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Paul Restuccia Obituary
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for Paul Restuccia
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David's Christening with Paul R (2)
September 5, 2017
David's Christening with Paul Restuccia
September 5, 2017
Foz, Restuccia, us, Cambridge
September 5, 2017
September 5, 2017
I am so profoundly sad to hear of the death of my friend Paul Restuccia, who was one of those my wife and I had arrived from Virginia to visit in New England on August 3. Having corresponded by email with him (on his old AOL account) last February, when we invited him to my son Travis' wedding reception, I received a reply telling me the details of his serious health issue, but which he said he felt “optimistic about”.
I responded to him in March, after spending some time to really take in the implications of what he was telling me, and sent him a long email which I hoped would not be the final time I would correspond with him based on that fairly optimistic email. But I was very worried and spent a lot of time on the email wanting to say as much of consequence as I could to him without sounding grim or maudlin. I did not get a response to it, and I do worry that he may never have seen it. He had told me before that he did not often use his AOL account, which is how I responded to him.
I do hope he saw it.
The long email I had sent also indicated that we would up to Boston in early August and that we hoped to visit him then. I sent another email July 31st, a couple days before we took to the road, to let him know we were coming to see him. When I did not get a reply, I was puzzled. I still had absolutely no idea that he had died, and was about to send another email when my wife discovered he had an account on twitter and found his death notice there. I was truly stunned and angry at myself, for if I had been smart enough to find out how sick he had become I would have come a lot sooner if he wanted me to. Tears were shed that night by us both in our Gloucester hotel room.
You see Paul was one of my closest friends. He attended as godfather to my son David who was christened by my father, a minister, at my parent’s house in Manchester-by-the-Sea in the Spring of 1989. Almost unbelievably we discovered early in our friendship that we were born on the exact same day, September 18, 1951 (a month and a day, we often joked, that we shared with the beautiful and enigmatic Greta Garbo, whose Swedish heritage I shared. We were both very interested in writing and I realized pretty quickly how deeply sincere he was and that I could correspond with him about anything and everything, and I did, and he did, in return letters and emails for so many years, all of which I still have, and have been reading over for the past number of days wanting to get in touch with his family to convey how much his friendship meant to me.
I met him through a mutual friend, Paul Cullinane, who I had grown up with, and who I attended K-12 with in Manchester-By-The-Sea. Both Paul's had gone to Brandies and developed a friendship there which I then joined. In our early 20’s we would often meet in Boston and go to blues clubs in Cambridge, like Joe's Place in Inman Square where Hound Dog Taylor and Big Walter Horton would perform; eat at Buddy's Sirloin Pit in Harvard Square; go to the Coop to peruse the books and the fabulous art prints they used to have; see obscure foreign movies at the Brattle Street Theater; or head downtown to Boylston St. to see great music from Freddy King and Muddy Waters at Paul's Mall or the Jazz Workshop.
Of course, we would all be on the lookout for girls, but shy and uncomfortable didn't get you very far with them. But alcohol would loosen tongues and we would talk and talk about writers, art, music, politics, religion, travel, philosophy, sports, girls, etc. far into the night. It was a special time in our lives as we thought about our futures, Paul C. talking about law school and politics, Paul and I mainly about writing and writers, about what was worth writing about, discussing various books new and old, and filling the room with talk of Conrad, Dostoevsky, Henry Miller, Mailer, Thomas Wolfe, Phillip Caputo, Tim O'Brien, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and many more. It was like they were all there somehow, listening to us talk about them, and thru them, into the night. At other times Paul would join us up on Cape Ann where we visited haunts in Rockport, Gloucester and Beverly which were always memorable. It was a special time with one of the most intelligent, perceptive, intensely sincere, funny, kind and compassionate persons I have ever known.
Prior to moving south, in 1977, to Charlottesville, Virginia, I had visited both Paul’s in the D.C. area. At that time, we all had even talked about a road trip out west together to see the country and to possibly even find a place to live out in the San Francisco area. That fell through but I knew it was time for me to move on, and my Civil War history interest led me to Charlottesville, which of course is now in the news in a very tragic way, and linked, interestingly enough, and in no small part, to that tragic war 150 years ago. I personally observed the events of that day last August 12th and I do so wish Paul was here now for me to talk with him about it. We did not always agree about everything, but I think we both had a profound mutual respect for each other, and there was never a hint of personal animosity over any disagreement.
Paul attended my wedding to Liz Riley in 1983 which took place in the chapel at the, then, Endicott Jr. College in Beverly, where my father was chaplain, and afterward to the reception over in East Gloucester overlooking the Atlantic and the Twin Lights on Thacher Island. Liz and I had a wonderfully memorable day together with Paul and many friends and family, including a walk on the beach, and a stroll up and onto the heights of Coolidge Point where Thomas Jefferson's kin once lived.
