The Big Red Dog that Owned Me

In the mid 1950's, the diocese of Mobile deicded that a new parish was needed in the Warrington, Florida area. It would be located between Barrancas Avenue and Bayshore Drive, just a few blocks west of the old Bayou Chico bridge, which no longer exists.

A small, snuff-taking priest named Father Jules Keating was assigned to the new parish, St. Thomas More, and took up residence in the new rectory. Until its restoration and revival as a rectory, the dilapidated old home had been the neighborhood "haunted house". It took a brave soul to enter within its walls, and we normally contented ourselves with chucking rocks through the few shards of glass which hung stubbornly in the windows.

Outside the back door was a pile of sheetrock which someone had gutted out of the building, and on this pile grew some of the biggest, juiciest blackberries ever shared by man, boy, and bird.

Father Keating had one worldly possession of which he was inordinately fond...a pedigree Irish Setter bitch named Helen, I believe. Shortly after arrival, she gave birth to a litter of little red fur balls. Two died and were given appropriate burials with all rites due the adopted offspring of a Catholic priest of the Irish persuasion.

Father Keating once asked my mother if she wanted one of the puppies, to which she replied in an emphatically negative manner.

"That's funny," he said, "Both your husband and your son told me that your family wanted one!"

In accordance with my mother's wishes, all the puppies were allotted to other members of the parish, much to my chagrin. However, a few months later, Lt. Commander Ken Lake, one of the recipients, got orders transferring him to Norfolk, VA. He had a chance to take a look at the quarters he and his family would be occupying and determined that he w0uld have to find a home for the puppy he had gotten from Father Keating.

The "puppy" was now several months old and was a big, gangly, happy-go-lucky full blooded Irish Setter named, "Sean".

Sean and I grew up together, and, unfortunately, I was in a dormitory at Florida State University when he finally died.

For many years, he and I wandered the beach near to our home. He was curious about everything. He used to wade out into Pensacola Bay and walk around with his head under water. I finally waded out beside him one day and learned that he was following crabs who were quite incensed at this canine intrusion into their environment.

Sean was Irish through and through. He was beautiful, and he made Big Red look like a skinny punk dog. One day when some scenes from "Wings of Eagles", with John Wayne, were being shot down Bayshore Drive. Cary's Lane, where I lived, was the first major road to Bayshore Drive from Barrancas Avenue, and cars came down to the corner where our house stood, and turned onto Bayshore all day long.

One of the cars which stopped at the corner was a big black limo, and a big man rolled the window down and spoke to Sean for a moment. My mother said the man looked a little like John Wayne. Who knows. Everybody seemed to have a moment for Sean.

The night he died, I was in Tallahassee at Florida State University, and my father was in the hospital. My mother called Father Keating to see if he could send the janitor down to help bury Sean where he lay. The janitor was out that day, but Father Keating said he would get it taken care of. My mother had errands to run, and when she returned, Father Keating had dug a hole in the corner of the yard to hold both him and Sean.

They rolled the body into the hole, and Mom asked if the priest was going to say a prayer for the dog. He replied, "No. I'm going to say a prayer for you. You need it more than he does."