Last Boat Ride of the Season

The old Arrowhead Club, Willoughby, Ohio

Barry O'Donnell at the Helm

Nancy and Jim

Moi. Willoughby in the background.

Interesting Structure on the Willoughby Shore

What Makes Each One of Us Different? Why Was I So Successful in School?

We are a crazy, mixed-up bunch of people--all of us. So different that it's hard to believe we are the same species. I guess if you looked down from the moon, we humans might look pretty similar. But I am struck by the differences. These differences are all the more striking within families. I have 3 daughters who are stunningly different, in appearance, in temperament, in so many other ways. My three brothers and my sister are all so different. What follows are a few guesses on why I am different from them.

To begin, I am the first-born kid in the family. I was even the first grandchild on my father's side. I imagine that the first born gets more attention than those that follow. Sometimes the parents and grandparents have more energy and even better health to deal with the first child or grandchild. I wouldn't use the "s-word" (spoiled), but the first-born has some advantages (and a few disadvantages, I might add). The first-born lives under stricter rules (in 3rd grade I had to be in bed by 8 PM during the school year; Jimmy probably went to bed after the Johnny Carson Show!). Sometimes the first-born lives in a family with very little money because the parents are at an early stage in their careers. I had to eat slum-gullion; Jim and Kev were chowing down on steak, those SOB's! Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit.

I know that I possess my parents' DNA, but there is enough shuffling that mother nature does that we brothers and sisters are pretty different. How did Denny get so tall? Mary Ellen so pretty? Why did Jim and Denny keep their hair (in contrast to Kev and me)? Why was Kevin such a fast runner and great football player? And how did he become a Republican, for God's sake!

One big question for me has to do with my success in school. Why did I do so well at all levels of school, from St. William's Grade School to St. Joseph High School, and to three colleges, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Cincinnati, and The Ohio State University? My simple answer is that I am more intelligent than my brothers and sister. But I know them too well to make that claim! I'm not that dumb and I don't want them to beat the crap out of me! We are all intelligent in our own ways. Somehow, my intelligence took me successfully through the American school system up to a doctorate degree.

I think my Dad especially gave me a lot of attention in my early years of schooling. He drilled me all the time on spelling and arithmetic. He took me to various libraries, Euclid Public, St. William's, and Cuyahoga County. And he read the newspaper and books--he was a fairly good model of a reader. He even managed to get hold of a magnificent set of used Collier Encyclopedias, one of the joys of my youth and adolescence.

Also, I really wanted to please my Mom and Dad by getting good grades in school. Later, I wanted to get straight A's because that would allow me to receive 7 pair of free Indians' baseball tickets. That played a huge role in my academic success.

One other strange factor was my sense of self. In first or second or third grade I was put into reading Group 2 at the beginning of the year. I'm guessing placement in that group was based on some sort of test scores. I remember thinking to myself (at age 6, 7,or 8): "I'm not group 2 material. I should be in Group 1, the top reading group." And then I proceeded to work real hard to prove to the teacher that I belonged in the top group. Within a week or so, I was moved to that group. Why did I think I was top-group material? Isn't that strange?

Along with this sense of myself, I was very competitive. I'm guessing that was partly a gift from my Dad and from my Grampa Coughlin--both very competitive athletes. This competitiveness helped me get into the top groups and helped me achieve top grades. It has been a theme through much of my life (occasionally to my detriment).

A couple of events probably shaped my life. When I was 2 going on 3, I was accidentally run over by my mother. The accident happened on Windermere Avenue in Willoughby. I had walked away from home to visit my Gramma and Grampa, who lived a block away on Hayes Avenue. My Mom didn't know where I was, and proceeded to back out our car to go looking for me. Unfortunately, as she was backing out, I was running up behind the car. I was seriously injured and had to be removed from under the car. I was taken by car to Huron Road Hospital in East Cleveland (a good 20 miles away), where they discovered a fractured skull, a concussion, and a broken collarbone, among other minor injuries. I was in the hospital for many days, a week I think. I remember vividly many details of this entire event. And I remember being so lonely in the hospital, without the presence of my Mom and Dad (at least at night). I remember them putting me in a crib-like bed, something I resented, thinking, "Here I am, almost 3 years old, and I'm put in something like a baby crib!" I remember that when I got out of the hospital, my Mom and Dad told me that I had turned 3 years old and that we were moving to a new house in Euclid, Ohio. Somehow, that accident and those days in the hospital shaped me.