After my two sons were born my wife and I would visit Cape Ann, sometimes twice a year (Christmas and summers), to see my parents, brother and sisters and their families while our kids and nephews and nieces were growing up, and while my folks were still alive. We would try to see Paul when we could, and a couple times in the summer we met at the Swan Boats at the Public Garden which would help keep the kids occupied and still allow us to visit and talk with Paul. Another time we met Paul and Lucienne at an exhibition hall near the sight of the Boston Tea Party on the waterfront to see a mechanized dinosaur exhibit which involved some, perhaps excessive, growling and snarling. Later we went to the Public Garden where we have video tape of Paul taking my son Travis down into the basin of the monument (apparently dry of water then) erected to the first use of ether at Mass. General Hospital in 1845. The monument mentioned the "Ether Dome" and the statue included some lion heads which Paul, demonstrating his love of children, tried to play-frighten Travis by shouting that he was "in the ether dome" and lifting him up and threatening to place his head into one of the lion statue's mouth. It was hilarious and Travis loved it.
It's obviously difficult to sum up the personal significance of a relationship that I had with Paul. In fact, I feel the tears coming as I write this, and a huge knot forms in my throat. Feeling this way about such a special person I can only imagine what his loss has been like for you in the family. So deeply sad. Words will probably fail me but I must speak, as I think back about looking into his intensely probing eyes, seeking with all their might to see right into the essential heart of whatever we were discussing. No attempt ever to impress or show off his immense intelligence and understanding, he was sincerity personified, and I remember him well talking and writing to me about his many memorable and deeply intuitive speculations and realizations. As I mentioned I have kept all his letters.
I thought I would share one of the letters he wrote to me a few days after our mutual 29th birthdays, September 26, 1980. I was in Charlottesville enjoying that welcoming, gentle, intelligent, beautiful southern town, with its woodlands and farm fields gently rolling up to the Blue Ridge mountains standing like sentinels to the west, with the Shenandoah Valley stretched out vast and fertile beyond that, and the West Virginia Appalachians beckoning one farther west. The letter was written a long time ago, but I think it is so revealing of his hopes and dreams, struggles and concerns, his keen intuitiveness and the kindness and quality of his character:
(Italics are mine)
Dear Tom,
Thanks for the card and the inspiring message upon it, which comes at a time of difficult adjustment. I am now at my desk on a new job, as a security guard at the Children's Hospital on the 3:30 - 11:30 shift. My chair overlooks Longwood Avenue, on a bridge connecting the Children's hospital to the research arm of the medical center. Is it a bridge between humanistic medicine and pure science? I find it odd to be on such a bridge, somewhat like the one I've been trying to create between art and science, intuition and knowledge, for I cannot accept the existentialist answer, that we alone determine our fate by our own actions. A strange intuition has come upon me that what we do is not in isolation, but has an effect somewhere else, perhaps not even visible, nor within the time and space in which we exist.
No, I have not retreated into Ray Bradbury fantasies, but since leaving the newspaper I have felt rather animated, freer in thought, and determined to listen to my own instincts. I don't deny the experience, but it was time to leave and get on with my own work. For like anything in which you are involved intensely, it takes on its own reality and if you do not watch yourself you will never be able to take that step out, in order to look back in. This is true even of artists who sometimes, in the inner search, get so caught up in their own neuroses that in their own work you also lose the sense of being lifted away. But for the artist who can push through to the inner (such as Bergman) or one that breaks out of the self (such as Fellini) there is a magic that somehow transforms you, so when you finish the book, or see the film, in some small way you are never the same again. I have these mad bouts of ecstasy when someone touches those chords - the music of Stravinsky or Mingus; the paintings of Rothko or Picasso, the movies of Bergman, Fellini or Fassbinder.
I worry about my own ego. We talked about it often, how it gets in the way. I have this fear that my personal ambition might get in the way of my literary ambition. My ideas about literature and about life are so strong that I could easily become a misanthrope, a Peck's Bad Boy of literature.
What can one do but try to channel this rage into creative work? I am, at this time, not very optimistic about a relationship. Is there a woman somewhere who can understand my intensity, rather than be frightened by it? I am too serious at times, and don't want to make it sound as though I'm ready to chop off an ear. It is a struggle to find my own voice.
For the first time in a while, I have a good structure to work in. In the mornings, I type over or revise the work of the day before. One morning a week is a fiction workshop I'm attending at the Boston Center. It is very quiet here at work. I sit at the desk and work until my break at 7:30 pm. Occasionally there are interruptions, but for the most part my time is my own.
I can hear you saying, well, aren't you alone much of the time? That is one problem. Perhaps it would be better to be working with a lot of people, but not in this stage of my work.
