“Language,” said DP’s mother, a frail, short, thin, flat, sickly woman who tended to wear a lot of black.

“We’re Catholics, aren’t we?” asked Daniel Patrick. “So why can’t I go to a Catholic school?”

“All this because of a football game.” Flynn Brady shook his head. “Don’t worry, you’ll fill out. Right now you take after your mother, but you’ll fill out. Now shut up and eat your dinner,” said DP’s father, pointing a long finger with a dirty fingernail at the kid’s food. DP’s father was not very understanding.

Turning to his mother, DP asked, “We’re good Catholics, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are,” snapped DP’s father. He sat at the head of the table, his suit coat hanging from the back of his chair, his shirt collar open, his tie pulled down a notch or two, and his suspenders dangling by the sides of his pants.

“We don’t go to church every Sunday,” said his twelve-year-old son. “I don’t, and I don’t see the two of you going very much.”

“I’m tired on Sundays,” muttered DP’s father, not enjoying his son’s interrogation. “I work hard during the week, and—”

“We’re not very good Catholics,” said DP’s mother softly.

“Jesus Christ, Emma…” snorted Flynn Brady.

“Well, we’re not. God knows we’re going to pay for it too.”

“Why, if we’re Catholic,” asked young DP, “am I going to Bala Grammar School and not St. Matthias?”

“Answer him, Mother,” ordered Flynn Brady.

“I have nothing to say,” said Emma Brady.

DP’s father said, “They expect a yearly contribution to the church fund if your kid goes to St. Matt’s, that’s why.”

“That’s not true,” sighed DP’s mother.

DP’s father shook his head.

DP wasn’t always sure why his father shook his head. Discouraged? Disappointed? Something his mother said?

“I want to go to St. Matthias,” said the boy.

And so he did, completing his seventh and eighth grades there. And then on to high school at St. Joseph Prep School, not far from St. Matthias. It was at St. Joe Prep that Daniel Patrick Brady began his Jesuit education. When DP graduated from St. Joseph Prep School, he continued to stay in the neighborhood, entering St. Joseph College, a few blocks away.

DP Brady loved St. Joe. He lived with three classmates in a small apartment not far from school on City Line Avenue. He worked lunch and dinner behind the cash register in the college cafeteria to pay for some of his tuition expenses. Young DP Brady hadn’t “filled out” yet, as his father had promised, and though he couldn’t make any varsity team, DP was one of the school’s most popular students.

Senior year, he became the basketball team’s mascot.

St. Joe was a big-time basketball power and its mascot was a hawk. Being the hawk mascot called for someone with a lot of nervous and frenetic energy, more important than agility and athletic prowess. If you were chosen as the school’s hawk, you were awarded a full scholarship for your senior year along with a hawk costume, and were required to run around flapping the hawk’s wings for the entire game. The hawk was allowed to rest during halftime. Many tried out for the honored position, but only one was chosen.