By Tom Deignan

Tom Hanley knows about the waterfront. He knows about the myth and he knows about the reality. He was in the Hollywood movie which made the waterfront famous, and he still works on the waterfront every day.

Much was made earlier this month about the posthumous honors bestowed upon Father John Corridan. He was the so-called “waterfront priest” (with parents from Kerry) who battled corruption and was the model for the righteous priest played by Karl Malden in the Marlon Brando classic movie On the Waterfront.

The Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor recently christened its first police boat in honor of Corridan, the Irish American labor crusader.

All of this might make it seem like the Irish American role on the mythic waterfront is a thing of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the unions, to a former police commissioner to other law enforcement officials who now keep a close eye of turf still cherished by the mob -– and terrorists –- the Irish remain on the waterfront.

Start with Tom Hanley. He is currently the union shop steward for Local 1588, which represents longshoreman who work for Global Terminal, the main cargo handler in the New Jersey Harbor.

Hanley was born in Greenwich Village, the son of an Irish longshoreman who was –- according to a recent article in The New Yorker –- killed by gangsters on the historically Irish turf of Manhattan’s West Side. The Hanleys left Manhattan for New Jersey.

Hanley has been on the waterfront nearly five decades now, and is respected by those currently in charge of rooting out mob influence. But even before he began working on the docks as a teenager, they were a big part of his life.

Hanley had a small but pivotal role in the film On the Waterfront. He played Tommy, a neighborhood kid who cares for the beloved pigeon coop kept by Brando’s character Terry Malloy.

When the boy learns that Malloy plans to rat on his crooked pals, he kills the pigeons in an emotional act of vengeance, capturing just how deeply entrenched the docks’ code of honor is.

Hanley’s brother also became a longshoreman which, as he told The New Yorker, is ultimately how he came to the job.

He also provides colorful insight into the shady, dangerous world of the Irish docks.

“(My brother) was hooked up with the Murphy brothers, who were in power in Hoboken at the time,” Hanley said. “They killed two or three people to take over that local. When I told my mother I was gonna get my pass” — from the Waterfront Commission — “she said, ‘No, you know what happened to your father.’ So I said, ‘Ma, it’s either the waterfront or the Railway Express.’ I used to steal some cargo with some guys from the Railway Express. So she chose the waterfront.”

But these days, Hanley is credited with being part of the solution, not the problem, since he won his union election last year.

He told The New Yorker that he was ultimately not one to be tempted by the waterfront’s corrupt influences.

“I had a friend who was a bad killer,” Hanley said. “When I left Hoboken, and came to Global, he always used to say, ‘Tommy, any jobs you want done over there?’ And I’d always say, ‘No, I’m driving a crane, I’m making money.’ If I’d said yes, it would’ve been done. But then I would’ve owed him something,” Hanley said.

“I could have had a lot of different jobs from wise guys. But, once you take one of those, you owe them. And then it never stops.”

Two Irish Americans, meanwhile, are overseeing the ongoing process of keeping the waterfront safe and secure.

J. Kevin McGowan is the acting police chief of the Waterfront Commission of New York Harbor, while former New York City Police Department Commissioner Robert McGuire is currently a federal monitor supervising reforms at Local 1588.

So, taking a cue from Father Corridan and, ultimately, Brando’s tortured Terry Malloy, the Irish on the waterfront continue to fight the good fight to keep it (relatively) free of crime and even terrorism.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)