April 26th, 1931 — John Francis,  first son of Easter Hore and Joseph Lynch, residing at Bailey Ave in the Bronx, was born at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Manhattan, in a neighborhood just north of the George Washington Bridge, still under construction at that time. The world's longest suspension bridge would open to traffic for the first time later that fall. 
       Two years earlier, Joe had married Easter at St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village near the neighborhood where both were raised, and where his new father-in-law owned and operated a prosperous grocery. A daughter, Easter (Essie), arrived in January ’30 followed in quick succession by John (’31), Robert ('34), Martha ('36) and Mary (’38). †
       When the stock market crashed in 1929, Joe had been an associate professor of  pharmacology at Fordham, nursing a dream to open his own Apothecary (drug store) in Riverdale. Sadly, the economic collapse that cost Jeremiah Hore (father-in law and chief financier) $85,000 on one day, put Joe’s dreams on hold as well.
       As the Depression worsened, Joe moved his growing family back from the Bronx to the West Village, into Jeremiah and Martha's large 3-story brownstone at 107 King Street, whose backyard adjoined his childhood home at 289 W. Houston, just around the corner from the Hore's grocery business at 564 Greenwich Street.
       In search of more stable employment, Joe reluctantly decided to join his brother and father in the NYPD where his college education—a rarity in those days for a cop—would fast track him for promotion in the ‘Bomb and Forgery Squad’ setting him on a new and ultimately tragic course.*

*James Mauro's ‘Twilight at the World of Tomorrow’ offers an interesting view of the time.

† Martha passed in '86 (a few years before her mother Easter). Robert, John, and Mary all in 2013, Essie in 2018.

November 25th, 1937 — Joe and Easter were back in the Bronx in their own apartment at 230 Naples Terrace enjoying a meal over Thanksgiving weekend with Easter's parents, as they celebrated their growing family and Joe's recent offer of a posting to the Bronx DA's office that would soon allow him to begin working closer to home.
       The following day the first of two successive tragedies struck that would have repercussions for all our lives. Martha Hore was working alone in the the family's grocery store (Jeremiah was on jury duty a few blocks away) when a troubled youth from the neighborhood came in and made a grab for the cash drawer. In the struggle that ensued, 17-yr-old Joe Healy grabbed a butcher knife and turned it on 65-year-old Martha with lethal effect.
       The family was still working through its grief when the World's Fair opened its gates to visitors with great fanfare on April 30th, 1939. But the ‘World of Tomorrow’ never quite lived up to its promise as news of escalating conflict in Europe filtered across the Atlantic, countering its optimistic theme and dampening the mood.
       The Fair, barely breaking even, soldiered along to midway through its second year. A month after Dunkirk, days before the Battle over Britain would commence, an electrician working in the fan room of the British Pavilion discovered a small, tan-colored canvas bag, and heard ticking.
       The bag was moved to a nearby field in the late afternoon of July 4th, 1940. Detective Joe Lynch arrived with his partner, Freddy Socha. He took out his pocketknife and carefully began cutting away a two-inch strip off the bottom of the bag. “This looks like the real goods,” were his last words.
       Babe Ruth (among other NY Yankees) visited the Lynch apartment on Naples Terrace, where Joe was waked before his funeral service. A detective leading the investigation, present at the wake that day, remembers Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, near tears, urging him, “[Have] your boys give all their spare time to this case.” The crime was never solved.
       At nine years of age, John had become the man of the family.

       1940 to 1953 — With a small stipend from the NYPD, Easter managed to get the kids out of the hot city and into a summer bungalow at 89 Reid Ave, Rockaway Point. At a young age, Dad began working to help with family expenses. He sold magazines (Colliers), jerked sodas (look it up), and meandered up and down the concrete walkways between the myriad bungalows of Breezy and Rockaway Point calling out his trade, “Tailor! Shoemaker!” collecting items in need of repair each morning, returning them that evening.
        In between those pickups and deliveries, if not serving soda, he could be found at the beach, often in the company of a group of young people that included a certain dark-haired Irish girl from Brooklyn whose family, living at 32 Olive Walk, owned the local liquor store.
       Catherine Murnane was the love of John's life, who would eventually win her away from her other suitor(s?). Mom's only real competition was the Almighty himself, who tempted his servant John to consider, briefly, a life of celebate ministry. But in the end, he came back for his girl.
       In spite of the Depression, family tragedies, and an ongoing World War, Dad (and Mom) always referred to those Halycon summer days at Breezy Point in hushed tones, as if something sacred had been shared by the few lucky ones who got to experience that time and place together.
       And so, when the time came in 1997, John did as he had been directed and scattered Mom's ashes into the waters off the beach beside Breezy Point's Surf Club; an act to be repeated soon, from a different urn.
       Finally, the '40s was also the decade John finished his time at Fordham Prep, quickly moving on to the college which shared the same Rose Hill campus, while making the most of ongoing scholarships offered him by the school in deference to his hero father's sacrifice and his own stellar academic record. 
       In '53 he graduated on the Dean's List (English) with the following epithet recorded in the school yearbook: “John ... tall and talented ... a master of all trades ... writes well ... assistant editor of Dun and Bradstreet magazine ... ‘Wake up, Jack!’ ... next stop law school.”
       As it turned out, the next stop was at the altar.

