Past and present merge at a Cape Cod cemetery.

The Shaw family in 1955; from left, Elaine, Lillie, Huck and Bob.

North Falmouth has always been a special place for me. It was a vacation spot, a getaway destination and even a personal sanctuary for almost half of my life.

In fact, it was where I was awakened to the sound of fighter jets going to afterburners early on a Tuesday morning in September almost a quarter-century ago, their destination being the airspace around Manhattan to protect a nation under attack.

I was in North Falmouth again Thursday morning, the 24th anniversary of the terrorist attacks upon the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the purpose was to mourn a beloved relative. Thursday morning was eerily similar to Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 -- almost unseasonably warm temperatures under a cloudless blue sky. It's as if the fates conspired to replicate the conditions of that near-perfect day when the jets took off from what's now called Joint Base Otis, only a few miles from the vacation home of my closest friend, for which I had the privilege of being an occasional caretaker when my friend was unable to be in residence there.

Robert Francis Shaw (1936-2025)

Thusday, the purpose was to say goodbye to my 89-year-old first cousin, Robert Francis Shaw, the son of my aunt, Lillie Farinella Shaw. If that name sounds familiar to residents of my hometown, it should. For many years, she and her son were owners of Shaw's Sporting Goods on North Main Street, a retail store that also served as a supplier of athletic equipment to many local high schools and colleges. That store still exists, in another location on Mansfield's main street and under different ownership as Grogan-Marciano Sporting Goods.

Bob Shaw was a good man, a kind and unfailingly honest man, as his eldest son Robert remarked during the funeral service at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in the Old Silver Beach area of North Falmouth. And he was a great friend and almost a surrogate son to my own father during an important time in both of their lives.

My aunt, Bob's mother, was the eldest of the five children of Carmelo and Gandolfa Farinella, who came to America from Palermo, Sicily, at the turn of the 20th century to seek a better life. Carmelo ran a bakery in the North End of Mansfield for many years, and his eldest sons (Santino, Frank, Tony) would hop on bicycles and deliver fresh bread to customers throughout the area. But in 1936, my uncle Sannie decided that the bakery life was not for him, and he opened a small clothing store on North Main Street named after him. In the years that followed, all four of the Farinella brothers (including the much-younger Charlie) would be involved in an enterprise that would become one of the town's most successful retail stores until its closing after more than 55 years in business.

Around the same time, Lillie's husband, a fellow named Huck Shaw, opened a small sporting goods store in close proximity to Sannie's on North Main Street. As I mentioned, that store became the go-to supplier of athletic equipment to schools throughout a wide swath of southeastern Massachusetts and neighboring Rhode Island.

Tragedy struck the Shaw family when Huck was killed in an automobile accident on U.S. 1 in Plainville in the late 1940s, when Bob was just reaching his teen years. Lillie took over the operation of the sporting goods store -- somewhat of a pioneer for women in business in that era -- and Bob came into the fold after his graduation from Mansfield High in 1955.

The business continued to thrive out of the tiny storefront on North Main across from Sannie's (now occupied in expanded form by Jodice Builders), and it was truly a family operation -- Lillie handling the books, Bob growing into a leadership role as the years passed, and his sister Elaine (a pioneering athlete at Mansfield High long before anyone even thought of the necessity of Title IX) behind the cash register.

Elaine would also die far too young and under tragic circumstances, leaving behind a daughter (Edon, who is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines). And as the 1970s approached, Bob found himself seeking change in his life.

He was married with two boys, but I believe he missed the influence of a father in his life. He may have found that in my father, who was just 15 years older than Bob, but with a wealth of life experience to share with someone willing to tap into it.

At this point, you may ask why my father needed a surrogate son with one of his own. It's a good question. I think the answer is that at an early age, my father and I started to have different life goals and interests.

I had broken away from the Catholic Church early in my teens, freed from the daily trauma of the repressive approach to education and maturation I experienced at Dominican Academy in Plainville. But my father was intensely devout -- and while he grew more aware of and disgusted by the abuses of faith that festered in the church, especially when nearby cases of sexual assault were exposed to the public, he still felt an obligation to worship in accordance to his personal belief in God, and my rejection of the dogma disappointed him.

