Re: John Francis (Jack) Radey
Date of Birth: April 30, 1911
Place of Birth: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Dear Sir:
I have an urgent humanitarian reason for contacting the above individual. If he is in your file and you have a current address for him, would you please forward to him the enclosed, stamped, unaddressed postcard*. If you have no record of him, would you please return the postcard to me for my records.
Sincerely,
etc.
(*postcard will be a modified version of one previously used)
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
September 18, 1946
Martin Radey 238
Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
In response to your written query of September 15/46, in order to request a death or marriage certificate it is required to know the state or county of the individual’s residence at the time of death or marriage. Since we do not know your son’s residence, this would prove a very inefficient and costly way to proceed with the search, with no guarantee of success.
American Federal Records are the ones that we can pursue with the greatest possibility of discovery of some sort. Consequently, we recommend the following sequence:
1) US District Court, which handles civil and criminal matters, and which has retrievable records;
2) Bankruptcy Court, which contains public information which is accessible by mail;
3) US Marshal, in conjunction with the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) in Washington;
4) Prison Records.
Your suggestion that we contact the US Internal Revenue Service is a sound one, but in order for them to retrieve information they require a Social Security Number, which we have been unable to obtain.
I await your written instructions before proceeding with the searches named above.
Sincerely,
Simon Paul Edwards
(President)
* * *
Edwards Investigation Services
212 Spadina Avenue, suite 100
Toronto, Ontario
December 12, 1946
Martin Radey
238 Gilmour Avenue
Toronto, Ontario
Dear Mr. Radey:
It is with deep regret that we close the file on our professional association, bringing to a halt our unsuccessful search for your son, but we do so at your instruction. You are indeed right when you say that it is a process that could go on for years, and that one must be realistic about the costs involved.
Since you may wish to pursue the issue further by yourself while naturally minimizing costs, might we suggest contacting the Salvation Army. As well as its better-known services, it also has a Missing Persons Service. We recommend using the same letter-of-inquiry and postcard tandem that we have used on your behalf
There are four headquarters to which you might write:
1) Eastern US: 120 W. 14th St., New York, NY
2) Central US: 860 N. Dearborn St., Chicago, Illinois
3) Southern US: 1424 NE Expressway, Atlanta, Georgia
4) Western US: 30840 Hawthorne Blvd., Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Our very best wishes for success in your search. I wish we could have had a successful conclusion to our endeavor. If we can be of further assistance, do not hesitate to contact us.
A final invoice is being prepared and will be issued shortly.
Sincerely,
Simon Paul Edwards
(President)
3
STAFF NEWS, January 23, 1948
Martin Radey of the seventh floor receiving department was the center of attraction recently when the members of the staff gathered to present him with a handsome smoking stand, cigars, and a hassock on the occasion of his retirement from the Company. Mr. Radey had been with the Company over 30 years and retired under Simpson’s Retirement Security Plan.
Ann Disapproves of my cigar, but I light it anyway, strong aromatic smoke filling the air. The Saturday Evening Post rests on my lap, the cover a Norman Rockwell painting of a neighborhood scene—kids playing tag, laundry hanging on lines, a man hammering shingles onto a roof.
Ann Jackson, who once worked on the switchboard at the Bell with Evelyn, now lives with us as live-in help. Evelyn’s needs are more than I can handle, and Joan, herself working full-time at nineteen, cannot be tied to her either.
Joan has ended up, much like her mother, exactly like Evelyn and Ann, working switchboard at the Bell too. Even so, Joan and Ann do not get along. Ann does not understand Frank Sinatra, jukeboxes, roller rinks. Joan is strong, smart, with a mind of her own. Like Gert.
I let a stream of blue smoke float toward the green-patterned wallpaper that surrounds me. I do not know how much more time I have. Jack, I think. Jack.
I see him cross the room of the apartment atop the stores on Roncesvalles, see his hand on the doorknob, see his eyes, blue, accusing me, hear his footsteps on the stairs.
The atlas lies open on my lap, the United States stretching across two pages, topography of greens, oranges, yellows at my fingertips. I push my eyeglasses down on my nose, peer through the bottom of the lenses.
So many places. He could be anywhere.
I do not know how to start. It is overwhelming.
Detroit. Toledo. Bucyrus. Ashland.
Heading south. Disappearing like winter runoff into soft loam, sinking into the earth.
I do not understand Jack. I do not understand anyone who can travel so far, so freely. Yet I try to make the leap, try to imagine the places named before me, however ordinary they may be.
I am sixty-eight years old, past the age of discovery and experiment, born in another era, another world. Nevertheless, I am intrigued by the litany of names that Jack has evoked: Detroit, Toledo, Bucyrus, Ashland.
Ashland. Kentucky. The source of his final words.
Simon Paul Edwards and his Investigation Services have checked these places out, found nothing.
And yet.
And yet; when I close my eyes I can see Jack in some mythical Kentucky, by the side of a road, in a diner with a cigarette and coffee, leaning on the hood of a Chevy, that smile, so white, so wry.
