Pat Dugan…….. my grandfather…….. throat cancer……..1947.
Ed Berrigan…….. my dad…….. heart attack……..1958.
Dickie Budlong…….. my best friend Brucie’ s big brother, when we were
five to eight…….. killed in Korea, 1953.
Red O’ Sullivan…….. hockey star & cross-country runner
who sat at my lunch table
in High School…… car crash…...1954.
Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan…….. my friend, in High School,
Football & Hockey All-State…… car crash….1959.
Cisco Houston…….. died of cancer……..1961.
Freddy Herko, dancer…. jumped out of a Greenwich Village window
in 1963.
Anne Kepler…. my girl…. killed by smoke-poisoning while playing
the flute at the Yonkers Children’ s Hospital
during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist….1965.
Frank…… Frank O’ Hara…… hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.
Woody Guthrie…… dead of Huntington’ s Chorea in 1968.
Neal…… Neal Cassady…… died of exposure, sleeping all night
in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico….1969.
Franny Winston…… just a girl…. totalled her car on the Detroit-Ann Arbor
Freeway, returning from the dentist…. Sept. 1969.
Jack…… Jack Kerouac…… died of drink & angry sickness…. in 1969.
My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.