A turning point of my life
I wasn't yet 30 years old and was working as a firefighter in New York City, in a firehouse completely swamped with calls. In the rare moments when we weren't busy, I would make calls on our cordless phone handset or rush to our office to read Captain Gray's subscription of the Sunday New York Times. Late one afternoon when I finally read the Book Review section, my blood began to boil. An article stated a thesis I took to be an offensive insult: William Butler Yeats, the Nobel Prize-winning light of the Irish Literary Renaissance, had risen above his Irishness and was now a universal poet. I grew indignant suddenly, and a deep-seated passion within me was activated. There were few things I was more proud of than my Irish heritage.