I've written hundreds of thousands of words already and still it is not right. I try to be grateful for the barely perceptible progress. There are days when it all seems to be moving outward, that what I want to say is within my grasp. At others, it is hours of agony.
I hope that we can keep up a more regular correspondence. It is a lost art to communicate by letter. Ma Bell has us talking off the top of our heads. Add to that the mindless passivity of most TV and you have a nation of people who cannot think clearly. It is why we have a performer beguiling half the population with his warmed-over 1929 ideas. Reagan is so artificial, so like a contrived drama program actor, that he is distinctly unreal. And Carter, the engineer, would just as well let the machine operate even though it needs a valve job.
When I really get down, there are always those comforting words of Melville, you know Chapter 23, The Lee Shore, - "Glimpses do we seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth: that all deep earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore? But as in landlessness alone resides the highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God - so better it is to perish in the howling infinite than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety. For worm-like then would we craven crawl to shore. Terrors of the terrible; is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the ocean spray of thy ocean perishing - straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"
Not that I feel any urge to return to land, only that in some ways I'm still a romantic who would like it all right now. Somehow, I must learn to deal with my ego, for it has led other writers into a nightmarish world. I have a tendency to be too judgmental. In one sense, it is the fuel for my passion to change things, but in other ways it closes me off from certain experiences. A writer should understand life, rather than sit above the fray and merely criticize it.
So, you see I'm not always bombastic. I need a good relationship to smooth out some of the harsh edges. I've noticed how your relationship with Liz has taken some of that tendency to violence away. Now you have learned what it is to be tender as well.
One thing love teaches you is to pay more attention to the little things. For a man with passion and depth can irritate the hell out of a woman because he doesn't know when to bring flowers home. Yet it is better to be that kind of man than a superficial one who can only date and please and has no courage for the larger battle.
A man needs to love, someone said, or else he becomes a fool. For if he is alone too long he begins to believe that women are unreal, and then makes them into symbols or ideas, and imposes all sorts of magic and bewitchery upon them.
You may have noticed some of the odd mood changes in this letter. I am not that mercurial, only that parts have been written on different days. It is now Saturday morning and I'm off to run a few errands, some of the more mundane aspects of life - but occasionally interesting as well, for a writer must keep his eyes open, looking for that richness which can to be found almost anywhere.
Take care, and give my regards to Liz.
Paul
I'm sure other of Paul's friends could attest to his fondness for that twenty third chapter of Melville's, Moby Dick. He and I agreed that it summed up in two short pages the silently howling need to create, to delve deep, and ever deeper, into the very essence and experience of life, impossible by a seeker like Paul to resist. To go forth and stare a hole thru to the rapture, to the danger and to the beauty at the very heart of what often seems like impenetrable darkness, seeking a light where slowly, very slowly, we might just glimpse and hear the ephemeral siren's song of revelation.
I will not forget Paul. I pray he knew I wrote back to him and planned to come see him. I was too late, but I will carry his friendship, his letters, and my memories of him with me, which will always be a source of inspiration and comfort - till we meet again? For "Ray Bradbury experiences" in my own life have led me to wholeheartedly agree with what Paul intimated in his letter, that:
“A strange intuition has come upon me that what we do is not in isolation, but has an effect somewhere else, perhaps not even visible, nor within the time and space in which we exist.”
Sincerely,
Tom, Liz, Travis and David Newman
Martha Reagan
August 2, 2017
Paul was such a wonderful person and a talented writer/editor. We worked together for 10 years at the Boston Herald. Paul often visited me in the Library to chat and see how I was doing. I will miss him very much.
Tania Mejer
July 31, 2017
I'll never forget the first time I learned Paul had written a play that was being performed in Boston. I'd always known him as a fellow editor and it was a wonderful insight into his life outside the Herald. In the workplace, he was always the first to offer to lend a hand or proofread a page. When I might have been stressed, he often seemed to impart a sense of calm.
My condolences to all of his loved ones; I wish I were able to be there in person to give them.
Gayle Palino
July 31, 2017
So sorry to hear about Paul. He and I have been neighbors for many years. I certainly will miss bumping into him on a daily basis.
Dan Riley
July 31, 2017
Prayers and thoughts are with the Restuccia family. Paul will be missed and will always be in our memories. Love Dan and Corinne
Brian Riley
July 31, 2017
So sorry to hear of the loss of Paul - such a wonderful man. We always enjoyed our chats at the Riley family events with Paul - he will be surely missed. Our thoughts and prayers to the Restuccia Family today & always. Much Love, Brian & Ellen
Virginia, Will, Liz, Shaynah and Jennifer Hampton
July 30, 2017
There are no words for such great sorrow. Thinking of you all at this difficult time
Alice Tierney
July 29, 2017
Please accept our heartfelt sympathy at such a difficult time as this. Love ❤ and prayers , Alice Tierney and family
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