"Man, it's beautiful out!"

By G. Wayne Miller, Journal staff writer

...One afternoon last autumn, I took a walk with Frank Beazley, a man of 77.
...Frank lives on Wallum Lake in Burrillville, near woods that Nipmuc Indians once called home. The leaves were showing color, but the sun was strong and a pleasant breeze sent whitecaps across the water. Frank wore a T-shirt, sweat pants, and a denim cap. With his blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and white beard, he looked like a favorite old uncle. Put a red hat on him, change the season, and he would have looked like Santa Claus.
...‘‘Man, it’s beautiful out!’’ he said, with his distinctive smile.
...We went down a path to the shore, to Frank’s gardens, as yet untouched by frost. The pumpkins had been picked, the squash and tomatoes harvested, but the growing season wasn’t finished quite yet: the eggplants remained an inviting purple, and the Mexican peppers, thin and red, continued to thrive among thickening weeds.
...We reached the herbs and stopped.
...‘‘Take a piece of that and smell it,’’ Frank said, pointing to a rosemary plant. I snipped a sprig and brought it to my nose.
...‘‘You can put that in soup or stew,’’ Frank said. ‘‘Oh, it’s delicious!’’
...From the vegetable garden, we traveled up a hill to beds of flowers. The heirloom roses were reduced to brambles, the sunflowers shriveled and gray, but zinnias still bloomed and Frank paused to enjoy them. Flowers brought him back to his childhood, when he made his first planting, a gladiola bulb. Every morning, the young boy checked. Finally, the gladiola pushed through, overturning a small stone to greet the spring. The memory still pleased him.
...We left the flowers and continued past an apple tree, one of Frank’s favorites, to a field on the crest of the hill. Except for blackbirds, it was quiet.

02:00 mins.

...Frank’s caregivers didn’t want him to come here alone for fear that his motorized wheelchair would fail and he’d be stranded, but he came here by himself often anyway to savor a beautiful day.
...Frank was big on beautiful days. He experienced them in many ways: when eating a hearty meal, when betting at the dog track, when watching football on his 10-year-old TV. ...Christmas was a beautiful day. So was his birthday, which had never been celebrated until he was middle-aged.
...Every day, he often said, that the sun came up and he was still here to greet it was a beautiful day.

...OUTSIDERS KNEW Frank as a poet who’d won national awards and as an artist who painted in an impressionist style, donating the proceeds from his acrylics and water colors to charity. They knew him as an eloquent man who spoke for those less fortunate than he at legislative hearings. Vice President Al Gore was among those who had honored his advocacy.
...I had met Frank many years ago, and I wrote a story about him, published in December 1992, in which he disclosed that all he’d ever wanted for Christmas was to have his mother call him ‘‘son.’’ Frank intrigued me, but my work took me elsewhere and it wasn’t until much later that I set out to learn more about him. His story was unlike any I have ever told.
...Frank had been abandoned at birth, and experienced a paralyzing accident, the loss of the woman he loved, and cancer. He never knew his father. He didn’t meet his mother until he was a teenager, but she refused to confirm who she was, refused to ever call him ‘‘son’’ — even though he later lived in the same house with her and her mother, his grandmother. In Frank’s native Nova Scotia, a heartless secrecy surrounded children like him who had been born out of wedlock. Often, these secrets followed their keepers to the grave.

...He had his dark moments, to be sure, but they were rare. The Frank I came to know was a man of goodwill. He told jokes (sometimes corny ones) and funny stories, and his laugh was contagious. He taught mostly by example — lessons about patience and forgiveness, of the importance of smelling roses and counting blessings, which he did not consider clichés. And while he was too humble to call himself wise, he was.

...WE STAYED IN the field for a spell, both of us watching the clouds.
...Finally, Frank spoke.
...‘‘I love this area, so quiet and serene. I look up at the sky and say, ‘God, I hope all my friends are looking down at me.’ ’’
...For years, Frank and his best friends had visited this field. They would smoke cigarettes and cigars and talk about baseball and pretty women — about how, all things considered, life was pretty good. These friends were all dead now, and Frank’s own longevity sometimes moved him to put a question to God:
...‘‘I’m still here and you people are all up there. Why?’’
...‘‘What’s the answer?’’ I asked.
...‘‘The answer maybe is: ‘Keep up the good work, Frank.’ ’’
...This field refreshed him, but there was another reason he came here so often. It reminded him of a place he still visited in his dreams: Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was born 12 days before Christmas 1928.

