Patrick Aidan Heelan was born, very romantically, in the 1066 and All That sense of being romantically born, on St. Patrick's Day in Dublin in 1926, as the second son of a mathematically gifted Flemish mother, Pauline Beirens, who had been sent from her native Antwerp to a convent school in Ireland, where she eventually met Matthew Henry Heelan, who, in addition to holding all the posts that are usually all we are told of a father's life, also had gifts that left a lasting impression on his family, including a passion for music, for sailing, and for roses, and who, together with his wife, raised his family, two sons, Louis† and Patrick, and a daughter, Esther, where they all grew up in a small stone house that stood on a parcel of land that ran directly to the sea, near Sandycove, in full view of the Martello Tower, not too far in space or in time from the Dublin we tend best to know from James Joyce.