My 100-year-old grandfather, Thomas Reed Callahan, passed away last month. His body ran out of fuel, and he died in his sleep, in his bed, in his home, in the town where he lived for at least 82 years of his life (minus the years of World War II).
I knew my grandfather about as well as he would allow me to. During my childhood, I was generally scared of him — he was an authoritative force who didn’t “play” with his grandchildren. I felt much the same way about his wife, my grandmother, Helen Blaney, whom he married in 1943 and who died seven years ago last Spring at the age of 92. I remember them both as stern.
(Thankfully, in some ways, my grandmother’s personality changed when I got older due to the onset of dementia, and she lightened up considerably. I treasure the memories I have of her laughing to the point of tears as we played games with our family around the table at our cabin in Maine. The battle-axe I knew as a child became a nostalgic and loving woman who, the last time I saw her, held my hand and looked up at me with nothing but love, not really remembering who I was, but knowing that she loved me.)
My grandfather, on the other hand, remained a complicated man right up until his death, and there’s a lot I don’t understand about the life he chose to lead. His relationship with my father and my aunt was burdened in ways I’ve never been able to get my mind around — I know they loved him, but they didn’t seem to like him very much.
In a lot of ways, I have my grandfather to thank for my close relationship with my dad, who for my entire adult life has seemed determined not to relive the same conflicts with his sons. My dad has some of my grandfather’s tendencies, as do my brothers and cousins, as do I, but all of us witnessed enough of Tom’s negative behaviors — his stubbornness, his selfishness, and his disregard — to recognize them as a warning.
With that being said, I loved grandfather, and my daughter loved her great-grandfather, and he will be missed.
Just the “Facts”
One of the ways I tried to understand my grandfather was by researching his family tree. I put in years of effort (not to mention hundreds and hundreds of dollars) into building the tree, and here’s what it taught me.
He was born, Thomas Reed Callahan, on September 4, 1919 in Abington, Massachusetts, to Thomas Edward Callahan (more on him in a moment) and Dorothy Lincoln Reed. During the census of 1920, they lived in Abington with Dorothy’s mother and stepfather. Both his father and step-grandfather worked in a shoe factory, the former as a “cutter” and the latter as a “welter” (which from what I can gather, means his step-grandfather was responsible for the strip of leather that connected the sole to the upper part of the shoe). His mother, Dorothy, and his grandmother, Jane, did not work outside of the home.
Sometime after the 1920 census but before 1922 (when they show up in the city’s directory), my grandfather and his parents moved out of my great-great grandmother’s house in Abington and into a place at 63 Court Street in Whitman, Massachusetts, which is the town just south of Abington. Thomas Edward’s mother, Christina (“Lena”), and his brother, Charles, lived just down the road at 68 Court Street. In other words, around the age of two or three, my grandfather moved out of his mother’s family’s house in Abington and into his father’s family’s neighborhood in Whitman.
But then, in 1924, when he was roughly four years old, my grandfather’s parents divorced, and by the 1930 census, he and his mother are back living with her mother and step-father in Abington (her own father having passed away from pneumonia in 1901, when she was four years old).
I have to imagine that having divorced parents in the 1920s was not an easy thing. According to one source I found, “Although divorce was more attainable in the 1920s than it had been in previous decades, it still carried a heavy stigma. There were few legal resources or options for women who were stuck in abusive relationships. Divorce was only allowed in situations where there was adultery, although exceptions were made in cases of bigamy or impotence.” Another source adds, “a divorced woman was often referred to as a moral fire alarm because of the danger she represented to society.”
At this point, my grandfather was 10 years old, and the Great Depression was in full swing. His mother — moral fire alarm or not — was now working as a public school teacher, and what happens next is a bit confusing.
My Grandfather’s Stepfather
According to the 1940 census, by 1935, my divorced great-grandmother has met and settled down with a divorced man named Frank V. Thompson, and they’re living in a house at 192 Central Street in Abington. I have no idea how or when she met and married Frank, but I do know Frank’s ex-wife was originally from Abington, and in 1930, they were still married. But then in 1931, they filed for a divorce down in Virginia for some reason, and by ’35, he’s married to my great-grandmother.
Frank had four sons prior — the first was born in 1909 (making him ten years older than my grandfather) and the last was born in 1925 — but his wife must have been awarded custody because my grandfather, now fifteen years old, is the only child in the house.