  1954 to 1970s — John Lynch and Catherine Murnane (always ‘Katy’ to him) began their married life on 4/24/54 —inauspiciously — in a Maryland trailer park during his short stint in the army. Presumably, they taught him to shoot, but the only thing he hit during the Korean war were keys on a typewriter as a technical writer for the Brass.
       In '56, they welcomed their first son, Steve, into the world, bringing him home to their Bay Ridge apartment on the Brooklyn-side of a proposed bridge that would eventually connect Mom's home borough, through Staten Island, to New Jersey—a sign of things to come.
       Drew was born into the same Bay Ridge apartment in 1958, but Owen ('60) and Kevin ('64) started their lives in the suburbs—in White Plains, NY and NJ respectively—the latter arriving into the family's new Maplewood home as the final coat of paint was still drying on the Verrazano Bridge.
       Dad started his career as a technical writer, working his way into advertising and a marketing job as one of Malcom McLean's ‘Mad Men’ at Sea-Land where he soon took off — literally, by ‘Air’ —around the world on plum photo assignments to publicize the momentous changes taking place in the cargo transport business. We remember chocolates from France and walkie-talkies from Japan. An exotic time!
       At the height of that success John ‘jumped ship‘ into business for himself, capping off an increasingly prosperous, though short-lived, yet exhilarating family period that saw us riding horses in Puerto Rico, skiing in Vermont, and sailing around Sheepshead Bay before the ill-timed '73 recession helped bring all the fun to an end.
       Around this time, Dad began working on “the Play” which would later open to mixed reviews from family members who eventually read it, the only audience, alas, which ‘The Soul has its Season’ would ever reach. Still, the man wrote a play!
       The premature death of Dad's new baby, Marketing Strategies, Inc. would mark the beginning of more difficult times. But our Maplewood years—in old man Van Winkle's relic of a house at 28 Clinton Ave, bought for $20k in '63 and lovingly restored over the next decade with lots of help from our carpenter, family friend and Sunday morning bakery delivery man, John Hauck—were a gift.
       Thanks loads, Mom and Dad!

       1973 to 1976 — The failure of Dad’s business seemed to intensify the bipolar illness he would struggle with for the rest of his life. Intensive therapy and medication helped him recover enough to respond to a job opportunity in Detroit, made possible through the intercession of old Fordham friends. It was time to say goodbye to Maplewood.
       Year One in Michigan passed slowly. Neighbors like the Stoddards helped. Mom sold her (inherited) Breezy Point bungalow to shore up the family budget; spoiling us kids with a small used motorboat and new minibike to compensate for missing friends, and generally holding things together for all of us since everything else, including Dad, had changed.
       Year Two was better, with John beginning to act more his old self by the time Steve left for college at Michigan State in Sept ’74, with a dream to fly. Then, just as life was beginning to stabilize in suburban West Bloomfield, John and the rest of the family were hit with a shock — Kay's diagnosis of advancing emphysema.
       It's not an easy thing for a New Yorker to leave New York, and with the recession easing, John had already been thinking about how to get back East to restart his dormant advertising career. Katy’s bleak prognosis only hastened his resolve make a move that would reunite her with old friends and restore the family back to its NY roots.
       By fall '75, the house was on the market when Dad flew East, ahead of the family, to look for work and a new home in New York. Mom was mostly on her own helping Kevin with homework, and Drew with college applications, while forming a special bond with Owen that year, cheering his every victory on the basketball court and track, and especially his ‘rock star’ performances at West Hills Junior High School.
      John commuted back each month to see everyone and share updates. In Manhattan, he ‘roomed’ with an old college bachelor buddy, and drove a cab while pounding the pavements looking for better opportunities to support his family.
       The house finally sold just in time for Kevin (6th), Owen (9th) and Drew's (HS) graduations. Dad found a spacious 2-bedroom apt in Hudson View Gardens, with a view of the river and George Washington Bridge, in the same Washington Heights neighborhood where he'd been born 45 years earlier. The family—minus Steve who had lined up summer work in Michigan—was heading back East.

