Mary Sheehan Dalton: I am Mary Sheehan Dalton. I was born in 1914 in Concord. Mother was Katherine Sullivan and father was Edward W. Sheehan and he was born in Concord in 1880 on Main Street. His father was Jeremiah Sheehan and his mother was Jeremiah's second wife and her name was Mary Williams and she was a Concord girl.
Edward Sheehan: I'm Mary Dalton's brother Ed and I was born in 1912 and of course I had the same parents as Mary and my grandfather Jeremiah and his wife Mary Williams. His first wife was Hannah who came from Ireland with him and with one of their sons. They had two or three sons altogether. Then Jerry and Mary proceeded to have a family of ten.
...Ten more besides the other three so there were 13 altogether? And where did the Sheehans live on Main Street?
Edward Sheehan: At the former Baker farm where the Concord Greene is now and the big white farmhouse. We, of course, had a bigger barn.
...What kind of farmer was he?
Edward Sheehan: He was a dirt farmer. He was a rock farmer, he used to bury rocks. The farm was so big and there were such big rocks left by the glacier that you couldn't farm too well so they used to dig great big holes in the ground and bury the rocks and cover them over and then farm on it.
...When you say he was a dirt farmer, did he raise vegetables for the Boston market like all the other Concord farmer?
Edward Sheehan: Oh, yes. As a matter of fact he was actually a well known Concord farmer and they competed with the Allen farm for the potato market.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: But he also had milk. He had cows or a dairy farm.
Edward Sheehan: He had a terrific apple orchard, in later years, which is all developed in that area on Main Street and Old Bridge Road. And up on Elm Street where that big development is up there [Baker Avenue], that was his 90 acre farm.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: That's where the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge is.
...Oh, he farmed that area also. Can you tell me now with all these children that he had, did they all go, as far as you know like your father and his brothers and sisters, through the Concord schools and did they tend to settle down here and what did they do for a living?
Edward Sheehan: The first three children by his first wife we didn't get to
know too well because they're actually my father's stepbrothers.
One went to live in Northhampton with his wife, the second one went
to live up in Seabrook, NH with his wife, and the third one Patrick
was killed in the service and he is buried at St. Bernard's as a
Civil War veteran[?]. Then the first son that Jeremiah and Mary
Williams had was Jeremiah Jr., he became a lieutenant in the Boston
police force and went to live in the city. The next one was David
who had his own farm in Concord. Then there was a girl Helen who
married a Sullivan. She had some education and was a postmistress
at one time and he went into business in the city. They lived
locally here in Concord all their life although he did work in
Boston. Then after that came Dennis who remained on the farm. He
was steadfast taking care of the cows and horses and plowing.
After him came a daughter named Katherine. Of course, they all
helped out on the farm as young children but after they got a
little education and met different people in the world... Katherine
married a man named Manion and went to Littleton and they lived
dirt farming all their life. Then came my father Edward and his
brother Timothy.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Dad only went to freshman year in high school and he was the and he was the first one to cut loose and say "I'm not a farmer. Toot-a-loo, Dad I'm going to the city and earn my way." And grandpa handed him two dollars and said "Good luck!"
... So he went to Boston?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: So he went to Boston. He was fortunate enough to get a job with H.P. Hood and Sons.
Edward Sheehan: Like everybody that went into the city from the farms, the first thing they did was they went to work on the elevated. You were a motorman or a conductor or something. He did that for a while until he was able to hook on with H.P. Hood & Sons.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Hood was looking for people who knew horses to deliver the milk routes and as a farm boy he was great with horses. So he started with Hood and stayed with them for forty years and did very well and ended up in management but that was his beginning.
...And the younger brothers and sister?
Edward Sheehan: His younger brother Timothy who came right after my father was the only one that received a formal education. He wanted to be a farmer who understood husbandry and animal life. So he went to Amherst to get a degree for farming. He stayed on the farm until after my grandfather died. And Robert stayed for a while then he went into business himself. Farm work was long days and Robert was great for short nights.
...Why don't we hear now from the Dalton family?
