This was taken from essays that I have written to my children - it was long before Louisiana.
The Early Years
I’m going to tell you a story - sometimes a sad story, sometimes happy and other times probably as boring as Hell - about my life. Much of it you will already know and other parts, perhaps not. Please feel free to skip over the boring parts. This is how I began and, eventually, how you came to be.
I was born on July 23rd, 1948 shortly after 2:00 AM. As the story goes, we were about to move and my father was out of town, arranging for his new job and our new home. As it was summertime and school was out my Uncle Dick and Aunt Helene had travelled from South Bend, Indiana to help out with my four older siblings when Mom gave birth to me.
Somewhere around midnight Mom knew it was time and Uncle Dick drove her to the hospital. After Mom was checked in, Uncle Dick started to leave but the nurses stopped him and told him to sit in the waiting room. After another foiled attempt he sat and waited. A little bit after 2:00 a nurse came out and told him that he had a son. Dick’s response, as told many times over the years was, “The Hell I am. That’s not my kid.” He then left and went back to the house to sleep. I imagine that there was a lively conversation at the nurses station that night.
We lived in Royal Oak, which was a suburb of Detroit. Two weeks later we moved to Pennsylvania. I’m not quite sure where in Pennsylvania. I know we lived in Erie, Bryn Mawr and Haverford over my first four years. Dad was an educator and had found that, if he wanted to advance, it was far better to move from one college to the next than it was to stay in place and wait for someone to retire or die. The only position that I’m sure of during that time was as Dean of Night School and Summer Studies at Gannon College.
Just before I turned five, we moved to Olean, New York, where Dad had taken the position of Dean of Liberal Arts at St. Bonaventure University. I started kindergarten at the Parish of St. Bonaventure.
My first memory was my second birthday. I remembered wearing a checked jacket and playing with the neighbors dog. I didn’t actually remember that it was my birthday but when I was older and told my mother that it was my first memory she told me that I didn’t remember it but had seen a picture of it, which she then dug out and showed me. So that’s how I learned that it had been my second birthday.
My next memories began in Olean. I remember that we lived on a main street and that we had three or four apple trees in the back yard as well as gooseberry bushes. When the apples ripened that year we set up a bench in front of the house and sold apples. Those apple trees were the first trees that I climbed. Two houses down, right on the Allegheny border, was a commercial nursery where you could buy flowers and shrubbery to landscape your home. Behind the nursery was the broadcast antenna for the local radio station.
I recall going to the birthday party of a neighborhood girl who was turning eight, my sister Nancy’s age. Nancy was mad that I was going but Mom sent me with her. There was a scavenger hunt where we hunted around the yard for poker chips. I couldn’t find any so Nancy gave me one of hers to shut me up. Then the birthday girl’s mom helped me find another so I gave Nancy’s chip back to her. At the end I won the booby prize for the least chips and got a Little Golden Book titled Dr. Dan the Band-Aid Man. The book had about six Band-Aids inside the back cover. Nancy insisted it was hers because she gave ma a chip, conveniently forgetting that I had given it back. That would set up our relationship for the coming years.
I also remember kindergarten. We actually had a sandbox in our large classroom. The teachers were the Sisters of St. Francis. At graduation I was chosen as “valedictorian” (my last such accomplishment) and led the graduation line wearing the habit of a Franciscan friar. I also sang a solo at graduation - On the Good Ship Lollipop. Yes, people actually liked my singing back then when I could control my voice.
But the one that stands out the most is Cindy Liegey. I took a liking to her and tried to kiss her under the stairs. I heard about that one, but not from the nuns. She went home and told her parents. Her father was an assistant professor of biology at St. Bonaventure and spoke to Dad, who then spoke to me and advised me that I couldn’t do that. It was my first father-son talk, one of very few that would occur until I was fourteen.
Towards the end of kindergarten Dad got a call from a nun of the Order of St. Joseph in Dodge City, Kansas. She was looking for a new president for St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City. It seems she had tried to hire a friend of Dad’s who said he wasn’t interested but his friend Frank might be. Dad replied that he didn’t know who she was and he was pretty sure that she didn’t really know who he was but he’d be happy to fly out to meet her.
Saint Mary of the Plains was, in fact, a high school which had been totally destroyed by a tornado several years earlier. School was in session that day but it was just before Christmas and everyone was in the basement assembly room at a Christmas party when the tornado came through. No on died and there were only a few injuries, but the top part of the school was gone.
