Transcript: Tape 1 Side A

DATE: March 3, 1998
TAPE: Tape 1
INTERVIEWEE: Thomas Scully, M.D.
INTERVIEWER: Eileen Barker
PLACE: Dr. Scully's home, 1400 Ferris Lane in Reno
TRANSCRIPTIONIST: Teresa Garrison (Revised 2016, Haley Kovac)

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Thomas Scully: Yeah, okay we're all set. It's working.

Eileen Barker: Today is March 3^rd and this is Eileen Barker. I'm interviewing Dr. Thomas Scully and we're at Dr. Scully's home on Ferris Lane, 1400 Ferris Lane in Reno. Dr. Scully, we might as well start with the obvious; tell me about where you were born and your date of birth.

TS: Alright. November 14, 1932. I was born in Jamaica, New York. My family at the time, actually, were living in Poughkeepsie; but my mother, I was the seventh child, went back to her obstetrician in Jamaica, to the Mary Immaculate Hospital where I was born. That's very close to the La Guardia Airport now. Anyway, that's where I was born and they were living in Poughkeepsie. Shortly thereafter, we moved to New Rochelle, so really I was raised in New Rochelle; I think we moved to New Rochelle, New York when I was about three years old.

EB: Where is Jamaica?

TS: Jamaica is on Long Island, but it's part of New York City now. It's actually part of Brooklyn, I guess, I don't know the exact technicalities, but it's Jamaica, Queens. It's part of the borough of Queens which is part of not Brooklyn, but Queens. It's part of New York City now.

EB: And your mother's name? Or your father's name?

TS: My father was James Aylward, that's a family name A-Y-L-W-A-R-D, it's an Irish name. He was James Aylward Scully, born in 1892 in Saugerties, New York which is north of West Point. My mother was Evangeline Marie Temple, she was born in 1897 and she was born in Sparta, Illinois; which is in southern Illinois, south of St. Louis across the river. So, the two of them met, it's kind of an interesting story, actually.

EB: How did they meet?

TS: My father was a traveling salesman, he was working for an automobile parts company, he was a jobber, they called him. He'd go around and take orders for automotive parts and this was 1921. He was 29 years of age, had not been married, apparently, according to my mother and others. He had lots of girlfriends, but finally he was on a trip to Dallas, and he stopped on the train in Kansas City, and had a layover for the weekend. And a friend of his was going to fix him up with a date and he went to the Muehlebach Hotel expecting to meet this blind date and introduced himself to my mother, who was there visiting a friend of hers from nursing school, and she was not the blind date at all. He did find the woman he was supposed to have the date with and went out, but he saw my mother and so the next day he came back the next morning, came back to the hotel and waited for her come down for breakfast and introduced himself. She had just been out of nursing school, had been visiting a friend of hers from St. Louis, who lived in Kansas City I should say. He said, he'd like to visit her when he got to St. Louis on his way back; and apparently, she said 'yes'. So, on his way to Dallas, that night on the train, he wrote his first love letter to my mother, I have a copy of it. In which, it's written on the stationary from the Muehlebach Hotel and says he couldn't sleep all the way to Dallas probably thinking about something, I've forgotten the exact phrases, 'little girl from St. Louis'. Anyway, he came back on his way back to New York, stopped off in St. Louis, called her, met her, went on the rest of his trip. Came back about four weeks later and asked her to marry him, and they were married in six weeks in the time they met. Six weeks. To the chagrin of their family, because he was Irish/Catholic and she was Presbyterian and she said 'yes', took a hell of a chance I guess. She said 'yes', no member of her family would come to their wedding; they were married in St. John Evangelist Church in the basement in St. Louis at night. And the witnesses were the janitor of the church…

EB: Was that a Catholic Church?

TS: Yes, St. John is in downtown St. Louis, it's still there. The janitor of the church was the stand-in for my father and my mother had a stand-in, the landlady of the little apartment she lived in, in St. Louis. Her roommate wouldn't come to the wedding, her mother and father, no one would come to the wedding; for a Scotch/Irish Presbyterian farmer's daughter from southern Illinois to marry a travelling salesman, Irish/Catholic. But, as it turned out, she was my great-grandmother, who was alive at the time, said to my grandfather 'you should not allow that girl to leave St. Louis without at least meeting her husband'. So, they invited them to a Sunday dinner.

