The Devil and The Angel: A Memoir

ENDORSEMENTS

Pretension is not a part of Dan Kennedy. Every move he makes is without being self-conscious. As one of his college instructors I can say it was evident to all faculty that he wasn't your average student. Consider this book and you'll see that his ability to grow and change is above average. Each page will prove him to be anything but your average writer.

As you walk through many of his life episodes I promise you will relate to the ease of his fluid prose. Nothing fancy here, just an easy enjoyable read. Dan is a natural.

Let me be clear that I am biased. Over the years I have heard a few of Dan's stories and this writing holds the promise of more to come. Voices from the past you have forgotten are in your immediate future. Employ your emotions willingly for a fun read.

John Henderson, Radio Personality, Professor, Friend

We have known Dan for nearly 20 years. We have lived beside each other and across town and have remained good friends with both Dan & Marvina.  Always a story to tell with a laugh at the end.  Good friends we consider family.

Gary & Patty O’Doherty, friends 

Danny and I met at Loyalist College and quickly became friends. His love of family, music and friends is his greatest attribute.  We will be good friends forever.

Mark Norris, former classmate and friend

I was enthralled. I only got through the first chapter and had to put it down to take care of … a few other things that had to be done. All the while that first chapter kept calling to me to come back. I finally sat down at 10:00 p.m. on Friday night and picked up where I had left off; I did nothing else until I read the last word at 4:00 a.m.

I have to tell you, Dan, that I have never in my life cried and laughed so much at the same time! It has taken me these past two days to process it all as I had such a visceral reaction to it: physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Rhetta Daoust, sister

FORWARD

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his book was written because I thought I had better get it all down in print before I forget the way things really happened. Everything, I wrote in this book is the truth.

It is a great relief for me to admit finally to the nightmare that was in my life for a time and fantastic to remember and write about the good times before and after the one I call the Devil brainwashed me. The good in my life so far outweighs the bad. Thanks to the strength I receive from my Angel.

I hope my friends and family, who I love very much, will forgive my indiscretions during my lifetime. Especially, during the seven years I was duped into putting up with the Devil before I found my Angel…again.

I feel ashamed and humiliated over what happened during the worst time of my life, and I wish I had had the courage then to call an end to it somehow. I couldn’t, because every time I tried, during those hellish years, I was beaten, traumatized and degraded into thinking nobody would trust or love Young Danny anymore or worse: someone I loved would get hurt. If my secret were found out, I was afraid of being an outcast to be ridiculed and tortured even more than I was: a boy who just turned 13 who wanted to die until he dreamed of a beautiful Angel who would be his salvation and give him the strength he needed to cope with his situation until the day they would be re-united… again.

Early in my life, I was just a boy, like any other boy, trying to enjoy my youth and, if I could help, my family through some difficult times in the 50s and 60s. I was a young boy who wanted to grow up to be Superman or Spiderman until … the Devil got in my way. The Devil received personal gratification from his dominance over me and tainted every aspect of my life throughout my teenage years.

The Devil warped my thinking and my perception of reality, dominated me with the threat of exposure and duped me into thinking my family would be harmed or even killed.

I had to go along with the Devil. I wore the mask of a happy-go-lucky fellow in front of my family and friends at that time. My whitewashing of Young Danny for everyone to see was just a façade that was sacred to me.

I was a very troubled teen who overcame his demons with some help from his mother, who he thought had abandoned him years earlier. But she was there to help eliminate, for good, Young Danny’s Devil. When the time came!

Still a young man, Young Danny, finds his Angel again. The invincible strength of their love for each other throughout the next 40 plus years energizes his character and zest for life and brings out the best of him, as they say.

Life is definitely an adventure for Young Danny … again.

Dan Kennedy

CONTENTS

ENDORSEMENTS

FORWARD

CONTENTS

YOUNG DANNY STARTS TO MAKE HIS MARK

A GUITAR, A CIRCUS & MISCHIEF

YOUNG DANNY THE ENTREPRENEUR & MORE MISCHIEF

MUSIC, FAMILY & …THE DEVIL

ESCAPE TO TORONTO &  A RETURN TO SAINT JOHN

DANNY MEETS HIS ANGEL

LIFE WITH HIS ANGEL

MUSIC AGAIN &  A RADIO CAREER

MOTORCYCLES, VEHICLES & MOM TO THE RESCUE

LIFE IS GOOD

AUTHOR’S NOTES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER ONE

YOUNG DANNY STARTS TO MAKE HIS MARK

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he eighteenth of May 1951, Young Danny is born in the Saint John General Hospital. What a way to start a book. Of course I was born. I guess my story actually began when I was conceived about nine months before that non-eventful day. I was not planned: I was the product of a 17-year-old boy’s hormones running wild and a 15-year-old raven-haired, blue-eyed beauty in love. That was my mom and dad. It was the early 50s in the port city of Saint John, New Brunswick.

