Shipwreck

My dad, Tony Sullivan Sr., hung out at Revere Beach bars every day he wasn’t working and every single night of the year. Unless, of course, he was in bed or on the couch suffering from debilitating clinical depression. Tony Sr. grew up in Revere, Massachusetts, a north shore suburb of Boston, during the 1950’s and early 1960’s. Revere was a working-class city back then. Nowadays, most of Revere, especially near the beautiful beachfront, had been gentrified by new money. The condos went up in the 1990’s and dominate the beach skyline today. The only parts of the beach that looked like the “old days of the 70’s, in the 90’s, were the bars that dotted the landscape.

While the Italian Mafia allowed Revere Beach to evolve through the years, they kept the clubs, bars, and restaurants where they conducted their daily business intact until 1990 when the big money came rolling in. The Mafia, which is short for the Italian Mafia, was headquartered in the North End of Boston. With a satellite office in Revere, they were involved in most money-making businesses here since the Great Depression.

My introduction to the nightlife of Revere Beach came during the late 1970’s when my dad would take me, his only son Tony Jr., out with him to his nightly haunts. My dad was a bar hopper. He liked to start at one end of the beach and make his way to the other end throughout the evening. We would start at the Shipwreck Lounge, the first bar on the southern end of Revere Beach. We then made our way to Bill Ash’s Lounge and Sammy’s Patio before stopping for a pizza at Bianchi’s Pizza. According to my dad, we had to “soak up the booze with the pizza” to be able to continue our bar trek without getting too drunk to drive home. The drinking age was eighteen, but I was only sixteen. My dad knew all the bouncers, waitresses, and bartenders everywhere we went so I guess just looking eighteen did the trick. I didn’t complain. A night on the town with my dad, meeting new people, having a few beers and a good meal was a great night.

While I didn’t know it at the time, my dad suffered from the mental health disorder of Manic Depression, known better as Bipolar Disorder today. If he wasn’t depressed, he was manic. He went from one extreme to the other without any “normal” times in between. He was a party legend. He could stay up all night drinking, laughing and partying, get minimal sleep and do it again the next day. While manic, he would have racing thoughts, talk a mile a minute, and be consistently upbeat, jumpy and wired. He also had an exaggerated sense of self-confidence and was euphoric most of the time.

Tony Sullivan Sr. also had a unique ability to make other people feel incredibly good during these manic episodes that would last anywhere from three months to six months before he would cycle into depression. The hopelessness, despair, fatigue, lack of pleasure and suicidal ideation associated with depression would have probably made most sufferers run to the doctor to take medication to put a halt to the crushing lows. However, my dad was more than willing to endure these lows to eventually experience his euphoric “highs”.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my father was the only Irish guy “the boys” allowed to hang with them on Revere Beach. These bars were sanctuaries for organized crime, and they didn’t want outsiders hanging out, period. They evidently checked out my dad early in his visits and found out that he was not a cop. He was just a local banker that enjoyed their company. All my friends were Italian, so it didn’t seem odd to me to be hanging out with bars full of Italians.

The Italian Mafia members in Revere loved my dad and my dad loved them right back. According to him, these guys were the only people who could keep up with him and his daily nightlife activities. “They party like I do”, my dad would exclaim as if this was a very favorable trait. After eating at Bianchi’s, we would continue up the Revere beach strip to The Driftwood Restaurant bar and then head into Lynn, Massachusetts to hit the Porthole Pub. From there, we usually ended up at a nightclub called Yesterdays in Saugus, Massachusetts to listen to some performers who imitated Elvis Presley, Tom Jones, Englebert Humperdinck, Don Ho, Bobby Darrin, Johnny Mathis, Ray Charles and other singers from the 1950’s. We would then eat Chinese food at Kowloon’s in Saugus before backtracking and frequenting the same bars yet again, and ending up at The Shipwreck Lounge before closing.

Although I didn’t inquire as to what criminal activities might be going on in these establishments, I did get to know a very nice man named Vinny that owned a restaurant in the North End of Boston. He also took bets on sporting events. I knew this because he was always using the payphone in The Shipwreck and the house phone on The Shipwreck bar itself, and he talked even louder than my dad. We spent a lot of time with Vinny bar hopping and hanging out at The Shipwreck “shooting the shit” as Vinny would say.

The food at Vinny’s restaurant was top notch and we thought Vinny was top notch too. Vinny attended my high school and college graduations. His gifts nearly paid for one semester's tuition at UMass Amherst. Gregarious and generous, he accompanied us on our nightly strolls through Revere and other North Shore drinking establishments owned and operated by the Cosa Nostra and its members.

