With a colorful cast of characters based on real-life influences and his own artwork, Dr. Ed O'Malley helps readers meet 'my people'
GROSSE POINTE WOODS — Dr. Edward O’Malley, 75, traces the cataclysmic point of his “absolutely blessed life” to his eighth-grade year in 1963.
A retired pediatric ophthalmologist, O’Malley has lived his life with “yes” on his lips, taking opportunities and seizing chances. Still, the defining moment occurred in eighth grade at St. Suzanne School in Detroit — although he says his luck started much earlier, agreeing that he had been born under “a lucky star” (or two).
In April, he self-published his debut novel, “The Walking Otters,” a thinly veiled memoir disguised as fiction, illustrated with O’Malley’s original artwork. The story follows the growing friendship of two Metro Detroit eighth graders, Cab and Julia, as they navigate the influential school year at the fictional St. Anne’s.
“The most important year of my life was my eighth-grade year, and that’s why I wrote the book. I wanted to write a book about two kids in the eighth grade finding their direction and all of the wonderful people that I’ve met in my life, many of whom were all there in that year,” O’Malley said. “It was like the Beatles coming together — the Beatles aren’t the Beatles without George, and likewise, my life would have been very different had some of these people been transferred out a year before.”
O’Malley wants the reader to “get to know his people,” and the two young teens are supported by a cast of fascinating characters based on the people in O’Malley’s own life, who helped see him from a kid from a working-class neighborhood to a Harvard graduate and successful doctor.
O’Malley grew up on the west side of Detroit, the fourth of five boys. His father was a Detroit city cop, and his mother was a homemaker who had left rural Ruth, Michigan, on a bus at age 14 to find her way in the Motor City.
The summer before eighth grade, O’Malley said his teacher for the upcoming school year, Sr. Genevieve Mary, picked him to be the captain of the safety patrol, a AAA program that put kids in schools across Michigan in charge of seeing the hundreds of students heading to Catholic school safely cross the streets.
“I had to manage this little team, and Sr. Genevieve was managing me. When I got to May of my eighth-grade year, Sister did one-on-one exit interviews with everybody,” he explained. He included this scene in the book.
“She sat us all down and told us what she thought of us,” O’Malley continued. “She really changed my life, and she sat me down and said, ‘You have many gifts, and those gifts aren’t earned; they are gifts. What you do with it is up to you. You, for whatever reason, have the gift of leadership, people want to be like you and near you, and you can do whatever you want with that — you can lead people to the dark side for your own selfish benefit, or you can lead people to make the world a better place.’ And she said, ‘You only get one life, and you can make your life a beautiful thing.’ I was sitting there like, ‘Dang, yes, I can.’ And that stuck with me my whole life.”
O’Malley believes that without Sr. Genevieve — or, Joanne Hoelschler, as she became known after leaving the convent 10 years later — nothing would have been the same, and he dedicated the book to her.
The book's title is a nod to the walks Cab and Julia take to and from school throughout the book — their conversations on these walks are where much of their personal growth and friendship blossom, O'Malley said.
“You write what you know,” O’Malley said. “There were no school buses for the kids in Catholic schools; there was a parish and school every mile or so. You never had to walk far, so everyone walked. That was the literary device I used — their conversations on the way to and from school — and the nickname of the school mascot is the Otters.”
After eighth grade, O’Malley’s life did not slow down. He attended Detroit Cathedral High School and met his wife, Judy, in his junior year at a funeral he was invited to by a friend. “It's all about saying yes instead of no,” O’Malley reiterated, recalling that afterward Judy brought him home to meet her parents and made him a hamburger.
By a wild chance, he attended Harvard, despite being pledged to another school (a story for another time, he says). He went on to attend medical school at the University of Michigan followed by a phenomenal medical career, which included multiple medical missions to places like Mongolia and Syria before retiring in 2018. O’Malley and his wife have two children and have lived in the same home since 1980, which is full of O’Malley’s artwork and family photos.
O’Malley says his life has been lucky and blessed, but that it also is important to pursue opportunities and say "yes" as often as possible.
“I realized many years ago that I was born under a lucky star and that I had more good things happen to me than anyone has a right to, but I didn’t have the narcissism in me to write a memoir, so I made it a novel,” O’Malley explained. “I had a lot of good years of life after eighth grade, but that was the year most determinative of the future.”
The two main characters, Cab and Julia, are representative of the two sides of O'Malley's brain.
“There was that jockish dopey raw talent side of my brain (Cab), and there was the opportunity-laden, literary other side of my brain (Julia)," O’Malley said.
The cast includes cameos from famous individuals such as Major League Baseball player and commentator Kirk Gibson, who once played hockey with O’Malley; famous novelist William Martin, whom O’Malley knows from Harvard; and famous architect Chien Chung “Didi” Pei. O’Malley even designed a series of buildings in Detroit for the book, and had Pei confirm it looked like something he would come up with.
Additionally, many of the fictional characters are based on important real people from his life, such as his beloved elementary school baseball coach and his dear, late friend, Congressional Gold Medal honoree Motoko Fujishiro Huthwaite. These two influential figures inspired the characters of Julia’s parents.
O’Malley took extra steps to ensure these cameos were as accurate as possible. In one instance, the person who inspired a character couldn’t distinguish fact from fiction, he said.
Paul Abbate, formerly the special agent in charge of the FBI in Detroit and now the United States deputy director of the FBI, is featured in the book as the character George Jameson.
“I got to know Paul, and I watched him in action … I told him I was going to base a character on him, and so I had him give a graduation speech to the eighth-grade class,” O’Malley said. “I sent Paul the text of the speech. A month later he called and he said, ‘Ed, what is this? When did I give this speech?’ And I said, ‘No, you didn't give this speech; the character that I wrote based on you gave this speech.’ He said, 'Ah, because I'm reading it, and I’ve given this speech before almost word for word.’”
Abbate told O’Malley to leave the speech as it was written.
“I asked him, ‘Would you, as a special agent in charge of this office, ever give a commencement address to a bunch of eighth graders?’ He said, ‘I do it all the time. It is one of the most important things I think that I do,’” O’Malley recalled. “‘My job is not just around this office; it is to create this next generation of people.’”
O’Malley said he had written the book three times over, working on the final published copy over the last five years. He plans to write a sequel. He self-published and has been promoting the book himself, and he says it has been well-received so far.
“One of the criticisms that I got from a few people was that these kids seem a little too mature for eighth graders,” O’Malley said. “My answer to that is, ‘You are entitled to whatever opinion, and I respect it, but I didn’t write a book about two average eighth graders. I wrote a book about two spectacular eighth graders, and the fact that you didn’t know these people doesn’t mean that they weren’t out there.’”
O’Malley hopes the book makes both young and old reflect on their own time in eighth grade, as well as their children's school experiences.
“When my kids were in eighth grade, it wasn't all that different,” O’Malley said. “The details are different, but the core is kind of the same; it is a year of incredible discovery, and the kids at the beginning of eighth grade and at the end are physically very different. It's a year when a lot of stuff happens. Not only physically, but it can be a time of great intellectual enlightenment where you are using your head for something other than getting the right answer, and you are trying to figure out where you fit in this whole world.”
O’Malley believes the book is “faith-affirming,” and he points to the journey Cab and Julia take to grow in friendship, commitment, and responsibility and learn right from wrong.
“Anais Nin said, ‘We write to taste life twice: in the moment and in the retrospect,’” O’Malley said. “With this book, I mostly want the reader to meet my people. I love my people; they are worth knowing.”
Copy Permalink