Another important event that shaped my personality happened when I was 5-years-old and in Kindergarten. It must have been late winter or early spring of 1954 when I got an illness (measles, chicken pox, or influenza) that developed into pneumonia--very serious pneumonia. I remember going deaf at one point, and having severe vertigo where the room spun around. I had a terrible fever and remember Mom running frantically into the kitchen and putting me under the cold water to cool down the fever. As she turned on the water, spiders and snakes came out of the tap and I screamed. Then she rushed me to the bathroom tub, and did the same thing. Again, spiders and snakes came out of the faucet. The fever must have been very high to trigger hallucinations like that.

A doctor came to our house--this must have been the end of the era of home doctor visits. He prescribed a sulfa drug to treat my pneumonia, but it backfired, causing some sort of damage to my kidneys, as I ended up urinating blood. During this sickness I was stationed in my Mom and Dad's bed. I was totally (and temporarily, it turned out) deaf, had trouble breathing, and constantly coughed up thick mucus. I spent my day's between sleeping, looking at children's books (I couldn't read yet), and playing games with myself ("pick-up sticks" was a favorite). Something changed in me during that month-long sickness, something shaped my life-to-come. I was more interior, more reliant on my self and my imagination. I suffered through tremendous loneliness and isolation, and had survived. One day in early spring I saw my friends Brian Cox, Allen Lane, and Chucky Lintern playing in the yard. I was so sick that I couldn't go out and play with them. I felt a profound loneliness and even a sense of being deprived of life and vitality. I was determined that that would change. And it did.

September 11, 2001--A Memory

September 11, 2001—A Memory

How I taught that 10 AM class I don’t know. I did mention the tragedy to the class, as if they didn’t know already, and we all prayed in class before the lesson started. Then amazingly, I proceeded with the lesson.

As the class progressed, I grew more and more anxious, until the end, when I practically busted out of the room and ran back to my office. “I have to see if Mom is all right!” I yelled to myself, racing down the hallways from T Building. I was also worried about my wife Linda and my 3 daughters. Julia was away at college, Miami University. Carolan was at Chardon High School. Em was at St. Mary’s School, where Linda worked. But Mom was 77 years old, blind, and alone at home in Euclid--Dad four years in the grave. I had to go to her right away!

I ran to the faculty-staff lot and cranked up my car—it was almost empty of gas. A thought streaked across my mind: What if the gas pumps go out? What if gigantic lines form at the gas stations? Are the ATM machines working? As usual I had almost no cash in my wallet.

My first step was to get to the Bank One money machine. The machine worked and I withdrew a hundred dollars, a huge amount for me to carry around. Then I headed to Kirtland Road, the back way to Mom’s. I thought maybe the freeways would get jammed up with cars, people fleeing . . . to somewhere, anywhere. We had no idea what was going on yet. So far we knew that both towers of the World Trade Center had been hit; by this time one of the buildings had actually collapsed to the ground, something unheard of! There was a story about a jet crashing into a field southeast of Pittsburgh. The Pentagon had been hit. There were rumors galore flying around. One claimed that Dayton had been hit. My oldest daughter Julia was a freshman at Miami University, not far from Dayton. What was going on? Are we all in danger?

Down Kirtland Road I drove like a maniac, coming to Rt. 20 in Willoughby. West on 20 to Vine Street. Down Vine to Lakeshore Boulevard. There near the corner of Lakeshore and Vine was a gas station without big lines. I pulled in and filled my tank. Would this be my last chance to get gas?