I also never displayed any inclination to follow in his footsteps and join the Sannie's family as a potential second-generation owner. I had wanted to be a writer from an early age, and that was set in stone the moment I walked into the offices of the Mansfield News in August 1969 and told Howard Fowler, the editor, that I was the answer to his difficulties in finding a reliable high school sports reporter.

It's not that my father was disappointed at that; in fact, I clearly remember the pride in his eyes when he read the first article I had published in the town's weekly newspaper. But very few of the Farinella offspring showed any interest in continuing the store's operation and legacy into the future, and indeed, that may have been a huge factor in the store's closing upon the retirements of my father and my uncle Charlie.

So, with me doing my thing and raising my flag of independence, Bob Shaw and my father struck up a relationship that was mutually beneficial to both.

Having been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes (which claimed my grandfather's life), my father found a kindred spirit in the quest for physical fitness in my cousin. He and Bob started a regimen of jogging; they would schedule long cross-country runs through the ancient trails up and down Taylor's Hill -- a picturesque trek through the virtually unspoiled Great Woods before Interstate 495 plowed through them years later. 

I actually ran those trails with my dad once, when I was still fit enough to do it, but it was a disaster. Tony and I became competitive and we turned it into a race for personal supremacy, and we were both so exhausted at the end, it became clear that I would not be a suitable running partner going forward. My father and Bob were never competitors during their runs.

About the same time, my father saw the need for additional income if he was going to put me through college, and thus save me the agony of having to pay college loans for decades. He and Bob came up with a life-changing solution; they took courses at the Lee Institute and got their licenses to sell real estate, and their successes at this "side job" have a lasting legacy in the Northwestern University degree that hangs in the middle of the awards wall in my home.

Bob Shaw, however, embraced it as more than simply a side job.

By 1973, he sold the sporting goods store to Peter Marciano, the brother of Rocky, the late heavyweight boxing champion of the world. Marciano would move the store to the site of the former Fuller's hardware store across from the North Common, and then take on former Patriots' quarterback Steve Grogan as a partner sometime later. Of course, I covered Steve's exploits for much of his career, and many years later, I got the opportunity to explain to Steve my family's background in his store while we sat at a US Airways gate at Philadelphia International Airport, waiting to board a connecting flight to Buffalo. 

Bob seized the moment to begin his own real estate business, and he moved his family to North Falmouth and became quite successful at it.

Still, one of my happiest memories of Bob came from his time in charge of the little store across the street from Sannie's. 

I had just made the varsity baseball team in the spring of 1970, and I needed to get some equipment. The staples such as jock straps and sanitary socks were easy to find in the retail store, but as I tried to find a bat to my liking, Bob noticed that I wasn't finding what I wanted among those on display.

"Come with me," he said, and he led me down the narrow stairway to a dungeon-like basement beneath the storefront. This was where he stored all the supplies usually earmarked for the schools that the company supplied.

Among the glistening new Louisville Sluggers in multiple boxes, I found the bat of my dreams. It was a 34-ounce Dick McAuliffe model, the bat designed for the former Detroit Tigers shortstop who eventually played for the Red Sox. It was long, probably too heavy by modern standards, and had a sanded-down knob at the bottom, which made it easier to find a place to choke up on the bat while swinging without having the protruding knob rub against your forearm. I asked Bob how much it cost; he said, "Forget it. It's yours." 

The A2000 -- still perfect after 55 years.

Grateful as I was, my attention was suddenly captured by a sight of beauty. Sitting on a shelf near the bat boxes was a glorious baseball glove -- the Wilson A2000, the flagship product of that famed American company. The A2000 was the most-used glove in the majors at the time, it cost the huge sum of $75 (the equivalent of $662 today) and it came in many iterations -- shorter webbing area for infielders, longer for outfielders -- and the one on the shelf had the largest webbing area of them all. Knowing that my fielding skills were suspect at best, I knew I would need all the help I could get from a glove. I pulled it from the shelf and slipped it over my left hand, and I knew I had to own it.

