Reunions at the Rare

On the day after my father’s service at Holy Rood, I returned to New Hampshire.  Traveling first by train into Manhattan and then by bus to Nashua, I had a few hours’ layover in the city.  With the weather unusually mild for the first day of February, I took this opportunity to walk around and revisit some of my favorite spots.  Even though I hadn’t actually lived in the area for a long time, I remained a native New Yorker, and I still felt very much at home there.

From Penn Station, I went first to the Franciscan church on West 32nd Street and spent some quiet moments there.  Next, I walked six blocks south with the intention of briefly stopping by the Rare Bar and Grill for old time’s sake.  Located on the first floor of the Hilton Hotel at 152 West 26^th Street near Seventh Avenue, the Rare was an easy walk from Penn and has been the site of several happy meetings with my friend and former colleague Walter Burke.  I had happy memories of the Rare, just as I had of many places in the city, and I thought it might be nice to stop by for a moment and reminisce.

When I arrived, something didn’t seem right.  The signs were gone.  The outside menu was gone. The inside was dark.  No one was there.  A notice on the door revealed that the hotel was seeking a new tenant for the restaurant in order to improve the dining service for its guests.  Then I realized, to my utter astonishment, that the Rare was closed!  Not closed in the sense that it just hadn’t opened yet for the day, but completely shut down and out of business!  I was shocked and disappointed.  How could this be?  I had been there with Walter only the previous May, although admittedly, that was now eight months ago.  I walked away feeling very dejected.

This dejection soon turned into sentiment and nostalgia.  I remembered the first time I had met Walter at the Rare.  That had been by his invitation on Monday afternoon, March 28, 2016, and it was an exceptionally happy and truly memorable occasion.  That first reunion after so many years proved to be so enjoyable that we met at the Rare again several months later on Wednesday, November 2, and then again a year afterwards on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Most of these meetings took place when I was in New York visiting my parents; thus, their timing was very convenient.

The Rare was a great place for two alumni of the sea to meet and dine and remember the voyages of their youth.  It was a quiet and uncrowded restaurant with great food and attentive service, and it was very convenient to Penn Station.  Also, in a neighborhood that was practically saturated with sports bars and fast food joints, it was neither of these.  It was a cut above the ordinary, but not so fancy that two merchant seamen wouldn’t know how to behave there.  Furthermore, since the Rare formed a link to our past seafaring careers, it was easy to start feeling some attachment to the place.  I’ve never felt sentimental about any other restaurant, but then, the Rare was different.

Dinner alone at the Rare would not have been any fun.  The enjoyment lay in the companionship and camaraderie even more than in the food.  With the palpable common ground of the fraternity of the sea, and with a shared outlook on life formed by the rigors of going to sea, our conversation flowed as freely and as strongly as a flood tide.  There was always so much to talk about!  The time seemed to stand still as we recalled ships and shipmates, voyages and destinations, adventures at sea and in port, and so very much more.  But of course, the time did not stand still at the Rare any more than it had all those years ago aboard ship.  Always too soon, we needed to return to the present day and walk back to Penn Station.

Our last reunion at the Rare took place on Tuesday, May 28, 2019.  Almost a year ago now.  It never occurred to me then that the Rare would be shut down and that our reunions would never take place there again.  But “time marches on,” as Walter remarked, “whether we’re ready for it or not.”

Indeed, time has been marching on relentlessly since the very beginning.  Everyone and everything have lasted only so long.  We recognize the brevity of our own lives, of course, but even grand creations that were built to last for centuries, such as the World Trade Center and the original Pennsylvania Railroad Station, have lived only for brief moments of time.  So, too, did most of the ships that Walter and I sailed on.  To my knowledge, all but two have gone to the scrap yard.  Only the Mercury and the Comet remain, moored in the reserve fleet on the West Coast.

