28. March 2010 by pat desmond.

Archbishop Williams High School inducted 11 people into its Athletic Hall of Fame March 27 - two of them were from the Class of 1964, my class.

More than 40 of us from the class went to the dinner at the Lantana where one of our members, Dr. Carmen Mariano, who is now the school’s president, told us what a great school Archbishop Williams continues to be.

Jack Gantley was on the varsity football team for all four of his years at AWH. He was honored for his contributions to a team that seldom experienced loss. In fact there were only two losses and one tie in all his four years on the team. Coach Armond Columbo, Jack’s coach and friend, made the presentation. Jack is a retired US Navy captain now living in Florida with his wife. He is a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and achieved his career success inUS Special Operations Forces.

He made us all proud.

Then there was George Gallagher. George was one of the brightest students in our class.  He was honored for his excellence in track and cross country. I don’t remember a pep rally for the track team back in ‘64 but it was great to hear the cheerleaders from our class chant “George Gallagher” as he walked to the podium Saturday. He set a 300 meter tri-county league record in 1964 that wasn’t matched until 1979. He did it all on cinder track, without any practice space. He is a dentist who is a professor at Boston University. He still runs, in fact he has completed the Boston Marathon twice - both times he beat three hours.

Today AWH has a state of the art track at a sports facility near the school. When I started at AWH, we didn’t even have our own football field. We borrowed public school space. Maybe adversity has its plus side.

We remember what the school meant to us back when we were students.  School pride wasn’t invented in the 21st Century. But we were children back then. We all had our share of insecurity and anxiety.

Since then we’ve moved on, created families and careers. Coped with loss and personal challenges. Built success and faced failure. That’s not one or two of us. We share the normal passages of a lifetime. Some of us from the AWH Class of ‘64 remained close friends over the years. Most of us went our separate ways. But a few years ago my classmates began getting together for dinner from time to time.

I think we’ve finally come back together.

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28. June 2009 by pat desmond.

My grandchildren are at camp this week - a Salvation Army camp on the shores of Sebego Lake.

It’s their week to commune with nature.

My children went to day camp when they were young - it was my way of dealing with day care as a single working mother.

My daughter works for the Salvation Army - she’s a case manager.

This week she has more free time than usual. We had a chance to get out to brunch today. It was great to have time with June - time to catch up.

Now she’s off to visit a friend she’s had since high school.

Time passes far to quickly.

I miss the days when taking my children for Chinese food after work was the high point of my week. Now I am thrilled when I have a couple hours to spend alone with my daughter. (Or my son, but that is too infrequent. His home in the woods of California is a little out of the way.)

The days of being always rushed, always over-committed have given way to grandmotherhood. It’s really more fun to sandwich the minutes of connection in between equal slices of separation.

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21. June 2009 by pat desmond.

My father, Francis X. Desmond, died in April 1965.

I was ending my freshman year in college.

This is the first time in my life I have ever written something for public consumption about him. My feelings about my relationship with my father have been too complicated to think about letting strangers take a look.

My father grew up in Milton. He graduated from Milton High in 1939. His mother was widowed but left with enough of a support system that she maintained two households. They summered in Marshfield.

It was a different society then. My father’s three brothers all went to college. But he went to work for the telephone company after high school and then went on to serve in the Army in the days of World War II.

He never talked much about his time in the war. Whenever he was asked about it, he’d turn the conversation in a different direction.

He had married my mother just before boot camp. When he returned from the Army, they lived with her parents in a tiny home on Pleasant Street. I have no idea how the two couples were able to co-exist in the house. I was six months old when my parents got their first apartment near Central Avenue. I’ve always been attracted to small living spaces. I guess that’s my history.

My father served as a Town Meeting member in Milton. He would wear his suit and go off to the Annual Town Meeting. He was proud of his contribution.

Even after all these years, I can see him in my mind.  He was a solemn man. He worked overtime often to support his family. He (and one of his cousins) built the house my family lived in during my school years. He added to the house twice.

He had been brought up in the Catholic faith and never questioned it, never missed a Sunday Mass, never ate meat during Lent, always ate fish on Friday.

He lived by values he never questioned.

His simple faith defined him.

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6. June 2009 by pat desmond.

Looking back at my first job brings a smile to my life.