There is a story surrounding everyone, some traces of information that are part fancy, part fact, a tale that gets passed around as casually as discussion of the weather. Her father was a drunk. His sister committed suicide. Their mother went mad. He’s worth a quarter of a million dollars.
After mass on Sunday, the new young priest, Father Morrison, stops me outside to introduce himself. He has been at St. Cecilia’s for more than a year now, since Father Colliton died, but this is the first time we have spoken. And as we talk I come to realize that there is a story surrounding me, of which I have been unaware. He tells me that someone has mentioned that I have a son living down in the States, and he asks how he is.
I see Jack smiling, cigarette in hand, the Ohio River behind him wide and deep.
He’s in Kentucky, I say, surprising myself.
Kentucky? Really? What’s he doing?
Operates his own business.
Father Morrison’s eyes crinkle in the morning sunshine.
Hotel business, I say. Ashland.
He nods, looks around, thinking.
Ever been to Kentucky? I ask him.
As a matter of fact, I have. There’s a Trappist monastery near Bardstown. Gethsemani. I was on a retreat there during my novitiate. Beautiful place. Lovely. Acres of countryside.
He looks at me.
You should go, he says. They have a guest house. A wonderful way to renew inner resources, make peace with oneself.
As I pull my hat low over my eyes, look into his face, try to determine what is there, see only concern, honesty, I hear myself talking to Gert in the restaurant on Dundas Street, that Sunday morning, more tha
n twenty years ago. I’m thinking of being a monk … It’s not such a bad deal.
You never know, I say. A pause. Nice talking with you, Father.
Same, he says, and we clasp hands.
At night, I spread the letters out on the kitchen table, touch them, reread them. Then I study the map of Kentucky that is open in the atlas beside them. Ashland is in the northeastern part of the state. Bardstown is about a hundred miles to the west, maybe thirty miles south of Louisville.
But Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery, is as invisible on my map as it must be silent. I touch the map, feel for it. I listen.
I have never had so much time alone. Retired less than six months, I wonder what I have done with all those years. They are gone, a blur.
Gethsemani, I think. I know the name from the Bible: the garden where Christ went to pray before He was crucified.
Somewhere in Kentucky.
July 1948 is humid, even sultry. The house traps the heat, especially in the upstairs bedrooms. As I lie in my bed, hands behind my head, staring up into the darkness, I think about my resolution for the first week of August. I am planning what I have never done before. At my age, I am undertaking a trip by myself, out of the city. Five days.
I am going to Gethsemani. One day to travel there, one day to travel back, and three days at the monastery. I have phoned ahead, made the arrangements to stay in the guest house. The bus from Toronto will take me through Detroit, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, Louisville. At Louisville, I transfer to a bus to Bardstown, and from there the short last leg of my journey.
When the bus rolls through Detroit and Toledo, I imagine Jack walking the streets that I see through the window, his hands in his pockets. When we pass a roadside diner outside Troy, Ohio, I conjure him up at a booth inside, a sandwich and coffee in front of him, cigarette burning in a glass ashtray. On the platform in Louisville, I see him leaning against a telephone pole, reading a newspaper. In Bardstown, he floats, for a fathomless moment, behind the wheel of a Dodge roadster that has pulled into the gas station across the street. Smiling that smile.
4
Within the walls are a silent herd of men, young and old, white cowls, brown capes. At a large desk in the entranceway I am greeted by an older man in monk’s garb and signed in, all talk at a minimum.
There are twenty rooms in the guest house. My room is as one might imagine: a single bed, a chair, a writing desk, two lamps. A crucifix is the sole adornment on the walls. My second-story window opens onto a closed quadrangle.
I set my bag down on the uncarpeted floor, sit on the bed, read the card that was handed to me:
A MONK’S DAY
3:00 a.m. - Rise
3:15 - Choral prayer of Vigils
Personal prayer
Breakfast
5:45 - Choral prayer of Lauds
6:15 - Daily Eucharist
Thanksgiving/Meditation
7:30 - Choral prayer of Terce
8:50–11:50 - Work
12:15 p.m. - Choral prayer of Sext
12:30 - Dinner
Rest/Reading/Personal Prayer
2:15 - Choral prayer of None
Reading/Personal prayer/Work
5:30 - Choral prayer of Vespers
6:00 - Supper/Reading/Personal Prayer
7:30 - Compline (Choral night prayers)
Retire
Guest are invited to join in any of the above activities, but are completely welcome to structure their own time to avail themselves of any of the monastery’s facilities. We also encourage exploration of the natural beauty of our acreage as an aid to silent contemplation.
Standing in the monks’ cemetery of miniature white crosses, there is a clean smell of pine and cedar that blows from the nearby woods. The fields are green, dotted with birches, poplars, the valley lush, hemmed in by the low, distant mountains.
At night the sky is cool, then there is thunder, forked lightning, rain. I lie in crisp, white sheets, see Jack digging in a garden, stop, wipe his brow, look up at the sky, and know that memory is a fiction that I can write.