The sisters decided to rebuild and, upon checking their charter, found that they were approved to run a high school and college. And that was what they decided to do.
From what I’ve been told, they rebuilt and opened a high school and four-year college. The nun who called my father was the college president. She had a bachelor’s degree. The rest of the faculty had a smattering of bachelors degrees, a few associates degrees and a large number, mostly nuns, who had not advanced beyond high school. The Kansas Board of Regents was threatening to yank their accreditation unless they could present a plan to improve the faculty and the curriculum.
And so, in the summer of 1954, after one year in Olean, we moved to Dodge City, Kansas. Dad set about to reshape the college and satisfied the Board of Regents with his plans. He was, obviously, the first PhD at the college. He began a process of bartering with the Sisters of St. Joseph to move nuns with college degrees into the school from other places and to send the less educated nuns to Wichita to earn college degrees. He hired from outside to beef up the educational level of the faculty. Some of the lay faculty were retained provided they complete whatever was necessary to obtain their bachelors degree. The majority were terminated. Within two years the Board of Regents was satisfied and by Dad’s sixth year he had moved the school to where to received accreditation from the Middle States Association, the premier accrediting group.
St Mary’s had an athletic department. The nun who had hired my father told him that football was bringing down the academic level of the school. How that was even possible, I don’t know. But after his first year he eliminated football Fromm the athletic program.
Dad was from Brooklyn, had been a frail child, and knew little about sports. He was about to learn how rabidly people in the midwest felt about football.
Our first year in Dodge City we lived at 1300 Avenue A. The next summer we moved five blocks up to 1716 Avenue A, on the corner of Comanche, across from St. Josephs Hospital. Comanche had a steep incline which ran down to Ave. B before climbing once again to Ave. C.
It started as soon as we moved in. Between midnight and 1:00 AM we would hear a car screech to a stop and then, quickly, banging. In the morning we would go out and find our garbage cans knocked over and down on Ave. B, where they had rolled the night before. Dad and I would go out, bring the cans back and pick up the garbage. The police department was either unable or unwilling to do anything to stop it.
One day I was out riding my bike when a dog started to chase me. Instead of trying to get away, I stopped and played with it. It began to follow me and when I got home it was still following me. It had no collar or tags. I don’t remember what I found to feed him but he was grateful. I summoned up my courage and asked Dad, who didn’t like pets, if I could keep him. The answer was no. So I played with him and left him outside at bed time.
That night, at about midnight, we heard the screeching of brakes and waited for the inevitable banging of trash cans. Instead we heard a loud, angry barking and the car burning rubber driving away. The same thing happened the following night.
The next morning my Dad told me that we could keep the dog, if it would sleep outside. That was certainly agreeable. There were no more trash cans dumped.
My new dog was a mixed breed with what seemed to be some Irish Setter in him. He had long, reddish hair. I named him Yeller, after the movie Old Yeller which was out around that time. He was with me most of the time, unless I was in school. When the cool weather came Dad relented and said that he could sleep in my bedroom. For almost five years he was my faithful companion and one of my best friends.
When I wasn’t around he would wander freely throughout the city, as dogs did then, and more then once came home dragging a large bone from the stockyard, over two miles away, that was too heavy for him to carry. When we moved to New York Dad told me that he had left him at the Schneweis’ farm and that they would take care of him. It was over three years later and after Dad’s death that I was told he was put down. I cried over that for several days.
My parents seemed to enjoy having children - at least my mother.
Frankie was born in 1941,
Jean in 1942,
Kathy in 1943,
Nancy in 1945.
Jimmy, who died after two weeks, in 1946.
I was born in 1948,
Mary in 1951,
Rosemary in 1953,
Barbara in 1956, and
Susan in 1957.
In case you’re not keeping track, that was ten children along with three miscarriages for a total of thirteen pregnancies in sixteen years.
When she became pregnant for the fourteenth time her doctor said that it would probably kill her so she had an abortion and a hysterectomy.
I always assumed that my parents really enjoyed sex but Kathy told me that Mom had told her that she didn’t really like sex and that when she was pregnant Dad would leave har alone. She also told Kathy - and me - that she loved being pregnant, never had morning sickness or any other negative and that she felt at her best when she was pregnant.
