Sean Ahern

Sean Ahern, Son of Writer John Ahern, Lived at Westbeth 1969-1971

My Westbeth Memory, 1969

When I was 15, in the eleventh grade, my father John Ahern and my stepmother Frieda Evans moved into 502D and invited me to move in. I had asked to leave my mother’s overcrowded apartment on the Lower East Side where I lived with my younger brother and sister. Together with my father and younger brother Evan, we built the walls in 502D to create two bedrooms out of the open space. The work was memorable. I had my own room for the first time and spent the next year and a half living with my father whom I had missed when my parents separated. Westbeth was the place where our family and friends gathered for many years afterwards.