Mary Dalton Mara: I'm Mary Dalton Mara [b 1919] and I was the daughter of Peter and Katherine Dalton. My father was born in Concord and my mother was born in County Cavan, Ireland. My grandfather Patrick was born in 1831 and he came in 1856 to New Jersey and later came up to Lincoln and worked for the Hartwell farms there until he bought land on Old Bedford Road and worked at night renting a horse to lug the rocks away and clear the land. And he later married and his first wife had died after the first baby was born, and his name was Frank. And then a year after or so, he married Mary McLaughlin who come from Ireland and they had four more children - Patrick, Mary, Elizabeth and Peter. Peter Nicholas was my father's name. Later my father married in 1907. My mother - Katharine McGuire - was born in Count Cavan, Ireland. They had five children - Edward, John, William, Leo, and Mary, myself. We lived on the farm on Old Bedford Road. I don't know how many acres. He kept adding a little bit here and there, but I remember it as about 42 acres. Some of it had been sold.
Later my father and his brother became well known. They ran the farm while Grandpa was aging and lived with us. He later died and they kept up the farm, and they were known for their strawberries and asparagus. One kind of strawberry didn't have a name and it's called the Dalton berry at the Boston market of Adams and Chapman Company. The sign is still up there in Fanueil Hall.
And I can remember people saying that my father used to go in with his older brother, Frank, when he was ten years old, into market to bring the produce into the market and it was mostly asparagus and strawberries at that time. Later it was corn and celery. They farmed all the land and bought some more land that was adjoining that on Old Bedford Road to Bedford Street, and over on Bedford Street they bought the Ingerson Farm which had bordered us at that point and some of the land on Bedford Street. So I don't know just how many acres there were in all. They also bought some down near the Flints - down near the Lincoln line. When Patrick Dalton first came to Concord, he lived near there on Shady Lane - when he was first married. That was near the Hartwell Farm.
...So they would have land in several places that they would have to keep up.
Mary Dalton Mara: They were within walking distance.
...Tell me more about going into Boston. Would they go in with a wagon and horse?
Mary Dalton Mara: Yes, two horses and a wagon. A couple of times his older brother decided to stay in and the horses knew the way home over the bridges and all the way home. My father was only twelve years old, but I remember his saying that the horses knew the way and he, at that age, took them home.
... And how long do you suppose that would take by horse? Do you have any idea?
Edward Sheehan: Well, they used to leave at about seven in the evening. My uncles would take a load of corn or whatever they had, on the wagon, leave at seven in the evening - and with one horse and a wagon - drive into Boston.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: It must take at least two hours.
Mary Dalton Mara: Oh, it took more than that.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: More by the long winding roads.
Edward Sheehan: It was twenty miles to the market and if they did ten miles an hour, they did very well. I think it probably took nearer three hours. And they wanted to get in early to get a stall. Then they would leave their wagon, feed their horses, and go to Durgin Park to get their evening meal and then come back and put up for the night.
...Sometimes, John Macone said that his father and his older brothers would just sleep in the wagon and then come back the next morning. Sometimes they'd be just too tired.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Well, they would be there at four o'clock in the morning to be ready to sell as soon as someone was ready because they wanted to get back to have breakfast on the farm.
Mary Dalton Mara: Milk the cows.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: They had to have the wagon to get to their farm.
...Would they sell right where they sell right now, in the same general area in Boston?
Mary Dalton Mara: Yes. At Faneuil Hall.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Faneuil Hall Market is now developed into the big Quincy market.
...But just down below Faneuil Hall is where all the Italians were.
Edward Dalton: On Commercial Street.
...Why don't you introduce yourself now.
Edward Dalton: I'm Ed Dalton. I'm the oldest son of Peter Dalton.
...When were you born?
Edward Dalton: I was born March 14, 1908.
...And what about the Daltons in school, and so on? And what happened with the Dalton second generation? What did they do? Did they all continue working on the farm?
Edward Dalton: Oh yes, we'd raise a lot of asparagus so we had to get
out in the asparagus season at five, or five thirty in the morning
and cut asparagus until breakfast time and then get ready for
school, walk to school or ride to school on a bicycle, and we'd
come back in the afternoon and work again on the asparagus and
strawberries.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: And my other brother mentioned the fact that he can remember, when he was small, picking strawberries and hulling them. They used to hull them in pails and take them and sell them uptown. I can't remember that at all.