My relationships with my siblings varied. Frankie was seven years older than I and was mentally retarded - yes, that was the diagnosis and accepted terminology then - as well as having cerebral palsy. Because we were the only two boys out of nine, we shared a bedroom and a standard double bed. When I was 6 he was thirteen and it wasn’t easy being his roommate. He went to school and was carried forward year by year through high school although his reading level never reached fourth grade. The CP gave him jerky movements and when he was frustrated he got mad. More than once we had fights and I slept on the floor. As he got older, Frankie got softer. He had several part time jobs doing simple things and would often spend his money buying candy and things for Barbie and Susan.
Jean was six years older than I and we spoke about as often as I spoke to the lady next door. We didn’t have a bad relationship, just not much of one at all.
Kathy was my favorite. From the time that I was four years old I was her protector. I called her Dootsy. When my father accused her of doing something when I was four, I protected her from a spanking. I told him “Dootsy didn’t do it. I did it.” As much as he cross-examined me, I stuck to my story and, eventually, I got the spanking. I was told that it wasn’t much of a spanking because Dad was trying too hard not to laugh. In fact, I do not remember any of this happening. My knowledge comes from hearing the story repeated over the years, mostly from Kathy and my Mom As we got older, Kathy and I stayed close. She would go out babysitting and then would go out and buy candy or donuts, bringing then home to share with me.
Nancy never seemed to like me. She would get angry at Kathy for sharing with me. I remember once they had pooled money and bought a dozen donuts from the Spudnut store on Central Ave. Nancy told Kathy not to share “their” donuts with me. Kathy replied that she wasn’t. Nancy had six and she had six and she was sharing hers with me. Nancy was still mad. I remember the time that she hit me in the head with a metal roller skate and then ran into her room and locked the door. I banged on the door with the roller skate and cracked the wood, for which I got a spanking. Nancy told that story for decades, always leaving out the first part. She told it once at a family reunion and I corrected her version. She said that she had never hit me with it. Kathy said, “Yes, you did.” That was the last time that I heard her tell that story.
Three year gap to me and three years after me to -
Mary was different. She was quiet and thoughtful. We got along well together but she was always somewhat distant. When she and her second husband, Hal, got a house in Connecticut she invited us there for a BBQ and then called that morning to cancel, telling me that it was going to be outside and it might rain. When I told her that the forecast was 10% chance of rain she said, “I know”. We were never invited again nor, to my knowledge, was anyone else. My brother-in-law Charlie, Kathy’s husband, just showed up there one day and she didn’t even want to let him in until he told her he needed to use the bathroom. Every couple of years all the sisters get together with their Red Hat Club and she joins them. I would only speak to her at reunions and those stopped years ago.
Rosemary - Romey - and I got along well. She was fun to be with but had a few problems. When she was sixteen she was arrested for selling - believe it or not - peyote in front of New Rochelle High School. Mom hired a lawyer and got her an ACD. Several years later she was arrested on 125th St. In Harlem for selling heroin with her boyfriend. I was a relatively new cop at the time and I went with her to Court in Manhattan and, after speaking to the ADA, was able to get the charges against her dropped. She pretty much straightened out after that and dated a New Rochelle cop until he died in an auto accident. I spent the next few days with her and fairly soon, when she found a new boyfriend, Steve Michalec, I taught her how to cook a few meals and left her with a Betty Crocker Cookbook. She told him she knew how to cook and didn’t really have a clue. After they got married and bought a house I helped her to file for a variance and get a building permit for an addition with bathroom. When I separated from my second wife, Diane, I spent almost two weeks living at Romey’s house. We got along extremely well until your mother started a divorce proceeding and Romey was going to testify to things that had never occurred on your mother’s behalf. After that we spoke only once, at the wedding of one of Nancy’s kids. Nancy put her next to me at a table. She asked me when I would get over being mad at her for what she did. I replied, “Never” and got up and gave Nancy an envelope for her son. Then I left.
Barbara was always one of the two “little girls”. We got along well but the friendship part didn’t blossom until she was in her teens. She moved with Mom to Indiana a few years after Dad died and then came back with a girlfriend to see New York. I took them to see Greenwich Village in the morning. The street had not yet been cleaned and it stank. There were homeless people sleeping in the doorways. I offered to take her back in the evening and she declined. After that went home Mom called to thank me for that. She said Barb no longer had interest in moving back to NY. I spoke to Barbara a couple of months ago (4/2022) and she told me it wasn’t just that. She had somehow built a picture of NYC as this exciting, adventurous place and had realized that there was a lot of crime and filth as well. Barb and I talk at least once a month. She, Kathy and Susie are my three closest siblings.