EB: This is the paternal side?

TS: My mother's father.

EB: Oh, so maternal side.

TS: Invited them to Sunday dinner, and they met and they talked and apparently they were civil. She got on the train and went to New York with him, never looked back. Through the years, her mother and father reconciled with her and my father, became fast friends, they would visit back and forth, they got along very, very well; but on the day of the wedding, that picture I showed you out there, no member of her family came. So, she went to New York and where he then had his business, up and down the Hudson Valley, Poughkeepsie, I mentioned, they lived in Buffalo for a while, they lived in Long Island, Baldwin, and they lived in several different places because he'd move around.

EB: And what was his full name?

TS: James Aylward Scully.

EB: Her family was from the St. Louis area, and what was her full name, what was her name?

TS: Evangeline Marie Temple. Sparta, Illinois.

EB: And her father name, and mother's name. Do you remember?

TS: Yeah, sure. He was Robert Temple and her name was Rebecca Adair Moore. Rebecca Adair Moore was my grandmother and she married Robert Temple and they had four children, my mother was the second oldest of those four children; born in 1897. But she went to New York, this was in '21 and my father died during the war in '44; so, they lived together for 23 years roughly. When he died, they raised seven kids, and then she lived as a widow for another almost 40 years and died here in Reno, she came to live with me for a couple of years and died here in Reno in '83. So, she's been dead now 15 years. So, she lived as a widow for 40 years and they'd been married 23 years roughly.

EB: So, you had six siblings.

TS: Yeah, I'm the youngest of seven. I have three older sisters, so there were three girls and then four boys, and I'm the youngest of the seven. One boy's dead now, one boy died. He had hypertension, died of a stroke in 1963. So, he just about 30, he was a year older than I. Actually, we went all through school together. 'Cause he repeated a year in grade school, he had severe eye problems and had surgery on his eyes, so he missed a year of school, or half a year. So, actually, from about the fifth grade on, my brother Vini, name was Vincent; he and I went all through school together and then he died when I was overseas, he died in 1963. But all the others are alive, my oldest sisters now and the others are all alive.

EB: Could you get me their names; you don't have to tell me now.

TS: I've got it all, all of it. I've got the whole thing: who they are, where their born, when they were born.

EB: Good. I'd like to include that.

TS: I'll give them all to you.

EB: Getting back to your maternal grandparents, what business was he in?

TS: Okay. My grandfather, Temple, farmed as a young man; 'cause they were all farmers in southern Illinois. They'd been there four, five generations, came there actually right after the Louisiana Purchase; their family settled there in 1808, 1809, 1810. So, they were farmers, he didn't like farming so he moved into the town of Sparta; where my mother and her brothers and sisters were raised, it's a little town and he then became a travelling salesman for John Deere farming equipment. So, he wandered all over the Mid-West selling farm equipment and then he also wandered selling stoves. They were developing, I guess, the old wood stove was going to be developed into coal stove and eventually hooked it up with gas. So he sold stoves and then later in his life, he lived into his 80's, he went back to farming, but he began to raise quail. He had a big quail farm in central Illinois and then his last years moved in with my aunt, my mother's younger sister. He and his wife lived in St. Louis in the city during his latter years and literally went home to a nursing home in Sparta, where he died. He and my grandmother died a few days apart in the same nursing home.

EB: Oh my.

TS: Yeah, few days apart. I can look up the details, but they were in their 80's, I've got it in here. But they were in their 80's.

EB: Well, this gives us an idea.

TS: So that was the Temple family. But all of his ancestors had been living in southern Illinois and in the St. Louis area since the Louisiana Purchase. And most of them, as a matter of fact, because I've got all this record, the earliest of that family settled in Maryland in 1693 and I have a copy of the land deed they got in 1693 and they were in Pittsburgh before the Revolutionary War. They were there during Lord Dunmore's War in 1760, 1770 and then moved to Boonesborough, Kentucky with Daniel Boone in 1787; and then the Louisiana Purchase was 1803 and they moved into the St. Louis area. So, there were several branches of the family, but they were all pioneers. My mother's family were all early, American settlers in Maryland and North Carolina and Pennsylvania. One of her ancestors is buried in Christ Church in Boston and there's a plaque there with, John Temple. A plaque on the wall there with a pew in that church there in Boston. So they were early, early, early American settlers. My father's family were Irish, they came in the mid-1800's. So, that's my mother's family.

