I learned about the Sullivan brothers when I was 9 years old, their story told in a black-and-white movie I watched on TV with my mother beside me.

I laughed through most of it. George, Frank, Joe, Matt, and Al were five boys born within seven years in Waterloo, ­Iowa, early in the 20th century, their lives full of adventure. They found an abandoned, leaky boat, plugged its holes with mud, climbed in, went sailing. And the boat capsized. They took a saw to their mother’s kitchen to improve it and cut through a water pipe.