Susan is the baby of the family. When I moved out she was nine years old. We really didn’t spend a lot of time together but she always had a good sense of humor with an easy laugh. And a smile. She had lots of friends and I wondered how she would turn out as an adult. Pretty well, it seems. She and her family are what I perceive as the almost perfect family. The one that I wish we were. But then, I’m looking from outside and a thousand miles away. Thinking about it, maybe the six years that separated me from a strong relationship with Jean is much like the nine years that separate me from Susie. I like her a lot and enjoy talking to her, I just don’t know her all that well.
So - Back to Dodge City. Our house was pretty loose compared to today. The doors were usually locked around eleven at night and unlocked before six in the morning. With as many as eleven people living there no one knew or seemed to care who was there. On weekends and during the summer I would get up and leave, without telling anyone, as early as 6:00 AM. As long as I was back for dinner by about 5:30 PM no questions were asked. That left an awful lot of leeway in my activities.
At age seven, in second grade, I became an altar boy. We were told that there would be a prize for the first one to know the altar boy’s latin responses to the priest in the mass. The next morning I showed up and gave them flawlessly, winning a small statue of the Virgin Mary. Frankly, I had known them for almost two years. I was reading and writing before kindergarten. That might be why my handwriting is so bad. It was self taught.
So I was an altar boy. I also had the best grades in my class. It was really nothing that I was proud of. It was effortless.
My father was good friends with humorist Bennett Cerf who, in addition to writing books, was the President of Random House Publishing. In addition to their popular fiction titles they published technical books and school books. Dad reviewed many books for Random House. Whenever Random House issued a new textbook through their Scott-Foresman division, from grades one through twelve, Mr. Cerf sent Dad two copies, one the student edition, the other the teacher’s edition. By the time I entered second grade I had read them all except physics, chemistry and calculus.
In second grade they brought first grader Donna Schneweis into our class and told us that she could read up to the fifth grade level. She picked up our reader and read, accurately but haltingly. I remember thinking that I could read high school texts better than that.
A couple of weeks later I realized that the nun who taught my class was using the teacher’s edition to question us. That night I re-read the teacher’s edition. The following morning Sister started to question us. I put my hand up and answered the first question. I put my hand up for the second one and she called on someone else. I left my hand up. Sister asked me why and I told her it was to answer the next question. She laughed and said she hadn’t asked it yet but go ahead. When I did, she turned bright red. That night Dad and I had a talk and again I was told that this behavior was not appropriate. I didn’t do it again.
That was the year that my tonsils came out. While I was in the hospital my Dad came across the street to visit me. He ran into the bishop of our diocese, a friend of his, and together they walked into my room. They asked how I was doing and the bishop asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I told him I wanted to be a priest and Dad laughed. He said, “Tell him what you really want to be.” I reddened and said “A bishop.” The bishop smiled and said “Well, I’ll be retiring by then.”
I discovered that the hospital had a chapel but no altar boys so I volunteered myself and served mass in that chapel every day for almost two years. By that time Bishop Forrest had decided to pull rank and throughout fifth and sixth grades I served mass in the chapel in his home every day, 364 days a year. (There is no mass on Holy Saturday as Christ has died.)
So that was me - best in my class, the Bishop’s altar boy and a boy scout to boot. What a great kid, with a lot of free unsupervised time.
So my parents didn’t know that I started smoking at seven and drinking hard liquor at nine. By ten I had used guns, chewed tobacco and made my first bomb. My friends and I would walk all over town, sometimes using the storm sewer system so that no one could see us. By eleven we had appropriated an abandoned shed on a barn just outside of town to use as a clubhouse, exploring the Playboy magazines that Buddy White took from his uncle Gordon Day’s basement. We had even started shoplifting for the thrill. Fortunately, I was never caught.
Summers were extremely hot - 90 to100+ in July and August - and we didn’t have air conditioning. Many summer nights I would sleep in the yard because it was so hot in the house. Sometimes I would have friends for overnights. And we would wander all over town in the wee hours of the morning. Seeing a cop was very rare at that hour and, if we did, they didn’t seem to care.
In July we would buy fireworks and use them all over town. My parents didn’t know, even when a cherry bomb exploded in my hand because I took too long to throw it. I didn’t tell them. I just didn’t use my right hand much for the next week. When I broke a bone in my left ring finger no one knew. I just didn’t use it until it seemed to be better. When I was accidentally shot between the second and third toes by a .22 rifle they didn’t know.
Had we remained in Kansas past my twelfth birthday I’m not sure what way my life would have gone.
- 30 -
