Ronan Tynan, the great tenor, is hardly the first Irishman to land in Boston looking for a fresh start.
It’s not Ireland he’s just left but New York, the city that embraced him and which he hugged back. He became a star in New York, an inspiration. His legs were amputated below the knee, but he became a physician. And then, in his 30s, he discovered that God had planted in his throat a voice that can make hearts rise and eyes rain.
He sang for presidents and he sang at Yankee Stadium, a version of “God Bless America’’ that made the hair stand up on the back of your neck and Yankees fans stand up and cheer. It was a soothing tonic for New Yorkers who would look to where the two great towers once stood in lower Manhattan and feel like crying.
But then he said something in jest that someone considered anti-Semitic and the reservoir of good will he had built up over a decade drained away in seconds. Strangers who once cheered now sneered. A doctor said he would let him die on an operating table if given the chance.
And worse, worst of all, the Yankees dumped him. Wouldn’t even hear his side of the story.
So, the other day, Tynan picked up a pen with the hand that still wears the bulbous World Series ring with the diamond-studded NY and signed a bunch of papers and closed on a place on Lewis Wharf and is now, as he approaches 50, a Bostonian. And as he tries to figure out where, aside from the Four Seasons, he can get a good meal in this town, he wonders where he goes to get his reputation back.
This is what happened in the apartment building on East 54th Street in October: A realtor was showing the apartment next to Tynan’s and asked if Tynan would say hello to some prospective buyers. The realtor told Tynan the prospective buyers were “a couple of nice Jewish ladies.’’ Tynan warned the ladies he often sang in his apartment.
“How’d you like living next to a loud tenor like me?’’ Tynan asked them, jokingly.
Turned out they wouldn’t, and they didn’t buy the apartment. A short time later, another person was looking at the apartment and Tynan was putting the key in his door when a different realtor came out from next door and said they had another prospective buyer.
“Don’t worry,’’ the realtor said, “they’re not Red Sox fans.’’
“As long as they’re not those Jewish ladies,’’ Tynan replied.
The woman looking at the apartment, Dr. Gabrielle Gold-von Simson, stepped into the hallway and asked Tynan to explain himself. Whatever he said, she didn’t buy it.
Gold-von Simson, who is Jewish, called the Yankees and asked how they could let an anti-Semite sing “God Bless America.’’
The Yankees took her version of events and couldn’t be bothered to get Tynan’s. The team has declined to discuss the issue publicly, saying it’s an internal matter.
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