Edward Sheehan: Did you milk cows, Ed?
Edward Dalton: Oh, yes.
Mary Dalton Mara: Oh, yes, we had cows and a couple of horses, and we used to sell the milk to J. B. Prescott.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: We didn't milk the horses, Mary! We just milked the cows.
Mary Dalton Mara: Did I say that? Anyway, I don't remember that part of
it, but I do remember all the strawberries and asparagus, and
later, corn. And when he bought some more land. And then, later
on, instead of taking the things into market, they had what was
called "market gardeners" and Mr. Tuttle used to pick up with a big
truck and they'd have bushels and trays of strawberries and all,
and he would take them into market and bring out the receipts and
everything. And then once a month, or once a week, they'd get
their check from Adams.
Edward Sheehan: What was an amusing coincidence was that when I was out of high school, I was working for a local market, and I used to go to the market and buy corn and strawberries from Mara Farms. Their father, Peter, used to come out and cut up the corn, and the strawberries, and make sure we got some nice stuff for the local people. Of course, I thought the nice stuff went to everybody.
...What about your husband's family?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: I can remember going to school. We lived on Bedford Street. And I used to go to school by there. And I can remember his grandfather, Mark Mara Sr., and he had long whiskers and my son tells me he had six boys and a girl in the family. He'd sit down and all the grandchildren would come every Saturday, and he'd give them a dime, a nickel or a dime each, and they'd all have to come to the house to get it. All the brothers' children.
His aunt, Katharine, married a McGrath. And they had some children so there were loads of grandchildren in the neighborhood.
Edward Dalton: The McGraths were farmers too.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Yes. They were farmers too.
Edward Sheehan: But you know, the Old North Bridge, the one we have here now, was built after the flood by Commissioner Volpe. When was that? '36?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Yes.
Edward Sheehan: But the bridge prior to that was a big bridge and my grandfather was one of the road commissioners that built that bridge. And they had his name on it. There was a plaque on that bridge for ages until it was washed out by the flood.
...One of the things I'd like to ask about - I have several different things - but one is I ask all of the people that I interview what their sense was of what I call the "status" of their own ethnic group when they were growing up, when they were children, or what their memories of their parents were, and what it was like being, in this case, Irish, in the town of Concord. That is, to what degree did your parents feel very much a part of the town and what were their own feelings toward the Yankees and then, later on, toward the Italians as they moved into the town. Do you have any recollections of those kinds of things?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: I think we were very fortunate because my father was such a
liberal person that he seemed to love everybody and they, in turn,
seemed to love him because from the first time we moved into
Concord, he was on committees in the town, he was road commissioner, and then he worked with them on their budget, and all the
different committees, finance committee and so forth, and was
elected selectman for three consecutive terms and then was re-elected again on another term. So he seemed to get along very well
with the Italians and the Irish and the Yankees because they got
along well with him. He had a tremendous personality and although
he was my father, I must say he was really a tremendous person. I told you that he moved to Boston as soon as the kids were
born. He couldn't wait to move home to Concord. And when we moved
back to Concord was just when I was old enough to start school. I
had two brothers older, and three or four younger. I remember
being told, "How lucky you are; we're moving to Concord. We're
going back home to Concord." And an older brother. who is not
living now, happened to be born one year when they were visiting in
Concord. His middle name was Concord. Dad was that proud of the
town of Concord. That was instilled in us as long as I can ever
remember, how lucky we are to be in Concord, and what a wonderful
place it is, and everyone in it were just the best people in the world. Dad, to me, was ecumenical before the word was coined. He
would go to the farm and get a carload of produce and go up to the
Catholic priest and drop off a load and then go across the street
to the Protestant minister and drop off another load there. And
he'd say, "Don't forget. Everybody is on the same road. We're all
heading for the same place. We might go on different routes."
Edward Sheehan: And when they originated the idea of having the Catholic church in West Concord, my grandfather, Jeremiah, was one of the donors, but he was also a donor to the Congregational church, the Union Church [Reputed to be the first].
...What about the Daltons? What were your impressions?
