A Man Who Lived

Danny called to tell me the news.

Dan is marvelous. He never forgets those of us who strayed so far from the neighborhood. When we manage our schedules to share a lunch, he brings the memories back to life with laughter and a few reluctant tears.

However, his news this time was different. “Billy B has died” was the terse message left on my answering machine.

I don’t think Dan realized Billy B and I had never shared a conversation. Of course, like all of the young men in the neighborhood, a hat was tipped and a smile exchanged as we left the 11 o’clock Mass on Sunday.

One of the reasons our paths had never really crossed was the difference in age. Billy B was a good bit older than I, and a neighborhood legend long before I entered my teens.

His name was one of the first mentioned when the rumblings of war started, and the lurid headlines loomed on the front pages of the NY tabloids. “Billy B has enlisted” was what I heard listening to my Aunt and Mother’s conversation.. Then “Billy B was sent overseas”, first France and then Germany. General Patton’s name was spoken in the frequent conversations I eavesdropped on sitting quietly in the corner of the kitchen..

I also heard that Peggy was waiting for him. I glimpsed her a few times with her sister outside church, and remember thinking how pretty she was. I really didn’t know her either, but my Mom knew her family.

Then finally the war was over, and there were wedding banns in the Sunday bulletin. Billy B and his Peggy were getting married. The first of their generation in Hell’s Kitchen to begin their own family and a new cycle of life would soon begin.

I didn’t go to the wedding, but I happened to be walking past the church with my Mother when the young bride and groom emerged as a cloud of rice enveloped them. I remember Mom saying, “Such a nice young couple.”

And they were. They set the example of exactly that. Soon their family expanded, and still they stayed in the parish as long as they could. We all tried to do that for a little while at least, but the lure of Long Island real estate eventually claimed Billy and Peggy and they left with two youngsters.

Yet Billy never really did leave. Religiously, until almost the very end of his life he returned most weekends to play stickball, the neighborhood sport of choice. And of course, he was always the winner in the games played.

It really was odd when I think back. Despite the fact we never really knew each other, I seemed to know about him. I knew how deeply respected he was not only by peers, and athletic competitors, but by everyone who ever spoke his name.

All the parishioners mourned when his oldest child died almost in infancy. We smiled when we learned there were other children. Occasionally, we heard he and Peggy were seen in the neighborhood, and looking well, and of course, had been at the 11 o’clock Mass.

Dan sent me a copy of the local LI newspaper when it ran a story about Billy B, the year he was inducted into the NY Stickball Hall of Fame. Rightly so, because he played the game he loved until well into his 80’s.

I didn’t tell Dan I hadn’t really known Billy B when he called me this morning. Because that really isn’t quite true. I may not have been a friend, or even an acquaintance, but from very early days in my life, I heard about a hero. A good man, who served his God, his country and his family with honor for all his 95 years on this earth. It was my privilege to have known Billy B even from a great distance and I won’t mourn him because he lived long and died young.