Chapter 1 - The Courthouse
The following is a tale of discovery, an exploration as much concerned with the stories we let breathe and take flight as it is about the secrets we choose to suffocate and bury.
For my part, it begins with the passing of my grandfather and ends with the death of my father. For other characters, their roles traverse the vast expanse of time between an unprecedented Great War to the lockdowns of the COVID pandemic. Along the way, they will experience pit stops at the landmarks of our nation’s last one hundred years: the devastation of the Depression, the optimism of the post-World War II years, the disillusionment of the Vietnam War, and the information eruption of the new millennium.
Like many journeys worth taking, this one will have some unexpected twists and turns. What started as a follow-up to my father’s and my previous title, Road Map to Power, has evolved into something that was unintended but should have been expected. It is where all human expositions ultimately end up: a story of family. In this instance, the Devine family. The eight siblings and the one brother that was sent away. Or, depending on who you ask, the one brother and the eight siblings left behind.
Some will say this book is about chasing ghosts. Let me clarify one thing right away—it's about capturing loved ones in life before they have a chance to become a ghost.
But I am already way ahead of myself. Let’s begin where I enter the picture.
***
When you are young and a little lucky, you don’t have much practice saying goodbye to someone you’ll never see again. Being both young and quite a bit lucky, my frame of reference was mostly fictionalized, drawn from popular song, television, and the silver screen. I suppose that’s why I expected a deep aching sorrow. Expressions worthy of epic poets. Possibly an orchestra playing melodies in a minor key.
Instead, there was numbness.
In retrospect, perhaps this numbness wasn’t the absence of emotion, just as black isn’t the absence of color. Mix all the colors of the wheel and you arrive at black. Mix all the emotions of the human experience and sometimes you are left with numbness.
My father, no stranger to saying goodbye, given the myriad of people he encountered in his life’s travels, was intrigued by the common rituals across cultures that often accompany our departures from one another. The hugs, the tears, the CliffsNotes of time spent together. Most importantly, the promise to see each other soon.
Maybe these promises are made out of courtesy or maybe they are genuine. Regardless, we are comforted by the hope that this separation is only temporary.
With my grandfather, however, this was a final farewell. It was the reason for my travels from Minnesota to Arizona. There would be no next time. After a long battle in the intensive care unit, he had come home to die.
In between stories of laughter and tears with my cousins, I stole moments to sit by my grandfather’s side. He no longer had the ability to talk. This fact from a man who was a legend at drawing out a tale well past its natural conclusion. To make a short story long, that was his Irish gift of gab.
There in his bed, he laid silent.
A nurse was his constant companion: reading vital signs, replacing IVs full of water, and administering pain medication if he began to stir restlessly. I packed my bags, unpacked them, and packed up again in a feeble attempt to avoid the inevitable. My ride would be arriving soon to take me to Sky Harbor Airport and then on a plane back home. With nothing left to occupy my anxious mind, I waited in a room adjacent to my grandfather's and began to pray.
If God had the time to evaluate all his precious creations, he would have found me to be a disingenuous prayer. I would pray when I wanted things or was frightened; most of the time in prayer I found myself both wanting things and frightened. Despite my thorough Catholic background, prayer had never become a ritual. As a result, my pleas up to the heavens always began awkwardly. Eventually, I would settle into a rhythm and after laboring through, the gist of my request would materialize.
“Please, Lord, allow me one last peaceful moment with my grandpa.”
With my agenda articulated, I entered his bedroom. He was resting prone and staring at the ceiling, seemingly ignoring the panoramic view of the desert, the cacti, and the foothills that filled his window. The nurse who was always by his side had set up shop in an empty walk-in closet. A desk and chair were moved into the space and she sat at her laptop computer facing away from us, quietly typing notes from this morning. We were, for my purposes, alone.
I whispered to him a jumble of memories and gratitude. How he could bring to life a Civil War battle as if we were standing there on the sidelines. How he could tell the same joke over and over again but somehow bring a fresh joy to each telling. How he could predict the next play of the football game or when someone was about to score a touchdown. How even though he would hug and hold on a little too long for your comfort, I would now give anything to be able to hug him one more time. And that’s when the tears began to flow uncontrollably.
