Jack:life Like No Other

Chapter 1 Question Mark It is close to noon on May 29, 1917, and uncomfortably cold for the time of year as Dr. Frederick Good drives through Boston to attend Mrs. Joseph P. Kennedy. The streets still glisten from yesterday's thunderstorms and the thermometer shows 48 degrees. Those children born here today will be the first citizens of a new America, for this city, part Anglican and Brahmin, part Irish and Catholic, eternally proud of being the cradle of the American Revolution, is once again at war. Every one of the big downtown stores has a window display promoting the Liberty Loan, and in Filene's main window stands a full-size replica of the Liberty Bell. A few blocks farther along Washington Street, Gordon's Olympia is showing The British War. Posters outside promise "Thrilling scenes of warfare. Men steeled for battle and death, leaping into action with daring abandon . . ." On Boston Common, red, white and blue bunting shivers at the lampposts, and the Ninth Infantry Regiment has set up a tent for enrolling recruits. Not far from the tent stands the Shepherd store on Tremont Street, with a large sign out front that reads: your old glovesfor the white glove society. every particle of the glove is used to advantage; the larger pieces are sewn together to make windproof waistcoats for soldiers and sailors . . . These days, live performances in the theaters along Boylston Street feature a fifteen-minute harangue by pitchmen rousing theatergoers to do their patriotic duty and buy the first issue of the Liberty Loan. A good pitchman can make buying a $50 war bond seem the moral equivalent of going over the top at the front. "Hang the Kaiser . . . Down with the Hun . . . Hail Columbia!" Normal life still goes on, of course. At city hall a long-running investigation by the Finance Commission into corruption by Mayor James M. Curley and his political allies is wending its sinuous and ultimately futile way to irresolution. Curley's defense against the accusations of corruption in awarding city contracts is "We all have friends, and if we didn't take care of them we wouldn't be worthy of them," which goes straight to the tribal roots of Boston's politics. There has been speculation lately that a weakened Curley might face an election challenge from the former mayor, John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. But today's Boston Herald states firmly that Honey Fitz has no such plans. The newspaper story is correct, for the truth is that what Honey Fitz has his eye on these days is running for the Senate in 1918, and on this day he is preparing to go to Washington for a meeting with President Woodrow Wilson. Fitzgerald will urge him to conscript able-bodied male alien residents who have lived in the United States at least five years; long enough, that is, to become American citizens. And if they are not conscripted, they at least should pay a special tax. One way or another, they must bear part of the burden of this war. He knows that Wilson probably won't accept his proposals, but Honey Fitz can count on winning a few headlines for them back in Boston even if they are rejected. A genuine opportunist? Yes, but also a genuine patriot. Meanwhile, his eldest daughter, Rose, is expecting her second child. A mile south of Boston Commonwithin sight, in fact, of anyone who mounts the steeple of Park Street Congregational Church, and looks beyond the Commonthere stands a two-and-a-half-story gray clapboard house at 83 Beals Street, in Brookline. And on the second floor of that house, in the main bedroom, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy is going into labor. The housemaid is boiling pans and kettles of water in the kitchen and carrying them upstairs. The felicitously named Dr. Good arrives at the housePerret, Geoffrey is the author of 'Jack:life Like No Other' with ISBN 9780375503634 and ISBN 0375503633.