My great grandfather, Tim, a Kerry Sullivan who played the fiddle, worked on the building of the Boston Public Library until disabled when struck on the head by a falling brick. My great-grandmother, a Fitzgerald, worked on a janitorial crew evenings at Filenes, cleaned houses on Beacon Hill days, kept a large merry household with borders in Boston's South End. My mother used to cite this as an example of life being a matter of attitude, not comfort and ease.
I remember Nana as a large cheerful woman with a great Irish brogue. When I visited her in her Jamaica Plain three-decker in the 1940s I would be assigned to sleep in the same bed, a single. She snored loudly and had a Big Ben clock that ticked all night. I was about five years old. My first encounter with sleeplessness. She had emigrated from Tralee in the 1870s, never went back to Ireland, never wanted to. She didn't much like priests.
-- Richard Sullivan, Boston.