Like No Other

By Kevin Boyle

If wealth is measured in friends, the position for the richest person in town is now open.

And move over, St. Patrick, there’s another Patrick on the way. Although the biggest social day of the year in Rockaway is the St. Patrick’s Parade, the celebration of Patrick Brady’s life on Saturday made Parade Day seem small.

In March, the town turns shamrock green.

On a Saturday in November, another Patrick, another saint — the patron saint of a good time — turned the town blue, with a massive FDNY crowd showing for his funeral. But there was some Irish green, too. And some Xavier maroon, some Connolly’s red, some lifeguard orange, and a Rockaway rugby shirt or two in the mix. And there were shirts with flags that made you think of Pat and the Harbor Light.

Now, I don’t know all the rules, but if one has to perform miracles to be a saint, then I nominate Pat Brady.

It’s a miracle, after all, to have hundreds of best friends. It’s a miracle to make everyone feel better just upon a quick encounter. It’s a miracle to be this beloved — truly beloved — across generations, across genders.

Pat was 42.  Guys — ten and twenty years younger — looked up to him on the FDNY and just around town. That’s how you carry yourself. That’s who I want to be.

Guys his own age loved him for his strength, his care, his fun, his humor, his beast-ness.

Guys my age? Well, one of Pat’s gifts was to become your age. He was an age chameleon. With Pat, I thought I was talking to somebody I went to school with — especially since we shared a joke for 30 years.

My brother Brian, Suntan Dan Edwards and I coached Patrick on the 7th-grade basketball team at St. Francis. The memory is a little fuzzy, but we were having fun giving all the kids nicknames. They could choose their own with multiple choices: A, B, or C. Well, like many multiple-choice tests, there is also D: Other. Make up your own. Patrick chose “Other.”

And that’s what we called each other for thirty years.

Through time, when we bumped into each other, we’d sometimes expand it and say, “What’s up, my brother from another Other?” Or “Yo, Mutha Other, what’s the word?”

But what was even better? We’d shout “Other” to each other from a distance. I might be riding my bike, half oblivious to people on the sidewalk, and I’d hear a shout, “Other!” And I’d keep pedaling and return the shout, “Other!”

He didn’t need to catch my eye or cross paths to send his friendship and warmth my way. He’d spot me and shout “Other” — nothing more — it was his way of keeping our bond.

Sometimes I saw him first and would just yell out, “Other,” like some crazy person, but I’d always get an “Other” back. Just like it happened on Beach 129th, two days before he died. That was it. My last exchange with him. A nickname shoutout to each other.

Suntan’s daughter, who might have appeared in Connolly’s when she wasn’t quite of age, didn’t offer Pat a fake ID, she just said, “Hey Other!” and the drinks flowed. Sunny tells me the whole bar was calling him Other the rest of the night, and he loved it.

As I stood in line, around the corner and down the block from the funeral home, the word “beloved” kept echoing in my head. Patrick was beloved like no one else. I’m not sure there’s a close second in town.

I wish I could tell him this. I wish I could tell him he had a gift. I wish I could tell him that I aspire to be him.

In the classic movie “It’s A Wonderful Life,” George Bailey gets a message from an angel: “No man is a failure who has friends.” And then his brother raises a glass, “To my big brother, George, the richest man in town.”

If love and friendship are the true fortune of this world, Patrick left us all richer for knowing him.

To Patrick Brady — there was No Other.