TOM SHEA

From the pages of The Republican

Somewhere around mile 24 of the marathon, Ericka Emerson, the daughter of a physician, physically active her whole life, collapsed of cardiac arrest.  Full story »

The Gray House is a kind of community center with emotional and spiritual support offered at no charge. Full story »

At 5 a.m., it takes the 58-year-old father of three grown children only 45 minutes to make it from his North Brookfield home to the field house at Springfield College to lift weights with his fellow members of the school’s baseball team.  Full story »

The Dodgers were the only team that lived together as a team until the 1960s, when segregation laws were overturned.  Full story »

Nearly 30 years later he can tell you she wore: A beige blouse and chino pants. She was cradling four or five books. Her hair was long and dark.  Full story »

He managed the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants when baseball ruled New York City.  Full story »

It was a neighborhood ... mostly of people who weren’t first in line for the family farm. Who weren’t the eldest. That was the rule. The eldest got the farm. The others had to move on. And they did.  Full story »

A little more than 20 years ago, the Rev. Leo Hoar was teaching a graduate level course at Springfield College, either on contemporary Christianity or liberation theology. He’s not sure which. But the priest does recall a student, Doug Campbell, suggesting (“Maybe ‘challenging’ would be a better word,” says Father Hoar) the class to go to Haiti, to see for... Full story »

Charles E. Cobb Jr. – Charlie to his friends – is writing. At the moment it is a piece of journalism, but he is also working on his memoirs, “Standing at the Crossroads,” the title taken from the Robert Johnson blues song. Two years ago his book, “On the Freedom Road: A Guided Tour of Civil Rights Trails,” was published... Full story »

 New year, fresh notebook.           HOLYOKE NATIVE and best-selling author Neil Sheehan’s latest, “A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon,” was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the 10 best books of 2009.           Schriever, who shepherded the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile program, was 94 when... Full story »

It was unseasonably warm in Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, the school year under way. Lucjan Krolikowski was 19, a seminarian studying philosophy. His twentieth birthday would be in six days. He was the third of four children, the son of a baker father and grocer mother. Lucjan was 13 or 14 when he told his mother and grandmother that... Full story »

Kevin Noonan looks great. That he’s rested is the first impression. He’s maybe even standing a bit taller – no small trick at age 54. He’s grown back his beard. It’s now pretty much all gray. His two daughters, Maya and Asha, are in college. He goes for long walks with his golden retriever, Chelsea. He’s just back from the... Full story »

Andrew Garvin is 12, polite and outgoing, and then, within seconds, shy. The sixth-grader at Springfield’s St. Michael’s Academy is basketball-team tall and rangy, but plays soccer and baseball. He is a handsome boy with green eyes, black hair. He is half Puerto Rican, a quarter Italian and quarter Irish. I tell him he looks a little like Derek Jeter... Full story »

Laurie Haas has enough to do.          A motor vehicle accident 13 years ago left her with a broken neck and crushed thoracic vertebrae. The resulting grinding pain rarely takes a day off.           On this recent morning, the 50-year-old mother of four has an appointment with her physical therapist and chiropractor.           It’s... Full story »

Summer. First night in Amsterdam. Too late for the museums. Lost, in a good way, among the canal-edged streets. Doing our best not to walk in the bicycle lanes. There are women for rent in windows. Dope smoke wafts from coffee shops. It is hard to believe one city could host so many Argentinian steak joints. There are still independent... Full story »