It was like a scene from a movie and I remember that moment like it was happening right now. The man in front of me was wailing …crying so hard like I had never before witnessed..in my whole life. Unusual because he laughed a lot and made a lot of other people smile and laugh….sometimes for no reason. It was my father, Billy. Billy O. I don’t think I had ever seen him cry at all…which is why it was so shocking. I remember him collapsing to the wall, maybe even the floor, in guttural anguish and resignation. His wife of 40 years, my beloved mother Bernadette, was about to die, since he just learned she had no brainpower to live after a five month horror that started with a little trip to the ER for a cough. Like stabs in the air he exclaimed, “Take me God…I was the sinner…she was the saint!!”…in between loud sobs….…paralyzing, even now almost eleven years later. I’m pausing ….as…. I…. weep.

What brought me back to memories of my father was a recent family gathering. The 50th Wedding Anniversary of his best childhood friend….Billy Dowling, who, like Billy O, was a charming Irish freckleface from the Bronx. Street savvy kids who knew how to have fun…and drive the nuns at school a little bonkers. They were like cousins and played stickball together at nine years old and remained buddies ever after. And not just drinking buddies. My father was his Best Man. And what a good looking one at that.

Many in the original wedding party including Billy and Mary Dowling were at the party. Adoring the Best Man all over again. Fifty years didn’t erase a thing. One of the bridesmaids said, “everybody loved your father…he was a great guy back then, always making us happy.” The only thing missing would be my sweet , quiet, polite mother, softly smiling, gently giggling along – or, perhaps, rolling her eyes at that. A groomsman from the wedding party, now also in his 70’s came over and said, “we all loved Billy…he was something else!,” People don’t reunite 50 years later and kiss ass, I thought. These people were serious. My reaction: “REALLY??” I was kinda stunned but after some thought, realize that all the aunts and uncles who loved him…his brother…many in his life were long gone. Who was gonna tell us this? The painful and not so little hiatuses in his marriage (HIS hiatuses) drowned out a lot of these beautiful memories.

Did I mention my father was a looker. Just shy of movie star looks with a killer smile. My childhood neighbor Jean Drago summed up her theory about good looking husbands….and the Irish American men of Brooklyn she grew up around. Those beautiful Irish faces…and so dapper…were always “bad luck….always !!“ …she claimed emphatically. ”Irish husbands are the worst…look at the Kennedys!” she would bellow followed by a litany of names: gallivanting womanizing movie stars….all of Irish descent as her living proof. I think she even included Bobby Darren. And Frank Sinatra, even though he wasn’t Irish.

The Anniversary party brought me back in time..not quite 30 years…but 40 or so. After all I was home with a babysitter for the Dowling wedding so I have no memory of that. I wonder who babysat me. My earliest childhood memories of this man who’s affability I have inherited are pretty enlightening and healing.

Billy O. Memorable is an understatement. As his oldest child it always seemed to me that EVERYONE knew my father Billy O’Keefe. And everywhere: the Bronx, Queens…..jockeys at Belmont track, at Shea Stadium the organ player knew him. All over our town of Floral Park…and yes, on the streets of Manhattan. He worked at so many construction sites and therefore guest appearances at every nearby watering hole. (Don’t they mean beer keg, shouldn’t it be: whiskey pouring hole?) Every bartender seemed to know him. That’s right, If you were Irish and from New York..and drank……you probably drank with him…at least once. Or knew Billy…or someone who knew him. From the Knights of Columbus, Church, the Fire Department, you name it. They all knew him. Think: social butterfly meets blue collar New York City Irish smart-ass….with a streak of Archie Bunker, naturally. And he had the class of a US Marine….to boot! Throw in a couple of beers or Scotches or Vodkas…and you were in for a fun time with Billy O. No question. Hands down.

There was more to Billy than his drinking and carousing, I now recall. He would take me along to “help” count the money in our church’s Rectory basement, where I was introduced to the process of rolling up rolls of quarters to be counted. It was a weekly exposition we would do together….much like when he took my sister Katie and I to one of the saloons he owned in the early hours of a Saturday or Sunday — real early…like 8 am….to scrounge the floor under the baseboards of the bar for loose change which we got to keep! I remember that smell of the smoky bar after a settled empty night. Katie and I were children barbacks. He’d teach us everything, including how the jukebox worked. The whole “kit and caboodle”, as he’d say….or the whole ball of wax. “Daddy its so early”, I’d note out loud, in the early morning dankness.

