by Carlene Phillips ·
Friday, September 13, 2024
The Warner Free Lecture begins its new season with a talk by journalist Emily Sweeney Friday, Sept. 20, at 7 p.m. in Volunteers Hall at the library. Sweeney’s topic, and subject of her third book, is John “Dropkick” Murphy—the man, the doctor, the professional wrestler, the founder of a sanitarium and fitness center in Acton, and the namesake of the Dropkick Murphys band.
“I’ve always been into media,” even as a kid, said Sweeney in a phone conversation. She went to Northeastern University for hockey and began on a pre-med track. But the “labs interfered with hockey,” so she chose a new major, journalism. And, she said, “I’m very happy I did.”
Sweeney, who was born in Boston, made a swift rise from a reporter for different local newspapers to a staff reporter at the Boston Globe, starting in 2001. There she covers local news and writes a weekly column in the Sunday Metro section called “Blotter Tales,” which she described as having funny, quirky items like the police wrangling horses. Her series called “Cold Case Files” was launched last year. It’s astounding how many there are, she said.
John “Dropkick” Murphy—the man, the doctor, the professional wrestler, the founder of a sanitarium and fitness center in Acton, and the namesake of the Dropkick Murphys band.(Courtesy photo).
The author of two books on the history of organized crime in the Boston area, Sweeney is currently working on the story of the mob wars of the 1990s. “Dropkick Murphy: A Legendary Life” is a very different book, with more of a hero than a criminal as its subject. In fact, Sweeney said she wants to nominate Murphy to one of the professional wrestling halls of fame. The book will be for sale and signing at the talk with cash, check, or Venmo.
Sweeney recalled sitting at Crossroads Restaurant in Acton when she overheard someone talking about Dropkick Murphy and a place called Bellows Farm that used to be just down the road at the intersection of routes 2A and 27. She asked some questions and was soon launched on an investigation. Accurate information was hard to find, Sweeney said. But once she got going, what she had thought would be a newspaper feature or maybe a magazine article became a book that would take her nearly a decade to complete.
John Murphy was born in 1912 in Malden. He was a very good athlete and was soon into professional wrestling, appearing at venues mostly in the Boston area but also throughout the northeastern U.S. At the same time he was wrestling, he put himself through four years at the Massachusetts College of Osteopathy. He was never a practicing doctor, but he put his knowledge and skills to work later at the sanatorium.
As a wrestler in the 1930s and early ’40s, Murphy developed a unique move that earned him the nickname Dropkick Murphy. Launching himself to become horizontal in the air, he hit opponents with both boots and usually landed right back on his feet. He would do this multiple times during a match. Sweeney will show a video clip in which Murphy employs his signature move. She said ’30s wrestling was like the pro wrestling she watched on TV growing up—the burly guys, flashy costumes, nicknames, and personalities. It wasn’t competitive then either, she said, but it showed great athleticism.
In 1941 with his first wife, who was a registered nurse, Murphy bought 80 acres of land on which there was a convalescent home and a barn. He turned the home into a facility for a very different kind of “convalescent,” an alcoholic trying to “dry out,” as the detoxification process was called at that time. Until 1956, alcoholism was not recognized as a disease but rather, a shameful weakness of character. Sweeney said ads for the farm used euphemisms: “Are you tired? Nervous? Need to get away?” The clients who came to the farm, among whom were rumored to be sports and entertainment celebrities, wanted to remain secret. Officially named Bellows Farm Sanatorium, the facility was better known as Dropkick Murphy’s.
The farm had a state-of-the-art gym with a ring for boxing and wrestling and a fitness center that offered training to elite athletes as well as fitness sessions to the general public. Murphy cared about people and about health, said Sweeney. “His life devoted to sports and working out drove him to pro wrestling, which drove him to open the farm.” After 30 years, Bellows Farms closed in 1971.
Sweeney met with Murphy’s second wife, Jean, who talked about life on the farm and described her husband as a fun, people-loving person. Dave, the oldest living of the six children at the time Sweeney talked to him, worked at the farm as a teenager. He shared many memories with Sweeney, including one of a fire. Both Jean and Dave have since died, but they knew about the book. The younger children told Sweeney they didn’t know much about the treatments but remembered looking for whiskey bottles that men staying at the farm might have hidden around the property. For them as kids, it was like an Easter egg hunt.
After the farm closed, some of the land was developed for apartments. The oldest son, Richard, had gifted much of the land as conservation trails for the town. The farmhouse is gone, but “the chimney was still there last time I looked,” Sweeney said. The red barn remains and is now occupied by small offices.
Sweeney has long been a fan of the band, the Dropkick Murphys, an American Celtic punk group that started in Quincy. She had interviewed singer and bassist Ken Casey before, and she knew the band was named after the alcohol detox facility because members had heard about “going to Dropkick Murphy’s.” But they knew hardly anything about Murphy himself. She talked to the band about her research, and the band started telling Murphy’s story at some of their shows. Casey wrote the foreword for Sweeney’s book, and, like her, he and members of the band want to make Murphy better known, and they join her in supporting his nomination to a hall of fame.
Sweeney said she was honored to tell Murphy’s story. “There were bits of information that I had to pull together; nobody knew everything. It was a labor of love.”
Visit the Warner Free Lecture website for more details on this talk as well as the others in this year’s lecture series.