I steadied myself, determined to include every word of my intentions. It was then something transpired that I still cannot quite explain.
Through the blurry wetness of my eyes, an ethereal being rose from my grandfather’s body, through the bedsheets, and hovered above me. I began to shudder but was immediately comforted with a warm embrace. I stared into the soft glow of the spirit and saw the face of a young man. It was the face of my grandfather from a bygone era: vibrant, hopeful, full of wonderment and life. He returned my astonished gaze and smiled. Before I could say a word, to acknowledge the divine, the spirit poured back into my grandfather. There, once again, he lay. Tired, old, ready to die.
Later, I sat on the plane in silence trying to piece together some coherent rationalization for what had ensued.
I was less than two years removed from receiving my degree in psychology and so I told myself, "The brain is a powerful tool, gifting us what we need in moments of intense demand." In my despair, my mind must have conjured a comforting image. How else would I allow myself to leave my grandfather’s room and board that plane? “Yes, of course,” I thought. “It was a defense mechanism to assuage my grief.” Spoken like a true disciple of the psychoanalytic greats.
For weeks, I told no one of my encounter. Occasionally, the specter of my grandfather’s smiling face would push to the forefront of my mind only to be buried by empirical measures and observable fact.
Not long after that visit, my grandfather finally succumbed to his long and arduous battle. I once again boarded a plane from Minnesota to Arizona.
A private visitation was arranged the night before his funeral. My grandfather was a famous man for reasons I will describe later in detail. His memorial would surely be well attended and feature a level of pomp and circumstance that mirrored his fame. For those gathered at the visitation, we were not grieving his success or accomplishments but the loss of a grandfather, a father, a trusted friend.
One by one, the family took turns testifying. Stories of love shared in unexpected spaces. Stories of laughter in the odd way we conduct ourselves only in the comfort and presence of those who most care about us. The memories flowed well into the night while I sat quiet and reflective. As the accounts began to stack upon one another and form the foundation of his life, an urge began to build up inside of me. As the night reached its natural conclusion, I started to stir into a frenzy, a zealot at a religious revival.
I can only say about what happened next is that sometimes in life you speak without the mind’s permission. The heart takes over with unfiltered emotions to convey. After not saying a word to a soul about my encounter, I bared witness to a crowd of mourners. I spoke of my awkward prayers, of being alone in the room, of spilling incoherently my feelings and despairs, of how the spirit of my grandfather appeared to me in youthful form. And then I came to a conclusion out loud that I hadn’t dared say to myself in private:
“When he smiled at me, I knew that he would be reborn.”
Jesus. I’m pretty sure I don’t have an evangelical bone in my body. Yet here I was, prophesying about the resurrection of the living and the dead.
The next day, I was eager to move on. I never expected or wanted to share this deeply personal revelation. Besides, did it really happen as I described? For others to possibly find comfort and solace in what may have been a product of my imagination was more than I was willing to carry.
The memorial allowed an escape from the attention. Those who had intersected my grandfather’s life poured in from across the country. It was a worthy sendoff to a man who had started at the bottom, traversed rocky terrain, and found himself on the mountaintop.
An extended caravan of vehicles wound through the desert to his final resting place. We lowered his coffin next to that of my grandmother, the great love of his life, who had preceded him in death less than two years earlier. We sang “Amazing Grace” in a manner fitting of our family mantra that sincere enthusiasm can almost make up for being slightly off key.
Exhausted, I made my way through the cemetery confident in the knowledge that my disclosure would be a kindly received afterthought. Fifty paces from my car and almost free, a voice called after me halting me in my tracks. I turned to find an elderly man flanked by four others. I recognized him as a friend of my Aunt Diana.
Dede, as we all called her, had dedicated her career to serving the Native American population of the greater Phoenix area. Through her nonprofit she addresses the overwhelming poverty, generational trauma, and addiction afflicting our nation’s “First People.” The man who called after me was an elder of the Navajo community who had attended the visitation.
The group formed a circle around me, blocking every direction of potential escape. The leader wasted no formalities to arrive at his point.
