CLEVELAND, Ohio — Within hours of landing in the United States for the first time, in 2011, Andy “Guck” Rowen found himself standing inside the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, staring at a piece of paper that seemed to collapse his past, present and future into a single life-affirming moment.
Rowen and Declan Joyce, the Irish-American Cleveland native who invited Rowen to his hometown to help him get his life back from years of drug addiction, had been “traipsing around” the museum for a few hours, with Rowen admittedly getting a little bored.
Rowen had arrived from Dublin less than 10 hours before — soaking wet from the journey, without a proper coat, and his mind and body battered by years of heroin and drug addiction marked by stretches of homelessness. Rowen had never been to the States and did not know anyone in America save Joyce, the man who picked him up at the airport…