My father was the serious minded younger brother who established a dancing school in Pre-Depression Era Hartford, Connecticut and stuck with it for 37 years. Uncle Jack followed the call of the wanderlust. Early pictures of my Uncle showed a debonair gent with William Powell looks and all Irish charm. One of my favorite stories goes that in 1934 after squandering a small family inheritance on the golden indolences of sun, rum and women my uncle found himself stranded in Miami, Florida. Versions of the story were told so often I can easily picture him, trim and white-suited guiding beautiful women named Sylvia or Rita over glossy floors to sassy rumba bands. In response to my uncle’s plight, my father wired a modest sum to facilitate a rescue. Uncle Jack was able to purchase a bus ticket and the necessary staple to sustain a week’s trip up the coast: a 25-pound bag of oranges. My uncle would retell the story years later while pursing his lips and suffering pounds of imaginary pith still stuck in his teeth. I believe he never ate another orange.Irish traditions blending melancholy and buffoonery were the bill of fare at our family gatherings. Uncle Mike played violin and banjo, Aunt Mim recited wonderful Irish poems, my father danced and played ukulele, my mother or cousin Judy played piano, Uncle Bill was an accomplished step dancer and could reprise a Sailor's Hornpipe at a moments time. Brothers Tom and Jim added great Irish stories as well.
For me, Uncle Jack’s celebrated contribution reached the full heights of glory, when at some point during a party, he would stand, reach into his coat pocket and turn his back to us in a smooth, excruciatingly slow movement. We all knew what was coming. As with all great performances, you never tire of perfection. A small box was opened and he removed an imaginary tablet and placed it into his mouth. Even from behind him, we could observe the early effects of the terrible pill; the awesome metamorphosis first noticed at the ears caused by the tongue’s placement behind the teeth, the horrible compression of the neck, a shuddering elongation of his arms and a reduction of body height practically in half. Suddenly my wonderful uncle turned and we were facing an agitated, snorting chimpanzee. With curled extended fingers dragging on the floor, his tilted head seemed almost human. He crawled and climbed on the table and chairs and us. He moved jerkily, giving quizzical looks that always brought us to tears. The performance would go on until we could no longer contain ourselves and collapse from sheer enjoyment. Uncle Jack claimed to have devised the routine years before to enliven an overly prim dinner guest whose solemn ways he felt required it. My family’s appetite for silliness was fortunately, endless.
I grew up in a 15 room house with a cavernous actic in Hartford, Connecticut that housed my father’s dancing school.
We occupied five rooms on the second floor and the rest were devoted to tap, ballet and ballroom dance lessons. The first floor had a spacious reception area with French doors that opened to a large ballroom space featuring a 14 foot high canvas ceiling, chandeliers, five huge mirrors, ballet bars, about fifty folding chairs lining the wall space and an upright piano. The second and third floors had a smattering of rooms for private instruction. Our living area and the studio rooms were separated by a few closed doors and keeping that fragile interface intact is an early memory. It was quite usual for my brother and I to drift off to sleep to the melodies of fox-trots and rumbas or tunes like Cheek To Cheek and Muskrat Ramble wafting up through the floor. That music became my staple and the great dancers associated with it, remain even now, the exalted ones. Dancers like Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, the Nicholas Brothers, Eleanor Powel, Donald O'conner and Peg Leg Bates were our family gods and Fred Astaire was Jupiter himself. 
Uncle Jack’s favorite tap dancer was Bill Robinson. Out of loyalty, I claimed to like Bill Robinson the best but my heart always belonged to Fred. During my early years, Uncle Jack worked part-time for my father teaching dancing and was often at our house during the day. We had a studio-couch in the den that my uncle used for naps between lessons. When I was young, I would take my nap on the floor next to him. It was during those preschool years that we really got down to the business of being friends. As I started school, Uncle Jack would have a cup of hot “Cambric Tea” ready for me when I got home. This historic Irish drink was actually sugary scalded milk with a teabag in it for show. I believe the desired effect was to make me feel grown up and it worked. There were occasions when my Uncle insinuated himself into my life during times of crisis. I remember playing with matches in the Spring when I was about eight and setting our Christmas tree on fire. The tree had been leaning against the side of our house for months, its desiccated limbs ready to burst into flames at the mere proximity of the match-head. I was shocked when it happened and dragged the flaming monster to the center of our back yard away from our house. Our neighbor, who might have been waiting all his life for the moment, appeared with a huge fire extinguisher and put the flames out. I was exposed, humiliated, dead meat. The next thing I knew, I was hiding in our living room closet, terrified, waiting silently in the dark for the inevitable moment of judgment. My paranoia was rampant. I was unresponsive to the voices of my parents calling out my name. Finally I heard a gentle voice whisper into the closet. "You in there Champ? The voice of Uncle Jack was like a healing balm infused into that dark space. I stepped out of the closet into the arms of my Paladin. So gently was I hugged into bravery, that my fear melted away. Uncle Jack took me by the hand into the kitchen to face my parents. I have long since forgotten how my misdeed was handled by my parents, but that particular expression of kindness is very well remembered. My uncle made it obvious that I was his favorite and I loved him for it. Actually our special relationship was established from the time that I nicknamed him UncleWow. Apparently, I yelled "WOW WOW WOW" while batting a wooded spoon against my highchair whenever he waked in the room. I was an intuitive nipper because the moniker was a perfect fit.
By the time I was in high school, Uncle Jack had taken a job as a night watchman at a tool and dye manufacturing company located a few blocks from our house. Once each hour he had to walk through the darkened building, four cavernous floors, inserting and turning a key into remotely placed red boxes that somehow satisfied the requirements of a security company. The entire trek took about twenty minutes. If he overlooked one of these checkpoints, fire trucks would show up or something equally disagreeable would occur. He called this “making the rounds”. My uncle had a powerful gliding step, swinging his arms to propel himself in a way that made easy work of the job. Today I still adopt The Jack Ryan Walk when I need to cover ground quickly. Many times throughout high school, I would bring him a thermos of coffee and we would sit and talk or listen to a baseball game on his static-prone radio before heading out on the next “round”. We would walk at a good pace with me carrying the key and “punching the clocks’. It would have been impossible for me to imagine that our friendship would come to such a murky end.
I make no excuse for abandoning my uncle at the end of his life. I know perfectly well when it happened. I had succumbed to a exclusive - all wrapped up - no room for anybody but the two of us love induced psychosis. I was consumed with love for Cynthia who subsequently became my wife. How can one reconcile such absorption? The near pathological force that could obscure one love for another is an enigma I'll always ponder. Who else in my life must have suffered during this span of rose-colored myopia? My foolishness has left an indelible reminder about the cost of not being present to your actions; perhaps that was my Uncle’s final gift to me. He would have excused my absence as temporary insanity. And it was. Uncle Wow accepted everything about me.
Jack(left) and my Father
dancing at our wedding - 1969