“What you experienced with your grandfather was a vision. In our culture, we center ourselves with ritual with the hopes that in our lifetime we may receive a message from the spirits. Many of us, despite our efforts, will never be chosen. You have been given a great blessing from above that must be honored.”
His and his companions’ expressions were deadly serious. The gravity of his words displayed a conviction beyond anything in my sphere of reality.
A staggered, “Thank you,” was all I could muster, and I went on my way.
Fighting the urge to forget the incident in its entirety, I managed to tell my girlfriend Jennifer—who would later become my life partner—about the encounter. Anybody who has met Jennifer would know this disclosure was a mistake if my objective was to “simply let it go.”
“Tomorrow, we are going straight to Maria and tell her what happened,” she said without hesitation.
Maria was our co-worker and friend at Face to Face Academy, a public charter school serving at-risk youth that we called our second home. A member of the Ojibwa tribe, Maria undoubtedly had a gift. She could see incidents before they occurred. Her insights into the human condition were uncanny. When she would start a sentence with, “why don’t we” or “have you ever thought of,” you were a fool not to write down or commit to memory what was about to come next.
Jennifer and I sat on a couch in her townhome decorated in a manner that disarmed you of your pretenses and ego defenses. There was no need for CIA interrogation tactics at black ops sites. All you needed was Maria, serving you a blend of her special tea, to get you to spill your most guarded secrets.
I started with my prayer for a peaceful moment to say goodbye to my grandfather. I included a vivid description of the youthful spirit that levitated from his hospital bed and ended with the message delivered by the group of Navajo mourners.
Maria pursed her lips and furled her brow. I had seen this expression from her dozens of times as she listened intently to our students’ concerns. Without a word, she stood up from her chair, retreated to the kitchen, and returned with more tea. She filled our cups to the brim.
Jennifer and I squirmed in silence, fighting back our urge to shout, “Well?”
An answer finally came: “We need to make you a medicine bag.”
With Maria, you learned to expect the unexpected, but even for her, this comment was stupefying.
She continued, “We need to make you a medicine bag to commemorate your experience. I know the perfect person to make it for you.”
I appreciated the gesture. But I hadn’t come to Maria’s looking for a medicine bag. I had come for answers.
“Thank you, Maria,” I said, trying to hide the exasperation and desperation pouring out from me. “But what does it all mean?”
“Whatever you believe it to mean,” she countered.
That was also not very helpful. I could have enlisted a therapist or called a 1-900 number if I was looking for that answer. From Maria, I needed more.
She could tell I wasn’t satisfied and tried to explain. “The important piece is that your grandfather entrusted you with this vision.”
I suppose Maria, true to form, had nailed what was most troubling about this entire episode. Why me?
I was barely in my twenties with hardly any understanding of the world’s more important matters. I had little spiritual awareness and had never been interested in nurturing that part of my psyche. At the time, my spiritual thinking could be summarized as, “You live, you die, you do the best you can in between.” To me, there wasn’t any grander purpose or meaning. How could there be when such devastating and tragic events occur to decent people so random and indiscriminately?
Einstein famously quipped, “God doesn’t play dice.” For me there was only dice. Furthermore, while I appreciated my closeness with my grandfather and always felt important in his presence, others experienced a stronger and more authentic bond. There were many more qualified and deserving people to be “entrusted with this vision.”
I expressed these misgivings to Maria.
She emphatically dismissed my concerns. “We are not in charge of who receives the message. We are only left with the choice of embracing or ignoring it.”
Weeks later, Maria presented to me the medicine bag embroidered with red and white beads in the shape of a dragonfly, a symbol of transformation in the Ojibwa culture. I accepted it with sincere gratitude and wore it with great pride. In the years to come, the pouch accompanied me during important moments in my life and I would clutch it when I called upon further strength and courage.
As for the question of whether to embrace or ignore the message, the answer was clear: it had become nothing more than a happy if not befuddling memory. I could have navigated the rest of my life comfortable with this decision.
That is until I saw a vision of my grandfather for the second time.
