The second installment of Michael Nolan’s Brooklyn memoir.

In my role as family reunion convener, I enjoy a certain latitude in choosing the dates and places where we might meet, always within the bounds of cousinly respect and consultation. So this year, since I was traveling (I could have said schlepping, but I won’t) all the way from California, the Zhelazny Reunion from my mom’s Jewish side took place on Saturday, Aug. 23 at cousin Jo Shifrin’s house in Ardsley, Westchester County, NY, and the Lowery-Nolan Irish reunion on Sunday, Aug. 24 at Holy Cross Cemetery in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn followed by a luncheon at Buckley’s tavern and restaurant near Marine Park. (Where Joe Torre and I played baseball as teenagers in the Parade Ground League.)

My musician daughter, Rosy, now a 5-year resident of Brooklyn, joined me and four other cousins on the cemetery tour. I had made a reconnaissance trip a few days prior to scout out the locations of where our ancestors were buried and made a map. We visited the humble grave-site of Rosy’s namesake and great-grandmother, Rosanna Lowery Nolan and husband James Joseph Nolan. Just a simple stone block with the name "Nolan" on it and a cross below. Rosy placed a bouquet of flowers at the site.

I had come to this very place as a young boy with my dad and brother. Jimmy and I would join our father and knelt, crossed ourselves, and said: "God bless Grandpa and Grandma Nolan". I treasured these moments of intimacy with my father who would not often display his fervor for the sake of the humanistic Ethical Culture choice he and my Jewish mother had made for the religious upbringing of their children.

But his underlying passion would occasionally break through when he would intone the Latin Mass with his mellifluous Irish tenor voice, or take us through St. Jerome’s Church or to the cemetery. I loved his tales of parochial school. His imitation of "Sister Smackerlips" was a favorite or describing his days as an altar boy.

Perhaps it was not surprising that I would take three years of Latin at my public high school, Midwood. Or in my early 40’s decide to enroll in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and become baptized Catholic at St. Kevin’s Church, here on Bernal Heights in San Francisco.

The picture above is of my cousin Meaghan Lowery Wright on the recent
Holy Cross Cemetery tour at the monument for our great-grandparents, James Joseph Lowery, an immigrant from Culdaff Parish, County Donegal
and Susan Farren Lowery, a native of Kentucky.

In the second half of the 19th century, my relatives lived, worked and married in the "Irishtown" section of Brooklyn along the East River waterfront between the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn Bridge—a section now enjoying a revival under its historic name of Vinegar Hill.

James and Susan had 14 children, some of whom did not survive birth or early childhood. My grandmother, Rosanna, did. She had 13 children, 6 of whom survived, including my dad, Harold Francis.

Soon, I’ll post a Google map I’ve created which shows how the Lowery’s and Nolan’s migrated from the waterfront where they worked on the Brooklyn Bridge, in the Navy Yard, or ran hotel, bar, drygoods and liquor establishments in support of the workforce, inland towards Flatbush where they often took jobs with the City as firemen and policemen.