DIANE MAKAR MURPHY Sentimental smiles are reward enough for ballad singer

You can almost hear it the way Eddie Durkin tells it -- he and eight brothers and sisters, ages 2 to 16, at their east Youngstown home, singing at their Irish mother's request.
"We used to have a swing set, and we'd all nine sit there like birds and sing. The neighbors loved it," Durkin said. "Our mom had us sing Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra."
It took him almost 50 years to realize singing was just what he should be doing.
Durkin was born and reared in Youngstown and became a graduate of East High School in 1957, before joining the military. Afterward, he got a job at Youngstown Steel Door, where he worked for the next 38 years.
About four years before retirement, his children, Colleen Ruggieri, a Boardman High School English teacher, and Brian Durkin, an Elkton correctional officer, bought him a small karaoke machine. Everything was about to change.
Durkin hauled it out for family gatherings, and then he found an even better use for it.
How it started
"I was in my 50s, in church in Salem and the sermon at St. Paul's was, we are blessed; you must give back," Durkin recalled. "The sermon just struck me. I don't know why. Sometimes you listen, but you don't listen. But, this time I did."
Durkin began dragging the karaoke machine to Shepherd of the Valley retirement center in Niles. "Music just came to me," he said, explaining why he decided to volunteer in that way. It was no wonder. In addition to "playing" his childhood backyard, Durkin and his brothers and sisters filled a pew at church and sang hymns. Durkin participated in chorus in high school, and throughout the years he sang the National Anthem when his fight promoter friends asked him to. His brother Bobbie was even a professional singer for a time.
After two years as a volunteer ballad singer, so many requests came in, Durkin had business cards printed and turned pro himself. Now he performs about 20 shows a month, singing at private parties, reunions, restaurants and care centers. He sings Broadway, country, songs of the '30s and '40s, and makes you do a double-take when he breaks out an Elvis ballad.
"I sing at most of the care centers from Cleveland to Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Sharon and East Liverpool," he said. His wife Mary, a nurse at St. Elizabeth's, encourages him to perform.
Moved to tears
Durkin sometimes sings at Sunrise Assisted Living of Poland, where my mother lived. He sings ballad after ballad -- "Make the World Go Away," "Let Me Call You Sweetheart," "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" -- sometimes along with aged, crackling voices from his audience, sometimes accompanied by their melancholy tears.
Sometimes the tears belong to Durkin. "Irish people are sentimental as hell," he said. "My brothers and I were all tough guys, but I cry in movies." When he sings "Wind Beneath My Wings," he said he pictures his little mom, who died in 1957 and who taught him "you don't steal; you go to church; you work." And he cries.
I wondered why someone with Durkin's voice wasn't singing somewhere important, on a big stage some place.
"I sing all over, but my heart is in care centers. These people clap. They sing with me. That's a reward in itself. When I sing to an Alzheimer's patient, I see a light come on," he said. "I know a lot of people who are retired, but I don't know anybody as happy as I am. I've been retired for two years and I loved my job, but I don't miss it."
The last time I danced with my mom before she died in her small room at Sunrise, it was to the music of Eddie Durkin, The Ballad Singer.
Ed may not have a lot of record producers barking at his heels, but I guarantee he has a lot of admirers among the angels in heaven.
murphy@vindy.com