Before the world-famous scientist took the stage to speak, the 92-year-old woman sitting in front of me shared with me her evaluation of him as a person:  “He has never grown up, he will never grow up.”

She speaks from experience, having known James Watson for several decades. And in the course of his talk, I came to see for myself what she means.

When only 24 years old, Watson, working with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), the basic genetic material from which all life is formed. For this great scientific feat, he received the Nobel Prize in 1962.

James Watson is 73 now, an age I know something about, having attained it myself. He has just published a new book “Genes, Girls, and Gamow,” a volume that seems just as frivolous as its title. It does not seem destined to become a classic the way his “The Double Helix” did soon after it was first published in 1968. In fact, some reviewers are already badmouthing the new book.

To prepare for the talk, I reread “The Double Helix” and found it absorbing but less charming than its reputation would indicate. Continual gossip about the author’s colleagues and his self absorption limit its pleasures for me but the scientific quest retains its power.

Among much else, the book will be remembered for such Watsonisms as: “One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.”

Last week’s talk revealed Watson as still self-indulgent, frivolous, opinionated, and scattered. As the nonagenarian quoted earlier says of her longtime friend: “He’s arrogant –  –  he doesn’t care what people think.”

The talk itself was filled with mumbling, difficult-to-hear anecdotes, grimaces, and head-scratchings by this speaker. Almost every sentence was punctuated with Watson laughing at his own wit, with much wheezing and snorting. Some audience members found it entertaining but a person without his reputation would surely have had many walk out on him during the 40-minutes of rambling.

He did offer a few noteworthy reflections about his pioneering work. “In science, it pays to talk to your competitors,” he advised, something he and Francis Crick did much of, to their great benefit. Putting it facetiously, he added: “You don’t want to kill your competitors – – you’ll have no one to talk to.”

Speaking about old group photos of scientists, Watson observed that “the best people were in the front row.” From this, he advised the young people in the audience: “If you want to be a scientist, sit in the front row.”

To the question of what he thought about most of the time in the period after his great discovery, his succinct answer was: “Girls.” In part, that happened because “after a month or two, I was bored with the double helix.”

About his latest book, he takes issue with his critics. “The book is beneath me,” they say. But, he replies, “The book is me.” Taking the offensive, he adds, “The book is better than most books.” Besides, he says with a snort, (referring to his friends and associates among the scientists): “I could have waited till they were all dead, including me.”

Slapping back at Bernadine Healy, the person who fired him from his job as head of the Human Genome Project, he observes: “It’s very dangerous to have power and exercise it in the absence of knowledge.”

Asked about cloning, Watson responds: “I’m too old to be interested.” But then he goes on to discuss the question. His main take on the issue is its feasibility, not ethics. “I have no moral qualms about it,” he says. “Most people want something new.”

Reflecting on this encounter with a man already ranked high in the history of science, I feel a mixture of reactions. I share almost everyone’s appreciation of what he accomplished early in life. After all, as his colleague Walter Gilbert said introducing him, “From this discovery flowed all of modern biology.”

But it comes as a shock to realize how superficial a man can be who has achieved something great. And I am surprised by how little wisdom some people  have gained after eight decades of life.

Of course, all of us elders have learned that a person may have a great impact on the world without being especially virtuous. We know that people can demonstrate soaring intelligence and yet be flawed in character. And almost everyone has discovered how a person who can think clearly, even brilliantly, can fail utterly as a speaker.

And yet naively I continue to cherish my illusion that achieving distinction in a field of knowledge or activity brings with it great stature as a human being. It shakes me every time I recognize the falsity of this view as I did once more when I heard the learned scientist.

Richard Griffin

Martin Eagen, a native of Roscommon, Ireland, was only 23 years old when he threw himself overboard from the SS. Mantiban. The ship was bound for Boston in the great mid-19th century  Irish emigration period when this terrible event occurred. The vessel stopped and turned around to look for him but he was lost forever. His sister, Mary Eagen, was left to find her way alone to Portland, Maine.

Margaret McGovern, listed under occupation as “spinster,”  arrived at the port of Boston on February 16, 1882. She had a child fathered by one James Bracken in Ireland who gave her parents one hundred dollars “to dispose of her.” With this money the parents paid their daughter’s passage, gave her ten dollars for her expenses, and told her to apply for the almshouse when she reached Boston.

These two stories, with their pathetic details, are among the many thousands to be found in public records kept by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In addition to the Passenger Lists collection from which the stories cited come, this agency has many other records relating to family history. The web site www.state.ma.us/sec/arc provides more detailed information about these holdings.

The period from 1848 to 1891 saw one million immigrants land in Boston. Not a few of the new arrivals here were also new arrivals into the world, having been born on board the ship that carried their mothers. At least one record gives the exact latitude and longitude of the ship the infant was delivered.

