Pete Bradley

My sister Dorothy is 14 months younger than I. So when she was a teenager, I was her official chaperon, commissioned by my Dad, and by my mother. It was natural and easy, because I liked the parties and the dances as much as she did. It was no trouble, watching over her.

But when I entered the novitiate of the Jesuits, the job of guarding her fell on my Dad. He took this very seriously. Whenever the phone rang – if it was physically possible – my Dad answered it. Ready, to censor the calls. All of the boys phoning Dorothy were very polite, except one. Pete Bradley.

Pete phoned; my Dad answered it; Pete asked to speak to Dorothy. My dad said, in his usual authoritative tone, "Who the hell is this?" Pete answered: "Who the hell wants to know?" My Dad exploded. He said: "I’m the father, and I have a right to know who talks to her!" Pete said: "Well, I didn’t ask who you were, did I?" So my Dad slammed down the phone.

When boys called on Dorothy, at home, Dad would let them talk together, alone, in the living room. It was enough that the doors were open wide, and my mother would come in with refreshments. But when Pete called, dad would sit right there in the living room with them, pretending to read the paper.

One evening Pete stayed on until eleven o’clock, which was past Dad’s bed time. It was too much for him. He stood up, slammed down the newspaper, and said to Bradley: "Why the hell don’t you go home?" Pete looked straight at him, and said: "Why the hell don’t you go to bed?" So my father threw him down the stairs.

Then a boy proposed marriage to Dorothy. Then another boy. And another. When Dorothy and Pete were together, just walking down the street, Pete said: "Which one are you going to marry?" Dorothy said: "I’m not going to marry any one of them. I’m going to marry you!" Pete looked at her, smiled, and said: "Oh, no, you’re not!"

When Dorothy reached home, and thought about it, she was really angry. She had proposed to Pete, and Pete said: "No!" Eventually she married a boy who was completely unlike Pete. Jack Hathaway, who was part English. He was the most gentlemanly of all those who courted her. He held the chair for my mother, when they sat down to table. If Dorothy dropped her handkerchief, he would catch it before it hit the floor. They had two little boys.

The War broke, in 1941. Jack was a fighter pilot in Italy. Pete was in the Army, on the Pacific front. Dorothy was following the war news avidly. But she was more interested in the Pacific front than in Italy. When their little boy began to talk, she recorded him on a record, and sent it to Jack. When Jack came home from the war, the record would not play anymore. It was worn out, from his listening to it, in Italy. Pete came home from the Pacific, a 100% casualty. That meant he received maximum support from the government, because he was not supposed to work; he was not supposed to exert himself; he was not supposed even to carry anything. He had shrapnel in the lungs.

Then Jack and Dorothy began to have trouble. Finally they agreed to separate. By that time I was home from the prison camp in the Philippines. She was crying on my shoulder, and I said: "Couldn’t you just live with him, and pray that love will come back? She said: "No! When you live that close to a man, you either love him, or you hate him!" So Jack left Dorothy on the East Coast, and he went to California, to become a commercial pilot.

My Dad was a policeman. Another policeman, my Dad’s friend, was working a dance. A fight broke out on the dance floor, and my Dad’s friend threw both of the fighters out the back door, into the dark. One of those thrown out was a gangster. He gathered two friends, and the three of them waited for the cop to come out, when the dance ended. He came out the back door, and the three gangsters began to beat him up.

Pete Bradley passed by. It was two in the morning. It was typical of Pete to be up and around at two in the morning. He said to me, later: "I don’t hold any briefs for the cops, but I didn’t like that kind of odds – three to one". So Pete stepped into the fight. He was trained for combat, and he knew how to hit. He hit one of the three gangsters, and the poor guy was out cold for three hours. Then it was two to two. The other two gangsters ran away. But the third, the one that Pete hit, was unconscious. So the cop called the Black Maria, the police car, and arrested the gangster.

The three gangsters were booked for trial. They could not afford to go to court, because all three had police records. They came to Pete – who was the only eye witness – and offered him money if he would not testify. Pete said: "Look! I don’t know that cop! But I’m not going to take money! I’m going to testify!"

The gangsters said: "If you insist on testifying, we’ll kill you before the trial!" Pete laughed, and said: "Good! Good! I’m supposed to be dead already, anyhow. I have nothing to lose. And I have already told the police that you are threatening me. If anything happens to me, they will pick you up in the next ten minutes. And you’ll end up in the electric chair."

The gangsters went out, crushed. Then they went to the cop – the one they were beating up – and offered him the same sum of money. The cop took it, and dropped the case.

My Dad said, later: "That Pete Bradley – he’s a man!"

Pete did not marry. I asked him why? He said: "I’m in love with Dorothy". I said: "Pete! She proposed to you! Why didn’t you marry her?" Pete said: "When I said ‘No, you’re not!’ I didn’t mean that we would never marry! I just meant that I was not ready at that time! I didn’t think that she would marry someone else!"

Pete probably died of the shrapnel in the lungs. Jack went down to Mexico, and got a Mexican divorce. He married a stewardess. And then he was killed in a plane crash. Dorothy received a phone call from a lawyer in California. He said, very carefully: "You are the legal wife, You have a right to claim all that he owns. Do you mean to place that claim?"

Dorothy was thinking: "Why should a lawyer make this call?……… It‘s that woman!…….So she said into the phone: "You tell that woman that she can have everything he owns, including the body! She banged the phone, and did not go to the funeral.

Now Dorothy is a peaceful widow, going to Mass and Communion every morning, praying for Jack and praying for Pete. Her two sons are both doing very well.

I don’t know how God keeps his books on this one.

O. Henry – Sidney Porter – called his first book of short stories: "The Four Million". He was living in New York, and there were four million people, at that time, in New York. He felt that if you could portray the soul of any person, you would have a best seller.

The children of God are so complex! They are all beautiful, all good. All have deep, strong virtues. And all of us have faults, and failures, and weaknesses. We need a mother, like the VIRGIN MARY, who has infinite patience, infinite love.

To me, it means: Be careful in judging anyone. We can- not even understand ourselves. How could we possibly understand the soul of somebody else?