Beverly Marie Albert (Mom) – still in her teens

I wanted to write this memoir so you would get to know the boy Young Danny before he was in the clutches of the Devil, and years later, the man Danny who found his Angel … again!  I want, and have, to tell you about my youth. This is my true story. No shit! My story of growing up and, at the tender age of just 13, having something happen that would change an innocent boy’s life…forever.

I thought I knew right from wrong, but it was hard to tell the good people from the evil ones. I was a boy who had a passion for living every day to its fullest. I could follow a discarded Popsicle stick or leaves down a gutter full of running water from a rainstorm for two blocks. I could chase a sick robin for an hour so I could keep it in an old shoebox for a week, feed and water it, until I could watch it take flight again. I was up with the sun every morning looking for a new adventure, and I usually found one. I loved life. I loved all my family. I loved nature. I was a normal boy, I thought, who had no enemies except for the school dentist. I had no problems that I knew of, and I was not afraid of work. I had a great spirit for life, survival, and happiness until my innocence was taken away by the Devil.

I’ll start with my family history. I don't know much about my real grandfathers. I say real because I had two step-granddads too.  Dad's father’s name was Arthur Cyril (Chaulk) Kennedy: Irish. He died when my dad was very young. Mom's father's name was Joe Albert: French. Mom’s mother Flo divorced him just as I came along. I hope it had nothing to do with me. I have enough baggage to carry around now as it is.

I was told years later, that Grandpa Albert was really pissed when he heard about Mom being pregnant and Young Danny coming soon. He was so pissed he tried to have Dad arrested. Grandpa Joe Albert even wanted to put me in an orphanage when I was born so I could be adopted out.  I might have become a Butter Box Baby like in the book of the same name, a book about an orphanage in New Brunswick I believe. I read that young mothers had their babies taken away and were told their babies had been adopted. As the story goes, babies of unwed mothers were smothered at birth, placed in butter boxes the orphanage used and buried behind the building in unmarked graves. I was lucky. My Uncle Bobby, one of my mom’s older brothers, was on leave from the Navy and came to our rescue. He wouldn’t hear of any child from our family ever being given away to someone else. There was a big fight about it but Uncle Bobby took my mother’s side, and I was brought home with her when she left the hospital.

Home to Young Danny then was the big house at 23 Cranston Ave. that a lot of us lived in for the next few years. I slept in the same crib with my cousin Skipper for a while, and we grew up to be great friends over the next 60 years or so. The kid, a few years older than Skip and I and always running around with just one rubber boot on, was my Uncle Norman. Granny had her hands full with Pop Albert leaving but the all her boys ended up back home with their wives and girlfriends and kids and life was one big party for a long while. I called Granny just that all her life.

I didn’t know that Uncle Bobby had gone to bat for me and put up such a fuss until my mom told me after he passed away 50 years later living in a men’s residence in Toronto. Uncle Bobby had his demons too. I sure wish I could have thanked him in person instead of on this single page now. But here goes. Thank you, Uncle Bobby, from all of Young Danny’s heart.

Uncles Murray, Ralph & Bobby, 23 Cranston Ave.,

Saint John, NB

As Young Danny was growing up, Uncle Bobby came in and out of his life every few years or so. Uncle Bobby was an alcoholic most of his life, but always a gentle soul with a heart of gold. Uncle Bobby returned to Saint John after he was released from the Merchant Marines when Young Danny was about seven. He and Young Danny took a walk uptown to the City Market one sunny Saturday morning. It’s funny, how we always remember the sunny days eh!

Look around and tell me what you see, Uncle Bobby said.

I see a lot of people selling vegetables, fruit, candy and dulce.

Look closer, Danny, and tell me what else you see.

I see a lot of people shopping. I see a blind man selling newspapers, cigars, cigarettes and magazines.

And what else? he asked.

Well, there’s a guy in a corner booth shining men’s shoes with a big shoe brush.

Bingo! My Uncle Bobby yelled. Old Joe shining shoes all day!

See my shoes, said Uncle Bobby, as he pointed down to his perfectly shined loafers with the new shiny pennies. No matter what! Keep your feet dry and your shoes shined Uncle Bobby told me that day. He kept his shoes shined until the day he died and so do I. Then he said if I were to build my own shoebox and shine shoes I would never be hungry or without a job. I would always have money in my poke. (Uncle Bobby talked kind of funny sometimes.)

