A Final Letter To My Dear Departed Older Brother Timothy Grogan Who, at 71, Passed Away On September 14, 2022:
Dear Tim,
Oh, I’ve written this salutation to you so many times in the decades following you leaving home for college. There were many letters to Grand Rapids and New York, not only during the college years but well beyond – during the two years I was laid up at home following my accident in Boston, my years struggling to break into film in Los Angeles, my grad school experience at USC and, of course, aerospace. And then Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I wrote you very long letters talking about everything. I talked about the interviews I was having with production companies in Hollywood, I talked about the story ideas for screenplays I was working on. And you didn’t just hastily scan these letters. I could tell that you read them carefully because your feedback was always detailed.
I remember writing you once that I was working on a
screenplay about time travel and you recommended some very obscure novel you
had read, “The Wizard of Berlin,” and even gave me your personal copy. You were always reading, often things that were
very much off the beaten path. I was astonished at the breadth of your taste. When
I sent you a collection of stories I had written, it was you who picked out
“State Secrets” to develop into a screenplay, a corporate thriller that
revolved around a long-held family myth that we Howards were direct descendants
of Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, something that in recent years
we’ve been able to document as true. Any
trouble at the office? You had advice. Any
domestic problems? You had advice. One
of my more poignant memories was senior year of high school when a girl I had
asked out called and canceled the date at the last minute. I could tell you
felt badly for me, for my disappointment, and quietly counseled me never to ask
her again. What you never knew was that
I liked her so I did ask her again … and again … and when she finally said yes
and spent some time with me, she decided that she liked me too. Go figure.
You were always thinking of others. You were always the
family protector, looking out for Mom and Dad, and especially looking out for
your two little brothers. When in 6th
grade in 1965 two bullies in my class started cornering me after school and
beating me up, you corralled the entire OLR football team to put the word out –
beat my brother up again and the whole team was going to have at you. It was such a prideful moment when those two
boys came to me in fear for their lives apologizing to me like crazy and
begging me to call off you and your friends.
They never bothered me again. And no one at Brother Rice
ever bothered me either. Even Brother Kelly, whom you and the other boys so loved
despite (or perhaps because) of all the affectionate little tortures he
inflicted on them, knew not to play his little nerve pinching jokes on me. No,
not on Tim Grogan’s little brother.
And that’s how it went. You were the protector. And that’s
why we worried about you, because who was protecting you? I recalled in my toast at your wedding
reception in 2004 the incident freshman year of high school in the fall of 1967
where I got lost on the U of D campus after a football game. I had come on the
Brother Rice bus but because I couldn’t find my way back to the parking lot, I
feared missing the bus and being stranded in Detroit. It was after all just a
few months after the riots. You had driven with friends but somehow you had the
intuition of knowing something had gone wrong. As I was trying desperately to
find something familiar looking on the campus that would lead me to the bus,
suddenly I turned the corner and you were there. You had forfeited riding back with your
friends to come looking for me. You got me back to the parking lot and we took
the Rice bus back together.
And so I mentioned at your reception – you’ve always been
the one looking out for everyone else. But
who was looking out for you? That’s why
I said we were all so grateful that you had found Elizabeth because now you
were going to have someone in your corner the rest of your life. And it was
true.
In all our vacations we managed to spend quality time
together. You would come to L.A. and spend a week or two with me, I would go to
Manhattan and spend a week or two with you.
And you had simple tastes. You
were just as happy taking a hike up to the Hollywood sign as going to dinner
and a movie. And in Manhattan you
introduced me to all the little known hole-in-the wall eateries, none you’d
ever find in the guide book. They may have not have looked like much but they
were cheap and the food was great, a combo you don’t find in New York unless
you actually live there. And, of course,
there were all the little backstreet cinemas and theaters, particularly the
famous Public Theater that always had great plays at prices cheaper than even Detroit
community theater. One my fondest
memories is going with you to the Public Theater to see a young Tom Hulce,
years before he became famous with “Amadeus,” starring in a wonderful play by a
wonderful unknown playwright named James Lapine who too would be world famous
in a few years, a play called “Twelve Dreams.”
I am so grateful that we became even closer in the past year
with many great phone calls. John had called me over a year ago concerned that
you were frightened about having an important heart procedure and seemed you
wanted to delay it, asking me to call you and try to nudge you a little. So I
called and told you, “You’ve always been my hero. You need to take care of
yourself. You need to have this procedure done. It will kill me if we lose
you.”
Your reaction surprised me. You acted so delighted and flattered.
It was like you had no idea that there was anyone out there who thought of you
as their hero. In your shy ways, it was news to you that anyone actually could
admire you. So I had to say it again,
this time much more forcefully, “Tim, everyone admires you! We all care about you!” And that started over
a year-long series of terrific lengthy phone calls in which we talked about
everything under the sun. We talked
about music and politics and you, even at this late date, were still watching
movies on cable and recommending titles to me.
Our last phone call was just a few weeks before you had heart failure
and passed early in the morning on September 14th.
In another way, I was not surprised by your reaction. You
had always been very modest and so I understood how you could not bring
yourself to believe that there was anything particularly special about yourself
that anyone could see. But you were
special. You made such a strong
impression when you wrote to this professor at New York’s New School (one of
the finest schools for economics in the world) saying how much you loved his
new book, you were admitted to the master’s program there on full scholarship without
even having to fill out an application or take the GRE. You became a brilliant economist of national
reputation, winning many awards in New York (and at least one in Washington DC)
for your reporting as Sr. Economics Editor for McGraw-Hill’s Engineering News
Record magazine.
Your modesty sometimes even annoyed me as you frequently
voiced concerns that you thought your position at McGraw-Hill was vulnerable. I
had to tell you, “Tim, how can you think that? You and you alone are
responsible for the quarterly cost issue and that issue is the bible in the
construction industry. Thousands of companies all over the U.S. wait for that
cost issue to do their estimating and contract bidding. Most of the magazine’s
subscribers are there for that cost issue and you are the only one who has the
training and experience to put it together.
If they lost you, they’d lose the cost issue and their subscribers and have
to shut the magazine down. No, Tim, you
have the best job security of anybody in the world!”
But did you ever believe it? One thing I know you did believe. You always knew that you had the unconditional love of your wife and daughter and your brothers and sister. And certainly mine. I was so happy when you moved to Pennsylvania to be so close (1 mile) to John and Jenny whom I knew would always be there for you and Elizabeth. And you had eighteen happy years with Elizabeth.
But as I said at your reception, until Elizabeth came along
we had always been worried about you because you had always had everyone’s back
but who had your back? The worries are now over. I believe in heaven and I
believe you’re in heaven and so I believe that there’s a whole world of people
who now have your back. I believe you are reading this letter right now. I believe you’re
with Mom and Dad and arguably more important that you have the protection
of your patron St. Timothy and our family patron St. Joseph. Okay, Timothy was St. Paul’s ward and I know
you were never crazy about St. Paul. And
I agree, he’s not the warmest cup of tea in the bible. But Timothy was okay, compassionate and kind,
probably the reason Mom and Dad chose him for you.
So my dear brother, enjoy the eternity of happiness you have
so richly earned and know that we will once again be together, but hopefully
not for another twenty years or so. As
we used to say in our youth,
Later Gator!
Love,
Mike
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