My Dad died in 1964. He had gone to Group Health Hospital up on 15th street to pass a gallstone. I saw him after it had passed. It was very odd to see my Dad in a hospital bed. He was a big man, strong, a worker. He was not meant to lie in a hospital bed. When I left his room, I told him that I loved him. It was something we didn’t do much in our family. Love is as love does, says Bethany, and our family had plenty of love, but we rarely said it. I said it and I was very glad that I did.
At 2:00 am that next morning I got a call at home. They said my Dad had died of a coronary occlusion. He was 65 years old. My Mom started pacing the living room in a trance praying my Dad through judgment time with God. Luckily Seal Toner, Kip’s Mom, came in the front door that morning with a horde of Church ladies to take over. We had the funeral at St. Anne’s and took Dad out to the Catholic cemetery in north Seattle. I have never gone back.
My Dad was born James Edwin Leahy in Huntingdon, Quebec, the son of Michael Richard Leahy and Vienna Mary Fortin. His grandfather and grandmother were James Leahy and Catherine Barrett. James was from Cork and Catherine from Quebec.
Dad came out to Leahy, Washington, with his parents. He talked about driving stage out of Leahy. He also took me back to Leahy when I was a young man and showed me Jim Leahy’s farm house and buildings and also his parents farm house which was still standing.
Dad went to World War I. He enlisted under age and shipped to France in a cattle boat out of New York harbor. He also changed his name to Edwin James Leahy. I don’t know why. He was an artilleryman and said the only Purple Heart he got was from being hit by the recoil of an artillery piece. He said the war was so casual that you could take a taxi out of Paris to the front lines. Other than that, he didn’t say much and I was too dumb to ask him. I always carry his postcard from Paris in my travel wallet.
Dad came back whole, but probably wounded in ways we didn’t see. None of his three younger brothers, who all became “successful”, went to war. Later on, when Mom and I would find him sitting in his car drunk on wine, I heard it was about people asking what happened to him, a gas station man, as they pointed to his brother the priest or his brother the Judge.
He went to Washington State University and graduated, they say, with a 4 point in Electrical Engineering. He got a job with Standard Oil and went to live in Culver City, California while waiting to marry Margaret Burke. They say he didn’t move up the ladder in Standard Oil because he was Catholic. I never went into a Standard gas station once I started driving.
My Mom survived my Dad’s death. Margaret Anastasia Burke. She was a survivor, one of 13 Burke kids, born to a farm family, who homesteaded near Mansfield all the way from Iowa. My Mom was born in Jefferson City, Iowa and came out west when she was quite young. Her parents were Bernard Burke and Mary Flanagan. Mary died after her 13th child and Mom, who was 16 years old at the time, took over as “Mom” while the older kids, like John and Nellie, went to work. Grandad Bernie Burke was a drunk and didn’t have much to do with the kids after his wife died. Mom raised 9 younger ones living in Mansfield and Waterville and working as elected Treasurer of Douglas County.
Mom and Dad were married at the St. Joseph’s Church in Waterville, Washington. Allan and Evelyn Leahy were there, so were Lawrence and Pat Leahy, Father Leahy. Cecilia Lou Burke, Uncle John’s daughter, was the flower girl. It made for a proud picture. They moved to Seattle and lived at 2626 26th Street just off Admiral Way. Dad had a Texaco gas station just past the corner of California and Admiral. He had made a good living during WWII. He told me once that the men who got a job during the Great Depression were ones that didn’t know there weren’t any.
They lived there until I was in the first grade, just after the 1949 earthquake. Then, Dad had a heart attack and they moved to Queen Anne Hill where they opened up a laundry on Queen Anne Avenue, just a bit south of Boston and bought the home at 308 Crockett Street for $18,000 at 3% interest and a $60 per month payment.
Kathleen and I were now old enough to help fold curtains, but even with our help, I think Mom and Dad went broke at that laundry. Dad went back to running a Signal gas station right across the street from the Broadway park on Capitol Hill. Johnnie and Eddie O’Brien used to hit baseballs into his driveway. It was a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise by the time I went to Seattle University. A few years later, he got a Shell Station at 19th and Mercer up near St. Joseph Catholic church. He worked there until he died.
My sister, real name Kathleen Fortin Leahy, although removed for 20 years of my life by the cloister walls, was always right there for me, even though I didn’t see her much. Fortin was our grandmother’s name, the mother of our father, Edwin James Leahy. Her name was Mary Vienna Fortin. She was born and educated in Huntingdon, Quebec, married Michael Richard Leahy and came west to settle in Leahy, Washington, along with Michael’s three other brothers, Dan, Denny and Jim, who had preceded him.
My sister and I really grew up separately. I went to the seminary for four years – the equivalent of my high school years – and rarely saw my sister except during the summers. By the time I returned home to go to Seattle University in 1961, my sister had entered the Marylhurst novitiate south of Portland to become a nun in the Holy Names Society. This was an order of Catholic nuns who taught in Catholic schools. She was gone at least in a physical way for many years after that. Yes, we got to visit once in a while, but by the time her life was a bit more public as a teacher in Holy Names Academy in Seattle or as Principal of Immaculate Conception High School in Seattle, I was gone to Turkey in the Peace Corps, gone to graduate school at New York University or gone to work at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.
