I. A Man for All Seasons
1. THE EARLY YEARS
There was one thing about young Albert Dennis Kirwan that his brother Will, two years his elder, did not likeâand that was his name. Try as he might, âAlbertâ always came out âAbbert.â Catherine and Patrick, the two younger children, shortened this to âAb.â This simple yet distinctive name stuck with Kirwan throughout his life, forever baffling acquaintances who tried to derive âAbâ from either âA. D.â or âAlbert.â
The Kirwan name probably first appeared in Louisville around 1850, when Patrick Nolan Kirwan, Albertâs grandfather, came down the Ohio River with his brother Edward looking for a place to settle. In choosing Louisville, they ended a hectic journey from Galway, Ireland. Seven Kirwan brothers had fled the Irish potato famine of the late 1840s and landed in North Carolina, but except for Patrick and Edward, each went his separate way.
Patrick and Edward arrived in Louisville during an era of nativist hostility and occasional rioting against immigrants. Patrick not only weathered the troubled 1850s, but also found a wife. In 1857 he married Mary Elizabeth Ross, whose family had come to Kentucky from Maryland after the Revolution. Between 1858 and his untimely death in 1865, Mary bore Patrick six children; the second, Martin John, born in 1859, was to be the father of Albert Dennis Kirwan.1
Martinâs widowed mother, hard pressed to support her six young children, insisted that they contribute to the familyâs upkeep as soon as they were employable. Martin, the oldest son, led the way by securing various part-time jobs as a youngster. In 1877 he won his first permanent job as a clerk in a small lumberyard owned by his cousin Edward and a friend. Although this fragile concern folded in 1881, forcing Martin to clerk for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad until 1885, dealing in lumber was to be his lifeâs work.
Despite his motherâs opposition, Martin married Minnie Jones in 1888. Mary Elizabeth Kirwan was a very possessive and strong-willed woman, and she hated to surrender any of her boys to matrimony. Six years later she would oppose Martinâs second marriage just as bluntly as she had his first. Martinâs brother Joseph went so far as to postpone his own marriage until after Mrs. Kirwanâs death in 1915. Martin, however, had much of his motherâs will, and set his own course in spite of her protests. Over the next four years Minnie bore three boys: Edward Emmett in 1889, Harry in 1891, and Joseph Ross in 1892. The responsibilities of a growing family induced Martin to start his own lumberyard in 1892; the next year he took Joseph on as a partner, and the enterprise became Kirwan Brothers Lumber Company. Although Martinâs total investment washed away in the 1913 flood, his brother Joseph and others managed to rebuild and continue the company until 1962.
Following Minnieâs death during childbirth, Martin courted Margaret Sullivan, a charming woman six years his junior. They were married in 1896, and her three stepsons welcomed her into their Franklin Street home. âMargaret became a devoted mother to the three boys and they in turn loved her as deeply as they could have their own mother.â In 1897 Margaret gave the boys a half-sister, Mary; in 1898 another, Margaret; and finally a half-brother, named for Martin, in 1899. Martin and Margaret now purchased a large frame house at 1842 Mellwood Avenue, and the family moved there in 1900. Accessible to both the Kirwan lumberyard and the home of Martinâs brother Joe at 1534 Fulton Street, it was located just south of River Road in âThe Point,â a two-square-mile area along what was then Louisvilleâs eastern edge, centering on Beargrass Creekâs confluence with the Ohio River.2 The Fischer Packing Company building now stands on the spot once occupied by Martinâs house.
By now, Martin had moved into the upper middle class, for the lumberyard at Fulton and Adams streets was a very profitable business. He and Margaret had a stable of excellent horses, a carriage, several buggies, and enjoyed a well-equipped household. As far as the children were concerned, having a lumberman for a father was blessing enough. They were thrilled by the whirring, screaming sound of giant saws biting into hardwood, and they loved the hot pungent odor of freshly sawed pine. There were great logs in the river to skip across, huge mounds of sawdust for tumbling on, friendly workers to talk with and to tease them. They were proud of their father and Uncle Joe, saw their name in advertisements: Kirwan Brothersâmanufacturing blinds, sashes, doors, frames, and moldings; dealing in lumber ârough or dressed.â
Martinâs family continued to grow. The first twentieth-century child was Susan, who arrived in 1901. Two years later Margaret gave birth to her fifth child, and Martinâs eighth, William English. A ninth was expected in December 1904. Everyone waited eagerly for the new arrivalâperhaps the baby would arrive on Christmas Day! Thursday, December 22, was unseasonably warm, with a temperature of 58 degrees under an overcast sky; so Dr. James Pell had no difficulty reaching the Kirwan home in time to help Margaret deliver a boy, promptly named Albert Dennis.
The city Albert would know so well as a boy and young man exuded optimism and progress in 1904. The Masonic Temple and the Jewish Hospital were completed that year, and both a new jail was under construction and buildings for the fire-ravaged Bourbon Stockyards. Broadway and Chestnut streets were opened all the way to Shawnee Park, and many new brick streets were being built elsewhere. The Louisville Railway Company, serving a city of 228,500 people, was proud to replace its âsquat, cold carsâ with âimposing, roomy, heated cars.â A nickel fare with transfer would take one âto almost any point on the entire system.â Business was good, and labor strife, though troublesome in some cities, was âonly slightly felt in Louisville.â In short, things looked good for a person born in 1904; the last rosy glow of the old order had a decade to go before World War I changed the world forever.
