Submission: Tim Kelleher Rides Again

The following was submitted to Dedham Patch by resident Brian Wright O'Connor. If you would like to submit to Patch, email samantha.mercado@patch.com. You can also become a contributor on Patch.

Growing up on Jefferson Street, Tim Kelleher used to hitch up the family goat to a wooden cart to pull him and his sister Alice Mary around the presidential avenues of pre-World War II Dedham.

But what Tim and his sister really wanted was to ride a horse, like Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, the western heroes of the silver screen, and, closer to home, like the liveried swells of the Dedham Polo Club.

In 1943, with war in the air, 14-year-old Tim got his wish – a chestnut pony named Paddy who came from a Yankee family on Common Street. His father, Timothy F. Kelleher Sr., owned the A.T. Chase Hardware Store in Dedham Square and knew most everyone in town. He built a barn on their lot just off East Street to house Paddy and the goats and the chickens and soon added a second mount to the stable, a white mare called Suds, for Alice Mary.

Tim and his sister put English saddles on Suds and Paddy and rode in the fields and swampy meadows off nearby Rustcraft Street. They also took longer rides among the orchards, farms and pastures of Canton on the far side of Route 128. “We could open up to a gallop over there,” said Tim, now 90, remembering the golden mornings before classes at Noble & Greenough School. “The highway back then was grade level. We rode after school and on weekends, whenever we could.”

A faded black-and-white photo shows fair-haired Tim, face beaming, wearing jodhpurs, a double-breasted riding coat and polished boots, standing between Paddy and Suds among the Rustcraft wildflowers with the tree line on the horizon.

The boots had come from Colonel Thomas Francis Murphy, a World War I veteran who lived on Pearl Street, rode at the Dedham Polo Club, and bought hardware supplies from Tim’s dad. Tim took a brown pair from Colonel Murphy and a black pair went to Mary Alice. “He heard they were looking for riding boots and was happy to see them find a new home,” said Colonel Murphy’s daughter Judy, 95, a star college athlete who taught in the Dedham schools for years and still lives in the white-frame family home she grew up in.

After the war ended and with school behind him, Tim worked in the family hardware store and had less time to ride. Tim went into the service and Paddy and Suds soon trotted off to another family. The boots migrated to the back of the closet. Years went by. Tim married and moved with his bride Catherine to a home on Lincoln Street. The hardware store changed hands, so Tim pivoted to sales, creating among his customers the sense of community he had found among the aisles of tools and nails and fasteners and other what-nots that kept households running as smoothly as Paddy’s canter.

The boots gathered dust as the young couple raised three children – Brien, Tim III, and Ann. Tim and Catherine aged gracefully like oiled saddlery, eventually moving in with their daughter Ann Stanesa and her family on Woodleigh Road. The boots went up to the attic. In 2015, Tim’s beloved Catherine passed away. He now walked solo around the curving lanes and grand oaks of the neighborhood. Even in summer, life seemed wintry. And with stiffer limbs and hands curled by age, the prospect of pulling on those boots again seemed more distant than ever.

But on a recent bright Sunday morning, Ann told her father to bring them down from the attic. The boots, still supple after 70 years in storage, slipped on easily. “This,” she told him, “is a special day.” They drove to Mor Linn Farm in Walpole, where Tucker, a Connemara pony, awaited, tacked and saddled and ready to ride.

Catherine Kennedy, who owns the picturesque riding stable, paddocks, and surrounding fields with her husband Cormac, watched carefully as Tim, helped by Ann and Tim III, creakily climbed the mounting block and swung his leg over Tucker’s back and settled, once again, into a well-worn saddle.

Tim’s eyes shone as he took the reins and paced Tucker around the indoor riding arena, the sun pouring through the tall windows, his children and grandchildren trailing along beside him. Decades fell away. Tim smiled, the beaming boy once again bestride the earth, his legs forked firmly around a horse.

“It’s been a while,” he said after three brisk turns around the arena. “But you never forget.”

--Brian Wright O’Connor