Damage in Halifax from the explosion of Dec. 6, 1917. Photo credit: Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management

Baby Francis (1917-1940)

...Nova Scotians would never forget the catastrophe of Dec. 6, 1917 — The Explosion, as they would always call it.
...On that morning, a fully loaded munitions ship was rammed by another vessel in Halifax Harbour. The explosives blew, with a force more powerful than any man-made detonation before the atomic bomb. Almost 2,000 people died.
...Nellie Beazley, a 31-year-old woman who wore her dark hair in carefully knotted braids, was among the many thousands who were injured. Glass struck her when the windows blew out of her home, and she carried a scar on her neck for the rest of her life. Nellie’s soldier husband, Francis L. Beazley, and the couple’s two young daughters escaped harm.
...This was not the first tragedy to touch the Beazley family.
...Married in October 1907, Nellie and Francis had welcomed their first child the following September. But Stella lived only seven months, dying a week after Easter. The Beazleys buried the infant, and on June 16, 1910, Nellie gave birth to Edna. The last girl was born four years later.
...The Explosion left Halifax in ruins, but as World War I ended, the city began to rebuild. A decade went by and the Beazley sisters grew. Francis left the army and became a shipper in a dry goods firm. By 1928, he had found a better-paying job as a clerk for Canadian National Steamships, but alarming headlines dominated that year. On the eve of the Great Depression, labor strife rumbled across Nova Scotia. The fishing, lumber, and shipbuilding industries, mainstays of the economy, declined. Unemployment rose. Relief agencies were overwhelmed.
...Eleven years after The Explosion, anxiety had returned to Nova Scotia.

...THE BEAZLEYS lived in a duplex on Creighton Street, four blocks from the waterfront, with its foghorns and ship whistles, and the distant wail of steam locomotives.
...The houses were all wood, two or three stories tall, built so close together that a person could barely fit between. There were no porches, lawns, front yards, or trees, and only a sliver of sidewalk. Barbers and grocers plied their trades. There was a Chinese laundry, but no theaters or department stores or parks. Creighton Street was home to stevedores and sailors, bookkeepers and masons. Numerous families had lost loved ones in The Explosion. Living paycheck to paycheck, they dreamed of a better tomorrow that most would never see.
...Like many of their neighbors, the Beazleys worshiped at nearby St. Patrick’s Church, the cathedral where Nellie and Francis had married and where their children had been baptized. Edna and her sister attended the all-girls parish school, where nuns indoctrinated them in the Roman Catholic religion.

...Q. Does God know all things?
...A. God knows all things, even our most secret thoughts, words and actions.
...Q. Which are the chief sources of sin?
...A. The chief sources of sin are seven: Pride, Covetousness, Lust, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, and Sloth.
...Q. What evil befell us through the disobedience of our first parents?
...A. Through the disobedience of our first parents we all inherit their sin and punishment...

...Edna, a friendly, attractive girl with fair skin, blond hair, and her mother’s blue eyes, was well-versed in the catechism.
...So in the spring of 1928 when she discovered that she was pregnant, she was stricken.
...She was 17, and the young man with whom she’d been intimate did not intend to marry her. That left only terrible options. Edna could have her baby and live on her own, but her church and society would scorn her — and, more than likely, she would be unable to make ends meet. She did not have the means to leave Halifax and start anew elsewhere. She was a frightened girl who feared eternal damnation and the wrath of her righteous mother.
...Edna’s father wanted her to have the baby and stay at home where he and Nellie could help raise their first grandchild. Son of a ship’s cook and an Irish immigrant, Francis was the oldest of nine children. Even before the death of his firstborn, the baby Stella, Francis had experienced profound loss: a sister and brother had died in infancy, and another brother, the best man at his wedding, had died in World War I. Francis was fond of the bottle but he was a gentle, caring man, and the thought of his grandchild disappearing into an orphanage troubled him.
...Nellie was unmoved.

