By Tom Deignan

Two events which seem completely unrelated got me thinking some deep thoughts recently.

Or maybe I was just feeling loopy from a lack of sleep.

That’s because on Monday, November 28, my third child was born. Timothy Russell came into the world the way his sister Maggie (now four) and older brother T.J. (now two) came in — after their parents were awake for over 24 hours.

So, with some time to spend in the maternity ward I got to thinking about a newspaper clipping I set aside for a possible column. Two weeks from now, on December 13, yet another batch of Kennedy family memorabilia will be auctioned off by Guernsey’s at the Park Avenue Armory.

It’s getting to feel like these Kennedy auctions are becoming monthly affairs, with everything but the family’s used toothpicks and toilet paper fair game for auctioneers.

So, how could a Kennedy auction mean anything on the night when my son was about to be born?

Well, it turns out that I possess an item which JFK auctioneers might be interested in. It’s nothing like the watch the Irish American prince wore at his inauguration, which is one of the items up for grabs next month. But it is a rare commodity, which has passed its way through three generations of my own family.

And presuming I resist the urge the sell this item to the highest bidder, it will move onto a fourth generation. Because, to me, it is worth more in my family — to T.J. or Timmy or Maggie — than it would ever be on the auction block.

As is well known in Kennedy circles, Joe Junior was supposed to be the first Irish Catholic president. But the eldest Kennedy son was killed in World War II.

After that tragic event, young Jack edited a book about his brother called As We Remember Joe. In 1945, the book was privately published. Only a few hundred copies were printed. I have one of them, apparently signed by JFK himself.

I have it because my great-uncle Dave Deignan (whose large family came to the Bronx by way of Roscommon and Liverpool) worked for the Kennedy family in Florida.

He was a driver who also looked after the family compound. He was so close to the family that (according to a clipped, yellowed obituary I once saw) when Bobby was killed in 1968, old Joe called Uncle Dave out of retirement to help hold the family together.

So, a copy of As We Remember Joe ended up in the hands of my grandmother, Anne Deignan (nee Murphy).

Unfortunately, not much of the Kennedy glow rubbed off on the Deignans of Staten Island. My Dad, Tom Senior, retired after 20 years as a sanitation worker.

He raised his own three kids just blocks from where he himself grew up. One of those kids, for better or worse, apparently struck my grandmother as a bookish type, even if a lot of the books he read were books about war or baseball.

Well, As We Remember Joe was kind of a war book. And so, I got it when my grandmother died in 1991. (My father would pass away just one year later.)

It’s too early, of course, to say which of my own kids might be interested in an item like this. All I can hope is that they are not so interested in the price it would fetch on the open market.

According to several estimates on the web, As We Remember Joe is worth as much as $5,000. In a world of hefty mortgages and college tuition, that’s not all that much money.

More valuable than the book itself, I think, is a piece of paper that came with it. It is, of all things, the warranty service index card for some piece of Panasonic electronics equipment.

My grandmother was supposed to write her address on one side of the card and mail it to the manufacturer. Instead she wrote, “This book belongs to Tom.”

That card wouldn’t earn much at any Kennedy auction. But, Timmy, Maggie and T.J., please know that that card gives this book any value it really has.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)