EB: And your father's family then, the Scully's.

TS: They're Scully's.

EB: Tell me about them.

TS: Well, I traced them back to Tipperary. The earliest I can get documented evidence is 1570 and all of their family were from Tipperary, Cashel and two little towns called Kilfeacle and Golden which are right outside of Cashel. The Rock of Cashel, of course, is a famous monument in Ireland, been there since the 7^th Century and St. Patrick was presumably taught there and the famous Irish king Brian Boru was his castle. At any rate, it's now a ruin and all of my Scully ancestors up 'til my grandfather are buried there. The family we know the most about, James Scully had 17 children. One of the children, the youngest by the name of William went to Edinburgh, got his doctor in medicine degree from Edinburgh in 1802.

EB: Would this be your uncle?

TS: That would be my great-great-grandfather, William Scully. He graduated from Edinburgh, but because he had married "a daughter of a widow with no means" he was disowned by his father. His father left him, he was a very wealthy man was James Scully, left him something like 50 pounds a year. Anyway, he never went back to Ireland, he left Edinburgh went to southern England to the town of Torquay in Devin and it's on the southwest coast of England very close to Plymouth and Portsmouth; and Torquay has become very famous as of late because that's where Agatha Christie was born and raised and wrote all of her stories. Anyway, he practiced medicine…

EB: Like heroine.

TS: Yeah, practiced medicine in Torquay from 1802-1842 where he died. He had a son and two daughters; the son was educated in Ireland, he sent his son back to Ireland at Trinity College in Dublin. He became an engineer and he came to this country with a wife and a baby. The general out there was his kid born in '37. They came here in 1842…

EB: Would this have been the first Scully?

TS: First of my family Scully's, there probably were other Scully's, but this was the first one of any of my family from the Tipperary Scully's. Came in 1842 to the area of Honesdale, Pennsylvania, Port Jervis and surveyed the canal that goes from the Delaware River across the southern tier of New York to Kingston; and they built the canal, of course the Irish built the canals in this country. The Erie canal which was started in 1822 and was finished by then, but they were building this canal to take coal from the coal fields of northern-eastern Pennsylvania, bring it across on the canal boats to the Hudson River and then down into New York. That avoided the necessity of putting it on ships, going down the Delaware River, out into the ocean, treacherous journey, up the Jersey coast in through the Straits of Verrazano and into the New York harbor. So, he surveyed that.

EB: The name of the canal was what?

TS: It's called the Honesdale Rondout Canal, it's called the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Honesdale was the town in Pennsylvania, Rondout was the little town on the Hudson River just south of Kingston, north of West Point, but in all the literature I have it's called the Delaware and Hudson Canal. It was used to transport coal from Pennsylvania to New York City by that route, 'cause it was cheapest and the fastest, from about 1840 to about 1875 or '80; and of course after the Civil War, the railroads put all the canals out of business. But he was there for a few years, then he went to Alabama to Muscle Shoals where he did surveying for the canal that goes around Muscle Shoals to allow boats to go up the Tennessee River, passed the shoals to Chattanooga. Then he went from there, in 1852, to Nashville where the Harpeth River has shoals and that enter into the Cumberland River; and I've been to all these places, and he surveyed canals there. They were bypassing all these shoals with canals, so the boats could come up the river and they wanted to get the Mississippi River boats up the Cumberland River to Nashville. Well, he died there, and his wife, died there in 1857 in a cholera epidemic. Now, why my grandfather as a five-year-old kid survived that, I can't tell you, but he survived.

EB: How many children did they have?

TS: They had two children.

