This is my great grandfather, Tom Lennon, about 1910 on a postcard that was sent to my great grandmother. There is no message, other than his nickname, "The Harrigan". The name comes from a George Cohen song that came out in 1907 and refers to someone being proud of their Irish blood. Tom was 100% Irish, New York City born and bred (I have his family back to 1860 in NYC). There is a rumor that he was a gambler, we know for sure that he was a painter and worked at the shipyards. My grandmother also remembered that he worked a bit for rum runners, hiding liquor in their apartment for the speakeasy downstairs. Tom did a lot of things but mostly he was loved and all too soon he was mourned.

Tom died when he was only 43 years old.

When you study genealogy you find out all sorts of things, like alcoholism, or "chronic alcohol consumption" was a viable cause of death at the turn of the last century. I have no idea when Tom began drinking or who else drank in his family. I only know that he literally drank himself to death and even after the doctor told him he had to stop or would be dead in a year he still did not. He still drank through everything and everyone that mattered in his life and because he drank he abandoned them all. And they missed him; I know my grandmother never stopped missing him.

When she was young (he died in 1933 when she was 14) my grandmother had Rheumatic fever. She used to say that the pain was so bad that even if someone touched the bed she was lying on, it made her cry out. Only her father could feed her and wipe her face, only he could hold her hand. My great grandmother was sensible and tough and she kept her eight children fed and clothed and sheltered no matter what which is all very important and should never ever be discounted. She kept them together and she kept them alive. But she wasn't soft and she wasn't tender, that was Tom. And then he died and all the tenderness went away.

It wasn't easy for any of them when Tom drank. My great aunt Agnes told a story of coming home from school one day and excitedly seeing her father waiting in front of the house. When she got close enough she realized he had passed out standing up, and was leaning up against the wall. It wasn't easy she said, loving him in spite of the liquor was never easy.

I wish I knew why he chose it first. He wasn't a man with money; all he had was his family. I don't know if he wanted much more but I do know his whole world was the city. He was born there, all of his siblings were born there and I might just find out that even one of his parents was born there. I don't know what killed his father (I haven't narrowed his death date down yet - he was unfortunately named John Lennon which is amazingly common in NYC in the late 19th century) but I won't be surprised to find out it was alcohol related. At this point, he would just be one more to add to the list.

But still, I can't look at pictures of Tom Lennon without smiling. He was so beautiful and I know from the way my grandmother talked about him that he was very special. And before things got very bad, for the first ten years at least, Tom and Julia looked happy together. They had hope for each other and that was something worth celebrating then and now. I come from people who knew enough to hope for something bigger, for themselves and for their children. I come from a man who knew how to love.

[Post pics of Tom Lennon as "The Harrigan"; Tom with son Thomas in 1916, Tom with Julia, circa 1921.]