***
I emptied my pockets: cell phone, wallet, keys, and loose change. The items were placed in a bowl that would have made for an excellent dog dish. Pressing forward, a chime rained down from above while a red light indicated I had failed.
“You’ll need to remove the belt.”
Yes, of course, the belt. That was silly. I don’t wear belts very often. I backtracked through the metal detector, took off my belt, and coiled it around the doggy dish. I headed through once again, but this time without any unnerving sound. I retrieved my belongings and allowed a moment to gather myself.
Having fared better at security, my lawyer was already waiting for me.
How I found myself in the Ramsey County Courthouse in need of legal counsel was still perplexing. I was a rule follower. I didn’t even have a speeding ticket to my name. My biggest infraction was when I once received detention for showing up five minutes late to school after open lunch. But now I was charged by the state of Minnesota with felony level Obstruction of Justice.
What a funny term for what occurred nearly four months ago in my employer’s parking lot on an unseasonably cold day in March. It is an interesting story, really. The intersection of race, youth, police, education, and the legal system. But that account will have to be saved for another time, another book, perhaps.
No, what I want to tell you about is the light.
My lawyer squinted his eyes and rubbed his glasses. “I can never see in this building.” He was a Minneapolis guy. A top-shelf, or rather a top-floor, lawyer whose office overlooked the Mississippi. My parents were not fooling around when they found out their youngest child was being charged with a felony. So, they hired the best. Granted, it was overkill. Comparable to bringing Michael Jordan to the family pickup game. Like many from Minneapolis, however, he rarely crossed the river into St. Paul and that fact never afforded him the opportunity to adjust to the light of the Ramsey County Courthouse.
To his defense, the light was challenging. The rectangular slits for windows, about seven times as tall as they are wide, let in only slivers of sun. Combined with the dark features that covered the expansive lobby, the effect was like an artificial fog blanketing the entire building.
Arriving at the elevators’ heavy bronze doors, we struggled to read the directory guiding us where the hearing was to take place. I pressed a number and the sound of slow grinding gears accompanied us to the upper levels where the courtroom was located. My mother and father were already seated and waiting for us.
My lawyer eyed my parents and repeated a conversation we had many times before.
“I feel bad they came up all the way from Missouri,” he said.
“I know,” I replied.
“It’s only a preliminary hearing. It will be a lot of sitting around and not a whole lot of action,” he said.
“I tried. They won’t have it any other way,” I replied.
Truth is, I was relieved they were here. We greeted each other with warm hugs. I could tell my mother was holding back tears. In hindsight, we probably didn’t need to expend so much emotion. Many families experience much worse injustices. In the moment, however, the weight of the ordeal made me feel like I was about to collapse.
I was reminded of what my lawyer had told me earlier: “The worst thing you can be in the legal system is innocent.”
The foggy nature of the building carried into the courtroom. It was difficult to clearly see the judge’s bench. It occurred to me that, intended or not, the tricky light created a home-court advantage for the County and prosecution. Like playing a game at high altitude where the visiting team doesn’t have the opportunity to acclimate. The stress was bad enough, but the mystifying ambiance of this building was additionally disorienting.
My parents, my lawyer, and I sat neatly in a row as we waited for the clerk and the judge to arrive. The courtroom was sparsely populated with the recipients of other cases and everyone was assembled in stark silence.
The sound of a door opening broke our waking slumber. We anticipated the judge promenading in, except that the creaking was not coming from the front but from the back instead.
We all turned to greet the noise and strained to see its maker.
Damn, this light.
But the eyes began to find its focus even if what they told us it saw could not be possible. My mother, father, and I took turns letting out an audible gasp. And who could blame us, for somehow a dead man was walking into the room.
***
There are myths about our lives that we often accept as fact without further examination. One myth I happily adopted was regarding my plans to further my education post high school. Feeling an urge to disrupt the stability of growing up in the same modest-size town, in the same house, with the same social circle, and anchored by a loving and doting mother and father, I had an urge to disrupt the stability. This need to let a little chaos into my life manifested itself into the decision to “go away for college.”
I wasn’t exactly Meriwether Lewis embarking with William Clark on a quest to find the Northwest Passage. But for me, attending St. John’s University in Minnesota was a risky endeavor. In my mind, I was a pioneer, fending for myself without friends or family.