Sometime in the late 1930s, the three of them moved to 12 Rose Ave in Marblehead, Massachusetts. They’re listed in the 1937 City Directory for Marblehead, and my grandfather graduated from Marblehead High School in 1938, but the 1940 census still has them listed as living at 192 Central Street in Abington for some reason, and it also says they’ve been living in the same house for the last five years.
Regardless of where they’re officially living, in the 1940 census, my great-grandmother is no longer teaching and my grandfather’s stepfather is listed as a traffic manager in the wholesale coat industry in Boston, where he makes roughly $5,000 a year. My grandfather, now age 20, works as a mechanic in the same industry, making roughly $1,000 a year.
My Grandfather’s Father & Half Brother
Meanwhile, in 1935, my grandfather’s father (i.e., my great-grandfather), Thomas Edward Callahan, is remarried to a woman named Catherine Devine (my father remembers her being called “Kitty” and having a thick Irish brogue). In December of ’35, Thomas Edward and his new wife have a baby boy named Paul. In a ’37 city directory, the family is listed as living on Belmont Street in Worcester, Massachusetts.
According to my father, Thomas Edward owned a bar in Worcester, though in 1940 and in 1941, he was still working as a shoe-cutter. In 1949, he shows up in the city directory as the manager of Madigan’s Cafe; in 1957 and again in ’61, he shows up as the President & Treasurer of Colony Restaurant Inc. I tried finding more information on either them, but to no avail.
Whatever bar my great-grandfather owned, my dad remembers visiting it once as a child. It was sometime early in the day and Thomas Edward was already drunk. Kitty was there too, and according to my dad, she was very friendly. Apparently, my grandfather and great-grandfather got in an argument, and my grandfather took my father out in a huff.
My aunt remembers visiting the place too. She remembers it being very dark inside.
When Thomas Edward died in 1963, at the age of 64, he left the bar to both my grandfather and my grandfather’s half-brother, Paul. My grandfather sold his half-brother his share and used the proceeds to buy his family a new boat.
I know next to nothing about Paul Callahan. He enlisted in the military in September ’54, served for four years, and was released in ’58. Besides taking over the bar in ’63, the only other thing I know is that he passed away in October ’77, just a few months after I was born.
All The Way Back to Ireland
Here’s what I know about the Callahans who came before my grandfather.
The farthest I can trace that side of my family is to a man named Daniel Callahan and a woman whose maiden name was Margaret Haggerty. Margaret was born in 1807. In 1858, she would get on a boat in Donegal, Ireland, with her children Daniel (13) and Eugene (12); her husband would not join them. I don’t know if he died or if he left his wife and children, but I can find nothing more about him. As you might imagine, there are a ridiculous number of people named Daniel Callahan in Ireland, and besides his name, I have nothing else to go on.
Of the two brothers, my family is directly descended from Daniel. He arrived with his family in Plymouth, Massachusetts, like the good pilgrims they were, and by 1860, at the age of about 15, he’s working as a mariner. His mom will pass away about eight years later, just two years shy of missing the birth of her grandson, and my great-great grandfather, Thomas S Callahan.
I’m not 100% sure, but Thomas S. was born on January 4, 1870, and his parents didn’t get married until that same year, so I think it’s safe to assume he was born out of wedlock. Daniel and his new wife, Catherine, would go on to have three more sons.
Sometime between 1870 and the census in 1880, Daniel stopped working as a mariner and took a job in a shoe factory. His wife, known as Katie, is listed as “keeping house.” By the census of 1900, he’s listed as a “common laborer,” as is his son, Thomas S.
Daniel would live long enough to see two of his children, including Thomas S., my direct ancestor, and his wife, pass away. Eugene will pass away from tuberculosis at the age of 24; Thomas will die from pneumonia at the age of 45; and his wife will die from malaria in 1907. Daniel would follow his family members to the grave in 1929, living to the age of 83.
My Grandfather’s Grandfather & Grandmother
All I know about Thomas S. Callahan is that he was born in Plymouth in 1870, got married to a woman named Christina Flood in July of 1895. and had five children who lived, including Thomas Edward, my grandfather’s father; they also had one child who died, with the cause of death being listed as “premature birth.”
At some point between 1900 and 1910, Thomas S. moved his family from Plymouth to Whitman, Massachusetts. According to a variety of censuses, he worked in the shoe industry his entire life before passing away of pneumonia at 45 years old.