Mary Dalton Mara: Papa was a very quiet person. He was the youngest in
the family. He and his brother Pat ran the farm after Grandpa
retired. I can just remember him in a rocking chair. He was kind
of deaf, so he really didn't get into things much but he got along very well with all. We had Italian men working for us on the farm
and we loved to hear them sing their songs. Then there were
Norwegian and Swedish people across the street, neighbors. And
they were wonderful neighbors. They all got along very well
together and we missed them when they left.
Edward Dalton: I think the thing that impressed on me how wonderful it was here was the Depression. We realized there was a depression, but only from hearing about it. We always seemed to have enough to eat, always had plenty of clothes to wear. I graduated from high school in 1930 which was the beginning of the depression, and my sister, my brothers and I, our family didn't know there was a depression so far as being deprived of anything. You heard about it, but all the people about us seemed to be able to survive and eat and live and enjoy life pretty much as they did before or after. Now, I think it was probably due to the area.
Mary Dalton Mara: The farms.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: The farms, because we did have a bad time. My father didn't have work. I graduated in '32, and we were desperate. They had the farm. They had plenty to eat.
Mary Dalton Mara: What bothered me most in my family was to see all the loads of strawberries and corn and the vegetables go into market and get taken back again. They didn't sell them. Instead of giving them something - to the people - I don't know if they finally did, did they?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: They didn't have welfare in those days.
Mary Dalton Mara: That's why I appreciate today. I had a rough time.
...Now, what can you tell me about Father Flaherty?
Mary Dalton Mara: I often heard what a very smart man he was and he used
to help boys and girls, especially boys getting into Harvard. He
would tutor them and he wouldn't take any money for it. He just
was glad to be helping everyone. After he left Concord, he was in
Arlington, Massachusetts, but he came back and he married my
brother Bill and Eileen Collins. And my brother Bill was afraid
he'd start on our family, you know, and he was worried to death
because he loved all the people. He knew everybody in Concord, and
he was a wonderful man.
...He lived to be very old, I think, from what the McHughs told me.
Mary Dalton Mara: He'd come back so often and visit and stop along. Even when I was married, he stopped along Lexington Road where we were living.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: He blessed Eddie when he had polio.
...And I think that Father Crowe was the godfather of one of the McManus twins, according to the McHughs, so there really was a very close relationship with these priests in the town in that era in particular. It turns out, and again it's so hard to get it all straight, but there have been a number of people that I have interviewed who have told me that there was another side to it too, sort of a darker side, that they brought up in their memories as fond as they were of all this. And their sense was that there were times when the priests at St. Bernard's were fairly intolerant in terms of what they could do when they were growing up as teenagers.
Edward Sheehan: Relative to that, there was five boys in my family, and we all wanted to be Boy Scouts, but none of us could be, because the scouts met in the Union Church.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: No Catholic boys were allowed to join because they met in the Union Church.
Edward Dalton: I was told I couldn't belong because they held the meetings in the Episcopal Church.
Mary Dalton Mara: In the next generation, our oldest boy went in the Episcopal Church, in the hall part of the Episcopal Church for the Boy Scouts. It had changed. But it didn't make any difference what religion, as long as they were good friends of mine, they were always welcome at home. And I had a lot of friends, Dorothy Jacobs was in my class in school, an awful lot. And then when I was young, we used to go to the affairs that they had for children in the Methodist Episcopal church.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: It wasn't the parents as much as it was the priests of that era. The priest would say off the altar, "You don't go. You don't belong to the Boy Scouts."
... because they meet over there. You know, it wasn't left up to the parents.
Edward Sheehan: Ironically, my two brothers and myself all married non- Catholics, not because of the precedent; it just happened to be like that.
Edward Sheehan: And my mother loved all three of her daughters-in-law. She was very proud.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: They were all welcome.
...I'm interested to know that, because I've wondered whether intermarriage between Protestants and Catholics was common in Concord back in your generation. I guess it must have been if three of you ...
Mary Sheehan Dalton: I'm the only one in the family that married a Catholic. And I married a Dalton.
... So that would have been a fairly common thing back in the thirties and forties.