But, there he was, Saint Billy letting in a handful of morning drinkers who could not wait for the legal time to drink, which I think was Noon. He’d let them in the back door so that the police wouldn’t see and they could get their fix. “They are alcoholics and have nowhere to go,” he would whisper to me. They needed Billy. Noone else for sure in our town would do this. And honestly as I look back I truly believe he did that for compassion and charity of his heart….and not the few extra dollars he would earn. They nursed their drinks all morning. And Billy told them funny stories. It was like he was babysitting them. And he loved it.

But my favorite memory: True to form, old school…no matter what time of day, Billy O had a rule. “Third drink is free.” EVERY third drink!. So, yeah, he wasn’t a money hungry saloon keeper. It was his passion. He had pride, too. He once had a carpenter friend make shamrock shaped aquariums adorning his namesake pub “Billy O’s” in Woodside, Queens which for years would do gangbusters although I have no idea where that money went. And I think he had green fish in the fishtanks on St. Patrick’s Day to honor the birth of my little brother Michael Joseph in the early 1980’s. I may have made this up. But I remember it anyway.

Add the trips to the bars in my childhood to the Church basements, volunteer firefighter events…and his building sites where he was an electrician for 50 years. A journeyman, he took me one day way up near the top of the World Trade Center, which he helped build. I can’t remember which Tower. There was sheet rock and sawdust and powder everywhere…and walls still being built. It was a wow moment. I could see New Jersey!! I remember asking if we could see England or California…already itching for a boarding pass. And in the electricians union, IBEW #3, honestly he was kind of like royalty. His father Mickey was in charge of helping union big wigs build the union and “convince” vendors to join the union. …among other heavy duty mystery missions, probably book or movie-worthy. No comment. Needless to say, when he died , my grandmother (his step mother) Lenny got NOTHING.

Looking back I realize those “Daddy and me” trips, he was teaching me, bringing me along, just like the fathers we saw on TV. I saw a little of his devilish dark side, too. I think I was nine. He once poured cheaper Rhein wine (i remember the label) into a more expensive bottle…it was OK, I thought, because it was kinda like how NY diners have years old Heinz bottles with new ketchup— and its not from Heinz. I know this to be true! He had his own allowance for it: “If they’re drunk, they wont even notice…what they don’t know won’t hurt them.” It was the 70’s during that recession we never hear about…because I think it was more known as the Carter Malaise. It was a recession like all others: real hard for the leader of a growing family….and a drinking fun-loving one, at that. The charm was non-stop and automatic. I remember he addressed every woman we encountered in our town Floral Park (Think Evening Shade on Long Island) at the bank, deli, on the street… with two single words: “Hello, Gorgeous”. But he meant it even if they weren’t gorgeous. I believe this. They all smiled or giggled. A few rolled their eyes “yeah, right” …but still winking at me to say its ok that he’s just saying that. These are my earliest Billy O memories…the better and softer ones.

As for Mrs. Drago’s indictment of Irish husbands…well, she got it half right. While my father, no saint, wasn’t the best husband for a chunk of the marriage, he did rescue my mother from a heartbreaking youth of losing both parents before she was 20, with nine siblings, most younger than her. My theory is that charming Billy O lit up her life with his charm parade through all the boroughs of New York and beyond. Her dear sister Anne once said, “The sun would rise and set on Billy. No matter what.” Bernadette stood by her man (though often alone home without him). But, in the end, it was OK… and, in the end, it was what it was: meant to be just what it was.

A little time warp here: Back to 1963…I have a vision of Billy O charming my mother at a beach party in the Hamptons, home from Parris Island, the dapper Marine. They danced, no doubt drank, though my mother rarely ever did… and the rest was history. And my story…and me… I was born. Isn’t it all about me, anyway!? The marriage was unconventional and my mother earned her place in Heaven, for sure. His playful hiatuses, where we wouldn’t see him for days or weeks brought on all sorts of pain, anguish, and terrible infighting among all of us abandoned hearts, not quite resolved all these years later. Some of that pain may have began when Billy and his brother Mickey were abandoned by their mother, when they were toddlers. And its OK.