Martin and Margaret were good parents. Relaxed and easygoing, Margaret created a bond of love and confidence with her children that endured until her death. Backing her was a husband who would âuse an old razor stropâ to curb childish misbehavior, but who was âvery kindly and gentle as a rule.â Ab revealed years later that Martin was much more than a disciplinarian:
At nighttime, my father would sit around the fire with all of the children and my mother gathered there, and he would read to us. Although this started when I was a young child and I never understood the plot or the progress of the story, nevertheless I was entranced, and all of us were entranced with the reading of my father. . . . He read to us most of Charles Dickens, . . . Thackeray, Robert Louis Stevenson, Fenimore Cooper, some of Shakespeare, and Mark Twainâs Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. . . . I think it taught all of us to have a great love for literature.3
Ab was seven in 1912, when the family moved to an antebellum three-story brick house at 326 East Jacob Street. This fifteen-room home was near the center of Louisville in a âbetter neighborhoodâ than The Point. Uncle Joe and Grandma Kirwan remained at 1534 Fulton, however, and therein lay a problem for Ab and Will. Uncle Joe always kept cows on his land, and Martinâs family had long been drinking that milk. Since the cows could not come to Jacob Street, Ab and Will had to go to the cows. Each took his daily turn carrying and sloshing a heavy pail of milk two miles to the family table. One can imagine the condition of the milk when it arrived! Will still remembers it as âone of the meanest jobs we had in those days.â
Abâs competitive spirit revealed itself early in frequent fights with Martin, Jr.âthis in a relatively peaceful household. The older Martin would often thrash both Ab and Will at the same time! Will eventually had âsense enough to know Martin could whip me, but Ab didnât.â For Ab this was not a matter of âsenseââhe had plenty of thatâbut a matter of attitude and self-testing. Heâd fight Martin, get whipped, and then tell Will: âI just donât understand how in the world Martin can take such punishment!â This frame of mind later made him a formidable athlete, and with the balance that came with maturity, it provided the determination to achieve undertakings others might have hesitated even to attempt.
Martin Kirwan would not allow his children to start school until they were nine years old. They were then expected to make up for lost time and finish elementary school at fourteen. An exception was made for Ab, who started at seven so that he and nine-year-old Will could be together. All of the children except young Pat went to Blessed Sacrament, a two-room parochial school in The Point. Two nuns taught about fifty students, and one of these was Sister Mary Henry. She was the sister of Martinâs first wife, thus a true aunt only to Abâs half-brothers, but all of the children considered her to be their Aunt Pet.
Aunt Petâs misguided partiality toward nieces and nephews caused much trouble. Finding Ab to be a good reader, she started him in the second grade. This still left him below his reading level, however, and so the next year she moved him through the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Although he remained in the sixth grade a full year, he skipped the seventh and eighth grades and entered St. Xavier High School when he was ten years old! Will, who had accompanied him through this accelerated schooling, was all of twelve.
Ab and Will spent nearly seven years in high school, first at St. Xavier and then at Male after the family finances failed to recover from the flood damage of 1913. Martin now worked as an estimator for Frey Lumber Company, a former competitor. At night he tried to instruct Ab and Will in the ways of high school. These two, clad in knee pants, heavy socks, and high black shoes, wandered the high school halls, sitting down in any classroom having vacant seats. Whenever the bell rang, they got up and repeated the process. It took them almost three years to earn enough credits to become sophomores. Ab later recalled:
I can remember so well my father trying to help us solve our algebra problems. . . . On one occasion my poor father worked for perhaps a half-hour solving a problem, and I looked at it and said, âNo, thatâs the wrong answer.â So my father went back to work and checked everything and came up with the same answer, equal to ten in the problem he worked. He finally asked me how I knew the problem was wrong, and I said, âBecause the teacher worked a problem today and the answer came out x=6â! This is merely an indication of how little I understood.
Tragedy first entered Abâs life in 1917. Grandma Sullivan, who had been living with Martinâs family, died in their Jacob Street home that summer. But death was to strike an even sharper double blow to the young boy and his family before the year was out. Abâs oldest and youngest sisters, Mary and Catherine, had been ill for several months. It was known that vivacious Mary had tuberculosis, but Catherineâs problem defied diagnosis. Medical treatment seemed to have no effect. Ab later believed the ten-year-old child âhad congenital heart disease.â She died in December 1917, and the next month the blow was compounded immeasurably by the death of the beloved oldest sister. The family had thus sustained three deaths in a period of six months.
These deaths, coming after a year of strenuous nursing and care, utterly exhausted Abâs mother. Ab and Will decided to help her as best they could. Both delivered the Courier-Journal each morning and returned home before the others were even out of bed. And soon they were cooking breakfast to save their mother the task. Years later, Abâs sons were destined to hear many times of his prowess in making biscuits: âIn that day, of course, one didnât have prepared biscuits. One had to get the flour from the barrel, sift it, mix in lard and knead it, mix in a little baking powder, salt, and pour in milk gradually while kneading the dough. I must say that I made very good biscuits. Betty has never really believed that, but I did!â
Margaret now emerged as the acknowledged leader of Martinâs second family. Although reared as Catholics, all except one followed the strong-willed big sister in her permanent drift away from Catholicism. Her older half-brothers, of course, were free of her influence, and they remained Catholics throughout their lives. Family harmony never suffered, for they all respected one anotherâs views and did not question one another as to the rights or wrongs of individual actions.
Abâs great natural athletic ability rescued him from the pathetic shyness he had developed as an underage high school student. He had begun playing football in the spacious sideyard of his Jacob Street hom...