While my grandparents had grown up in or near Duluth and my mother was born a stone’s throw from the shores of Lake Superior, Minnesota didn’t register much in my family’s lore. As my grandfather embarked on what would become a Hall of Fame career, he uprooted his burgeoning family when my mother was only six months old and crisscrossed them through the country with stops in Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Minnesota was simply the station where the train made its first departure.
I had only been to Minnesota once, for a soccer tournament in 1993. I remember more the devastating floods that greeted us throughout our northward journey rather than anything particular about the land of 10,000 lakes. Even though my mother reminded me to connect with a great uncle I had in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, I placed his existence on the back burner and stuck with my inner “go it alone” storyline.
To a soon-to-be college student about to shed the majority of the eighteen years of life he has only known, a great uncle existing in the netherverse is as concrete as having a distant relative from Nigeria inexplicably contact you via email—except without the promise of making you a millionaire.
By the time I was sitting in the Ramsey County Courthouse, I had been living in the city for several years, just a few miles away from where my great uncle had lived with his family for decades. I was hardly aware of his existence. It should come as no surprise, then, that it took me completely off guard to discover he was a magician. And, for his first trick, he turned himself into my grandfather.
Of all my grandfather’s eight siblings, the youngest, Gerald Devine, looked the most like him. His facial features, from the bulbous nose to the crescent lines on his forehead, were stunningly familiar. Adding to the confusion was the fact that on that day, Gerald was the same age as my grandfather right before the heart surgery that had confined him to a hospital bed for the rest of his life.
A few years after this courtroom encounter, a statue of my grandfather was commissioned to be displayed in front of Notre Dame Stadium. When the first renditions failed to capture the essence of her father, my mother pointed at her uncle Gerald in frustration and said, “Just make it look like him.”
My mother always had a special affinity for her uncle for a litany of reasons including both being left-handed. Disliking the name Gerald, his friends and family learned to call him “Jerry” or just “Lefty.” To the large congregation at Nativity Catholic Church in St. Paul where he served, he was either Deacon Devine or Deacon Jerry. With many names and titles to choose from, my mom affectionately referred to Gerald Devine as “her uncle Lefty.”
After his first mystical appearance at the courthouse, Uncle Lefty became a fixture at my hearings. He would sit with my parents, hold my mother’s hand in comfort, and listen to the proceedings. His presence was reassuring but he mostly remained quiet while my lawyer, parents, and I discussed strategy.
After several months of this exhausting routine, I was faced with a pivotal decision that would shift the balance of the trial. Weary and battle fatigued, we were at an impasse as to how to move forward. Wanting a change of scenery, the four of us absconded to the lobby of the hotel across the street and positioned ourselves around a circular coffee table.
Uncle Lefty sat hunched in an oversized recliner as we discussed the day’s offerings. Waiting for everyone to take their turn, he leaned to the edge of his chair and asked, “May I offer a few words?”
In those “few words,” I discovered a quality about my great uncle that I would observe repeatedly in the future. He was careful not to interject in a way that would seem to be imposing. When he chose to speak, it came from a place of experience and compassion forged from decades of being a deacon. His guidance that day proved pivotal and unlocked a door so that I could move on with the rest of my life. Lefty came to my aid and believed in my decency although he barely knew me. He showed up in my moment of need because, at the end of the day, we were family.
After my grandfather’s death, I thought that chapter of my history had closed forever. I never expected to have that chapter reopened by someone who lived ten minutes down the road.
This development brought both joy and questions.
First the joy. Through Uncle Lefty, I met a cascade of Devines I never knew existed. Their warmth and presence punctured holes and let in new light to the myth that I was going about this Minnesota experiment alone. Jennifer and I grew close to Uncle Lefty and his wife Mary Kay over coffee, dinner, and celebrations. Once Jennifer and I chose to marry, my dear uncle Lefty was the only logical choice to be the officiant.
