"My Father's Favorite Small World Story"

                 The Backstage Attorney

                              written by Patrick F. Linehan Sr.

        In the year 1940, I was working in The Bush Tower Building on West 42nd Street in Manhattan.  At the time I was 22 years old. My job was to show office space to prospective tenants.  In addition to this I had showrooms of sectional bookcases which I sold for the C.J. Lundstrom Company of Little Falls, New York. My title was Floor Manager, for which I was paid fifteen dollars a week plus the commission I received for selling the sectional bookcases for the Lundstrom Company.

      On the same floor where I worked was a company called The Bubble Glow Sign Co. which was owned by a lovely, rich, overweight woman named Miss Cowey.  She used her company as a toy !  Among the other playthings she owned was Rip Van Winkle Camp located in the Catskill Mountains.  One day when Miss Cowey was leaving her office she approached me and asked if, during the course of the summer, I would be so kind as to forward her mail to her camp upstate….which I did.  Before I left to go on vacation, I wrote to Miss Cowey informing her that I had made arrangements for someone to forward her mail in my absence.

      To my surprise, the following Saturday morning I received a phone call from a man named Frank O’Rourke, whom I had met when he had come to visit Miss Cowey at the Bubble Glow office earlier that year.  Frank was a French Professor who spent his summers working as a counselor at Miss Cowey’s camp. He was a very likeable man who I think….had something going with Miss Cowey! In any case, Frank informed me that Miss Cowey had asked him to invite me to spend my vacation, as her guest, at Camp Rip Van Winkle. I graciously accepted the generous offer and headed to the Catskills!

       Now, here I am, a child of The Great Depression, a boy from Howard Beach, New York, finding myself planted among the idle rich! Nestled among beautiful mountains and surrounded by rippling waters was a camp staffed with counselors, several nurses and a private physician.  The facilities provided the guests with numerous leisure time activities such as horseback riding, boating, tennis, and a full indoor ice hockey rink. It was on this rink that I watched Muzz Patrick of The New York Rangers teaching the campers how to play hockey. That day I took particular notice of a young man who was assisting Muzz.  He stood out in the crowd as a remarkable hockey player. I found myself so impressed with him that I decided to take some random photos of him.  That was the summer of 1940. 

       Let’s move on! The year is 1957 and I am working for Vince Jacobi as a Frontlightman for the Broadway show, “My Fair Lady” at The Mark Hellinger Theater in New York City.  One night, while waiting for the subway on 50^th Street and 8^th Avenue, my brother-in-law Jack Rowland who was a Soundman for the show, walked toward me and introduced me to his friend Jimmy Brannigan.  Jack said that Jimmy was working for Eddie Camus in the Prop Department at the theater.  Working in the Spotlight Booth rarely afforded me the opportunity to meet all of the people who worked Backstage. Jimmy told me he had a Law Degree from Georgetown but also had a sideline career in Show Business.  In the course of conversation, the name Muzz Patrick came up.  I told him that I had met Muzz Patrick years ago at Camp Rip Van Winkle back in 1940.  Jimmy was taken aback with my comment and told me that he too had been at Camp Van Winkle in 1940 as well.  It seems that he came from a working class family from the West Side of Manhattan who could not afford the luxury of sending their son to a camp like Rip Van Winkle.  However, his parents were good friends with the Patrick family and Muzz invited Jimmy to the camp, to assist him in teaching the campers how to play hockey!  “What a small world” was my remark to him, not knowing then that the world would get even smaller!

       Needless to say, as soon as I got home that evening I looked through the photo album I had filled seventeen years earlier with photos I had taken on my vacation at Rip Van Winkle Camp.  There under the photo of the young hockey player, who had impressed me so many years ago, was the name Brannigan! The next night I  went backstage and handed the photograph to Jimmy, who shouted out “Holy Shit…that’s me!”  Yes, it was a very small world indeed!  Over the years I lost touch with Jimmy but I had heard he was working as the head of some department at a television studio in the city.  That however was not the last I would hear of Jimmy Brannigan.  Years went by and the world did indeed get smaller!

        One evening, Brannigan and his best friend, who was a Police Inspector for the City of New York, got into a meaningless argument outside of a restaurant in Manhattan.  The confrontation that ensued would make the headlines!  The story that that appeared in the newspapers would tell us that Brannigan threw a punch….and killed his best friend!  The conclusion to this story is not without irony.  It was said that when the Police Inspector’s wife was told that her husband had an accident….she insisted that someone should get in touch with Jimmy Brannigan immediately because he would know what to do! After all, Brannigan was a lawyer and her husband’s Best Friend!

       This small world story ends with Jimmy Brannigan being booked and charged with Involuntary Manslaughter. However, Jimmy died of a heart attack before the case ever came to trial!

                                                             Patrick F. Linehan Sr.

                                                                                    Frontlightman on Broadway

                                                                                    Retired Local #1 – Card No. 263