Chance Encounters with Bob Flaherty: Contemplating eternity in rarefied air

Janice Kozub, a retired nurse from Hadley, enjoys an hourlong walk nearly every day around her neighborhood. Columnist Bob Flaherty tagged along with her one day for a walk and talk.

Janice Kozub, a retired nurse from Hadley, enjoys an hourlong walk nearly every day around her neighborhood. Columnist Bob Flaherty tagged along with her one day for a walk and talk. FOR THE GAZETTE/BOB FLAHERTY

Published: 10-06-2024 10:57 AM

Heaven. A little slice of it anyway. High in the hills of Hadley it suddenly appears, a soundless and angelic view of the world. Far below is the UMass campus, the Emerald City itself, its towers as mere candlepins. Beyond that, forest and mountains and icy blue sky. Cliché, yes, but for a second, heaven.

Little did you know that you’d soon be contemplating a bit more than cliches.

For this tiny stretch of pavement, a side street off a rural speed road, is the everyday walking route of one Janice Kozub, who walks the view and walks it again, meditatively passing the same neighbor’s houses and circling the same cul-de-sac as though navigating a stone labyrinth.

“Well, you know, I love to walk,” says Kozub, a retired nurse. “It’s my favorite thing to do, really. If I can get a walk in I feel I’ve accomplished something. I try to walk for an hour every day.”

She is happy to have a walking companion.

“All my life I never felt old until I got into my 80s,” she said. “You have to keep moving. Once you stop being mobile, it’s the beginning of the end.”

And then — that view again. Man.

“That’s what everyone says,” she smiles. “And it’s the highest, that’s what makes it so cold.”

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The street is called Maegan’s Way, named for a girl who grew up there, Kozub pointing out the house as we pass.

They look out for Janice Kozub up here. In the golf cart at the end of the street sits Tom Quinlan, waiting for the school bus carrying his grandnephew Jaden. “He likes to drive the rig home,” smiles Quinlan, eager to make sure that the stranger walking with Kozub is not some smoothie trying to bilk her out of her life savings.

The calling

The then Janice Fitzgerald was born in Boston in a now extinct hospital in the middle of a blizzard so wild that ambulances couldn’t make it up the hill. Of the many things she’s grateful for is that her mother went into labor the night before.

Her family lived in Somerville but moved to western Mass when she was a year old, soon settling in Chicopee.

“My father was a tile contractor,” she said. “He was one of eight boys, all tile contractors, all with wonderful reputations.”

She was raised Catholic and remains devout, never missing Sunday mass at Most Holy Redeemer down below. “I’m always thanking God for everything,” she said.

When informed that her walking companion’s Catholicism had lapsed, Janice Kozub just sighed.

She and her late husband Edward were high school sweethearts at Chicopee High. “I had a wonderful high school experience. In my sophomore year I met a woman, a speaker … who told me I’d make a wonderful nurse. I’d never been in a hospital. I’d never known any nurses, and yet, it really appealed to me because, as I said to my mother, ‘I don’t want to do anything where I’m sitting in a chair all the time. I want to be on my feet.’ And there it was. To this day — and of course she has passed — I don’t think that woman realized the impact she had on me. I just can’t imagine not being a nurse. It was perfect for me.”

But before that, she and her husband raised six kids and she now has 15 grandsons and four granddaughters, and they all, as far as she knows, go to church.

Kozub’s nursing career resumed when her kids were older. “I’m happy to say that my husband had a good job. Our first child came 10 months after we were married. I was able — and I’m so glad I think of it that way — to stay home with all of them when they were little. Then we both worked. I worked 3-11 at times. My daughter was such a blessing to me.”

Much of Kozub’s career at Baystate Medical was spent teaching — giving lectures on good nutrition and extolling breastfeeding for expectant moms. “A lot of people don’t realize what a difference it can make in a child’s life. It gives them a very, very healthy start, as it was meant to be.”

“I love to look down on UMass,” she said, back in the cul-de-sac. “I have one grandson that’s graduating this year and another graduated last year. Both very smart.”

On a given Saturday, the faint drums of football add syncopation to Kozub’s route.

Her youngest son, Paul, lives right over there with his wife and four young children, a house we’ve passed a couple times in our stroll. Kozub lives there too, four years now, in her own apartment on the lower floor.

“To have people who really care about you living near you, people who love you, makes all the difference in the world.”

“They’re very busy,” said Kozub of the kids, “but when I’m in my own apartment, honestly, I don’t hear them.”

A point of connection, she says, is often found in the laundry room. “We have two washers and two dryers that we share. We just help one another and talk.”

“I’m not hard to please, really,” said Kozub. “I don’t look to make my life complicated. I’ve always been happy. I’m grateful for that.”

Now, about heaven ...

You are quick to inform your companion that your late father attended mass every single day, as if that might elevate your spiritual status.

“I’m sure he prayed for you,” she smiles. “You know, in heaven, they can pray for you. Same when you’re in purgatory.”

The columnist does not like the sound of purgatory, like cell bars slamming at MCI-Cedar Junction.

“Most people don’t go straight to heaven — you have to have a stop-off,” she insists.

“Surely Janice Kozub is a shoo-in for the straight shot,” you counter.

“Oh no, no, no,” she laughs. “But I’ll get there. It’s very hard to go directly to heaven, unless you’re an exceptional person.”

“Like Mother Teresa?”

“Even she might not fit in right away,” said Kozub.

“Sounds like I’ll be stuck in the Phantom Zone forever.”

“God knows your heart. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to be in heaven some day. Just live a good life and do your best,” she says.

Kozub mentions a friend jealous of her husband’s interest in some woman. “And she said, ‘When you get to heaven, you better not choose her!’ And I said ‘In heaven you don’t think of that. You’re all very happy to be there, honoring God. It’s not anything like what you had on earth.’ And that made her feel better.”

The pledge

Janice Kozub retired from nursing in her mid-70s, but continued to do a lot of counseling by phone. “Nothing they ever had to pay me for — it was my honor to help.”

Another trip around the block, another celestial glimpse.

“Well, Bob, I think I’m a little over the hour,” she smiles, hugging the columnist goodbye and heading up the driveway for home.

Next door, Tom Quinlan stops to take in the view, one that did not always include the UMass towers.

“I went in the Marine Corps, came back two years later, and there are these high-rises,” he laughs.

He also, along with his son, built most of the homes up here and immortalized his granddaughter by naming the street after her. “Maegan became a nurse,” he said. “Started working at Cooley Dick a couple weeks ago. Her grandmother was a nurse. My mother was a nurse.”

The Nightingale Pledge is alive and well in the rarefied air of Hadley.

Bob Flaherty, a longtime author, radio personality and former Gazette writer and columnist, writes a monthly column called “Chance Encounters” in which he writes about our neighbors going about their daily lives.