the point where in 1970 she was Director of the Admissions Department.  That position was full of pressure and incredibly time sensitive and yet she commanded the respect of countless Doctors who all wanted to hire her for their own private practice.  Her salary of $9,292 in 1970 would be equivalent today to about $40,000. It’s an impressive accomplishment not just because Mom was among the first women in her generation to have her own career while also raising a family but she did it in a town like Ridgewood where many men and women would frown on any mother who worked on a full-time basis.  She was a trailblazer for sure.

I then began to look at all of the other numbers on the PCS form that defined Mom and Dad’s life back then  – the mortgage payment of $250 per month, the tuition payments for me to attend PC of $600 per year (equivalent to $2,400 today) and for Matt and Mary Claire to enroll at Mt. Carmel for $88 each (equivalent to $324 today). When you look at the complete financial picture, you see a family essentially trying to make ends meet and provide the best life they could for their family.  Matt, Mary Claire, and I could have easily attended the Ridgewood public schools which enjoyed a stellar reputation but the Catholic faith was important to Mom and Dad so they made a big sacrifice in helping us obtain a faith-based education.  Their experience of trying to provide for their family is a timeless one but seeing the raw data and then reflecting on it makes me even more grateful for the strong foundation they provided us.

Unemployment Hits Home in the Kirnan Household

The feeling that it was the “worst of times” really hit home in April of 1971 when Dad lost his job.  His company was among the many companies in countless industries that was not able to keep up with the pace of technological change.  Printing was becoming much more automated, more technology-driven and the terrific skills that my Dad had acquired over many years as a lithographer were not as highly coveted as they had been earlier in his career.  He loved that job so much that he never really entertained leaving the company he had worked for since right after the war in 1946.  A good friend of his had urged him in the early 1960s to take a position in Buffalo, NY but Dad did not want to move that far away from the strong family roots my Mom and him had established after getting married in April of 1948.

When I looked at Dad’s estimated income for 1971 on the PCS Form — $6,500, down over 40% from the prior year — it was a painful reminder of the toll Dad’s job loss had on him and our family’s overall financial situation. I can still remember with absolute clarity the day I heard that Dad had lost his job.  It was actually on my parents wedding anniversary — April 17, 1971.  They told us not to worry and even went out for dinner that night but I knew instinctively that things were going to get more difficult.  I had not studied Economics yet but I had never seen or heard of anyone in our town getting laid off before — after all, this was Ridgewood and those things just didn’t happen or so I thought.  I knew that Mom and Dad were worried about being able to make all of the tuition payments as well as the upcoming expenses associated with Cathy and Jack’s wedding. We didn’t have a ladder back then but Dad wanted to at least spruce up the outside of the house as best we could so Dennis, Dad, and I painted the lower portion of the house that summer. We had some good fun doing that and you could actually see the line that formed in roughly the middle of the siding where the new paint began and the old paint remained.  I always marveled at how Dennis was able to do this for the family because he was already working over 50 hours a week that summer as a stock clerk at the old Rickels Home Center on Rt. 17. He never talked to me about whether he was worried about finances but I think it was clearly on everyone’s mind. We would shoot baskets in the backyard, go to the Fireplace or Dairy Queen for a burger or ice cream and we had the most fun just listening to some of those great 8 track tapes of his in the den on the first floor which he had set up as a bedroom of sorts.  Such a great collection of music, including Traffic’s John Barleycorn Must Die, Cat Stephens Tea for the Tillerman, Sly and the Family Stone’s I Want to Take You Higher, Carole King’s Tapestry, Carlos Santana and Oye Como Va, and Dennis’s favorite at the time — Rod Stewart and his #1 single Maggie May.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T5hYlUsQ0s

I worked lots of odd jobs that summer painting houses with my friend Jimmy VanYperen whose Dad had his own painting company in town.  I was also becoming quite the landscaper back then as I cut lawns for about 10 families including Mrs. Rockerman (she always gave me an ice cold bottle of Coca Cola), Dr. Small (Dennis and I usually did that job together), and Mrs. Spraker to name just a few.  I also worked a paper stand on Sunday mornings with Brian Alcock at the old Mary’s Delicatessen. We had to put the Sunday papers together at 4:30am and Mary would always give us the best buttered rolls and orange juice.  For some strange reason Brian and I would have a contest to see who could jump over the tallest pile of papers — he won of course but he had 6 inches on me truth be told.  It was pretty cool that Brian and I were best friends in the same way that Dennis and his older brother Drew were best friends. Brian and I went to Mt. Carmel just like Dennis and Drew had and they remained close through their 4 years together at PC right up until the day Denny died.  Drew was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in 1982 along with the girl he was planning to marry as a motorist went right through a red light.  How ironic that we would both lose an older brother, something we have talked about for years and which solidified an already strong life long friendship.  How unbelievable is it that two other close friends of ours  – Dan Bradley and Tom Cermak – would also lose a brother. Danny lost his younger brother Frankie in August 1978 in a car accident when he was only 17 years old.  Tommy lost his younger brother Jimmy a few years later from an overdose of alcohol.  Because of the long hours Dennis had to work that summer, he wouldn’t always get to see my summer league basketball games at the Benjamin Franklin courts but it was always really special when he and Dad were able to see me play. No matter how poorly I might play he would always tell me something positive and he never once was critical of anything I ever did. He was a lot like Dad in that he was very quiet but you knew the love was always there and that he enjoyed watching me play.