Christina, my grandfather’s grandmother, was born in Cape Breton in New Brunswick, Canada in 1874. She immigrated in either 1886, ’89, or ’90, depending on what she felt like telling the census takers that year. After her mother died in 1891, her father moved the family back to New Brunswick, but in 1895, she’s in Plymouth, marrying my grandfather’s grandfather. By 1910, she’s working alongside her husband in the shoe factories, but after pneumonia took Thomas S., she returned to the home and two of her sons took jobs in the shoe factory, both working as “cutters.”
Catherine will live, incredibly, to the age of 103, which means my great-great grandmother passed away the same year I was born! She and Thomas S. are buried at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Plymouth.
Back to My Grandfather
So now it’s the 1940s, and my grandfather, Thomas Reed Callahan, is living in Marblehead with his stepfather and mother and working as a mechanic in the wholesale coat industry. In Dec. 1941, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. Three months later, on March 19, 1942, my grandfather signs up as a Private in the Air Corps. He enlists “for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law.” He’s listed as one of the “semiskilled mechanics and repairmen” with two years of education, single, and no dependents.
A year later, while still serving, he married my grandmother, Helen Blaney.
My brother knows a lot more than I do about what my grandfather did during the war, but I do know he was stationed stateside for the entirety of it, working as a flight instructor. I know he spent some time in upstate New York and Texas, and that he would receive his discharge while stationed in California.
One of the stories he liked to tell had to do with driving back to Marblehead from California with my grandmother. This was before President Eisenhower installed the interstate highway system, so a cross-country trip back then required finding the right paths through a mishmash of state roads. He often told me about losing his breaks while driving on ice somewhere in the midwest — he told this whenever I had to drive through Vermont’s winter weather to make it home for Christmas.
My father would be born in ’47; my aunt in ’51. They lived in a small house my grandfather had built near the top of a dead-end hill in Marblehead on a lot of roughly 15,000 sq. feet — a huge lot for Marblehead.
By this point, my grandfather was working for the Metropolitan Coal Company, which owned waterfront coal terminals in Boston, including access to the rail yards. During his time there, he returned to college, earning his B.B.A. from Northeastern in 1952.
At some point after 1952, he went to work for the First National Bank of Boston, and after that, he became the comptroller for Michaud Bus Lines. He retired from there in 1983, but in his “retirement,” he took a part time job at the National Grand Bank in Marblehead, where he would work for another 35 years before finally retiring at the young old age of 99.
During the ’60s, my grandfather also worked as an adjunct at Harvard University, teaching classes in business finance. He didn’t do it for too long, but after I became an adjunct at Green Mountain College in the 2010s, he would mention the job to me pretty much every time we saw each other. It was difficult because he taught night classes, which meant he didn’t get to see his wife and children on the days he taught, and ultimately, that’s why he stopped, but 50 years later, he looked back on the experience fondly.
He was also a dedicated member of his community, serving in public office for Marblehead and as an officer for the local chapter of the Freemasons.
His Real Legacy
In 1960, my grandfather and grandmother purchased a camp on Bunganut Pond in Lyman, Maine. While it’s officially a pond, we always called it the lake. The lake covers about 300 acres in southern Maine. It’s deep enough for speedboats and long enough for jet skis. There’s a public beach on one end, a campground in a different cove, and an old Girl Scout camp that is now owned by some Christian organization.
I call our camp my grandfather’s real legacy because it was here that his family congregated the most. My father and aunt grew up going to the camp, and when they got older and each had three sons of their own, that’s where they took us every summer, and now that we have kids, that’s where my grandfather’s great-grandchildren meet to play and swim.
The camp is why my dad’s family and my aunt’s family remain so close. I grew up fighting with my cousins like they were my brothers. We saw each other virtually every weekend in the summers, and we made fun of each other for doing belly flops off the dock or for getting tossed this way and that from the tube. We sat around countless campfires, whispered to each other in the loft, crept to the edge to watch TV when we should have been sleeping. We “mined” for mica up the road, collected firewood from the forest floor, rode our bikes to the frog pond. We battled each other in badminton, outdid each other in fishing competitions, accused each other of cheating at tether ball. We yelled at each other while putting away our toys, insulted each other while closing down the camp on Labor Day weekends, and giggled in the darkness while my grandfather yelled at my dad and uncle about being too loud at 8pm.
In short, it was at the camp in Maine where our family became a family, and because of the relationships we forged on that lake, my grandfather’s family, three generations later, remains close and strong.
If that’s not the sign of a successful life, then I don’t what is.
So thank you, Gramps, and give Gram a big kiss for me!