The hospital in Halifax where Frank was born. Photo credit: Dalhousie University Archives See Frank's record from The Home of the Guardian Angel Orphanage

...She hadn’t raised Edna to be a fallen woman. She had social pretensions and hoped some day to move to a better neighborhood. Bringing along a bastard child did not fit her ambition.
...So she decided the terms, her husband and daughter be damned:
...When Edna’s condition could no longer be hidden, the girl would be quietly admitted to Halifax’s Grace Maternity Hospital, successor to a ‘‘rescue home’’ for unwed mothers that the Salvation Army had opened early in the century. Edna would have her baby and then give the child up.
...There would be no celebration, no birth announcement, no public evidence of any sort confirming that the child had ever existed. Neighbors might gossip and her husband and daughter might be resentful, but with diligence, the truth could be hidden forever.
...Nellie was a calculating woman, but her calculation this time was wrong.

...ON DEC. 13, 1928, Edna gave birth to a normal, healthy boy whom she named Francis, after her father. She returned home, and on Christmas Eve, a cold, blustery, snowless day, Francis L. Beazley reluctantly brought his grandson to the Home of the Guardian Angel, an orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity, who also taught at St. Patrick’s Girls School. The sisters had a mission, but it was not to disclose family secrets.
...In accord with Nova Scotia’s Illegitimate Children’s Act, the case of Baby Francis was presented at a closed session of a justice of the peace, who could require an unwed father to help pay for a child’s birth and subsequent ‘‘maintenance’’ — or funeral, if the baby was stillborn. The Beazleys named 19-year-old Ralph Flemming as Baby Francis’s father. The young man was the son of a housewife and a janitor who lived in a lower-class neighborhood near the Halifax navy base.
...The justice entered no order against Flemming. The Beazleys agreed to pay what they could to the nuns, who had dozens of children in their care.

Sister Rita Marie Hagen, Father Joseph LeBlanc and The Home of the Guardian Angel orphanage in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Photo credits: Father LeBlanc/The Eudists Sister Rita Marie Hagen and The Home of the Guardian Angel Orphanage/Sisters of Charity, Halifax, Congregational Archives See Frank Beazley's baptismal certificate

...Feed the little ones. Change their diapers. Rock the cradles. May God bless us all.
...On March 14, 1929, the Rev. Joseph LeBlanc, orphanage pastor, baptized Baby Francis at St. Patrick’s Church. The nuns gave Frank a middle name: Ralph, after his assumed father.
...The years unfolded and Baby Francis remained healthy, surviving scarlet fever, one of the frequently deadly childhood illnesses of the era, and growing into a good-natured, well-behaved little boy. Four walls defined his world. Nuns, priests, and fellow orphans were the only people he saw.
...‘‘No one comes to visit Francis,’’ a nun noted in his record. ‘‘Occasionally, $5.00 comes by mail, for his maintenance. His mother still lives on 50 Creighton Street, but does not visit him.’’ Edna could have walked over, for Creighton Street was only a few blocks away.
...Frank’s mother and grandmother occasionally sent letters, sometimes in response to reminders of overdue payments. Things were difficult at home, 21-year-old Edna wrote to the mother superior in April 1932, when the Great Depression had settled on North America. The pay from Edna’s job as a clerk at Eaton’s, a downtown department store, was her family’s primary income.
...‘‘Dear Sister,’’ Edna wrote.
...‘‘I am sorry to have to have you write me like this but as you know, this has been a very hard winter for everyone. I guess you can understand mostly. Father hasn’t worked much this winter so therefore I had to support the house on the little bit of money I earn at Eaton’s.
...‘‘I enclose ten dollars for now, and Mother and I are making plans for the future. You will hear from us again in the near future. Hoping Baby Francis is well and good, we are preparing to do better.’’