As family members, former shipmates, old friends, and even great ships and iconic buildings leave this life and return to dust, it becomes easy for one remaining to think as the Psalmist: “I am a stranger in the earth” (Ps. 119:19).  As everything that was familiar becomes lost, one can feel out of place in the world as it changes incessantly and becomes increasingly different and even strange.  The demise of the Rare Bar and Grill has come to symbolize for me the loss of so much more.  With it closed, one of the last links to my irretrievably gone seafaring past is now itself irretrievably gone.  I will miss the Rare just as I miss going to sea.

But as the deacon asserted in the service at Holy Rood, “we have our citizenship in heaven” (Phil. 3:20 NAB).  No longer will we be “strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Eph. 2:19).  On an earthly voyage that by its very nature is fraught with uncertainty, change, loss, and sorrow, there can be no better future than to ultimately return to our celestial home port.

Now, we have photographic documentation of a reunion at the Rare.  A member of the wait staff took this portrait of Walter and me after dinner on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.  Walter stands on the left, and I’m on the right.  It was a wonderfully happy and festive occasion.   

The Passing of the Torch

Buoyed by the happy memory of his recent last voyage aboard the ferry Cape Henlopen, and sustained by frequent visits from his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, my father spent his final months in quiet repose at Nashua Crossings, an assisted living facility near the family home.  The staff there took good care of him and kept him comfortable, well-fed, and safe.  In the summer, he enjoyed the great outdoors of the courtyard.  In the winter, he appreciated the warmth of the great indoors, thankful that cleaning up the snow and ice was no longer his responsibility.  In all seasons, he enjoyed the company of his family and took special delight in his three great-grandchildren.  They eased the loneliness and mitigated the infirmities of his old age.

But just as his time aboard the Cape Henlopen went by too quickly, so did his time with the family.  The debilitations of advanced age overtook him. He passed pleasant holidays at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, but in this new year he required hospitalization and then hospice care.  Finally, on Friday evening, January 24, 2020, my father quietly rang up “Finished with Engines.”  Concluding an earthly voyage of 98 years, 2 months, and 22 days, he returned to the celestial sphere from which he had arrived almost a century ago.  There he joined our Mom and many other family members and old friends who had gone before him.  As the last of his siblings and cousins to leave this life, he has passed the torch on to a new generation that must now preside over the family.

A week later, on Friday the 31^st, I attended an interment service for my father at the Cemetery of the Holy Rood in Westbury, Long Island.  He had made his return to New York for this occasion not aboard a ship, but in a hearse.  I followed him on a bus.  In our last moments together as father and son at Holy Rood, the deacon intoned the customary prayers for the dead and, quoting Saint Paul, reminded us that “we have our citizenship in heaven” and that “we await the coming of our Savior” (both Phil. 3:20, NAB).  These good points remind us that all of our earthly voyages are temporary and imperfect.  The best is yet to come.

We who now carry the family torch in this life have the obligation and the opportunity to serve both the living and the dead.  This year, we plan to continue the temple ordinances for my Mom and several of her cousins.  Next year, we will start the temple ordinances for my father.  For many years, we will help with the temporal and spiritual needs of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  These family projects are “a sacred duty”[1] because “the family is ordained of God”[2] and is “central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.”[3]

Now, two photographs from the family archives.   My Mom took this father-and-teenage-son portrait on the bank of the Penobscot River at Fort Knox in Prospect, Maine, in October of 1976.  In the background, an unidentified tanker was discharging cargo at the oil dock in the paper mill town of Bucksport.  Many voyages lay ahead of us when this picture was taken.

Finally, a closer view of the rusty tanker that we were admiring.  Regarding my choice of a career in the Merchant Marine, I recall my father remarking that there was more opportunity for advancement aboard ship than there was in his field of school administration.  Every ship had a Captain.  Every ship had a Chief Engineer.  If I worked hard and studied diligently for the license exams, I could make it to the top.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, but he did have my best interests at heart! 

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[1] “The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, General Relief Society Meeting, September 23, 1995.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Cleaning Out the Archives

Every place of human habitation needs a good housecleaning every so often, and our home is no exception.  With plans to retire, relinquish the property, and relocate to a milder climate in the not-too-distant future, the time has come not only for a good housecleaning, but a major downsizing as well.  With this thought in mind, I’ve packed up and given away many household items in recent months, but of course, more still needs to go.  Nothing in the house, not even the family archives, may be exempt from inspection and possible ejection.

