Tom Hagen was thirty-five years old, a tall crew-cut man, very slender, very

Ordinary-looking. He was a lawyer but did not do the actual detailed legal work for

The Corleone family business though he had practiced law for three years after

Passing the bar exam.

At the age of eleven he had been a playmate of eleven-year-old Sonny

Corleone. Hagen's mother had gone blind and then died during his eleventh year.

Hagen's father, a heavy drinker, had become a hopeless drunkard. A hard-

Working carpenter, he had never done a dishonest thing in his life. But his

Drinking destroyed his family and finally killed him. Tom Hagen was left an

Orphan who wandered the streets and slept in hallways. His younger sister had

been put in a foster home, but in the 1920's the social agencies did not follow up

Cases of twelve-year-old boys who were so ungrateful as to run from their charity.

Hagen, too, had an eye infection. Neighbors whispered that he had caught or

Inherited it from his mother and so therefore it could be caught from him. He was

Shunned. Sonny Corleone, a warmhearted and imperious eleven-year-old, had

Brought his friend home and demanded that he be taken in. Tom Hagen was given

A hot dish of spaghetti with oily rich tomato sauce, the taste of which he had

Never forgotten, and then given a metal folding bed to sleep on.

In the most natural way, without a word being spoken or the matter discussed