EB: One of whom was…

TS: One of whom was my grandfather and his older half-brother. The engineer had two wives, he had a son by the first wife, who made a career out of the army; he retired in 1900 as a general in the U.S. army. He had been in the army for 40 some odd years, but he took his younger half-brother, my grandfather, to New York and where my grandfather was raised by relatives. So, he gets to New York in 1857 and he's raised by relatives and assumes their name. So, he's raised by a family named Cosby, C-O-S-B-Y, no relation to the comedian, but when he becomes 21 he retakes his own name of Vincent Scully. He has no education, he'd been raised during the Civil War; the Civil War is now over and he gets a job as a common laborer, and then finally he gets a job as a butler and then spends the next 40 some years as a butler for the Auchincloss Family in New Port, Rhode Island. I told you that story earlier.

EB: This is Hugh Auchincloss.

TS: Hugh Auchincloss, yeah. So, in the winter they'd be in New York; a big, fancy house over on the East side, actually not very far from where the Metropolitan Museum is there. They're home was on East 60 something, I got the address. So, my father would spend his winters in New York and his summers and spring and early fall would be in New Port. So, that picture I showed you out there is my father as a little boy after the death of his mother, being raised in New Port, Rhode Island.

EB: So, his adoptive parents, where were they? What happened to them?

TS: I can't tell you.

EB: The people who raised him, the Cosby's. Did you ever…

TS: No, no, no, no. My grandfather died before I was born…

EB: Oh, of course, this was your grandfather.

TS: Yeah, we're talking, this is 1860, 1870 during the Civil War.

EB: Oh sure.

TS: 1860-1870. So I don't know anything about them. I've tried to search through the Mormon Library to find them. I've found a number of Cosby families, but the problem is that if you do any research in the U.S. census prior to about 1890, they only list the name of the man of the household. They generally, until 1880, don't list the woman or any of the children's name, they just list the number. So, in one of those families may have been this young boy, but he wouldn't have been listed by name, because they only listed them as, you know, five minor boys or minor children. So, I have been unable to find that and there's nowhere in the oral or written history of my family of what happened to these people. We do know that it was New York. So anyway, my grandfather was raised in New York lived there all of his life, would be in the summer in New Port and then he retired.

EB: And when did he marry?

TS: He married my grandmother in 1871 and their wedding picture is on that wall out there. No, sorry. Yes, I guess it was the middle 1870's 'cause he had six children and my father was the youngest of six and my father was born in 1892. Anyway, he married in the middle of the 1870's and they had six children. My grandmother died…

EB: And what was her name?

TS: And her name was Elizabeth Maxwell. Betsy Maxwell, Elizabeth Maxwell.

EB: And your father was, you said, the youngest of six.

TS: The youngest of six, youngest of six; and the oldest was Thomas, for whom I'm named. He died the week I was born. So they named me for him and then there were two girls, one of whom died as a young girl and then there were two boys and another girl. So, my father was the youngest of six, born in '92.

EB: And were they Catholic?

TS: They were Roman-Catholic.

EB: Roman-Catholic.

TS: Roman-Catholic, as were all the other Scully's. As a matter of fact, my father, James Aylward Scully, was named for his uncle, James Aylward who was a priest in New York and actually baptized my father. I got his baptismal record. Anyway, he was raised in New York and as a matter of fact lived in a little apartment house right behind St. Patrick's Cathedral…

EB: Oh my.

TS: …where they were raised; and when my father was a little boy, he used to serve mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral. He was an altar boy at St. Patrick's, as a little boy.

EB: So, your father did his growing up in New York City.

TS: Did his growing up in New York City and in Hammersmith Farm in Rhode Island in the summers.

EB: Oh. So at this point, your grandfather was the butler…

TS: Oh, yes he had been…

EB: …and little children

TS: Oh, long before…

EB: …lived with the family.

TS: Oh sure.

EB: I see.

TS: My grandfather was the butler from about 1880-something, I've got that date somewhere, the early 1880's to 1920 when he retired. By then he was 70 years old and the Auchincloss' let him stay in that house and he stayed in that house, which is now called the Yellow House. It's still there at Hammersmith Farm; Jackie's mother lived there for a number of years and now, Hugh III lives there, and I have a letter from him. I sent him an old picture; he had never seen that picture.

EB: Just for clarification. Jackie, you mean Jackie Kennedy.

