John Durkin, Jr. was born on December 26, 1936 in Lowell, MA to an Irish father and Portuguese mother. He graduated from Lowell High School in 1954 and went on to graduate from Merrimack College with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. He continued the family business of cleaning products, eventually opening Durkins, Incorporated. His father owned the Puritan Floor Covering Company. His mother, Helen (Spinney) Durkin, was part of the Spinney family, a large Portuguese family in Lowell. The family's surname was originally Espinola, but the patriarch, Dominus, changed it to Spinney when he immigrated to the United States. In this interview, John tells the family folklore of how Dominus was kicked out of Portugal, eventually opening a bookstore in Lowell.
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