In the spring of 1990, I left my job as a teacher at a private school in Miami, Florida to come home and help my mom deal with my dad’s mood fluctuations. He had been on a manic whirlwind tour without mom. Tony Sr. had taken out $50,000 from their joint checking account and disappeared. Before I arrived back in Boston, my father had been stopped trying to penetrate the compound of the head of the New England Mafia in Providence, Rhode Island. In his manic state, he was going to ask him for a job collecting debts for "The Family". Thankfully, their security intercepted him and called the local police. After spending a month or so at the Pembroke psychiatric facility, he was released, was taking a new medication and came home to Revere.

Tony Sr. tried to start a new, sober, medicated chapter of his life, but the tug of his manic highs was too much for him to take. “I’m sorry Tony. I’m a junkie for my highs”, was his statement to me as he left the house to hit all the joints on the Revere strip one balmy summer evening in 1990. I looked at my mother and she just shook her head. It would just be me tonight. I hurried to get into the car before my dad pealed out of the driveway in his lime green Dodge Charger.

“You’re coming with me?”, said Tony Sr. “There’s nothing that I’d rather be doing”, I responded. My father beamed a wide smile and countered with “That makes me happy”. “It makes me happy too dad”, I replied even though I secretly wished we were home playing Scrabble with my mother. I loved hanging with my dad, but it was certainly stressful to say the least.

We pulled in front of the Shipwreck, parked the car and strolled into the bar. “Tony!!!”, was yelled by Vinny, on his usual bar stool, and seemingly everyone else in the bar. The next five minutes were spent with us hugging every bar patron as well as all the waitresses and bartenders. They all gave my dad a good ribbing for what he tried to accomplish down in Rhode Island. Chuckles, chortles and guffaws resonated throughout the bar along with a lot of backslapping of my dad by his Shipwreck friends.

We had a few drinks during the next hour and then Vinny chimed in. “Let’s hit all the hot spots, T”, Vinny said boisterously to my dad. “I wouldn’t have it any other way”, replied my dad. Next thing I knew, I was in the backseat of the Charger with my dad driving and Vinny in the passenger seat. As we parked at Sammy’s Patio’s back parking lot, my father jumped out and hurried inside while me and Vinny took our sweet time exiting the car. “How’ve you been Tony?”, asked Vinny, who was looking a little pale. “I’m good, Vinnie. It’s good to see you and hang with you two again”, I responded truthfully.

As Vinny went to put his arm over my shoulder and walk to the bar door with me, he grabbed his chest with his left arm and took a knee. It was obvious he was having trouble breathing. Vinny wasn’t old at 55 but I’m sure the stress of his life could certainly cause physical problems. “I’m going inside to call 911”, I said hastily as I started to make a run for the door. “No, come here”, Vinny responded insistently, and I did as I was told. “Take these”, he said to me as he reached into his coat pocket and handed me a little brown notebook and a little black notebook.

“The brown book is my official Shipwreck betting log. Cosa Nostra will know about this one and you must give it to the owner of the Shipwreck if anything happens to me”, said Vinny in a choppy breathy sentence. “This black book contains side bets I was taking individually that no one else knows about. I want you to have it. All the names and phone numbers and amounts are there and there is no crossover from the black book. If I don’t make it, collect the debts and use the money to buy a house, save for retirement, or whatever you want. You are like a son to me”, Vinny said quickly and with purpose. I began to move towards the bar but he was holding my coat in his fist, and even sick he was still as strong as a bull. He released his grasp briefly and I broke free. He said one more thing as I bolted away to the bar. “Promise me Tony”. “I promise”, was my immediate response as I opened the bar door. I grabbed the bar phone and called 911. Everyone in the club heard my frantic call and ran out to help Vinny, who was now silent and prone on the ground.

My dad gave him chest compressions and mouth to mouth resuscitation before the ambulance arrived. The ambulance took him to Winthrop Hospital nearby, but Vinny was dead on arrival. When word filtered back to the bar, I immediately gave the brown notebook to the owner of the Shipwreck as instructed. Vinny’s boss never asked if there was another journal.

After a sufficient mourning time, I collected the debts amounting to a little over $20,000 dollars. At age 27, I invested the money in the biggest and most well-known mutual fund in the world, the Fidelity Magellan Fund. The fund averaged over 12% per year from 1990 until 2012 when my twin daughters entered college. In 2012, the investment was worth close to $200,000 and managed to pay for most of my daughters’, and my younger son’s, college costs.

I briefly thought about not collecting Vinny’s debts. However, a dying friend’s last wish is an unbreakable sacred bond. Rest in Peace, Vinny, and thank you.