TS: Jackie Kennedy. Jackie Kennedy's mother, Janet Bouvier was Hugh Auchincloss', I think, third wife. After Jack's mother and father divorced, Janet Bouvier married Hugh Auchincloss; and that was sometime in the '30s, I don't really remember when. So, that's why that family picture is shown on Hammersmith Farm and that house is still there. It's called the Yellow House now.

EB: The picture looks almost like a thatched roof.

TS: No, it doesn't.

EB: But it's not though is it.

TS: No, no. I can show you a modern picture of it; I was there a few years ago, and it's still occupied. It's a beautiful home. So, my father was raised in New York City and raised in Hammersmith Farm. Well, to finish that story, when my grandmother died in 1898, my father was six years old. A few years later at the turn of the century, my grandfather remarried, Mary Reilly, who became known as Aunt Mary and she had been one of Irish nannies for the Auchincloss'. And so, my grandfather, Vincent Scully and his second wife Mary Reilly, called Aunt Mary, lived on Hammersmith Farm until they died and they died about four or five months apart; and my mother was pregnant with me and went to five funerals during her pregnancy with me. My grandfather died, my step-grandmother died, my Uncle Tom died for whom I'm named, my Uncle Johnny died. So a whole bunch of my family died in the year 1932, when I was born. So, I was named John Thomas; my real name is John Thomas, I didn't know that for years. I was always called Tommy John, as a kid and so I always wrote Thomas John Scully; and only when I joined the Air Force, for the first time had to get a birth certificate and my mother had forgotten. I got a birth certificate and there it shows me in my birth record as John Thomas. So, I went to the Staff Judge Advocate, or whatever in the Air Force and he said 'Oh, you could change your name'. So, I just changed my name. So, everything I have, all my official things was Thomas John, but literally my birth certificate says John Thomas.

EB: Well, that was an interesting part of the background that we had to get over.

TS: Sure, sure, sure.

EB: Now, let's skip to John Thomas Scully. You're named after your uncle.

TS: My uncle, the oldest member of my father's family. He was considerably older than my father, actually.

EB: So, when your parents married and escaped St. Louis and went to New York.

TS: Yes, left St. Louis, went to New York. Spent the rest of their life in, well, Baltimore, Poughkeepsie, Jamaica, Baldwin and ended up in New Rochelle where my father died. So, they lived in five cities in the state of New York during their married life.

EB: And then your mother came here and lived.

TS: No, but my mother lived in her own apartment for 35 years.

EB: But then ended up…

TS: Came out here…

EB: In Nevada.

TS: Right, came here in 1980 lived with me and Celia for three years and died here, yeah. But she didn't come here until she was 80 something, 81, or '2. After my father died, she finished raising us, 'cause I was just 11 at the time, my oldest sister was maybe, what, 11 years older? She was either 21 or 22, at the time. She raised us alone and after I was raised, she gave up the house where we were all raised in and moved into an apartment and lived in that apartment for another, I have to figure it out, 30 some years.

EB: How did she get along? You were so young and she had little children. Was there enough money to-?

TS: I'm not sure of all that. 'Cause I haven't gotten all that from my older brothers and sisters, who aren't terribly talkative. One of the reasons why I bought that tape recorder was so I could talk to my brothers and sisters over the phone and it still works nice.

EB: Can we tell? I didn't mean to lose any of that.

TS: No, it's still working.

EB: Oh good.

TS: My father must've had some life insurance policies. I don't know the other money she had really. I know she used that money to buy the house we were living in. I remember she sold her wedding and engagement ring; she sold the car she had. She then went back to nursing part-time and she would do special duty nursing and then my older brothers and sisters all worked. I started working when I was 14; so everybody had jobs and contributed to the household, one way or the other. But I'm not sure; I guess there were no uncles and aunts that were sugar daddies that would give us any money. I think my mother just did a lot of it on her own. She begged, borrowed and stole, I guess. But most of it was through she'd make money nursing and my father did leave enough money for her to buy the house; so she had that and taxes weren't very high.

EB: And that house was where?

TS: In New Rochelle.

EB: By then you were in New Rochelle.

TS: Oh yes, we lived there all my life.

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