      1976 to 1987 — That summer, Drew worked with an old friend down at the Jersey Shore before joining Steve at MSU in the fall. Kevin began adjusting to life in the big city at PS-187, while Owen’s musical skills earned him a spot in the selective enrollment High School of Music and Art — the school Fiorella La Guardia had started back in 1936, describing the effort as “the most hopeful accomplishment” of his administration.
       Year One in Washington Heights was difficult. Year Two, not much better. Dad  continued pursuing better job leads. Washington Heights had changed since Dad's youth, and times were tough. It was time to make a change again. Though struggling with health, the ‘Mother Bear’ went back to work and together she and Dad found a way to bring their two remaining cubs (still living at home) back to the suburbs and better schools.
       The new year started with promise in Westchester. John was working in advertising again. Soon, he’d be offered a great job at Fordham. Steve was starting flight school. Drew, after a 6mo adventure in CA, had returned to school at NYU. Kevin began his high school career in a top-rated district.
       But Owen, a senior at the same school, was having a tough time. The musical prodigy of the family had always marched to the beat of a slightly different drummer. But lately he’d begun to struggle within himself in ways difficult to define. His tragic suicide in May ’79 devastated the entire family. A pall hung heavy over all, none more so than Mom and Dad, who struggled to cope with the loss. There would be moments of celebration and joy again, but never without the sense that something (or rather someone) was missing in them.
       As the months slowly passed, the family began to sew closed a wound that would never fully heal. The following year John welcomed his first daughter (in-law) into the family, delighted to have ‘another girl’ in the house at holidays, and often in-between, as Drew & Lynn’s newlywed apt was barely a mile away. More little girls, and boys, soon followed. The pall began to lift.
       Steve flew around the globe with the Air Force before moving to Chicago to work for United Airlines. Drew found happiness at home, meaning in church, and success running a local business. Kevin finished high school, discovered his own love of music, and started a band. Later, he left tbe stage and also moved to Chicago where he began producing concerts for major recording artists.
       The birds had flown the nest — one with angel's wings.

       1989 to 2013— In the late 80s, Dad took up public school teaching in the Bronx before taking Mom to Florida in search of more affordable living, relief from the cold winter illnesses exacerbating her breathing problems, and new teaching opportunities for a man now entering the sixth decade of his working life.
       John continued teaching while Katy joined a local bridge club. Semi-annual visits back to New York were highly anticipated, when John and Katy held court around Drew and Lynn's dining room table with whoever of the Neary’s might show, along with long-time faithful friends like the McGirr's, McGuires, Taylors, and Rose Chickanis.
      By the mid 90’s we all began to feel, to hell with the weather, let’s live closer again. As John neared the 10-year mark guaranteeing a small pension, Mom and Dad began to plan their return; but it was not to be.
       In Sept '97, Katy finally succumbed in her long battle with emphysema. At 66, John found himself alone for the first time in 43 years. We remember how forlorn he looked on the boat at Mom’s funeral, and especially at Kevin and Wendy’s wedding the following summer. He appeared lost without her, telling Steve he just wanted to get away, far away.
       That fall, John headed overseas, once again, to teach on a military base in Okinawa. The opportunity gave him the time he wanted to reset his life, and also provided another small pension and insurance for retirement.
       Upon his return in '03, John bought an apartment near the train in Larchmont so that Manhattan would be “just steps away.” The plan was to keep busy with part-time work while enjoying visits to the city, walks along the Sound in nearby Manor Park, and the company of old friends and family (living in town), and other sons and grandchildren only a short flight away in Chicago.
       But at 72, John retired for good after only a brief stint substitute teaching in Larchmont. He became increasingly inactive as old demons rose again, slowly turning him inward. Losing mobility by '08, he relocated to a retirement community in NJ, and shortly afterwards, left the East Coast for good to live near Steve and Kevin in Chicago.
       More and more in these last years, John's thoughts turned to his beloved Katy, and departed son, Owen. After a while, it seemed like more of him was with them, than here with us.
       A few of Drew’s kids visited their Grandpa recently and afterwards remembered a poignant moment when John—looking around the table at 2 of his 3 surviving sons and 6 of his 10 grandchildren—suddenly announced, “I gotta say, the biggest accomplishment of my life has to be marrying Katy, and bringing this family into the world.”
      It was a nice thing to say to those assembled; even nicer to hear, that after a long life which started hard, and got harder before it was done, John had found satisfaction in something very real to claim as his own success.

       Fare Thee Well, Dad.