The people I worked with at the Patriot Ledger back in the 70s were bright and committed and caring.

Back then I was part of a company union that included about 70 reporters and copy editors. We all considered ourselves professionals. The Ledger covered about 30+ towns from Plymouth to Westwood in those years. There were three (or three and a half) editions. Each town had a correspondent and none of the correspondents were part of the union.

The Ledger was in a growth stage back then. There were rules about town coverage. We were sure to cover Selectmen and School Committee. Each day (five days a week) there would be a town column. The bigger towns, with bigger readership were high status amongst our little band of journalists.

Of course, Quincy, being the only city in the region and the highest readership was the jewel.

Most of us wanted to be the city hall reporter.  My turn came in the early 70s. It was a great time. There were scandals to study. Amazing people to profile. It was a great life.

Then another war broke out in Isreal. And being interested in the larger world, I decided I wanted to be a war correspondent. I didn’t plan to make a lifetime of it. I expected the war would be over in a matter of days.  I told the executive editor, Ed Querzoli, that I wanted to cover the war in Isreal. He told me I was the city hall reporter but that he would talk it over with the editor, Don Wilder. Within a matter of an hour, Don and I were discussing my hopes and plans.

He told me I could take a month but when I returned I wouldn’t be the city hall reporter. He said the Ledger wanted first refusal on all the stories I might write while I was in Isreal but he wanted promising they would publish them and I’d be paid as a freelancer during my leave of absence.

The time I spent in Isreal during the Yom Kippur War helped me understand a great deal about myself and my world. The war only lasted three weeks. I was able to travel in buses to the front with other journalists. I watched mortar fire explode in the sand of the desert. I interviewed soldiers who came from the US to join the Isrealis because they were Jewish. I interviewed civilian soldiers who put their lines on hold every so often to fight - men and women.

I talked with people who lived near the mountains of the Golan - people who were accustomed to gun fire and missiles in what people considered times of peace.

And then I returned to the Ledger. Collected about $300 in freelance fees. And went back to working general assignment.

One lesson I learned was that everything is local.  For the people I met and interviewed during my time in the war zone, the end of the fighting was just a reprieve.

For me it was a lesson in the value of commitment.

These days the Ledger has changed its focus, away from the intense desire to cover all the news about its communities.  They let all the correspondents go. They continue to decrease the staff. And the readership continues to diminish.

Fred Hanson, who has been the Milton reporter for a while, has been reassigned to Braintree. No one is being assigned to replace him. The Ledger is down to about 30 people in its editorial union. It is a sad time.

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10. May 2009 by pat desmond.

Mothers’ Day once was painful for me.

I was one of those women who had fertility issues. Of course, that was long, long ago.

My daughter, June, entered my life in 1974. She was 4 and I was ready to create a different sort of family.

A few years later I became a mother again. It was a miracle. My son, Timothy, came into my life, adding more joy.

Someone forgot to give me the map for motherhood.

I did the best I could.

I know I do better at being a grandmother. Afterall, there are no expectations of what a grandmother is responsible for.

Now Mothers’ Day is a chance to think about the purpose of life and the thoughts of Kahlil Gilbran, who said:

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.”

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7. May 2009 by pat desmond.

Just watched Penelope Trunk on the web explain how to get along with Generation Y.

She explained the young people are not interested in money and won’t pay their dues to climb a career ladder. But they love their parents and are very good team players.

I’m what they call a Baby Boomer. I realize I don’t fit her box for Baby Boomers. I type my blog a few minutes after midnight, sitting silently in my two bedroom condo in Dorchester.

I grew up in Milton. My business is in Milton. My 30-year-old son graduated from Milton High. But I moved to Dorchester because I’ve chosen to sink the profits of my life into a business I enjoy and the education of my two children. Neither of my children have eliminated their school loans yet. It’s a goal as much for me as for them.

I have a plan - but I’m keeping it secret until I reach the goal.

Was I ever focused on money? Not really. Today money is more of an issue because my business operates on a level that requires a steady cash flow. There are bills to pay - the printer, the post office, suppliers, but most of all the employees and various contributors who keep the Milton Times in operation.

My first fulltime job as a journalist paid $115 a week. That was in 1968 at the Patriot Ledger and I was on step 2 of their scale with credit for time worked before I earned my bachelor’s degree. I loved my job. I loved the people I worked with.