Last month’s project, then, involved a thorough examination of the children’s picture albums.  They had about a dozen of these, all filled mostly with mediocre photographs taken with toy cameras and with some duplicates of pictures taken with more sophisticated equipment.  It was a motley collection, but it did contain a few gems that I wanted to save.  The bulk of the collection was jettisoned, as we had much better quality photographs of the same subjects.  Redundancy is a wise course in both archival work and shipboard engineering systems, but it can sometimes be taken to unreasonable extremes.

Not surprisingly, the photographs that I saved are of ships and ship-related subjects.  Some are quite good.  A few are not so good but unique.  All of them bring back memories, and I’m happy to present them here.  Let’s start with a visit to the Cunard Line’s Queen Elizabeth 2 as she reposes at the passenger ship piers on the West Side of Manhattan.

The bow of any large passenger liner is an impressive sight when viewed from the street.  Here, the great, curved, black steel port bow of the QE2 rises magnificently from the placid Hudson on Saturday, July 3, 1999.  It’s awe-inspiring to think that this great bow was designed to cut gracefully yet purposefully through the largest waves and swells of the Atlantic between New York and Europe.  Few, if any, of the ship’s pampered passengers would give this matter a thought.

 

This great bow, like every other part of the ship, requires regular maintenance.  Here, on the same day, we see two seamen on a camel rolling on a fresh layer of black paint.  Not a job for the faint of heart!

 

In these two photographs, taken on Sunday afternoon, September 1, 1996, from the top level of Pier 90, we have a close-up view of the Queen’s port side superstructure.  From this vantage point, we can look through the oversize windows into the ship’s public rooms and promenades and admire her luxurious accommodations.

 

Leaving the West Side piers now and taking the subway down to the Battery, we next embark on the Staten Island Ferry.  Always a family favorite, these half-hour voyages are great fun, and it’s easy to lose track of the time and spend half the day sailing back and forth.  The first picture here shows the pilothouse of the American Legion on an overcast Saturday, April 3, 1999.

 

A year later, we see the same view of the Gov. Herbert H. Lehman on a bright and sunny Saturday, March 4, 2000.  The blue sky and sunshine make all the difference in these two photos.

Switching vessels on the same day, here we view the southbound Gov. Herbert H. Lehman from the northbound American Legion as the two ships pass “at sea” on the Upper New York Bay. 

 

 From the ferries we watch the shipping world go by.  First, we see the anchored bulk carrier Amphitrite on Saturday, April 3, 1999. 

 

Next we see the anchored container ship Maersk Valentia on Saturday, March 4, 2000.

Later on the same day, we watch as another Maersk Lines container ship emerges from the Kills between Staten Island and New Jersey.  She is rounding Saint George and will soon pass through the Narrows and head out to sea.

Leaving New York now, we go next to Maine.  The Portland area is always a great place to see ships.  First, we admire the academy training vessel State of Maine as she rests alongside the Bath Iron Works pier in Portland on a cloudy and warm Saturday, July 11, 1998.

Next we enjoy a close-up view of the tanker Orkney Spirit at the Portland Pipeline pier in South Portland on a hazy Saturday, May 6, 2000.  The adjacent waterfront area and nearby breakwater are excellent vantage points from which we can watch everything that enters and leaves Portland Harbor.

Heading south now to Massachusetts, we watch the Dutch freighter Schippersgracht discharging cargo in Fall River on Monday, August 27, 2001.  Free to roam the pier and watch the ship unload, we did not know on this date that our unrestricted access to the docks would hereafter be curtailed as a result of the terrorist attacks that were only two weeks away.

Moving farther south to the Delaware Bay, we have an noontime view of the northbound New Jersey silhouetted in the sunlight from the southbound Delaware on Sunday, Christmas Eve of 1995.  When driving to Virginia to visit family, the voyage across the Delaware Bay comes as a welcome break from the holiday traffic!

