May 2, 2023
Who could ever forget the Horgan twins, Jimmy and Joey, who grew up in an antique Greek Revival house at the corner of North and Cottage Streets, now the site of Rockland Trust bank?
Jimmy passed away from a long illness on August 22, 2015. Joey passed away December 21, 2019. Their older brothers John and Michael died before that; the remaining siblings are Tommy and Earline.
Like most Medfield kids in the 1950s, Jimmy and Joey attended the Memorial School on Adams Street. One day, during recess, Jimmy went inside to get a drink of water from the fountain in the hallway. Suddenly a big kid from the playground saw him and thought he’d have fun pushing little Jimmy around. Jimmy quickly escaped and joined the other children who were playing outside.
Just a minute later Jimmy reappeared in the hallway with the reinforcements: brothers Joey and Michael, and good friends Mike Rogers and Billy Callahan. They surrounded the pugnacious big kid, read him the riot act, and warned him not to pick on Jimmy ever again. Those kids had Jimmy’s back, and whatever they said worked.
From that day on it was common knowledge that if you messed with one Horgan, you messed with them all.
Jimmy and Joey’s first sports venture was with the Medfield Little League. Short in stature, they were Napoleonic and courageous and high-octane and extremely loyal to each other, not just in sports but in just about every other aspect of their lives…as were the other members of the proudly-Irish American Horgan household as well.
These twins were practically inseparable, with similar but not identical likes and dislikes. Joey was always a very hard worker, sociable and talkative, eloquent when speaking, interested in world history, and a man who could talk with anyone about religious issues and politics. Jimmy would take the side of an underdog, saying, “It’s not the dog in the fight, but the fight in the dog.” He’d never underestimate the goodness in people.
Jimmy always held down a good job and read a lot of books in his spare time. (Later in life, he lived just a few steps from the library.) Jimmy and Joey were gregarious and opinionated and enjoyed a good debate. They lived for the good times but managed to come through the bad ones with a smile on their faces. As boys, Jimmy and Joey were good friends to many, and they were always there to lend a hand. And that’s what made them into the young men they became.
Jimmy and Joey Horgan were tenacious, quick, and agile halfbacks on the Medfield High School football team. Coach Ed Keyes admired those qualities and called the twins “fearless runners,” seemingly indestructible. Jimmy and Joey were two of the most valiant running backs ever to put on a football uniform for Medfield High. With their smaller size and weight, they were tough running backs playing on a giant billiard table of green grass.
Along with brother Michael, as well as other starting members of the 1962 varsity football team, Jimmy and Joey helped usher in a great winning tradition, reversing a four-year skid. They graduated from Medfield High School in 1963.
As adults, they were avid, eclectic readers. Among their favorite novels were The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway, East of Eden, Grapes of Wrath, and The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger, and the World War II novel by Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead. With a smile on his face, Jimmy remarked, “I wish Mailer had written less about the dead and more about the naked.”
Jimmy and Joey were also fascinated with philosophy and especially enjoyed the cinematic work of director Stanley Kubrick. For Jimmy and Joey, the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey perhaps represented the unknown but also the higher power standing as a gateway to the heavens. Joey was a free thinker, never believing that mankind was hard-wired to resort to war, and refusing to believe that the deadly, violent, and ultimate conflict of warfare was the answer. He mentioned that war was a sometimes-permanent solution to a workable, temporary problem.
In 1970 both Jimmy and Joey managed and worked in the 14 Carver Street Restaurant that was once called Dante’s. That dining spot was in a tough location near Tremont and Stuart Streets in Boston, especially with the teeming crowd coming out later in the evening. On one side of their restaurant was the Hillbilly Ranch, which featured country western music for its faithful following. On the other side was the kinky, 12 Carver Street nightclub, a biker bar with some local Boston jazz singers appearing nightly.
In that rough locale the twins realized that those people in Park Square went “around and around the same blocks night after night selling themselves.” Although they distained that sometimes criminal street life, the twins were accepting and philosophic, realizing those people had to make a living somehow. Regardless of the ambiance, Jimmy and Joey made their restaurant successful until the operation had to close due to the new construction restoring all of Park Square in early 1980s. Today that same location is where PF Chang operates today serving Asian food.
Jimmy worked hard and gained an outstanding reputation as a mixologist/bartender…and he was named one of Boston’s top 10 bartenders by Boston Magazine. Jimmy still found time to study dramatics and theater in Boston, and as a fine actor he appeared in productions for the Walpole Footlighters.
Joey on the other hand, had returned to Medfield after working nearly a decade as a chef in Cero’s in Provincetown and at other restaurants on Cape Cod. Later he went to work at the Shaw’s in Medfield in the produce and seafood sections, where he became well-known and appreciated by the customers and staff. Many of Joe’s fellow employees were surprised to find out that Joey had his twin brother when Jimmy came in to shop and met many of the Shaw’s staff.
As time marched on Jimmy and Joey moved into the second-floor apartment owned by Linda Cain at 13 Pleasant Street in Medfield. From there they had easy access to one of their favorite hangouts, the Medfield library. Likewise, they were also living near their other favorite venues such as the Zullo Gallery, Royal Pizza, and the new Brothers Marketplace. From all this profile, Jimmy and Joey had become two of the most well-known and recognizable figures in all of Medfield.
Jimmy and Joey Horgan grew up in a transitional time which might be considered Medfield’s adolescence. Medfield had been a sleepy town just 20 miles southwest of Boston – no Medfield Day, no fast-food chains. Crime was little to none, and employment was always available. The only vices kids had were smoking cigarettes and occasionally drinking beer. Car drag races were in vogue, and although seemingly dangerous, few ever got hurt. There were local street corners where teens would go to meet and talk about their latest exploits. If they gathered in public areas, the police soon came by to run them off – but inevitably they would turn up somewhere else. The most likely place would have been the soda fountain at either Lords or the Maguire Drug Store (now Brother’s and Go Fresh). At least they were spending their money. Outside on the Main Street corner, the local street kids stood fashionably, sometimes defiantly with their jackets open, even in the cold weather. Perhaps, those teens identified as being anti-establishment, later ushering in the sometimes-non-conformist culture that bloomed in the 1980s.
In the twins’ lifetime they welcomed a new era when the town went upscale with a stellar school system. Graciously, Jimmy and Joey celebrated both the prosperous town that Medfield became, along with the beloved heritage. In remembrance, it has been people like Jimmy and Joey Horgan who have helped to stir the melting pot of our universal society. That may seem remarkable in the present-day world of uncertainty. Enlightened by the life and good times of Jimmy and Joey Horgan has made one thing abundantly clear. Perhaps, these twins were the Jimmy and Joey Horgan who many people never had the pleasure of knowing. In revelation, sometimes in life we can never know the ending to a song until it’s sung clean clear through.