One such was born to a woman not arriving on these shores for the first time. Maggie Mason, 20 years old, had been born in the United States and was visiting family members in Ireland. She booked passage to Boston on the liner Marathon and during the voyage she gave birth to “infant Mason.” This child was legally Irish, rather than American, because Maggie Mason  bore the nationality of her husband. Only in 1920, with women’s suffrage, did women acquire citizenship in their own right.

I recently heard these stories and others during a talk given by Janis Duffy, who works as reference supervisor at the Massachusetts State Archives, located near Columbia Point in Boston. She also lists herself as a lecturer, researcher, and genealogist. Her presentation fascinated me and the other elders who listened as she related often heart-rending tales of suffering and hardship borne by our ancestors, or people like them, as they struggled to reach American shores.

We heard about one traveler who had already become famous –  – John L. Sullivan, the heavyweight champion of the world. He came first class and, on his arrival, was met on the dock by thousands of his wildly enthusiastic fans.  Janis Duffy found his name among hundreds of John Sullivans and became sure it was he when she found a Boston Post newspaper account of his arrival.

And Pat Kennedy’s name appears in the records also. He arrived in 1849 when he was 29 years old. He was to become JFK’s great-grandfather. He died young, so that his wife Bridget had find outside employment in order to support her family.

“We have the best research resources in the country,” says Janis Duffy. As one who has made extensive use of such resources here and in other parts of the United States, she knows whereof she speaks. Ms.Duffy began as a volunteer at the Massachusetts archives and then moved into a professional position there. She demonstrates how interest in family history can become a marvelous vantage point for a wide diversity of learning.

During her talk I reflected on my maternal grandfather, Richard Barry, who arrived in Boston May 8, 1871 as a passenger on the Cunard’s “Siberia” en route from Liverpool  and Queenstown.  Described as a “common laborer” at age 12, he was accompanied by his two younger brothers, James and John. Though it must have taken pluck for boys like this to find their way in the new world, he managed marvelously. He settled in Peabody where he went to work in a leather factory. Eventually, he became owner of a factory himself and was able to put his family on a secure footing before his death in 1909 at the age of fifty.

Using this link with Ireland, I have inquired about Irish citizenship, a step that many other Americans of Irish descent have taken. That could give me an Irish passport and facilitate travel in the European Community. Had I received citizenship before the birth  of my daughter, she too could have benefited from my new status.

The Massachusetts Archives welcomes visitors from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday and also Saturday until 3. Information over the telephone is available at (617) 727-2816. The Archives are under the direction of  the Secretary of State and contain a great many materials bearing on the history of the Commonwealth as well as other resources valuable for tracing family histories.

Richard Griffin

“Archbishop So-and-So would never lie except for the good of the Church.” A quotation like this one, as I recall, appeared in a New Yorker magazine article written in the early 1960s by an American Catholic priest using the pseudonym Xavier Rynne. This article and succeeding ones published by the same magazine provided material for a book that still rates as the best account of the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965.

The quotation from the unnamed archbishop has lodged in my memory because it summarizes so well the attitude called “clericalism.” It refers to a mentality on the part of many clergy, and not a few lay people, that places the needs of the institutional church ahead of the need to be truthful and honest.

That kind of thinking has surely been a large factor leading to the  enormous crisis engulfing the Catholic Church in Boston. And not just Boston. Like a seismic shock that crisis is now spreading across the country, shaking diocese after diocese with revelations of sexual crimes against children and of church efforts to sweep those crimes under the rug of secrecy.

Bishops and other authorities acted out of a false sense of institutional loyalty. They judged it better, by whatever means they could find, to keep everything secret rather than divulge the truth of the evil that was being done by their clergy. This secrecy covered the inexcusable assigning of priests with long records of pederasty to be assigned to local churches as pastors.

My reason for writing about this situation again in a column focused on aging is its continuing effect on us older church members and others who care about our morale. It is not easy in our later years to have the institutions and the people in whom we have trusted for a lifetime suddenly revealed as unworthy of confidence.

In July 1963, I landed in Southampton, England after a five-day voyage from New York on the great ocean liner The France. Almost 40 years later, I still remember what it was like to walk on the ground after disembarking. For the next several days, as I visited London, I felt the earth moving under my feet. The motion of the ship to which I had become accustomed lingered on in my body, making the ground seem shaky.

That same feeling is what some of us Catholics, and perhaps others, are now experiencing with the crisis that is shaking the Church. We have lost our moorings, our sense of solid ground, our confidence in tomorrow. Every week, sometimes every day, new revelations emerge to strike us in the gut. What sense, if any, can we find in it all?

I like to think that we are living through the death of one kind of institution as it slowly and painfully gives way to another. The implosion of the Boston archdiocese reveals the need for radical change as nothing else could have. To our astonishment, we elders have arrived at a time when the old certitudes can no longer serve us.

Of course, I am not talking about the faith that remains the bedrock of the Catholic Church. Basic belief and valued traditions of spiritual practice remain solid. But, even if we do not welcome it, we face the challenge of change in other areas of our religious life that have proven false.

