Thomas Blaine Kennedy, a well-traveled Episcopalian priest and pastor with roots planted deep in the Irish Republic's Co. Monaghan, readily makes the concession that "my life has been dependent upon mentors and people who have been kind and done wonderful things for me."

 He cites "those that have taken a chance, not knowing how it's going to work out, but believe in you," and "that develops a trust in the whole process that allows you to go on and do things you never thought you could do otherwise."

 This son of the small town of Aghnamu­llen — known familiarly to most as "Tom" — has indeed gone on and done lots of things he could scarcely have thought he could do alone. What follows is his oral review of a fully lived life.

The Ancestral Saga

 My paternal grandparents, William and Mary (McCrory) Kennedy, married in 1905, and they had seven children. Mary McCrory had been a domestic for a family in Brooklyn during the latter part of the 19th century, and she got to know the family who had sponsored her very well. The father was a Presbyterian minister, Dr. Warren Wilson, and he was very fond of Mary.

 When Dr. Wilson visited Ireland in 1921 and saw the tensions in County Monaghan between Protestants and Catholics, he sponsored the Kennedy family to come to America. My grandfather had a little farm in Monaghan and he sold the chickens and the pigs and all the equipment, took the clothes on their backs, went to Belfast, took a boat over to Liverpool, and came to America on the boat Columbia in the fall of 1922. They had their seven children with them and went through Ellis Island.

 They settled eventually in Sherman, Connecticut, where the Wilson family had a summer place, and my grandfather worked a tenant farm. My father, at age 13, moved with the family and eventually attended Henry Abbott Tech in Danbury, learning the trade of carpentry. "His word was his bond," Tom recalled. "People were always thinking, 'What can I do that I can call Bob to fix?' He could fix anything. And so, there was that trust."

The Path to the Priesthood

 Thomas Blaine Kennedy and Joanna Peck Warner were married on Aug. 29, 1964, three months after graduating from college — Tom from Claremont Men's College (now Claremont McKenna College), where he played baseball for four years and was captain his senior year; Joanna from Connecticut College.

 In 1964, Tom came to Cambridge to the Episcopal Theological School for four years. In the spring of 1965, he heard that Martin Luther King was coming to Boston to lead a protest. A group of seminarians took the bus to Carter Playground and followed King on that march down to the Parkman Bandstand. "That was the first time that I heard him speak," he said. "And there was a tension that you could feel walking down Columbus Avenue."

In 1968, he received his Master of Divinity from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. He was ordained deacon in June of that year in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, and ordained a priest in May 1969 at Trinity Church in Copley Square. Joanna got her MAT in Education from Harvard in 1969.

A Year in East Harlem

 In the fall of 1966, Tom took an internship year in New York City living in East Harlem, meant to introduce seminarians to life in the inner city. "Joanna and I quickly found out what it was like to be a minority in a majority community," he recalled. "There were 600 Black and Hispanics on that block, and Joanna and I were two of four whites. We know what it is like to have eyes cast on us as we walked up and down the street and wondering, 'What are you doing here?' It was a fabulous experience."

From Comm. Ave to the South End to Brookline

The Kennedy family moved to Brookline when Sam was two and beginning to develop an interest in baseball. Tom had been hired at Trinity Church to do student ministry — he was there for 15 years, twice as the priest in charge, then served as dean at St. Paul's Cathedral on Tremont Street.

When a new bishop was installed and no longer saw the need for a dean at the cathedral, Tom negotiated a termination and began looking at parishes in St. Louis, Cleveland, and elsewhere.

After returning from a visit to St. Louis, 13-year-old Sam made his position clear: "Dad, where have you been?" And when Tom mentioned needing a job out of town, Sam's response was firm: "I'm not moving, so I'll see you on the weekends." Tom had to remind him: "No, Sam. It doesn't work that way. I work on the weekends."

Rev. Kennedy the Banker

At the time BayBank wanted to expand into the neighborhoods. Its CEO, Bill Crozier, who was also the treasurer at the Cathedral, asked Tom to consider a new job with the bank. Tom's protest that he knew nothing about banking got a quick response: "We know about banking; you know something about the community. Let's see if we can make a marriage."

In May of 1989, Tom started work as a senior vice president at BayBank and then at BankBoston, which later merged with Fleet. After being let go when the bank had to offload assets, he moved on to Sovereign Bank, doing community reinvestment work with John Hamill and Joe Campanelli.

A Message for the Next Generation

"We stand on the shoulders of others who have gone before," Tom said. "And my life has been dependent upon mentors and people who have been kind and done wonderful things for me, and I think that this is certainly true in my life. I would say it's true in Sam's life as well. This is certainly true when I go back to my childhood and little town I grew up in. I think of all the people there who were supportive not just of us as kids but of my parents."

The Kennedy family today is a large and far-flung one. Tom and Joanna's daughter Sarah Blaine Kennedy Flott lives in Ann Arbor, MI, with her husband and their three children. Son Samuel Hobart Kennedy lives in Wellesley with his wife Amanda Johnson Kennedy and their two children. Son James (Jamie) Rutledge Kennedy lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, with his family.

Ed Forry is the publisher of Boston Irish's Magazine and website.