Brian Ledwith

Brian J Ledwith is born March 7, 1940, eldest son of James F and Anne Elizabeth McGovern Ledwith.  His father James is born in Brooklyn in 1902 and his mother Anne in Garadice, County Leitrim, Ireland, in 1904.  On the 1940 census, where Brian appears as 1 month old, the family lives at 74 Hicks Street in Brooklyn, which they rent for $30 a month. The household includes, in addition to the family of three, three lodgers—a widowed woman of 65 who does not work and two men, one a grocery clerk and the other a safety engineer.  Brian’s father James is listed as head of household with an occupation as government clerk. 

Three siblings follow shortly after Brian’s birth—Jane Ellen, Anne M and James P—all born before 1945.  The family are practicing Catholics, members of St Joseph’s parish in Park Slope, where Brian also attends elementary school.  On the 4th of July 1953, when Brian is thirteen and his youngest sibling only nine, their father James dies.  His mother lives almost forty more years, until August 23, 1994.  She never remarries. Both parents are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn, NY.

In 1958 Brian graduates from St Augustine High School, a Catholic academy for boys in Brooklyn, where the yearbook notes that although Brian is a new addition to the class he serves on the Student Council and has been readily accepted by his fellows, who appreciate his keen sense of humor and ability to get along with others.  Also noted is his reliability:  “He’ll never quit in the middle of a job.”  At the time of his graduation he expects to continue schooling at Fordham.

After that the trail of documentation for Brian J Ledwith goes cold until the years of 2003-2014, when the city directory lists him at 390 Ninth Avenue in New York, address for the general delivery window at New York’s main post office, which the New York Times chronicles in a 2014 article: A Manhattan Post Office Is the Only Address Some People Have.  In the article a man waiting in line at 10 a.m. for the door to open tells the reporter, Michael Wilson, “This is where homeless people get their mail.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/nyregion/a-manhattan-post-office-is-the-only-address-some-people-have.html

On September 16, 2018, at Terrace Health Care Center, a nursing home in the Bronx, Brian, age 78, dies.

We did not know Brian, but today, researching his life, tracing his boyhood, we appreciate him in the present tense, and we send love and gratitude for him into the universe.