Edward Sheehan: And my daughter married a non-Catholic, although she was brought up in the Catholic Church. And my brother's two daughters married Catholics and the other one married a Jewish boy. So we've all become well acquainted with all the different religions and nationalities. I'd like to point out this, that when my father was young, working for his father, Jeremiah, who had the farm, they didn't always send the produce to Boston for selling. They used to load it on the wagons and travel around Maynard, where all the Polish and Finnish people who worked in the mills used to buy potatoes by the bags. They used to come around with the potatoes and the turnips and the carrots and the squash in the fall and all these people who worked in the mills used to buy bags of it at a time. And then, when the depression hit, the mills closed up and they were all out of work. And my grandfather said, "You run your route just the same. You carry a notebook and these people are all reliable." So instead of getting two bags, they got one. But they all got what they needed. Enough to suffice. And my father told us in recollection of this one time that they lost very, very little. Almost every single one of them, when they went back to work, paid for the produce that they got. That's how he got to like the different nationalities.
...Do you think, in politics, as I was saying, it really took a long time before the town was willing to elect an Irishman to be selectman and I had a sense from what I've been reading about the town and looking at the Social Circle memoirs and so on, that there really was a pretty powerful Yankee force in the town, running the town, even figuring out who was going to be selectman, and so on.
Edward Sheehan: Even today. I used to dabble in the operation of the town, the finances and so forth.
...But what I was interested in was that I think your father was the second - James Nagle was the first in 1922 - and then when he retired, his place was taken by your father.
Edward Sheehan: Dad asked him if he was going to run again that year and he said, "No." He thought he had had enough. So Dad ran.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: It was sort of an unwritten law. There were three selectmen. Two could be from Concord proper, and be non-Catholic, or be Protestant or what. But one had to come from West Concord, and he or she would be the Catholic.
...That's what I've wondered about.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: It was sort of a two-to-one thing.
... So that once Jim Nagle won ...
Mary Sheehan Dalton: He broke the ice.
Edward Sheehan: One thing, here, we don't want to lose sight of was the fact we had a large group of Catholics that were against Catholics.
...Can you explain that?
Edward Sheehan: Well, if an Irishman opens up a store, there will be a certain group of Irishmen who will never trade there. Jealousy or whatever you want to charge it up to. And that was also true in politics. I know that when Pa was running, he had a lot of the Yankees in Concord. He always got a big vote in Concord. But half the time, the Irish vote in West Concord would be split. [See Krist Andersen tape. He defeated Edward Sheehan's brother Robert in a race for selectman and had support from some of Concord's Irish.]
...I noticed that when Jim Nagle ran for selectman, he ran against a Yankee, and he was the first one. And there was a letter in the Concord Journal that I found, in 1922, endorsing him against the Yankee, and it was signed by Judge Keyes. It was signed by Pliny Jewell and two or three Wheelers.
Mary Dalton Mara: I remember one of the Macones gave Chuck a book to read. It was a Town Report, and it was the funniest thing. In between the lines it was really bigoted. The different things that were said about people who were helped in one way or another. There was an undercurrent there. They had the census, and it was written so funny. They'd tell every one who was rooming at the houses on Main Street. Most of the teachers, a lot of the teachers roomed at some of those houses on Main Street in Concord. I can't remember all of it, but there was that little undercurrent.
Edward Sheehan: Today, there are probably just as many Irish snobs as there are Yankee snobs. Only they're just snobbish about different things.
...Yes. People told me that there was an Irish woman who lived up on Nashawtuc Hill, whose name was Murphy, but that she called herself "Murfay". Do you think that's really true?
Edward Dalton: I used to drive her in a taxi when I was a kid. It was "Murfay", she said.
Mary Dalton Mara: I remember your coming home, telling about it.
Edward Dalton: E. Stewart Murfay.
Mary Dalton Mara: And they'd say, "How did she spell it?" The same way.
Edward Sheehan: We had a kid in school with us - O'Brien - he used to call himself "O-bree-on".
Mary Sheehan Dalton: Even though we were brought up to be ecumenical and to love everybody, I can remember my father saying, we didn't get to Concord center very often because it was too long a walk, but if you brought something home, and he said, "Where did you get that?" and you'd say "Richardson's", he'd say, "Don't you know you trade with your own kind?" Because across the street was the Catholic drug store. Snow's. If you went to Richardson's, you know, we didn't go back there a second time.