Nevertheless, she was there when I got married in San Francisco to Margaret Anne Passanisi, there with advice and counsel when I was refusing induction into the army, there when I left my first wife, there when I fell in love with Bethany Weidner and got married at Leahy, there when I said let’s go to San Patricio and find the Battalion. My sister is straightforward, determined and loyal.
I knew most of my Burke Aunts and Uncles. I didn’t know Ralph who committed suicide after WWII or Philip who was electrocuted lifting a wire over a hay wagon. But, I knew all the rest.
Nellie was the oldest girl. She worked as a postmistress in the Mansfield post office and later married Bert Schmitz who was the sheriff. Bert had a petrified wood collection in his house which was just on the left as you came into Waterville. John was the oldest boy and ran a Chevron gas station in Waterville; later he was the Deputy Sheriff. His wife was Cecil and she could make lemon pies to die for. Paul was married to Jenny. Paul drove an oil supply truck to farmers. Jenny was beautiful. They had a daughter, Monica.
Keigher was a railroad man married to Aunt Ann. I only saw him in a rocking chair in his home in Wenatchee dying from a work injury. Uncle Dick was married to Aunt Nell. Dick was a Chevy dealer and later worked for the UTC. He had a car with a siren on it and sometimes worked at weigh stations where trucks had to stop for inspection. More importantly, he was Chelan County’s Democratic Party ward boss. They lived in Wenatchee too. Katie and Eddie also lived in Wenatchee. Katie was a redhead, a Democratic Party workhorse, married to Martin Keith. They had two boys, Mike and Sean. Katie died early from cancer with my Mom sitting at her bedside.
My Uncle Eddie and his wife Irma were probably my closest Burkes. He got me my first real job working as a union laborer out of Local 1017 for his company, Graves and Burke. They were dirt contractors, digging reservoirs and ditches and building roads for power lines. It was big money for me. It was $3.10/hour and up to $4.00 if you were blowing rock. If you worked in Seattle, non-union, you were pulling down a big 75 cents or maybe $1.10/hour.
I worked summers for Eddie. Irma put me in her home for room and board. I could earn enough to pay my tuition at Seattle University which was $800/year and still have some money left over for clothes. I learned that work was social and it was up to the workers, not the boss, to set the speed of the work crew. The lead man on our crew was a giant. His name was Jim Sanford. He was from Cashmere. Jim wasn’t worth shit in the mornings, but once he got warmed up you couldn’t keep up with him. He told me, “when that boss man comes up along the ditch to talk to us, I want you to stand on your shovel and stay there until he leaves.” Jim said, “we’ll talk to him all day, but we’re the ones who say when and how fast we work.” I never forgot that, even though it was my uncle who was the “boss man.”
I also never forgot the Laborers Union. When I came back to Wenatchee 15 years later, I went down to the hall and thanked them for my college education. And, twenty years after that, when I ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Laborers union locals in Washington state gave me more money and support than they did to any other candidate who ran for statewide office that primary. I was very proud of that, even though I could not win that race for them.
There were two other uncles, Uncle Frank and Uncle Joe, both of whom lived in Spokane. Uncle Frank was a meat cutter and married to Aunt Vivian, a nurse he met in Hawaii during the War. Aunt Vivian taught us all to swim by throwing us in Liberty Lake, outside of Spokane, and saying swim!
Uncle Joe was the Burke family success story. He was married to Polly with two kids, Kevin and Susan. He survived WWII as a Lieutenant Colonel and never forgot the Sergeant who continually saved his ass. Joe came back home and traveled eastern Washington selling insurance to farmers and saving every penny. He became middle class and active in things like the Spokane Club. I loved Uncle Joe. He called me Daniel Boone and wanted me to be an Insurance Agent and work for him. I just couldn’t get into it and, after one summer working for him, I went back to work for Uncle Eddie digging ditches.
Aunt Mary, Mom’s maiden sister, was always with us. She lived on Admiral Way in West Seattle when I was little, but she moved in with us when we moved to Queen Anne Hill. I don’t know why. She lived with us until Mom died. She died a few months after Mom. She worked down at the Navy shipyards. I never knew exactly what she did. She once told me to do something when I was little and I called her a “big chocolate pie,” my best swear word, and told her that she “was not the boss of me.” Aunt Mary lived a quiet, perhaps desperate life. I wish I knew. She had a great library which I had hoped to inherit, but, as it turned out, I did not receive one thing from her estate even though it was me, my sister and our family who shared our home with Aunt Mary for twenty plus years. Extended families can be vindictive and petty.
We did have a true extended family on the Burke side. It was kept together by a history that none of them would talk about, whether during holiday visits, funerals, weddings and the famous Burke Reunions. We were always going “east of the mountains” for some family event, up and over Stevens Pass, regardless of the weather, the snow or the required chains.
