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  • My Grandfather and Father Salute Mr. Stevens
  • Kerry M. Brennan

My grandfather, James F. Brennan, was born in Hartford in 1912 and began his career as an underwriter with the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company in the early 1930s. According to family oral history, my grandfather likely suffered from what might now be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. In the early 1950s, he was hospitalized at what was then known as the Hartford Retreat during a particularly persistent period of depression.

The family story doesn't make clear whether it was the illness itself, or the stigma attached to it, that led my grandfather to lose his position at the insurance company following his hospitalization. My own father, who would have been around ten years old at the time, remembered that his Dad was called to a meeting with an executive upon his release from the hospital, to discuss his future at the company. He would never work as an underwriter again, but he was re-employed by the Hartford in the role of elevator operator at the company headquarters.

The story goes that when my grandfather returned to work, he found that most of his colleagues, with whom he had been friendly before his illness, no longer spoke to him or even met his eyes as he ferried them from lobby to office and back again. Among the few exceptions was Wallace Stevens, by then a Vice President at the Hartford, who always greeted my grandfather by name.

This small gesture of respect meant a great deal to my grandfather. He was a sensitive man who could be deeply hurt by the judgment of others. He was also thoughtful, intelligent, and a lover of poetry whose admiration for Mr. Stevens had perhaps little to do with his powerful position at the Hartford.

James F. Brennan died in 1976. Thirty years later, my father heard of plans to commemorate Wallace Stevens' life in Hartford by the marking of a path along his daily walk to the office. He wrote the following poem to shed some light on the very last part of that famed commute, and to honor a daily act of decency which contrasts with the curmudgeonly reputation of the poet, and which was never forgotten by the elevator operator and his family. [End Page 99]

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