Edward Sheehan: Well, when we moved to Concord, when I was five or six, we moved in the house next door to you, and my father helped build our house with his father and brothers.
...I noticed in the 1880 census, it had Sheehans living right on this street, right on Old Bridge Road and I wondered if that was part of the family too. I'm trying to think of a way to wind this up and one thing that occured to me is maybe you could tell me a little bit about your own children, any of them, who have chosen to stay in Concord. Do you have children who live here in the town?
Mary Dalton Mara: I have. My oldest son, Charles Edward Jr., lives in Concord, and his first job after he graduated from college, he went
out to New York, and once his first child was born, Brian, he was
anxious to come back to Concord. He was lonesome for Concord.
He'd call every once in a while and want one of the other children
to go out ... and they used to spend by the month. And Kevin had
to fly back once, and it was a storm. Mohawk Lines. And it was
really rough, and he had to fly alone back, and so then he finally
got back to Concord, and he settled in Concord, and he's married to
a girl from Bedford and they have three boys. [One son, following
service in Vietnam, was in Washington, D.C. A crazed gunman
entered a bar where the Mara boy was and fired randomly. Mara was
killed.]
...And how about you, Mrs. Dalton [Marguerite] . Do you have children who live here in town too?
Marguerite: Our son, our oldest son, was the first Concord boy killed in Vietnam. Sixteen years ago. 1963. He was the first Concord boy. There were four altogether. And we have a son, thirty now, who lives at home. We have a daughter that's married. She lives in Florida right now, but she'd love to be back home.
...And what does your son do?
Marguerite: He works in an office in Lexington. I couldn't tell you the name of it because it's initials. I never remember those initials.
Edward Dalton: Something to do with computers.
Marguerite: Ed owned Dalton and Robinson for 36 years and he worked there in high school so he was there over 50 years. That corner - Dalton and Robinson.
Edward Dalton: We went to a dinner, and more people came over ...
Marguerite: We went to the Elks and had dinner for the Senior Citizens. And all his old customers came over and hugged him because, you know, he retired and sold the place.
...And how about you, Mary?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: I have just have one son, and he's in the military. He's out at Leavenworth right now. So I have nobody in Concord.
...Will he be back here for Christmas?
Mary Sheehan Dalton: No, he won't because his wife has a job, and she can't leave it right now.
Edward Sheehan: He went to Concord High School.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: No, he didn't go to Concord High School.
Edward Sheehan: Oh, no, he went to Catholic schools.
Mary Sheehan Dalton: He didn't go to any Concord public schools. He went to Rose Hawthorne and then he went to Waltham to St. Mary's and then he went to Northeastern. But I don't think he'll want to come back to Concord. He likes California weather an Florida weather, and he's not too fond of New England weather, so I don't think he'll ever be back.
...And how about your clan?
Edward Sheehan: We have one daughter, Kathleen, and she went to Concord High School and she married a Concord boy and they lived in Concord. They had a home here on Bedford Street and then he was in Vietnam and after they came back, he went into business in Concord.
Finally they found a place in Maynard to live that they liked, and they moved to Maynard, and they now reside there, which is nice because that was my mother's home too.
Mary Dalton Mara: My youngest son always said, "Don't ever sell this house. I never could drive by here if there was anybody else in this house." So, he loves Concord, but he lives in Chelmsford now.
...Why don't you tell me about your brother Robert?
Edward Sheehan: Well, as I said, there were seven of us altogether. I had a brother William, who we lost in 1931, and then Robert was next in line and he was a veteran of World War II and then became an elected selectman of Concord and served three consecutive terms and he has now passed away. There isn't a day goes by that I don't meet someone that asks if I'm his brother or things like that.
...What did he do for a living?
Edward Sheehan: He worked at General Radio for a long time and ran the cafeteria. He retired from there and moved to the Cape where his wife still lives. Then I have a brother Jeremiah, who was also in World War II as a pilot or was a gunneryman and he did his service in England and he's now retired and living down on the Cape. Then we had a younger brother Joseph who distinguished himself in high school as a runner and went to Northeastern after Worcester Academy as a outstanding runner and was killed in World War II. Then we had a little sister Eileen who didn't make it past her first six months. So that was the Sheehan family.