Later, Uncle Lefty’s sons Shawn and David returned to St. Paul from a sabbatical in Chicago. They brought their young families with them as well. In looking at Shawn and David’s children, I was harkened back to the old black-and-white photos of my mother and her siblings in their youth. Now, the experience was in three dimensions and in full high-definition color.
When my daughter Ava was born, she quickly integrated into the Devine family, bridging the gap between Shawn and David’s youngest and oldest children. Separated by considerable distance from my own brother and his family in Missouri and the families of my first cousins in Arizona, Ava now had a Devine family to call her own.
One of my great childhood memories was traveling to Arizona during the holidays. It was tradition for the cousins, aunts, and uncles to challenge each other to a game of touch football on Thanksgiving Day. These were competitive affairs that combined laughter and overzealous passion. Sometimes my grandfather would come out and call a few plays.
Receiving my first invitation to what is dubbed the “Turkey Bowl” played in the tight confines of Shawn’s front yard in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul, I quickly detected that Lefty and Mary Kay’s children and grandchildren approached the game with the same intensity and a disdain for participation trophies.
“My God, they even play football like us,” and now Ava had a Devine Thanksgiving Day football game to call her own.
To understand how I was related to the St. Paul Devines, I dedicated myself to the dizzying practice of learning the difference between second cousins and first cousins once removed. Despite being my age, Shawn and David were my mother’s first cousins, making them my first cousins once removed. Although I am nearly thirty years older than Shawn’s firstborn, Quinn, all of Jerry Devine’s nine grandchildren are my second cousins since we occupy the same generational line.
Genealogical terminology was simply the tip of my constantly expanded list of questions. The most salient of these queries was why I waited until my mid-thirties to start trying to connect with Uncle Lefty’s clan (not to mention my grandfather’s seven other siblings along with their children and grandchildren).
I realize that I may be forgiven for meeting Shawn and David much later in life. Many of us are likely not well acquainted with our first cousins once removed or our second cousins; and dare I fail to mention our second cousins once removed.
What’s puzzling is that my mother’s awareness and connection was only a fraction better. These are her uncles, aunts, and first cousins. She barely remembers meeting her paternal grandparents although they were both alive well after she graduated from high school.
The reason for this divide is not a complete mystery. The various branches of the Devine family tree experienced emotional separation because there was also physical separation.
When he was just a child, my grandfather was sent to live with an aunt on his father’s side. What was supposed to be a temporary move ended up being a permanent arrangement.
In his autobiography Simply Devine, my grandfather briefly addresses being severed from his family. In the “Proctor Minnesota” chapter, he writes:
My earliest memory is walking up as a cold and confused four-year-old, riding in a Model T Ford in the middle of a blizzard. I was crying as Aunt Mamie tried to comfort me; my Uncle Joe was driving. It was 1928, and my aunt and uncle had picked me up at the train station in Duluth, Minnesota, and were taking me back to their home in nearby Proctor, Minnesota. I’m certain I had no idea at the time what was happening, but my parents had sent me to live with my aunt and uncle because of financial desperation. My father ran a general store in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, but he was ill, which limited his ability to feed and clothe our family. I was the second oldest boy out of nine children. As the days turned into weeks and months, I realized I was not going to be returning home. Many nights I cried myself to sleep.
What discomforts me is that my grandfather’s first conscious recollection in life is being whisked away from his family with little comprehension of what was happening to him. His first memory was not happiness or even something mundane. His first memory is of trauma.
Later, he continues:
I never tried to find out more about why my parents had sent me away. It was a decision that I’m sure affected their lives as well. One aching feeling that never left me was how desperately I missed my family.
If anything, my grandfather was true to his word. He never tried to find out why his parents sent him away. In the 200-plus pages that followed this harrowing scene, he doesn’t mention his childhood displacement again. Can you imagine the sentence “One aching feeling that never left me was how desperately I missed my family” in the hands of another author? Faulkner, Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Morrison could center an entire epic novel around that one phrase. My grandfather, however, devoted a sparse 199 words to the heartache of losing his family.
He wasn’t alone in his omissions. The motivations behind this choice and the reasons for why he was never returned to his mother and father, to his eight siblings, was buried in a grave of silence.
