Sportswriter pens first novel
This story was originally published in the Warwick Beacon, a publication partner of Ocean State Stories.
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CRANSTON — Martin Luther King gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech in August of 1963, and a new novel from Warwick writer John Gillooly opens with King’s words from that day:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’”
The Promise of the Class of ’64 uses real headlines from the 1963-64 school year to frame the story of a group of high school seniors living their everyday suburban lives as the Vietnam conflict escalated, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the Beatles made their US television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed.
“It was a really interesting year,” Gillooly says.
The book’s unique structure was inspired by the author’s own experience as a senior at Cranston East during the 1963-64 school year. Mr. Kelly, his American history teacher, arranged a deal with the New York Times where students used the daily newspaper as their history textbook. The newspaper at the time costs five cents a day, and students paid on the honor system.
The book was released last month, just a few weeks before the author’s eightieth birthday. It was published by Stillwater River Books of West Warwick.
“The class of 1964 were mostly born in 1946, which means we are the oldest of the baby boomers,” he says.
“There were 3.5 million births that year,” he adds, a huge jump from the previous year. “It’s the only year to produce three presidents: Bill Cinton, Donald Trump, and George W. Bush were all born in 1946. We’ve had presidents from the class of 1964 for 22 of the last 34 years.”
The baby boom, which started when World War II ended in 1945, led to school overcrowding in the 1950s and 1960s.
“We had about six hundred kids in our class,” Gillooly says about his time at Cranston East. “And the school was just one building. The gym wasn’t there yet; the addition wasn’t there yet.”
The novel is set at a fictionalized version of Cranston East in August 1963, where an Irish Catholic student named Jay Burke has transferred for his senior year. Gillooly is drawing from reality: he went to Catholic school for the first ten years of his education, transferring from Bishop Hendricken to Cranston East because, at the time, Hendricken didn’t have a hockey team.
Sports were always a big part of Gillooly’s life. After finishing high school, he got a job in the Providence Journal mailroom, and within a few years he applied for a job at the sports desk. He remained there for his whole career, retiring in 2018 after fifty-four years with the Journal.
“I wrote three columns a week for twenty years,” he says.
That’s partly why the book took decades to write.
“In 2005 I published my first book, about the Mount Saint Charles hockey team. I spent a year with the team, and when the book came out [fellow Journal sports writer] Bill Reynolds said ‘Okay, what’s your next book?’”
“I said, ‘What do you mean, what’s my next book? I just finished this book!’”
“He said ‘You’ve always got to have a next book.’”
That’s what gave him the spark for a book about the class of 1964.
Reynolds died in 2023. “I miss Billy every day,” Gillooly says. “I had some great mentors at the Providence Journal. He was a mentor.”
Stillwater River Books also published a book by Reynolds, Story Days: Highlights from Four Decades Covering Sports. Owner Steven Porter says that book did very well and might have been what inspired Gillooly to approach the publisher with his novel idea.
Stillwater also operates an independent bookstore at 1745 Main Street in West Warwick.
“John came into the store. He’s very well known, and we had stocked his Mount Saint Charles book for quite a while,” Porter says.
Writing the novel began in earnest after Gillooly retired. He went back and read daily New York Times stories. Some were about events people generally remember. A lot of them weren’t. “There was a freedom of the press ruling in 1964, so I added that into the story,” he cites as one example.
“There used to be something called the Four W’s,” he explains. “Who? What? When? And Where? The first paragraph of every news story in the New York Times included all four of those points.”
Though Gillooly had never before written a novel, he saw it as the only way to tell the story of that moment in American history. “I’m not a historian so I didn’t want to write a history book,” Gillooly says.
Jay the character and John the author share a lot of qualities — they’re both Irish Catholics fascinated by President John Kennedy — but they are not the same. “This is not a memoir,” he says. For one thing, Jay plays football. John’s sport was hockey.
What does he think the biggest difference is between high school now and high school in 1972?
“The biggest difference is that there were no varsity sports for girls,” he says instantly. “None. Title IX didn’t pass until 1972,” he adds, referring to the legislation preventing discrimination based on gender. “The interesting thing about Title IX is that it doesn’t mention sports at all. Patsy Mink was interested in science, and she passed the law that there cannot be any discrimination against girls and women in anything federally funded. Having watched it as a sportswriter, it was fascinating.”
Gillooly says that his favorite part of sports writing was getting to hear and tell people’s stories. “Maybe some people from the class of ’64 will read the book and tell me their stories.”
“The average lifespan in the United States is 79 years. We’ve all already lived beyond expectations.”
In retirement, sports still play a big part of his life. His two grandsons both play three sports a year.
“My daughter says my grandsons won’t be reading my book for a few years,” he says, alluding to some co-ed teen shenanigans that ensue. In the novel, the blue-eyed protagonist quickly catches the eye of two girls, best friends who both find themselves drawn to the athlete.
Porter says that the book has been well received so far. “Talking about the sixties, looking back on that era and how volatile it was, there are a lot of parallels to what’s happening in the world today,” the publisher says.
Gillooly is currently planning a few author events at local libraries, including one this June at the North Kingstown Library, and he hopes to do a few other library events and local signings.
“I felt like this was a story worth telling,” Gillooly says. “And it’s an easy read. I’m a sportswriter. There are no big words.”