I zipped out on Vine, then left on Lakeshore down to Lloyd. Down Lloyd to Forestview. Then to E. 272, then Farringdon, then E.266 and into Mom’s driveway. I pushed open my car door, one knock on Mom's door, then inside.

There Mom calmly sat on the davenport, drinking a cup of coffee, smoking a cigarette, and watching the television’s grim news. Mom was OK; I was the one who was frantic, anxious, frightened to death. I hugged her. She comforted me like I was a scared 5-year-old again.

Robert M. Coughlin
September 11, 2008

Robert P. Coughlin--My Dad

This past week was the 11th anniversary of the passing of my Dad, Robert P. Coughlin, known, like me, as Bob. My Dad was actually baptized in 1922 as Paul Robert, and some official documents (like his Navy papers), use that name. But some time early on, the name was flipflopped and he was known as Bob and presented himself formally as Robert P. He was the third child of Cornelius Francis ("Connie") Coughlin and Cora Bowers Coughlin, after Francis Cornelius ("Connie") and John Anthony ("Jack"). After my Dad there were two more children: Bill and Bernice. I think all the Coughlin kids were born in Cleveland, probably around E. 87th, but were raised mostly in Willoughby, Lake County, Ohio--about 20 miles east of Cleveland.

Dad was our hero, for so many reasons: he was our protector and defender; he was our provider and advocate; he was a Navy combat veteran from World War II. And he was a good and kind and loving man. And he did all of this in spite of some heavy burdens. One burden he carried was severe asthma, which was very serious at times in his childhood and adolescence and prevented him from being accepted into the Navy before the war broke out (after Pearl Harbor, it was another story--"Sure we'll take you! Welcome aboard, sailor!"). In his late 50's Dad suffered from heart problems. He had bypass surgery around age 57, and suffered from congestive heart failure and diabetes in the last years of his life. These last illnesses were debilitating to his great energy and spirit. Along with these illnesses I think he suffered from some level of depression. Maybe that was a consequence of the medicines he had to take as well as the weakness caused by the heart failure. Still, the image I have of my Dad is of the guy in his thirties and forties, with his black hair, drop-dead good looks, broad shoulders, with forearms and biceps like Popeye-the-Sailor. Dad was strong! A nice trick he could do was to rip the Cleveland yellow pages (about 4 inches thick) in half! It was part technique, but part brute strength. Dad could also run very fast and hit a baseball a mile. We enjoyed watching him play softball at Mudville (officially, "Willow Playground"), with his tremendous hits and great defensive play. One time he hit a home run at Mudville and as he stepped on home plate, he broke his foot! I wish we had had the chance to see him play fast pitch baseball when he and his brothers tore up the Lake County leagues. Dad hit a famous home run at Painseville Township Park on a very muddy day. When he circled the bases, he avoided the incredible mud puddles around the bases (thinking that it was no big deal because the ball went out of the park, into Lake Erie). Well the other team pulled the appeal play saying he missed a base, and Dad was called out. He and his brothers were great ballplayers, but any chance for a career in professional ball was halted by the war. One brother, Connie, did get a tryout with the Cleveland Indians, and we have the letter sent to Connie offering the try-out. Their baseball careers were in the tradition of their father, Connie, my grandfather, who was one of the great ballplayers to come out of Cleveland in the early decades of the 20th Century.

My Dad's life surely was shaped by the bittersweet years of the Great Depression and then by World War II. From the time my Dad was seven years old to the time he was in his mid twenties, the world was in chaos, depression, and war. So you can imagine how wonderful it was for him around 1946 meeting Margaret Ann Fitzpatrick (of the locally well-known Fitzpatrick family). What Dad probably wanted more than anything was a life with Margaret Ann, a family, children, and a job that paid the bills. There had been so little of normal life that he was ecstatic about settling down to this kind of life. He married Margaret Ann in August of 1947 at Immaculate Conception Church in Willoughby (the reception was above the fire station in Willoughby-on-the-Lake). Ten months later I was born, the first of 5 children. [More coming on Dad infuture blog entries.]