Ask my mother, my aunts, my uncles, or my cousins and you may receive a sliver of information. My father, a trusted confidant of my grandfather and trained in psychotherapy, could hardly remember my grandfather mentioning his childhood. Occasionally, my grandfather would make some general statements like, “it was the Depression, and it was common for children to be sent away and raised by other family members.”
My grandfather’s childhood circumstances were only a portion of a larger unanswered story. For instance, what about the brothers and sisters who remained at home when my grandfather was sent away? What sort of hardships did they endure in a family wrought with “financial desperation”?
Canvass that enigmatic generation’s dozens of children and grandchildren and you would have enough information to maybe complete a paragraph:
“He never talked about it.”
“She didn’t bring it up in conversation.”
“It was probably too difficult and painful to discuss.”
Compared to that silence, my grandfather’s 199 words was practically War and Peace.
So, it seemed destined that the story of the how the Devine family of Chippewa Falls overcame great hardships and destitution and went on to produce a nurse, a college professor, a factory superintendent, a small business owner, a beloved deacon, an honored Vietnam war chaplain and priest, and a Hall of Fame football coach would never be told. It would remain a narrative lost forever to the generations that would follow. In its place, only a question as to the impact on a family when a part of their history is obscured from the official record book.
It could have gone that way. It was likely it was going to go that way. Then, something remarkable happened. A ripple from a small pebble tossed in the pond of the family’s memory. Maybe the divine intervening in the Devine.
One of my grandfather’s middle brothers, Greg, was notified that he had been inducted into the hall of fame at this his alma mater’s, McDonell High School. As part of the ceremony, each recipient was expected to deliver a speech. Greg had a radical idea which he shared with his brother, Lefty. “I’m going to talk about our childhood.”
To pull off his plan, Greg enlisted the support of his son, Tim. Greg wrote down the bullet points and handed them to his youngest with a simple “here” as if it were the weekly grocery list. Except the piece of scrap paper wasn’t a reminder to pick up bacon and eggs. The statements it contained were emotional landmines.
Thankfully, Tim was a lifelong educator and gifted writer. He brought to life the themes of adversity, resiliency, and hope from these scribbled down sentiments which had lain dormant inside his father for decades.
Still, it was up to Greg to deliver the lines. When his name was called, he stood up and faced a crowd of friends, family, and former classmates. For the first time in nearly eighty years, he pulled back the curtain and began to speak about the harsh truths of his youth. All his life, he questioned whether telling his story would be met with ridicule or worse, apathy.
Instead, he was greeted with a standing ovation.
This positive response seemed to create momentum. Greg started thinking that if his speech had inspired people at the banquet, others could find encouragement in the Devine sibling’s rise from obscurity. Greg said to his brother Lefty, “We should write it all down.”
They started meeting more frequently at the A&W in Baldwin, a nice halfway point between St. Paul and Greg’s home in Eau Claire. They got to know the waitress. and when the first one to arrive would walk in, she’d say unprompted, “Your brother’s not here yet.”
During those visits, they began sketching out a rough outline under the working title “Bootstraps,” a name that needed no explanation. After each subsequent trip, however, Lefty noticed that Greg’s initial enthusiasm had started to fade. Finally, Greg put to words what Lefty knew he was already thinking, “I don’t believe I can do this anymore. I am finding it hard to dig this deep.”
Lefty understood. He was also finding it difficult to confront the past.
While this was happening, my father and I were discussing the framework for our follow-up book to Road Map to Power. We were searching for narratives of individuals who seemed ordinary on the surface but demonstrated extraordinary resiliency and service to their community. When we off-handedly heard about Lefty’s stalled project, we immediately arrived at the same conclusion. We wanted to tell the story of the Chippewa Falls Devines. Our expectations were modest. If anything, this account would have tremendous value to our family members who were left with so many questions and so few answers. With a little luck, it could also provide encouragement for those facing similar adversities.
There was something else pulling me closer. An echo that began at the side of my grandfather’s hospital bed, reverberated the moment my great uncle appeared in a St. Paul courtroom, and was now a vociferous roar that I could no longer ignore.
All that remained was to convince a Devine to confess.
***