...ON AUG. 24, 1934, a nun packed Frank’s clothes and shoes, his only belongings, and delivered him to St. Joseph’s Orphanage, which the Sisters of Charity also ran, in downtown Halifax. The Home of the Guardian Angel did not keep children past the age of 5. Orphans who were not being adopted or returned to their families had to leave.
...Constructed in the late 1800s, St. Joseph’s was four stories tall, a red-brick building with a forbidding Gothic look and a statue of Joseph, patron saint of families, by the front entrance. Boys lived in one wing, girls in another.
...The nuns placed their faith in routine and discipline.
...Frank’s day began at dawn, when a sister roused the boys, who slept in a dormitory furnished with steel-frame beds, night tables made from old apple crates, a crucifix, and a painting of the Last Supper. A boy who had wet the bed awoke in fear: as punishment, the sister would drape the sheet over his head and force him to stand by the radiator until his urine dried.
...After washing and dressing, the children went to the chapel for Mass, then walked single-file to the dining room, where a spoonful of cod liver oil awaited. Breakfast typically consisted of porridge, milk, cocoa, and molasses-soaked bread, stacked on a tray. Frank always hoped for the bottom slice, which was the sweetest.
...Catechism, writing, arithmetic and reading lessons filled the remainder of the morning and much of the afternoon. The nuns did not abide mistakes. When a child mispronounced a word, the nun would say: That’s stupid! Go to the dunce table! The child would leave his desk and take a seat at the front of the class. Wearing a white dunce cap, the child would repeat the word until he got it right. And then he would repeat it again and again, never to be forgotten, or so the sisters believed.
...When the children completed their studies, the nuns put them to work. The boys washed dishes. They darned stockings. They sewed buttons. They ironed the boys’ knickers and the sisters’ black habits. They scrubbed and waxed the floors by hand, sometimes getting blisters on their knees.
...The sisters believed that idleness bred mischief, and they did not tolerate it, punishing loafers and trouble-makers with a yardstick across the back of the legs, a slap on the face, or a tug on the ear. Boys who tussled were given boxing gloves and sent to the recreation room. Fight it out and then come out as friends, the nuns would say as they closed the door.
...After dinner, the boys bathed, changed into pajamas, and returned to their dorm, where they held up their underwear for inspection. Soiled drawers brought punishment. Then the boys knelt at the foot of their beds, hands clasped and heads bowed, while a nun recited the rosary.
...At 7 p.m., without a hug or a kiss, the sister turned out the lights, leaving God’s Little Ones to the darkness and their dreams.

...WITH ITS WOODEN pews, high ceiling, and marble altar, the chapel was the soul of the orphanage. Even brother and sister orphans were segregated at St. Joseph’s, and only in chapel were all the children ever allowed together: the boys seated on the right, and the girls, their faces veiled in lace, across the aisle on the left, every child looking straight ahead or risking a reprimand.
...This was where the children heard sermons incorporating the lessons of the Ten Commandments. This was where they attended the Stations of the Cross and the incense-filled rituals of Holy Week. This was where, after abstaining from food and water, hungry or thirsty or not, they received daily Communion.

Chapel at St. Joseph's orphanage in Halifax. Frank was sent there in 1934. Photo credit: Sisters of Charity, Halifax, Congregational Archives

...The nuns did not celebrate orphans’ birthdays — many children, including Frank, didn’t know exactly when they’d been born — but observing the birth of Christ was second only to Easter on the orphanage calendar.
...Christmas Day began with high Mass. The boys ate breakfast and washed the dishes and the nuns led them into the recreation room, where a tree topped with a star had been put up and decorated overnight. Chairs stacked with presents surrounded the tree. Each chair was labeled with an orphan’s name.
...One Christmas, Frank stopped after entering the room.
...What’s the matter, Francis? said Sister Rita Marie, who was fond of the boy.
...I see my chair, Frank said, but there’s hardly anything on it.
...Sister Marie led Frank to a chair with a single gift, wrapped in plain brown paper.
...That’s your present, she said. Would you like me to open it?
...A red snowsuit was inside. The Beazleys had sent it, but Sister Rita Marie did not tell Frank.
...The nun went about her business and Frank approached an orphan who’d received toys.
...I’ll trade you my snowsuit for one, Frank said.
...The boy declined.
...Frank tried a second child — and this time, another nun caught him.
...What are you doing? she demanded.
...I wanted to trade my snowsuit for a toy.
...The nun ordered Frank to his room.
...Take it upstairs and put it in your locker! You’re going to need that when it gets really cold!
...Except for Sunday visitors, outsiders rarely entered the orphanage. The Knights of Columbus were among the few who were allowed. One December when Frank was about 8, the group sponsored a Christmas party for the boys. The highlight of the day was the coin toss. The knights threw pennies into the air and the boys scrambled to pick them up. What fun! Grab all you can! But the children had to stow their pennies in their shoes, since the nuns had sewn their pants pockets shut — a help in a boy’s never-ending battle against bodily temptation.
...When the party ended, the boys returned to their dorm.
...Take your shoes off, a nun said. Dump all the pennies on the floor.
...The nun collected the coins. Orphans owned nothing but what they wore — and a few toys, if they were lucky.
...How could a child raised like this ever amount to anything?

