Kinsmen and Kinswomen

Thomas Skudder Burgin was my grandfather’s brother. We called him, simply, Uncle Tom. As a child growing up on the periphery of my grandparents’ lives, I never gave him too much thought. I knew he had been a politician, had a yacht, and drove large Detroit-made luxury cars. But not much more.

I knew my grandfather and his brother were terribly close. Their nightly or near nightly phone calls – brief, but consistent –  were legend, especially the ritual sign-off. “Ok, Tom. Very good, Tom. That’d be wonderful, Tom. Good-bye, Tom. (long pause) Helen, that was Tom.”

Uncle Tom’s death, coming in the midst of my freshman year at college, was a blip on my radar screen at the time. But, as the years went by, I would come to learn of his true stature, earned the hard way, day after day, doing the decent thing, and treating people well. When I recently found the edition of the Quincy Sun devoted to remembering him, I spent the better part of a Saturday reading it.

Two extraordinary men; brothers; very, very different characters, and yet each leading what some would call simple lives. Serving their communities at the local level. Getting the work done. Many, many friends. Observing life’s passage with dry, mordant, humor, and behind the barely concealed smile, a hint of sadness.

I salute them both.

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Here below, are images from the actual paper, as published… Note, I am aware that the quality of the reproductions isn’t great. (If you click and open them in a new tab, you can see them full size.) But it’s worth starting with the basic layout, if only to see how much space, how many separate articles, and reminiscences, were devoted to this man’s passing. And I think this need to be said: if he had been an editorial afterthought in any sense, if the treatment of his death were simply polite, if they were just going through the motions, it wouldn’t look like this. Clearly this was someone for whom people cared deeply, and it shows.

Scroll beyond the images of the newspaper, for the actual pieces (in searchable and reproducible text).

Quincy Sun, Thursday, January 30, 1986)

From a six month compilation of the paper’s daily editions, available here.

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Tom Burgin, my grandfather’s brother, was Quincy’s beloved mayor, and a lifelong public servant of that community.

1939 Press Photo: Mayor Thos. Burgin, JW Savage, & city clerk Crane

Near the end of his life, Tom Burgin put pen to paper and produced most of a memoir, which, with a little judicious editing and rearrangement, became the volume you see here.

It was “printed” in a very small run. More like xeroxed and stapled together. And, fortunately,  the sole surviving copy (that I know of) was found and saved by cousin, Elisha Lee.

This winter, Elisha was good enough to give me permission to take the pages out of their binding, and scan the whole thing, so that it could survive in electronic/ digital form–hopefully to be read in the future by people interested in the town’s history.

This little volume – really the collection of a man’s thoughts and observations on his passage through this world – almost didn’t make it.

I’m really happy that it has.

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With the goal of preserving his manuscript, and getting it into the hands of others who might enjoy it as well, here is the whole text of Tom Burgin’s Remembering Quincy at 80...

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The following, written ten years later is more laconic, but no less revealing. I’ve returned to re-read it many times. The older I get, the more I revere this man. He has been physically dead for years, and yet not two days go by that I don’t think of him and his example. He seems, in that, alive and vibrant.

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Looked at with the perspective which comes thirty-five years out of college, my life has been happy, but not glamorous; interesting, but not eventful; rewarding, but not lucrative. Some of the things that grow in importance to me with the passing of time are: the greatness of Harvard, the value of standards, people, tolerance of others’ viewpoints, humor, and forehandedness.

In the field of activities, my interests seem to be reasonably diversified among family, business, civic and educational concerns, snatched opportunities for recreational reading, golf, and my place on the Maine coast. My affiliations include…

C.R. Burgin

October 28, 1955

While I could have included more of the writing by and about Grampa composed at the end of his life, I remain particularly fascinated by this piece, written for his twenty-fifth at Harvard. The collected thoughts of a man in the act of creating his life.  The comments of a player, taking a brief time-out, before jumping back into a very undecided game.

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The obvious distress of the Secretary’s third request for my biography has finally got me pinned down.  The first two had the easy and rather gentle sound of the notices I send out for interest, not too long overdue,— but this third one!— “Angels and ministers of grace, defend us,”— what can any self-respecting man do but push aside the litter on the study desk, order the bewildered offspring off to early bed, and prepare to grasp the proverbial bull firmly by the horns.

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When my grandfather, C.R. Burgin, was in college, he pledged a fraternity, and one of the (now quaint) hazing rituals he was put through was to memorize the sequence of U.S. presidents up through Wilson.

For this he devised a shortcut, which was to only say the first syllable of their surnames. Sixty years later he could still rattle them all off, to the never-ending delight of his children and grandchildren: “WashAdJeff, MadMonAd, JackVanHar, TyPoTay...” and so on, till the penultimate “Eli Taft,”  and the ultimate, “Tiger Wilson, Sir!” (I’ll let you figure out the Eli and Tiger.)

In August of 1980, the summer I was fourteen, I spent a week or so with my grandparents alone in Maine, and one evening he wrote them all out for me, with an update through Carter.

I’m putting this up fully aware it will mean next to nothing to those family members who didn’t know him, and less than nothing to non-family who just happen by.

But sitting on the porch of the house in Maine, listening to him recite these while the ice in his bourbon softly clinked, and watching his face fill with mirth recalling it all, is one of my sweetest memories.

This piece of paper still puts me there.

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