Returning now to New England, let’s visit some lighthouses.  First we have the storied Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, on Saturday, August 30, 1997.  A popular tourist attraction, this site commands a magnificent view of Casco Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  One can spend many hours there and never tire of the scenery.

At the farther end of Maine, we have this view of the famed West Quoddy Head Light in Lubec on a cloudy and foggy Monday, June 23, 2003.  This site is often cloudy, foggy, windy, damp, and cold, and it has a rugged beauty.  It’s also peaceful and quiet, with very few visiting tourists, even at the height of the summer season.

In Massachusetts again, we see next the diminutive Plum Island Light at the mouth of the Merrimack River in Newburyport on Friday, June 23, 2000.  Blue sky and sunshine abound at this lovely site which is often overlooked by Boston area residents who flock to Maine instead.

In New York again, this time on the spring vacation from school, the children go with their grandparents to the iconic Fire Island Light on a brilliant April day in 2001.  My sons Steven and Michael pose on the boardwalk that leads through the dunes to the light.

Finally, we return once more to New England, specifically to the Piscataqua River that forms the boundary between New Hampshire and Maine.  The Memorial Bridge spanned this waterway for about a century before it was replaced with a more modern structure.  When the children were little, they were thrilled to walk across this bridge from New Hampshire to Maine and back and watch the tidal current rushing beneath their feet.  This view is taken from nearby Prescott Park on a beautiful but chilly Monday, October 8, 2001.

All these photographs from so many years ago bring back a sea of happy memories for everyone in the family.  We are indeed fortunate to have these memories, just as we were fortunate to go on so many family outings to the oceanfront when the children were younger.  Perhaps even more to the point, we were extremely fortunate to have a house full of happy and healthy children in the first place.  So many blessings, and so many reasons to be thankful!  The psalmist said it well when he asserted, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord” (Ps. 92:1), and when he exhorted, “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Ps. 100:4).

An Academician on the Water

Several years ago, I visited the archives of Manhattan College in the Riverdale section of the Bronx in order to research the life and career of my great-granduncle, Joseph Lawrence Scanlon.  He was born in Nyack, on the Hudson River in upstate New York, in 1878.  As a teenager in 1893, he entered the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a religious order less formally known as the Christian Brothers, and he took the name Brother Apelles Jasper.  This pursuit of the consecrated life enabled him to receive an extensive education at Manhattan College, Columbia University, and the Catholic University of America.  This prepared him for a distinguished academic career as professor, dean, president, and trustee at Manhattan College.  In addition, he edited and wrote for several academic and religious journals.  Subsequently, he became a librarian at the LaSalle Military Academy, a Christian Brothers high school in Oakdale, on the South Shore of Long Island.  Finally, he died in New York City in 1944.

In the course of my research, I had the privilege of meeting Brother Luke Salm, a professor emeritus of history and an archivist at Manhattan College.  When he was a young man in the 1930s, Brother Luke knew Brother Jasper, and he remembered him well.  Brother Luke recalled that when he was a college student, he spent his summer vacations at the LaSalle Academy in Oakdale.   During these times, he  observed Brother Jasper setting out on the Great South Bay early every morning in a small motorboat.  Apparently, Brother Jasper enjoyed sailing on salt water!

Of course, this is a very tenuous connection to the sea.  Brother Jasper was not a  merchant seaman, but it would be accurate to call him an amateur bay man.  Besides, in this era before many of the bridges and tunnels in New York were built, he most certainly sailed on ferries across the Hudson River and other waterways.  Thus, Brother Jasper was acquainted at least with the tributaries of the sea.

My interest in Brother Jasper stemmed from our being related.  Getting to know him was facilitated by the lengthy paper trail he left behind,  The archives yielded a storehouse of material written both about him and by him.  In perusing this collection, it became clear to me that Brother Jasper was a very intelligent and very learned man as well as a highly accomplished academician.  This assessment was confirmed by a confrere’s notation that he was “remembered as a teacher for his intimacy with many areas of learning.”[1]  His connection to the Great South Bay came as a bonus.