...JOY WAS ELUSIVE at St. Joseph’s — but Frank, a handsome blond, blue-eyed boy with an improbably sweet spirit, found it. Young though he was, he discovered a philosophy that would remain with him for life:
...‘‘Take what’s there for you, enjoy what you can,’’ as he would phrase it many decades later.
...Frank enjoyed jumping rope, playing Chinese checkers and hide ’n’ seek, reading the funny books, listening to music on the orphanage radio. He liked singing in the choir. He liked Father LeBlanc, the priest who had baptized him and who now trained the altar boys. A happy-go-lucky man, Father LeBlanc was one of the few adults around Frank who did not dwell in gloom. He played ball with the boys and helped with their Latin and their singing. That’s all right, he said when someone slipped up. If you can’t get it out, just mumble!

St. Joseph's Orphanage, Halifax, Nova Scotia. Photo credit: Sisters of Charity, Halifax, Congregational Archives

...Even chores did not get Frank down. Orphans turning 8 achieved the status of Josephites, charged with helping the younger children. Frank took pride in his new responsibilities when he became a Josephite. Sister Rita Marie often said: You know, Francis, you’ll always be rewarded one way or another by helping people out.
...And gardening delighted Frank, from the moment he received a gladiola bulb, during the growing season — his bulb, no one else’s. He alone would plant it! He alone would bring it to life!
...‘‘Very friendly and eagerly enthusiastic,’’ wrote a psychiatrist who examined Frank when he was 10. ‘‘Very responsive to praise.’’

...Sitting in class, Frank daydreamed, his mind wandering to the world beyond the brick walls. The nuns occasionally took the children on picnics or to the movie theater. Frank’s first film was Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, released in 1937, when he was 8; the dwarf Happy was his favorite character. But excursions were rare. There was no contact whatsoever with children outside St. Joseph’s, no clues into how an ordinary boy lived. Frank learned of the war that began in Europe in 1939 only when the Halifax authorities conducted air-raid drills. Sirens screamed across the city as the orphans lay motionless in bed, the shades drawn, the lights extinguished, a nun on duty to enforce the silence.
...But Frank never longed to leave, never tried to run away. Where would he go?
...This is my home, he thought. My friends are here.
...As he got older, Frank began to notice a girl at chapel. He glimpsed her face at Communion when she lifted her veil to receive the host.
...She was pretty, and Frank was smitten. He watched her return to her pew, and the next time they went to chapel, he sat on the aisle.
...Frank turned toward the girl.
...A nun snapped her wooden clapper.
...Eyes straight! she said. You’ve come to church to see God, not girls!
...During recess, Frank kicked high on the swing, which afforded a peek over the wooden fence dividing the girls’ and boys’ playgrounds. He spotted the girl, and she saw him. When the nuns turned away, they snuck to the fence, where a crack in the boards allowed a furtive conversation.
...Hello, Frank said. How are you?
...Fine, the girl said.
...My name is Francis Beazley.
...My name is Viola Smith.
...Viola — that’s a nice name.
...Are you going to be here tomorrow? Viola said.
...It depends on what the nuns have for us, Frank said.
...Frank talked to Viola once or twice again, and that was it. Decades later he would wonder how life had treated her, but he would never learn. Like all of Frank’s early peers, time swallowed Viola.

...ONE SUNDAY afternoon, Sister Rita Marie called Frank into the parlor.
...Francis, she said, I want you to dress nicely. You’re going to have a visitor.
...The boy was puzzled. No one had ever visited him.
...It’s your mother, the nun said.
...My mother? I’ve got a mother?
...Yes, Sister Rita Marie said, we all have mothers.
...Frank changed into his Sunday best and went back to the parlor to wait. The afternoon unfolded without anyone calling on Frank.
...Eventually, Sister Rita Marie came in. She looked distressed.
...Francis, we’re sorry, she said, it’s not your mother who’s coming. We made a bad mistake.
...A miscommunication had occurred. The mother of another child with the same first name was visiting, the nun said.
...Frank began to cry.

TOMORROW | FAMILY SECRETS

Read about the series

Source notes