Its old news under the Throggs Neck Bridge (literally) …because I’m sticking to my appreciation of most things Billy due to some sort of awakening I experienced at the Dowling festivities. For Dad his stepmother Lenny, who knew him better than everyone and anyone!!— and survived just the teenager (and beyond) Billy part! She’d too smile the second she saw him…followed up by a smack on his head or an eye roll or a wink at us that he was a “knucklehead”, her favorite word. I lied. I just remembered…there was another time he cried like a baby: when Grandma Lenny died —way too young and rather suddenly. In fact, he cried twice in front of me. Writing this chapter reminded me. (I cried too and stole her red nail polish that she used on her toes from her house.) And I wasn’t there but I bet he cried when Aunt May died too. OK before my thesis here dribbles away in tears, I’ll wrap this up, soon.

On a much happier note: mere mention of his Aunt May and Aunt Margie makes him smile so wide decades after their deaths. (and his Aunt Dot who is still alive!) Billy O sold Christmas trees with his cousin, May’s son when they were barely teens. They got the trees together..and picked an opposite corner, each selling for the same price. One snowy night, Aunt May got off the bus and heard my fathers sale price—- a dollar more than her son’s ! A rap on the head he got! And yes, Saint Billy went to Catholic elementary school and became very knowledgable of the nuns and their rulers. But legend has it that even the nuns were charmed by Billy O. Of course. My father is the Lost Little Rascal!!

Was he dishonest? Sure. Noone would lie better than Billy (“The O’Keefe lie”, we’d call it years later) It was not easy to suss out his lies. And sometimes they were for a good cause. A few times in the 1970s we were on food stamps for a stretch and when Christmas came he picked out a tree once telling the guy he had paid out front…and then telling the guy out front he had paid the guy inside…smiles all around. I remember him saying, “Don’t worry Im going to pay them back. They will understand. They are my friends.” And in some way Im sure he did because he shopped at that florist for years after. In my eyes, then and now: he didn’t steal to steal. He stole to give his moneyless family a Christmas Tree. One of his personal heros was his Uncle Frank O’Keefe, a legendary camera operator from NBC News and Sports. On Sundays Billy would take me to see Uncle Frank at 30 Rock and they’d let me touch the control room button that would beam a football game shot…or a commercial ..out to the world. I was fascinated and mesmerized. We visited Uncle Frank whenever we could! He was Tom Snyder’s cameraman and did the lighting test for a new anchor to arrive at NBC 4 in NY one afternoon long ago, Sue Simmons.

That fascination with television magic brought me, many years later, in 1985 to NBC. And a little resume dropped on a desk from Frank to fellow Irish mobster Judy Sullivan— in Personnel. My career in television was all originally lit like a candle within me on those “Daddy and me trips” ten or fifteen years earlier….fed even more by my mother allowing me to eat my dinner in front of the TV for “Eyewitness News at 6” every single night.

As my salute to the gifts of Billy O winds down, I am convinced he learned a lot of respect skills and behaviors that he did exhibit— when he exhibited them— in the Marines. Like teaching me how to shake a hand “like a Man!” Firm and solid to the point of almost hurting…, in case you didn’t know.

Once a Marine, always a Marine. He was a mess hall cook…and would make amazing dishes, notably whipped potatoes with secret ingredients and NEVER ONCE has he followed or even read a written recipe. No Betty Crocker for Billy O. No need. Thank God he was a Marine because if he hadn’t done that, Im not sure a lot of these happy memories would have happened.

He’s 73 now.. a little frail but with that movie star swath of hair a bit grayer and not quite white. He still has ants in his pants and and remains a bit lonely without my mother. His smile is still infectious as I saw at the Dowling Anniversary. He doesn’t miss a trick, as he would himself say. He adores his grandchildren. We’d always joke that he will outlive us all. He just may. But, just in case: My brother Michael Joseph, and I have a secret plan this holiday season—to take him to Ohio to see Uncle Frank’s widow, Aunt Dot who I know will smile wide at the sight of him. I can’t wait.