Free Bing Crosby by Gary Giddins

more than once; on one occasion Kate, advised of his internment
     by the arresting officer, told him to keep her son overnight to teach him a lesson. Still, the gang’s crimes were piddling
     ones: swiping candy and ice cream, drinking, smoking anything they could light, putting up their dukes, and sneaking into
     movie theaters. The urchins in Bing’s circle produced a priest, lawyer, doctor, judge, boxer, and football Hall of Famer,
     as well as an entertainer. Bing stayed in touch with some of them his entire life.
    The episode that cemented his stature among his peers — never told the same way twice — involved his challenging one Jim Turner
     to a fight in defense of his “plump and easygoing” sister Mary Rose. 32 She had been either called “fatty” or caricatured in a picture, which was either distributed to the other kids or drawn on
     a blackboard. Jimmy Cottrell (later a junior welterweight champ and, with Bing’s help, a Paramount Pictures prop man) was
     a member of the Logan Avenue gang but was present at the 1914 tussle. He remembered a large crowd of kids circling a parking
     lot (an alley according to Bing, aplayground according to Mary Rose), cheering the contestants. Bing bloodied Turner’s nose (undisputed), earning his sister’s
     devotion and subdued approval from his parents, especially Kate, who thought him chivalrous.
    Bing was closest to Mary Rose of all his siblings, while Kay bonded with Ted. These lifelong pairings were viewed with irony,
     because Mary Rose — a candid, funny, exceedingly well liked woman who greatly enjoyed Bing’s reflected glory — was personally
     much more like Ted. Kay, who was quiet, private, and fiercely independent, was Bing’s double. In later years she never gave
     an interview, never boasted of her famous brother, never confided in anyone when she was dying of cancer. Of the seven children,
     only Kay and Bing would never be divorced.
    Yet Mary Rose was his favorite. “Whenever I had problems,” Mary Rose said, “I always went to Bing and he calmed me down and
     advised me what I should do.” 33 She admired his remarkable memory, apparent from early childhood, and the way he taught himself to do a time step and play
     drums. His pet name for her was Posie, and he took her ice-skating, sharing his old black skates. “We liked to swim and to
     skate and none of the others did, particularly,” Mary Rose said. 34 Jim Pool, the last of her three husbands, noted that when Everett was managing Bing and found him intransigent, he would
     ask Mary Rose to intercede. When Bing noticed Mary Rose and Jim driving an old car, he bought them a new one. “In my book,”
     Mary Rose said, “he had it made when he was little. I always knew he’d amount to a lot.” 35
    On September 18, 1915, as Bing commenced his final year at Webster, grandfather Dennis Harrigan Jr. passed away at his home
     in Tacoma, at eighty-three. 36 Bing had been a baby the last time they had seen each other. Six years before, Dennis had been struck by falling timber while
     inspecting construction of the governor’s mansion, and he never entirely recovered. He was survived by a brother, seven children,
     fourteen grandchildren (half of them Kate’s), and a widow, Katie, who would become the subject of the opening anecdote in
     Bing’s 1953 memoir.
    In Bing’s story, his grandmother Katie, who is dying, asks her “Irishman” husband, Dennis, for his hand. “Katie,” he says,
     “it’s a hand thatwas never raised against ye.” Eyes dilating, she answers, “And it’s a damn good thing for ye it wasn’t!” Upon delivering that
     insuperable finish, she expires. 37 It’s a fine tale, paying homage to a spirited Irish woman, and may have some basis in truth (perhaps regarding Bing’s great-grandparents).
     But Dennis died three years before Katie, and neither ever spent a day in Ireland. Bing’s confusion on this point is instructive.
     Bing’s family neither visited Dennis