You can work where and when you want too, he told me, lowering his voice like it was a secret. Maybe you could set up shop in front of the Bank of Montreal at the foot of King and Dock St. to shine shoes. Or camp beside the Bus Terminal farther up the hill on King Street where the buses come into from out of town.

Ya, I said, and I could just roam with the thousands of pigeons in King Square with my shine box. Or park my ass right in front of the Citadel on Sundays while the Army Band is playing and make my fortune with my mobile shoe shine venture.

Uncle Bobby and I spent the rest of that day in 1958 happily building my professional shoeshine box with a black leather shoulder strap confiscated from one of my dad’s old belts. I think it was old? He’ll never miss it? Bing, Bang, Boom. He did. Uncle Bobby bought me my first cans of Kiwi (brown and black) shoe polish and a big two-sided buffer brush to start me off. Always use the best shoe polish to give the best shoe shine, he said. A few rags made from his old Navy socks, and a few quick lessons in technique, and I was ready to go. I gave my first professional shoe shine to my Uncle Bobby at no charge, of course. From that day on I have kept all my own footwear perfectly shined too.  Especially the cowboy boots I would wear on stage years later. They were always shined to perfection and, whenever I looked down at them I would remember a very special Uncle; Uncle Bobby.

.

Uncle Bobby – worked in the Arctic as a

Second Cook and Baker

Granny was born on her family homestead called Mann’s Mountain close to Tide Head, New Brunswick, near the Restigouche River. On that same river is Mann’s Island. I still have relatives around that mountain area that I plan to visit someday. When my Uncle Ralph died a few years ago, he left me some old pictures. I now have a picture of Great-Grammy whose name was Mary Ann Mann. (Granny always said her mother was a Mann. Not my joke…Granny’s.) Grammy Mann was a full-blooded Micmac. Some say she had special powers that could heal sick people just by laying her hands over them while chanting up powerful spirits. So the Elders say.

In the first picture my Uncle Ralph left me, Great-Grammy was sitting on the step in front of the big house her husband and my great-grandfather Archibald Myles had built for her with his father’s help. The farmhouse he built had 12 bedrooms and a huge kitchen, Granny told me, and the outhouse out back had two seat holes. There was one large hole cut in the seat for adults to sit on and a smaller hole for the kids so they wouldn’t fall in. Yes, Granny said, they would use last year’s Sears catalogue for toilet paper. They would tear off a piece of a page and sit there and rough it up between their two hands by rolling it into a ball so it would be softer on the rear.

Great Granny – Mary Ann Mann Myles

Grammy looks about 85 in that picture with her white hair and wrinkled face, and she’s smoking a pipe. She looks exactly like Granny and Granny looked exactly like her years later, I noticed. Another picture I blew up to hang in my den shows Granny at about ten years of age with her four brothers, a sister and an aunt, and Grammy as a beautiful young woman of about 30. Great-Grandfather Archibald Myles looked old even then with his long white beard sitting in his rocking chair, but I figured he was only about 55 and didn’t like to smile. Granny told me her dad sat in that rocking chair and smoked his corncob pipe late into the night for many years. After he had died at 92, Granny told Uncle Ralph that Grammy took over the ritual of sitting in her late husband’s rocker and smoked the same pipe every night until her death years later at 91. It must have been some excellent tobacco.

The Family Homestead on Mann’s Mountain, NB

Great Grandpa Archibald Gordon Myles in centre

The last black and white picture I received was of Mom’s Uncle Gerald fixing a tire on the families old rusty Model T Ford.  My mother, at age 12, was sitting on the running board of the old Ford watching him. She said her Uncle Gerald and Aunt Ena (Granny’s only sister) and a bunch of the kids were on their way to Campbellton to buy supplies for the upcoming winter, and it was a real treat for the kids to go for the ride. The car had at least four flat tires on the way to and from town, not unusual in those days Mom said. I believed that just by looking at the picture of the tube out of the old tire her Uncle Gerald was patching. He had to be putting a patch on the last open piece of rubber. When I look at that picture of my mom at 12 years old, I can’t help thinking that in just three more years that young girl in the picture will have a baby and give him the name of Danny. Young Danny!

Mom’s Uncle Gerald and Aunt Ena. Kids: Denice behind wheel, Ronnie in the tube, other kids L-R – Dee, Mom, Terry and Lorraine

But back to Granny. A few years after Granny divorced Grandfather Joe