And so as I reflect back on this period of my life I am now so much more aware of what was really going on behind the scenes.  But sitting down with Mom these last few years and documenting her incredible life journey has made me appreciate even more what we all went through during this period.  Men and women lose their jobs every day.  Some can adapt and move on and grow in new ways but no matter who you are, when you lose your job you lose some self-esteem and confidence. Dad was really no different than anyone else in that regard.  He would never fully recover financially from losing that job which had defined a big part of his life but he recovered in so many other ways, becoming the best version of himself that he could possibly be. He ultimately gave up drinking in 1990 and he learned to show affection to his family, to hug them and yes even kiss them on their cheek. I think his 11 grandchildren had something to do with that as well as being more comfortable in his own skin and just being the person he always was deep down inside.  He would always ask you how your own family was doing and would want to know everything possible about the grandkids.  And, he always wanted to know how Matt, Mary Claire, and Cathy were doing. He didn’t have much of a formal education but he clearly knew what was going on around him, after all he was a voracious reader of the newspapers and loved watching the news on TV or listening on the radio. He saw people he knew from his own neighborhood get killed in the horror of war. He lost his livelihood and his first son in his mid-40s but he found the internal strength to fight back and grew in new ways and in the process became more human, more real.

Mom shouldered enormous pressure during these years.  She became the major breadwinner, a role she didn’t want and an uncommon position for a mother to find herself in back in those days.  Mom was the glue who kept us and everything together.  She was the doer in the family and the one you would go to if you had a problem.  She always encouraged you to do the best you could, to work as hard as you could and to never give up on your dreams.  There were many times I am sure she didn’t feel so great and didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning, especially in the period after Dennis passed away.  But she answered the bell every day and never missed a beat.  Years later when I became a parent I would often ask her, how she got through those dark days in the 1970s and she would simply say “Jack, your father and I had 4 other kids to raise”.  Wow, I thought and I have always been left to ponder whether I could ever showcase that kind of grit, inner strength, and resiliency if something ever happened to one of our children.  Just like Dad, Mom did the best she could and would always make you feel proud that you were both a Kirnan and a Flaherty.

Some Final Thoughts About 1971

There is a final postscript on that PCS Form and its something I never knew until recently.  The PCS application was the only strategy that could have allowed Dennis to finish college at St. Joseph’s.  Debts were piling up and Dad’s new position at The Ridgewood Print Shop, which he obtained in early April 1972 just two weeks before Dennis died, only paid about half of what he had earned when he worked in NYC.  In early 1972, Mom and Dad were informed by the College Scholarship Service that their application for financial aid had been denied.  It was a harsh reality for sure but it was something I was not made aware of until a few months ago when Mom opened up about it during one of our conversations.  Access to education is an even bigger issue today than it was back in 1971, especially for those families who struggle financially like ours did.  If Mom and Dad were applying for financial aid today, their application would have easily been approved and Dennis would have been able to finish and graduate from the school he loved.

There’s so much irony in knowing that because in the spring of 1972 Dennis had already made plans to leave St. Joe’s something, again, which I was unaware of.  He had already applied and been accepted to Fordham University and was planning to commute to the Rose Hill campus in the fall of 1972.  I now wonder how he was able to handle all of that pressure.  He had seen his Dad lose a job and worried about his future; he saw his Mom working harder than ever to make sure he could stay in school; and, he probably in some way felt some guilt about living away from home with everything going on back at Overbrook Road.  I now think about that last trip home before he passed away a little differently than I had before.  He had come home for Easter week and I vividly remember my last conversation with him on Sunday, April 9th as he dropped me off for pole vault practice at PC.  We talked about the beer he was going to buy for me at one of the bars in upstate NY when he returned home in May.  But he didn’t reveal what I am now sure was some real angst, some uncertainty about what lie ahead for him — a new school, a new commuting experience, and having to say goodbye to so many great friends he had made at St. Joe’s.

Dennis’s time came much too early and its something none of us will ever truly understand. I guess it’s part of the faith journey we either believe in or choose not to believe in. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point and there’s a song that my son Patrick used to play when I would drive him to high school a number of years ago which to me captures a bit of what I am feeling these days. It’s a song by Faces, a British rock group that launched the solo career of Rod Stewart.  The song Ooh La La, has a catchy refrain that we can all relate to as we walk through life — “I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now, When I Was Younger”.

Patrick and I would hum the song every now and then but I never really reflected on the meaning behind the lyrics until recently but now they really resonate with me. I wish I had been more in tune with what I was feeling during the Fall of 1971 and the years that followed.  I wish I could have been more sensitive and more compassionate to what each member of my own family was going through during that period.  I wish I could have told Dennis just one more time how much I loved him or how much it meant to me to have the best big brother I could ever hope to have, the one who always took me by the hand to show me the way forward.  But, as Katie has reminded me when I expressed a similar feeling about wanting to hug my Dad one more time after he passed away, she said “Dad, one hug will never be enough”.  Yes, Katie is right.  There can never be enough hugs for those we love.  I am comforted by the belief that we will all see Dennis again sitting next to Dad and all of the other great people who have been on this life journey with us. When that day arrives, it will be the best Reunion you could ever hope to have and one whose date and time rests with the good Lord but oh it will be a great Reunion for sure.

I hope April 20^th can in some way bring all of us peace, comfort and happiness for knowing that we had a brother who lived fully, who loved life and his family, and who is now and forever in a better place where we await that happy Reunion.  Yes, Dennis will forever be a member of our great Kirnan family — Mom, Dad, Cathy, Dennis, Jack, Matt, and Mary Claire.  How lucky were all of us to have had him in our life!