Catholics continue to look toward Rome for guidance in crisis. In this instance, however, pope and central church government seem more a part of the problem than of the solution. A culture of secrecy and institutional duplicity have characterized many of the Vatican’s policies and activities for too long.

Internal change cannot very well take place in the current Vatican. Though it may seem ageist of me to suggest it, I have to think that a man burdened by crippling disability and disease has become ill equipped to take the lead in bringing about necessary reforms. The pope, I am convinced, should long since have been subject to a term of office as, in effect, other Catholic bishops throughout the world are. In the modern world, no one person can serve indefinitely long, no matter what his eminence and his record of past achievement.

Mind you, I would never take this critical stance were the Church not vitally important to me. In my later years, I continue to look to this faith community of mine for support and enlightenment, and I still find both there.

Though in the middle of a crisis like this one it may seem unrealistic to expect good to come out of it, that is what, in fact, I do expect. This agonizing time seems to me perhaps the Church’s best opportunity in decades to make  changes that are desperately needed.

In the meantime, it may help to us elders to look back on our record of success in adapting to previous large-scale changes. There is abundant reason for confidence that we, for whom church remains important, can do the same in the face of new challenges.

Richard Griffin

What if the residents of a large urban neighborhood could be assured of continuing to live in their own homes even into extreme old age?

This actually is the aim of Beacon Hill Village, a newly formed community of people over age 60 living in this area of Boston. Only four weeks ago, the first members signed up to receive services that will enable them to stay living where they now reside.

Judith Willett, the executive director of this “virtual retirement community,” expresses the high hopes behind the new venture. A dynamic woman, highly experienced in providing services to older people, she recently explained to visitors how the community will function. Although the organization’s active phase is only four weeks old, its structure has been carefully planned over the last few years.

“We are the access point,” she says of her office at Beacon House on Myrtle Street. A board of directors made up of older people will have responsibility for steering the new venture and seeing that it develops according to plan.

The idea behind Beacon Hill Village is one long familiar to specialists in the field of aging. They refer to it as “aging in place” and many of them regard it as the ideal for later life. Research has shown that large percentages of older Americans want to live out their most mature years in this fashion.

Many other people, of course, prefer to move away and live in places planned exclusively for older people, but they are clearly in a minority. I myself find the virtual community idea intensely attractive and would welcome having one in the urban neighborhood where my family lives.

The new community has three main providers.

The first is the nonprofit organization known as Rogerson Communities. It takes responsibility for financing, accounting, and fundraising. This agency has also contributed the office site, free of rent for the first year of operations.

Secondly, Houseworks, an agency based in Newton, will furnish a wide variety of direct service providers. These provide home health, transportation (including escorts), home adaptation and repairs, concierge services such as errands, and housecleaning.

The third component of the system is the Massachusetts General Hospital with its Senior Health program. This MGH program features an interdisciplinary approach whereby physicians, nurses, social workers, therapists, and others will work together to benefit patients.

If this new community sounds utopian, in many ways it actually is. Already inquiries have come from the far reaches of the country with people wanting to know how it works. Some other people in the Greater Boston area have begun fantasizing about how such a program could serve people in their own communities.

Of course, utopia costs money. The initial yearly fee to join the community is currently $500 for a single person and $600 for a household. Starting July first, the price will rise to $750 for an individual, $1000 for a household.

And the individual services will come at a price as well, though Houseworks will discount its standard fees by ten percent and the MGH services will be covered by patients’ standard health insurance.

To make community memberships affordable for people whose income falls short, Judith Willett has been applying for grants.

But money remains an important issue. Middle income people are the most at risk population, she says, because they lack the safety net provided to those lower on the income scale.

To get a skilled and objective view of the Beacon Hill plan I called John O’Neill, the veteran director of Somerville Cambridge Elder Services. To his mind, the new venture has a good chance of succeeding. “It could actually work there,” he says, after pointing out how difficult this kind of plan has been to pull off in other places. And it’s much better than expecting the state or federal government to do anything: “If they wait for a public solution – – who knows?”

On the visit to talk with Judith Willett my wife and I were joined by two of our friends, Clare Corbett and Clare Chapman. They were interested in exploring how the Beacon Hill virtual retirement community might possibly serve as a model for their parish church. My wife and I, for our part, were interested in learning how residents in our own urban neighborhood might think about starting such a venture.

To her credit, considering that her community has had only a few weeks’experience, Judith Willett agreed to speculate with us about the Beacon Hill model being applicable to our communities.

“I think you would need larger groups of people than one church and one neighborhood,” she said. To meet the annual budget of some $250,000, her community needs at least 300 people. And members of her board have contributed $100,000 toward the expenses of the first year.

But we can still dream of ways to emulate the creativity and adventurous spirit of our friends on Beacon Hill.

Further information about the new community is available at 617 723-9713.

Richard Griffin