Maybe I belonged to Generation Y back then. I lived just fine on the money I earned. What was important was that I was learning constantly and having fun.

You know, I still am learning. That’s why I twitter and tweet. And Facebook. And Linkedin.

Truth is I don’t know what I’m doing yet but I’m learning.

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22. April 2009 by pat desmond.

The first few issues of the Milton Times were produced at my dining room table in Milton.

My daughter and my mother worked with me to paste up the copy.

My daughter had lived around newspapers most of her life. When she was four years old, she used to visit the newsroom of the daily where I worked after day care. She would wander around, talk with other reporters, help the janitor sweep the floor, draw on old newsprint. It was a good life.

June had come into my life in 1974 - I was 28, divorced and wanting very much to be a mother. That was the year the state decided single people were suitable as adoptive parents. Not long after she and I became a family, my co-workers took over the newsroom to give us a toy shower.

That was one of the best days of my life. My co-workers were truly all the family I needed back then. I was incredibly grateful for the friendships.

Time passed and somehow the corporations that were gobbling up newspapers had pushed me out of the world of reporting. By then I had two children and no other source of financial suppport.

I had learned much about newspapers over the years. I had learned that you needed to know who you were writing for. You needed to know how to get the paper to your market. And you needed to know who would pay to be included in that news vehicle. The bottom line needed to fill a need for the advertisers.

Knowing all that, I also knew that I probably had to own a newspaper if I wanted to avoid another layoff.

I expected my two children would help me if I started a newspaper. I was surprised that my mother was willing to take a role.

But in 1995, I sat at the dining room table late into the night with my daughter and my mother using rubber cement to glue the first issues. Desktop publishing created the ability to print crisp fonts with a regular laser printer. My mother was the one who understood what Milton was really about. I understood news and technology. My daughter’s strong suit was graphic design and computer savvy.

I’m not sure whether either of them were having fun.

I know I was sure we could do this but I also realized it would take at least a year of crazy long hours with no guarantee of a return. But I also realized I had to make it work - or find another way to pay the household bills.

My son, who was still in high school, was willing to handle the newspaper deliveries for the price of a used car. That was probably one of the best deals I ever made.

There were so many people who helped me without asking for anything in return. Writers donated their work. Photographers took pictures. A woman who had once worked for the other paper in town offered to sell advertising space.

The number of gifts continues to overwhelm me. I need to spend a long time creating a list of the generous people who encouraged me. So many wonderful people.

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12. April 2009 by pat desmond.

My first job in newspapers came my way because of the goodwill of a wonderful man. Ed Querzoli was city editor at the Quincy Patriot Ledger in 1966. I was a student at Stonehill College, majoring in English literature, and living in Milton at my family’s home.

My goal in life was to write books of fiction. I wanted the fiction to be excellent. Making a living was a concern. The idea of working for a newspaper seemed like a way to use my skill as a writer to earn money.

But I had no experience. Well, I had been co-editor of my high school newspaper. And I had lots of poetry that was dark in a teen-aged sort of way.

So one afternoon in 1965, I gathered up some of my poetry, a couple old high school newspapers and dropped by the Ledger newsroom and asked how to apply for a job. Ed took time to speak with me and explained I had no experience - no clips - and that my poems and high school essays proved that.

I told him they proved I could write and that writing for a newspaper would not be very different.

It’s just a different subject, I told him.

He told me to come back in a week or so.

And that began our relationship. At the time I didn’t know he was just too nice a man to tell me no chance, no way.

I came back a week later with an innocent smile. Each of our conversations ended with him saying, come back in a week or so. And so I kept coming back. After eight of these meetings, he finally said. OK I’ll give you a chance. He gave me a stack of what they called rewrites. Each had a mark at the top saying “1 graph” or maybe “3 graphs.”

I sat at an old Royal typewriter and put the information into the one or two paragraphs.  Who, what, where, when and why. Simple sentences. About four hours later, having finished the pile, I asked Ed what to do next.

He said come back next week. He told me he thought he could find about eight hours a week for me.

I don’t think I’ve ever been happier with the promise of a job. I had no idea what I’d be paid.

People don’t go into newspapers for the money. And there are still good people, like the late Ed Querzoli, who will give a beginner a chance.

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