anthonytoth.com goes live

I have set up a web site containing information about me, my work, and this book project. There is a brief biography of Beverly Eckert, as well as a summary of No Truer Hearts. There are also pages about my journalistic and academic experience. Thanks for visiting!

Beverly's Christmases Past

For someone who lives life with enthusiastic joy, who relishes celebrating with loved ones, who thrives on creating beautiful things for others, Christmas cannot come sooner each year. When Beverly and I spoke about her early years, she remembered to me Christmases past, each story lighting her face and animating her voice. There was the cardboard fireplace set up each year by her father, so Santa would have a ready entryway into the Eckert house. And the raucous holiday parties, the kids fueled by cookies and chips and bottles of pop cooled in a basement sink filled with ice. There were cherished presents, remembered forever, like a favorite doll, a trusty bike, a handy wagon. Always, there was music, loved ones gathered around the piano, singing carols in a close and familiar harmony tuned finely from years of practice.

One Christmas, Beverly put her artistic talents to full use, creating with her hands a set of Victorian carolers for her sisters' families, each family member carefully assembled -- from top hats and shawls, faces formed from clay, hair snipped from a reluctant Sean and others, and clothing and shoes painstakingly fitted together. Love is the things you do, you make, you pass along -- at Christmastime and all the year through. The group in the photo is the one Beverly made for her sister Karen and her family. Their heads are perpetually tilted up, singing in unison a familiar carol, just as Beverly and her loved ones used to do.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Rosemary Auricchio Rooney, July 12, 1924 - December 13, 2010

The Sean Rooney that Beverly Eckert had fallen in love with was once a small boy who doted on his mother, Rosemary. So close was the boy to his mother that on one occasion, when he was asked to sit on the steps of the family house for a few seconds for a photo, he began to whimper because he could not be close enough at that moment to his mama. His sour expression is caught for eternity in the snap of that camera's shutter.

Rosemary Rooney told me this story with a sense of pride when I visited with her and with some of Sean's siblings in Buffalo in October, and she showed me that photo. She clearly relished the closeness she shared with the young Sean, and this closeness lasted until the very end of his life, on September 11, 2001.

And as Beverly grew to love Sean in the months after they met, she also grew to love Rosemary, who opened her house and her heart to her at a time when openness and warmth were in short supply on the home front for Beverly. In the Rooney household, Beverly was charmed by the relaxed, lively and generous spirit of a family in which good food was shared at the dinner table, along with large helpings of love, good humor and mutual respect between each child and parent. Beverly told me how loving and gregarious Rosemary was, what an easy, informal and good-hearted relationship she had with Sean and her other children.

Rosemary Rooney passed away on December 13 at her home, among children she loved so dearly. News of a grave illness came out of the blue a few weeks previous, and so her family had time to prepare for the inevitable goodbyes. They had a chance, a welcome, precious time to return a small portion of the great mountain of love she had doled out during her long life to Sean and Beverly and all her children and grandchildren and others close to hear large and generous heart.

The departure of every soul from this sweet earth is different. We never know whether there will be time to say goodbye to those who hold a part of our hearts. Best, then, to cherish the ones we love each day, so they always know, no matter what happens, how much they mean to us.

Here is the Buffalo News obituary for Rosemary.

Back to Buffalo, Part 4

Beverly had close friends going back to her grade school years in Buffalo, and I had the good fortune to speak with two of them: Kathleen DeLaney and Carol Bauda. They offered some wonderful memories of Beverly during her school days. Kathleen and Carol told stories of a Bev who, in addition to being a stalwart and big-hearted friend, was the instigator of pranks, a skilled athlete, an articulate and intelligent public speaker, a poet and writer, and an artist who revelled in the free atmosphere of the art room in Sacred Heart Academy. Here, the girls could find refuge from the strictures of the rest of the school, and listen to records, gossip, dream, and let their creative juices flow sitting at their easels.

The stories I was told will help me paint an accurate portrait of a life lived fully and well.

Back to Buffalo, Part 3

During my visit to Buffalo, I was guided to some of the places that were important in the life of Sean Rooney by his sister, Cynthia Blest. Certainly a formative influence on Sean's life were his years at Canisius High School. In the photo on the right, Cynthia is pointing to Sean's portrait in the Class of 1969 picture, which hangs in a large room outside the auditorium/gym. In a number of media accounts, including this article in the New York Times, Canisius is given as the place where Sean and Beverly first met at a dance. So I was eager to see the gymnasium, where such dances were held. But after speaking with several people, I learned that the 16-year-olds actually met at a dance at another school. (You can read the book to find out which one!)

Another place I was taken to was the first house in which Beverly and Sean lived. Here began a tradition of grand nest-feathering, with Sean taking the lead and Beverly ably assisting in home renovation projects large and small. The fine wooden beams that Sean had created in the kitchen were still there.

Back to Buffalo, Part 2

I went to Buffalo in search of stories from the early lives of Beverly and Sean, and I returned from my trip with plenty of them. I was especially keen on getting details about the young Sean Rooney, because I had only gotten a few vignettes from Beverly. On one sunny day, Sean's sister, Cynthia Blest, guided me around the parts of Buffalo that had been touched by Sean.

This is the house on Dorchester Road the Rooney family lived in when Sean was growing up. Beverly had told me the story about the time Sean had dismantled a 1951 MG TD in the driveway when he was a teenager, and rebuilt it piece-by-piece. And Cynthia recounted with a smile an episode involving Sean, some gin-and-tonics, and a botched repair job on the front steps. It was in the kitchen of this house, helping his mother, Rosemary, that Sean absorbed the lessons of how food and love could combine in magical ways. Many times it is the lessons we learn when we are young that carry us through in the years to come.

Back to Buffalo, Part 1

I drove up to Buffalo in October to continue my research for the book. I focused on gathering information about Beverly and Sean during their early years, speaking with their friends and relatives, and visiting places that were important in their lives.

Karen Eckert kindly shared her memories of Beverly, and guided me around Buffalo. One of the places we visited was Forest Lawn Cemetery and Crematory, where the Eckert family placed a beautiful bronze plaque over Beverly's resting place. Karen said that she and the other siblings (Susan Bourque, Margot Eckert and Ray Eckert) had devoted a great deal of thought and care to the words on the plaque. It is a difficult thing to summarize in a short space the talents, accomplishments, spirit and love of an exceptional person. I think they succeeded:

BEVERLY A. ECKERT

Born May 29, 1951

Died February 12, 2009

In the crash of Continental Flight 3407

In Clarence Center, New York

Widow of her beloved high school sweetheart

Sean P. Rooney

Who died September 11, 2001

In the attack on the World Trade Center

Beverly was a tireless advocate for the families of the victims of 9/11

A leader in the establishment of the 9/11 Commission

And Co-founder of Voices of September 11th

A lover of beauty

A writer, an artist, a poet

A constant source of amazement and fun

Generous of spirit

Dedicated to her family and friends

And the principles of justice

She lived her life extraordinarily well

Devoted in love, Beverly and Sean are together now

"Happily Ever-Aftering"

"...The evening sky has deepened into darkness on a soft summer night. We are sitting on the stone step near the kitchen door, watching the fireflies rise in the backyard over the newly mowed lawn. Friends are expected for dinner. A steak is on the grill, a glass of wine in hand.... we are laughing.... we are content."

-Beverly Eckert-