My Mom would drive and my Dad would constantly be saying, “pass em, Margaret, pass em.” My Mom was actually an amazing driver. The old ‘50 Ford had a vacuum seal that worked the windshield wipers. This meant that when you were climbing up Stevens pass in a blizzard, you had to let your foot off the gas so your windshield wipers would get the snow off your windows and let you see where you were going.
There were many secrets that us 1st cousins would try and unlock when we met at Family reunions. We first met at Sun Lakes State Park over near Dry Falls, but then we settled in for years at Camp Field, a CYO camp on the Icicle River near Leavenworth. I jumped in that river once when Uncle Eddie and I were in Leavenworth and it took my breath away as I lunged for the shore. “Why do you think they call it the Icicle?,” an incredulous Uncle Eddie asked me.
The reunions at Camp Field were three day affairs. It would take you that long to get to know who was who and to see if you could find out the answers to any secrets. Like did Uncle Eddie really wear purple underwear? Who was it that shot that old mule, Doc? Eddie or Joe or who? Why was that female cousin really in Montana for all that time? Did Uncle Ralph really die of asphyxiation or was it suicide? If it was suicide, how did he get buried by the Church? Is that woman with our cousin the nun, just another nun or are they, you know, together? Why wasn’t that Uncle in mass this morning? And, do they have to hide their Crown Royal liquor from their wives? Will that engaged couple get to have a cabin of their own or will the Aunts keep them separate?
We would all be there, checking each other out, telling stories and saying, “now, who’s that?” The Uncles would drink their liquor, the first cousins their beer, and second cousins would be down near the Icicle river smoking dope. In the mornings the Aunts would make breakfast and the Uncles would serve it. There was plenty of food and, of course, pies like you wouldn’t believe. Every Aunt had her specialty. They would line them up and we would devour them.
There were other traditions at the Reunion. We’d have family pictures taken with the “originals” sitting in lawn chairs in front, then the first cousins (the grandchildren of Bernie Burke and Mary Flanagan), then the second cousins, then the “outlaws” who were the in-laws. Mike Burke, the son of Bernard and Mona, was our family’s official photographer. He lives in Selah with Joy.
We also had the baseball game out in the back field. I have pictures of both JD and Chad up for bat. Burke Crossley made sure they didn’t get hurt. We’d have three legged races too, JD and Tralee were in one of them. One time JoAnne, who was married to Jim McNew, brought a survival suit. Lots of us would get in it and jump off the bridge going across the Icicle River and AJ or Dorothy would throw us a line downstream and pull us in. It was great fun. Those three sisters, Janice, Dorothy (Bush) and JoAnn (Graham and then McNew) were daughters of Keigher and Ann. Their brother was Bernard Burke who was always a stalwart of reunions and the Burke family. They had another sister named Mary. She was married to Jim Crossley. Jim and Mary lived in Wenatchee when I was working for Uncle Eddie. I had my first bottle of beer there. Mary died way too early, but she gave birth to a great bunch of kids before she did. A lot of the Crossley family live in the Tri-Cities area.
Of course, we went to mass on Sunday morning in the chapel. Usually it was Father Pat Burke who said mass for us. Pat was the son of Uncle Dick and Aunt Nell, and brother of Terry and Whalen and sister of Maureen (Cox). Reunions got harder for me in the late 60s or early 70s. I wanted to attend a community event, a sharing as the Mass is supposed to be, but by then I was not a “practicing Catholic”, as my Mom would say. I had “fallen away.” I no longer did any of the sacraments, no mass, no confession, no Church on Sunday. The Church’s support for the Vietnam War had pretty much eliminated my interest in it. But, by then, there were lots of us at that reunion who didn’t go up to “swallow the leader”, as we used to say in the Seminary.
Maybe if we hadn’t lost the CYO camp or had it taken from us, the reunions would have imploded anyway. There were also secrets about why one whole branch of the family was not coming to the reunion anymore. Of course, no one was really sure since no one would ask them straight out. This led to more secrets, but fewer people to find out the answers.
I heard once that it had to do with whether the reunion was canceled when one of the originals had died. I guess this happened once, but not another time so when it wasn’t canceled that branch felt insulted. Then, as some branches got older they started having their own reunions. That was good but the main reunion got smaller.
Then, we either lost the camp or the Church decided to sell it to rich people. This beautiful camp which had been available to working class and poor kids and their families is now owned by the Bullitt family from Seattle who turned it into “Sleeping Lady” where everything is mauve, textured and perfect. But, that’s the Burke family and it was great and is great to be a part of them even if the Reunion is now gone pretty much. I feel a great loss for my own sons – the protection and guidance they could have received from that great family seems lost.
We tried to keep those family ties. We did bring our sons to the reunions when they were at the Columbia River park, organized by Dorothy Bush and up to the Waterville Fairgrounds organized by Julie Daling. I tried to send in funds whenever there was a call.
We also kept our sons aware of Leahy, Washington, even though there were no buildings remaining, except the abandoned church. They have both been there and that’s good.
Place is an important marker. To be from a place. “I am Dan Leahy from Leahy, Washington.” Sounds good. I said it when I was lost or under attack. You have to come to some agreement with yourself about what identity to choose. You need to hold firm to that identity, especially when your enemies try to give you an identity you don’t like.