Among Brother Jasper’s writings was some poetry which illustrated his range of subject matter.  Writing on a religious theme, he incorporated, for example, philosophy and biology, subjects that he taught, into some of his poems.  And while never having been a merchant seaman, he did include the sea in one of them.  Naturally, this one is my favorite:

Though stormy seas about me roll,

And angry waves conceal the goal,

I need not fear.

Though my frail bark is tempest tossed,

And strangers crowd, yea, all seems lost;

I should not fear.

Though friends rebuke and foes malign,

Unholy ones their strength combine;

I will not fear.

For Thou whom winds and sea obey

Will all my pains and grief allay,

When Thou art near.[2]

  

As these verses demonstrate, Brother Jasper was a man of great faith, and he used his literary skills to share this faith with others.  For this, we who read his poetry owe him a debt of gratitude.  I also feel honored that he included the seafaring profession in his work, and I appreciate his use of the metaphor of the storm at sea.

Brother Jasper’s abiding religious faith was evident in all of his poetry and prose.  Also clear was his admiration for the works of charity and acts of selfless service to others that such faith engendered.  He admired holy and Christ-like men who quietly did the Lord’s work without calling attention to themselves.  Furthermore, as a man of quiet contemplation, he recognized that the Lord operated through the still small voice and not the splash of sensationalism, and he asserted, “The divine call to a higher life is a gentle influence.”[3]

Perhaps Brother Jasper experienced some of this “gentle Influence” on the Great South Bay.  The sea and its tributaries have bespoken the existence and genius of God to many of us, and certainly Brother Jasper would recognize such a manifestation of the Deity.  Yet he would also realize that while we live here on the created Earth, we are not entirely a part of it.  As a spiritual man, he understood the human capacity for something higher and greater, and in another poem he exhorted:

O mortal, rise above the clod

That holds thee down so low:

Enjoy the presence of thy God

Wherein all blessings flow.[4]

A colleague wrote that Brother Jasper possessed “a quiet nobility of soul”[5] and had “a remarkable devotion to duty.”[6]  Another stated that he had “a kindness of disposition, an urbanity of manner, an evenness of temper, a goodness of heart, and a never-failing cheerfulness.”[7]  This was in addition to his “more than ordinary intelligence,”[8] which made him “a walking encyclopedia of language, science, mathematics, philosophy, and literature.”[9]  Finally, he was described as “one of the truly great men that every once in a while the Lord sends to the earth.”[10]

It seems to me that the faith and spirituality of such a great man could only have been increased by his experience on the Great South Bay, and it would have been much further magnified if he had actually gone to sea.  I am certain that a transoceanic voyage would have been a truly grand epiphany for him.

Now let us put a face to the name.  I have only four photographs of Brother Jasper, and this is the earliest.  It is believed to have been taken in a studio in New York in the early 1900s when he was in his mid-twenties.

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[1] Br. Casimir Gabriel, F.S.C., The Tree Bore Fruit: Manhattan College 1853-1953, Riverdale, NY: Manhattan College, 1953, p. 71.  This splendid volume recounts the history of Manhattan College in its first century and was a gift to me from Brother Luke. 

[2] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), “Fear Not,” in The Manhattan Quarterly, April, 1914, p. 42.

[3] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), Life of Venerable Brother Benilde of the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, p. 33, unpublished typescript held in the Manhattan College archives and dating from the 1940s.

[4] Joseph L. Scanlon (Br. Apelles Jasper, F.S.C.), “The Flower,” in The Manhattan Quarterly, April, 1914, p. 9.

[5] Manhattan College memorandum on the death of Brother Apelles Jasper on February 20, 1944, and held in the Manhattan College archives.

[6] Ibid.

[7] From a speech given by an unnamed confrere on the occasion of Brother Apelles Jasper’s Golden Jubilee at Manhattan College on December 19, 1943, and held in the Manhattan College archives. 

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Manhattan College memorandum previously cited.