This inquiry about bravery is so demonstrably irrelevant and regrettably inapplicable to me. I’m a coward, an admittedly committed coward. I always have been and always will be. Except when it comes to food and drink (and in the past, tobacco), I am not one to take chances or accept risks.

That should be the end of this response. But I think my reading public may expect more. Still, it is difficult to characterize anything I’ve ever done as brave. I never climbed a tree to save a cat. I did not have the inner strength to follow the urgings of my parish priests and school nuns to enter the seminary. I never rescued a damsel in distress. I never kissed a lesbian. I could not muster the courage to vote for Donald Trump. No, the experiences I’ve had which might border on being brave are not because they were in any sense heroic, but rather they were certain times when I was scared and somehow got through something anyway.

An early example is my short-lived basketball career. My father and my uncle bowled on Sunday afternoons at the Catholic Youth Center (CYC) in a league where the teams represented parishes in the diocese. On the rare weekends I was not sick I would tag along with them (primarily because we would stop at the nearby Krispy Kreme on the way home and I got to make the selections). When I was in the 7th grade that got me involved in the Catholic Youth Organization CYO) basketball program at the CYC, where the only qualifications were that you were a boy and that you were a Catholic boy. I was scared because I never played basketball before and the other kids had. I participated anyway. Then, when I was a freshman in high school, standing all of 5’4” tall and looking like a total nerd, I decided to try out for the St. Patrick’s Junior Varsity (JV) team. In that endeavor I remember being again very uncomfortable, not only though because my basketball skills were not yet honed but also because I had to shower with the other players after every practice and by my count I was still several years away from full puberty. Nevertheless, the gods were with me as all of the other freshman boys (7, actually) were caught smoking at the side of the gym and were expelled from the JV team, leaving me as the only freshman player, and I proceeded from there to accumulate a career total of two points (both foul shots). Unfortunately, this story has a sad ending in that the next season I was the only sophomore who didn’t make the JV team.

My grandmother died in December 1966 when I was a first year student at Catholic University law school. At the request of my Aunt Ann I had to get to Scranton fairly quickly to help with the arrangements as there was going to be a prolonged three day Irish wake in our home. I decided to fly that night from DC National Airport on Allegheny Airlines, with a stop in Allentown. A snowstorm developed before the flight departure time and it became problematical whether the flight would occur. I still remember shaking with fear as I entered the plane, but I did find some strength to board. The pilot announced during the flight that conditions were so bad that we couldn’t land in Allentown and said “we’ll just go on up to Scranton and give that a try”. We had a treacherous landing in Scranton, and the pilot commented “we probably shouldn’t have tried that”. I did not kiss the ground when I deplaned, but if I had it would have been justified.

Public speaking always scared me. I had a speech impediment when I was a child. Still do to a certain extent which is related to my hearing deficiency. But it was quite worse when I was an adolescent. My ninth grade teacher was Sister Marianne, a favorite of mine. She asked to meet with my Dad and suggested that I have speech therapy sessions with a nun at Marywood College. I attended those sessions on Saturday mornings for much of my freshman year. When I was a sophomore there was a speech contest at St. Patrick’s. Sister Marianne encouraged me to enter and worked with me in preparation for the contest. I delivered Marc Anthony’s speech from Julius Caesar and I won! Yay! 

One of my courses in my second year at the University of Scranton was Public Speaking. Each class member was to participate in a debate before the entire freshman class. Again, the thought of standing and speaking in front of a crowd was frightful to me. Still, I somehow did it. The topic of the debate was the Electoral College. I was pegged to defend it. I cannot remember what my arguments were and I’m certain I would advocate differently today, but that was then and I won that debate!

Since you now know that I overcame fear to have significant speaking successes in high school and college you are undoubtedly wondering if my winning streak continued in law school. As a matter of fact, it almost did. Most law schools have a Moot Court program where the students argue a hypothetical case before a panel of judges. My first year roommate, Bernie Yanovich, asked me to participate as Co-Counsel with him during my second year of law school. We progressed through the first three rounds, but lost in the final round to two classmates who then went on to defeat Moot Court representatives from the other law schools in DC.

One might think that my decision at age 27 to leave my job at Arthur Andersen, to terminate my apartment lease, to sell my car, to otherwise sever my connections with DC, and to leave the area for a trip to San Francisco where I only knew two people, had no pending job, had no place to live, and faced an uncertain future, was pretty brave. Wrong. I was just being fanciful. In retrospect it was like “what was I thinking, this was not a responsible thing to do”. For years thereafter I looked back on that trip and prayed that no son of mine would ever just pull up stakes and take off to California in a conversion van, similarly with no job and no lodging in place and with a doubtful future.

As we know, though, that trip to San Francisco turned my life around. I think that is where I see bravery. I had no idea how to be a boyfriend, a fiancé, a husband, a father, a provider, a homeowner, or a caregiver. I nevertheless proceeded full speed ahead in those and other aspects of my life because I found a source of bravery in new circumstances and experiences, i.e., my wife’s strength and faith in me for 42 years. And so with respect to the second part of this question which is what was the outcome, I can report three sons, four grandchildren (and counting), and two daughters-in-law (and counting). Not too shabby.