I am sitting on a stone bench in an enclosed garden of pinks, whites, purples, the sun behind a cloud, when a young monk in his thirties strolls near, book in hand. I understand silence, but am not sure that I understand these men.
“Good afternoon,” I say, reflexively.
He looks up, nods. “Good afternoon.”
I am a bit surprised to hear him speak. “I understand that Trappists take a vow of silence. I’m sorry if I invaded that.”
A smile. A shrug. “We minimize unnecessary speech. We are not antisocial. Or mute. You’d be surprised how much speech is unnecessary.”
It is my turn to nod. Then: “Would you mind talking to me a bit?”
He lowers his book, studies me.
“Or is that wrong?”
“Not at all.”
He approaches, sits at the other end of the stone bench. The sun slides from behind the cloud. I can hear only bees nearby, birds in the distance.
“Is it true that you make wine and cheese?”
He smiles. “Cheese and fruitcake would be more like it. We’ll be doing extra work starting in September to prepare for the Christmas volume. It’s a source of needed income.”
“What else do you do here?”
“There is so much to keep us busy. We have cooks, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, mechanics among us. There are daily tasks: washing dishes, cleaning floors. We run our own waterworks, our own sewage disposal plant. There is a large vegetable garden, a mechanized farm, a small beef herd. We grow and harvest wheat. We have a granary.”
He folds his book shut, leans the weight of his body forward slightly, his hands braced on the front edge of the bench beside his thighs.
“I’m Martin Radey,” I say.
“Thomas Merton.” He offers his hand, which I take. “Where are you from?”
“Toronto, Canada.”
“Really? My brother was stationed somewhere near Toronto early in the war. He went to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. He couldn’t wait for us to enter the war.”
“Where is he now?”
A hesitation. “He’s dead.” Another beat. “His plane went down in the North Sea.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. It was the mention of Toronto that brought it back.” A pause. “How long will you be with us?”
“Three days.”
“Like Jonah.”
“Pardon?”
“In the belly of the whale.”
I smile. “A nice whale, though.” I look around me.
“Have you been here before?”
“No. This is my first time.”
“Have you been to Kentucky before?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“What brings you here?”
“What brings anyone here?” Then, as before, I surprise myself. “I have a son who lives in Kentucky.”
He nods, as if understanding. “Near here?”
“Ashland.”
“That’s in the eastern part of the state. Did he tell you about Gethsemani?”
I think about it. “Yes,” I say. “He did.” Then I ask him, suddenly, the sun in his face, the memory of lightning flashing in the night, of Jack leaning on his shovel, staring at me, of the trip here, of my years alone: “What is a monk? What is this place?”
He smiles, frowns. “Does the silence scare you?”
I do not know what scares me anymore, can think of no answer.
“Monasticism is rooted in all major religions of the world. It was practiced in the East a thousand years before the Christian era. Gethsemani has been here for a hundred years. A monk,” he says, looking away, “is not a man with a fiery vision. A monk has nothing to tell you except that if you dare to enter the solitude of your own heart, you can go beyond death even in this life, and be a witness to life.” He turns to me. “You can be a monk, just by accepting that. It is a process, not a destinatio
n.”
I look at him, into his dark, confident eyes.
He stands, picks up his book. “Pray for me,” he says, nods, and leaves.
The sun beats down warmly on my neck, my back, as I lean forward, hands clasped, elbows on my knees.
“Tell me about your son.”
It is the next day. We are in the garden again, on the same stone bench.
“He runs a hotel in Ashland,” I say. “The Scott Hotel.” I see Jack in a shirt and tie, hair slicked down, at a large desk in a private office.
Thomas Merton nods, looks down. “How old is he?”
My mouth is dry. “Midthirties,” I say. Jack signs a form, folds it, places it on the side of the desk.
“I’m thirty-three,” he says.
I look at him. “You could be my son. I could be your father.” You could be Jack, I think. He could be anywhere.
“My mother died when I was six. My father died when I was sixteen.”
We are quiet.
Then, sitting here, beside him, the past surfaces. I remember another priest, at the graveside of my baby brother Patrick, more than sixty years ago. I remember him telling mother that Patrick had been redeemed.
In this garden, with this man, the question flows naturally, yet surprisingly: “What is redemption? I don’t think I understand.”
He squints, smiles. “It’s an interesting theological concept. Very complex. The root meaning is to set free or to cause to be set free. To redeem is to ransom. The Old Testament saw redemption as a transaction. One could be redeemed by sacrifice, by giving of self. We were capable of our own redemption. The New Testament, ah, now that’s slightly different. It is imbued with a redemption for which God paid the price.”
I feel the sun warm my hands, listen to the silence around us.
“Men need to be set free from a power greater than themselves, but it cannot be accomplished without cost. Someone must pay. Man or God.” He stares out into the rush of summer colors: impatiens, petunias, white roses, baby’s breath, soft mauve forget-me-nots, moss rockfoil, dark red.
Shadow of Ashland, A Witness to Life, and St. Patrick's Bed Page 28