I turned to Bob, and said, "Bob, I know you can't give me this glove for free. I wouldn't ask for that. I don't have $75 right now, but I swear to you I will pay it if I can have it. I absolutely have to have this glove." I reached into my wallet and pulled out three $10 bills, the product of a just-cashed check from the Mansfield News, to show my intentions.

Bob smiled and said, "Half-price." 

That glove is still mine. I used it (but didn't overuse it) in my struggles through two varsity baseball seasons and three in American Legion ball in Foxboro. It was later used for intramurals at Northwestern, beer-league softball in Attleboro, and later, for tossing the ball around with my friend's son in their North Falmouth yard. Now, it sits next to me at my desk as I type this. Its leather is still as soft and supple as the day it emerged from the Shaw's Sporting Goods basement in my hands. Wilson still makes the A2000 and they sell for around $300, but I've tried the newer ones on -- and aside from a little more padding in a few places, my glove is still superior to those.

I also thought I still had the bat, too. But after I told that story to Bob's younger son, Tommy, following Thursday's graveside ceremony, I recalled that I broke the Dick McAuliffe Louisville Slugger during a Legion game -- bad swing, barely put the ball into play, and I was entirely heartbroken upon its loss. I went home and sawed off the little knob at the bottom to save as a souvenir, but I don't know what happened to that.

Over the years, I would occasionally run into Bob during my vacations in North Falmouth -- usually at the small diner called "Talk of the Town" on Route 28A where I frequently breakfasted during vacation eeks or quick winter getaways. And on one of my trips to south Florida to cover a Patriots-Dolphins game, I dropped in on him at his winter home in Boca Raton. His wife, Joan, died in 2008, and was buried in their joint plot in a tiny cemetery in North Falmouth. Despite his loss, and several battles with medical issues of his own, Bob never lost the optimism that characterized him throughout his life.

One of my true regrets, however, is that we weren't as close as we could have been. I'll take ownership of that. There were many times over the years of his retirement when Bob would try to contact me by phone -- but, and this is unintentionally funny in a way, he would always unknowingly pick times when I absolutely could not answer. Those were usually when I was in a press box somewhere, covering a game. Whether it was in Seattle, or Dallas or Foxboro or practically all points in-between, or in the stands in the Albertini Gym at Mansfield High, the phone would ring and I'd be in a position where I could not answer. Sometimes we might be able to make contact afterward, but not as often as I could have or should have.

That came to mind as the tolling church bells at the parish of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton underscored the solemnity of the moment on Thursday. No matter what we do in life, sometimes it just seems like it's never enough. It's not necessarily that we run out of time, it's often a case of not using the time we have as well as we could have.

North Falmouth house under construction.

My connection to North Falmouth has also waned in recent years. The house that my friend built in 1979 and was a frequent destination thanks to his abundant benevolence (and his trust that I would not wreck the place) was sold a few years ago. New owners demolished the little three-bedroom structure and built something much larger. 

All that remains are photos and memories -- not only for me, but for another extremely close friend that would frequently visit while I was there. It became her sanctuary and a peaceful respite for her soul during the most severe of her two bouts with ovarian cancer. Thankfully, and through the wonderful work of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center, she has survived both.

And, of course, it was where I experienced a watershed moment for our nation. It was where I went for a few days off after the Patriots opened their 2001 season with a loss to the Bengals at what was then Paul Brown Stadium. I flew from Cincinnati to Chicago and then to Boston on Sept. 10, 2001, blissfully unaware of the plans that terrorists had for the next morning. I went directly to North Falmouth and woke up to the sound of the roaring jets in the sky above the next morning, thinking at first it was just another training exercise. Unable to fall asleep again, I got out of bed and turned on the TV in the living room -- and saw, to my horror, that the world had changed.

It all happened on a beautiful late-summer day, just like Thursday -- a date that will forever be etched in my memory as representative of loss.

MARK FARINELLA wrote sports for more than four decades for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.