Unexpected Pleasures of Reading the Providence Journal

It  is not the first-- and I devoutly hope that it is not the last--- time that I open the pages of the PROVIDENCE JOURNAL and see the picture of someone from my past.

       Today, Sunday, I was greeted by the smiling family picture of my childhood neighbor --someone I knew as Johnny but  whom the Journal described as JackWhite III.  The photo shows Jack with his wife and three of his sons. It is part of a brief  notice by Michael Delaney that connects the recent  movie The Post to reporters and  exposes that first appeared in The Journal. Jack White III  brought to light the income and  taxes of Richard Nixon and this exposure eventually caused Nixon to resign and won the reporter the Pulitzer Prize. 
Seeing Jack remembered so graciously gave me pleasure  because he was my contemporary and my neighbor. My family lived in the second floor tenement of the house which his family owned and also occupied the first floor tenement. In my First Communion pictures Johnny and I are standing together in our finery for that special day. 
 Every day of my childhood was spent in close  company with that wonderful family. There were other children, and I was friends with Johnny's sister Margaret. We often gathered on the stairs of my front hallway while I told scary stories to the other children: Mary, Michael, Frances and Bethany. The most enthusiastic member of that group was Michael White who later in life became famous as a Detective in the Central Falls Police Department -- he would add to and embellish my stories.  

However, the most charismatic members of the White family were  their parents Jack White II and Marge Dougherty. First, they were both extremely good looking: Jack, tall, dark and handsome and Marge, blonde with a creamy complexion that my mother envied.  They were both funny and friendly--but  most of all--they were both good and generous people. The Whites had a television years before my family could buy one and daily Mrs.White would invite me to come inside and watch HOWDY DOODY instead of loitering around outside their door. When my mother caught wind of this violation of one of her primary Irish Pride rules -- NO POOR MOUTH!! she forbade me to accept Mrs. White's gracious invitations.  Of course, Mrs. White also understood the rules of  Irish decorum and never invited me again --she just very kindly placed a seat outside and raised the shade so I could watch the antics of Mr Bluster and Howdy from outside the house--both prides intact. 
Mrs. White was not just beautiful, funny and kind; she was brave.  She had  her babies at home, and I can remember sitting on the ground in the side yard near the bedrooms with my rosary beads in hand. Praying and listening through her cries and calls, I waited  to catch the sound of a newborn wailing. I could tell so many instances of her goodness and boldness, but it was Mr. Jack White who saved our family.
After my father's gambling habits forced him to leave Pawtucket to escape loan sharks and angry bookies, my mother was sad and overwhelmed with the burden of three daughters to support and no job. Jack White came upstairs -a rare occasion- and asked to talk to her. As I sat at the kitchen table doing my homework and pretending to be invisible, I heard him tell my mother that she and all of us could stay there in his house. That he wanted no rent until she found a job and that he would keep the weekly rent at the less than 10 dollars per week he currently charged, and never raise it.  He kept that promise until 1968 when he and his wife bought their first single family house. My mother had always admired Jack and praised his pro-union stance which she shared. When he left our kitchen, she said, "That man is no saint, but who is? He's a better man than most you will meet. No one is perfect; not even the Church or the Unions, but they do more good than harm. So never  be quick to believe anything negative you hear about Local#57."