January 27
2012
In 1924, when he was ten years old, my great uncle Thomas was nearly burned to death. Thomas and several of his friends were playing in a vacant lot down the street from their apartment building in the Bronx when they discovered this large discarded wooden box. According to my grandmother there were paint cans of some kind in the box and the paint caught on fire. There was always a lot of confusion about how the fire happened - none of the boys had matches (which would have been hard for them to come by) so the theory was "autocombustibility" or paint soaked rags slowly burning and then flaming up when the boys opened the box's lid. Regardless of the cause, Thomas became caught up in it and began burning alive. The other children understandably panicked and began running and screaming. My grandmother, who was only five and not with the boys but back at their building, remembered the screams and remembered also the sight of her father running for the lot and saving her brother's life.
Thomas Lennon, who for all his struggles with alcohol and resultant broken promises, loved his children more than life itself. Every one of them spoke of him the same way for decades after he died. He was a man who disappointed his family, a man who could have been so much, yet also a man who adored them and they adored in return. On this particular day, Thomas Lennon grabbed his son and threw him to the ground and extinguished the flames. Then he carried his little boy home where his screams continued for a very long time.
More than putting out the fire, it is what happened in the days that follow which is the true miracle. The doctor came to the house and determined that little Thomas's survival was a precious thing indeed. Nothing was certain. His wounds had to be cleaned constantly to stave off infection. The pain was so great that the child could not bear to be touched and yet that was clearly necessary. The only one who could tend to his wounds was his father, something my grandmother echoed a few years later when she nearly died from tetanus*. Thomas Lennon tended to his boy with a sweetness that was without compare. Little Thomas survived, and thrived, and lived a good long life. His father, sadly, was gone less than ten years later. But Thomas lived and really, that alone (without all the other many stories) is testament to how much a father's love can achieve.
How a photograph of the box came to be taken, and how it ended up with my great grandparents is a mystery. It is an 8 1/2 by 11 inch picture - large for the time and certainly something they could not afford. (Nor did they own a camera.) The tag hanging from the lock is also strange. It seems to include an address which is familiar to me so perhaps it was part of some investigation from the fire or police departments that notes the box's location at the time of the accident? Regardless we have it now along with a note from grandmother with the details, which is really what matters. Without that note, and if my mother and I had not heard this story many times, then this would just be some strange random picture of a box. I would never know about the day my great grandfather was a hero or the son whose life he saved.
Stories matter, don't they? We would not know who we are without them.
(Now that it is scanned in, I will be sending the original of the box to my mother's cousin, Thomas' son.)
*I should note that my great grandmother was an exemplary mother and very conscientious in the care of her children. However, Thomas Lennon had a special touch when his children were ill. My grandmother told me that the pain she suffered from tetanus (which they referred to as lockjaw) was so great that the bed on which she laid could not be touched without causing her agony. Yet again, it was her father who tended to her. Only he could touch her, she said. Only he did not make her cry. He had a gift for tenderness, which his children never forgot.
