Transcript: Tape 1 Side B
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)
Eileen Barker: …the first tape. And are we recording?
Thomas Scully: Yes. We are. Okay, now we're on.
EB: So, here we are. Your mother and you are living in New Rochelle. [Breaks up] Yeah, we're recording. Where they went when they were married after this whirlwind courtship.
TS: Right.
EB: They moved to New York, so tell me about this; let's take that from the beginning.
TS: Okay. I'm not born, of course, they arrive in New York in 1921; and from 1921 to 1932 they have six children and they're living in Buffalo, they're living in Long Island, they're living in Poughkeepsie, a variety of places. Finally, in 1932, I come along as the seventh child; they're living in Poughkeepsie, New York where my father was working with an uncle at the time. After my mother comes home from the hospital, they stay in Poughkeepsie for about three years and in 1935 moved to New Rochelle, New York and that's where they lived for the rest of their married life. So, from '35 to '44 when my father died, they were in New Rochelle and then my mother stays in New Rochelle from '44 to about 1980 when she comes to Reno. So, my entire life, essentially, was in New Rochelle.
EB: New Rochelle, New York.
TS: Right.
EB: Now, your father was in the military.
TS: In the First World War, he was in the Navy. Yes, he was.
EB: But you said he was killed in 1944?
TS: No. No, no. He died, he had a heart attack. When the war broke out in '41, he tried to re-join the Navy, but he had seven kids, he was 40 years of age and they didn't want him.
EB: Oh, I see.
TS: But he had hypertension, he had high blood-pressure, he may very well have had kidney disease because his mother died as a young woman of kidney disease; as you know and we'll talk about later, I've had kidney failure, and we don't really know what my brother died of at the age of 30. But, my guess is there was probably a genetic type of renal disease. Be that as it may, my father had severe high blood-pressure and he had a heart attack and then a year or two later had a stroke. So, he wasn't killed during the war, but he died in New Rochelle in 1944. He died just after "D" Day.
EB: And he was how old?
TS: He was 52 years of age.
EB: Father died at 52.
TS: Yes.
EB: Okay. So you went to grade school in New Rochelle.
TS: Yeah, all of my family went to Holy Family Grade School, which was down the street from where we lived and…
EB: Do you remember the street you lived on?
TS: Oh sure, sure.
EB: What was that?
TS: I lived initially on Faneuil Place.
EB: Is that spelled like Faneuil Hall?
TS: Yes, exactly; F-A-N-E-U-I-L, Faneuil Place. And then just before the war, moved around the corner not more than five houses to East Chester Road. I remember we used to carry pots and pans around the corner. Went down the end of the street and around the corner and we went to a bigger house; cause we were all getting older, my older brothers and sisters. And we were living in East Chester Road when my father died in June of 1944, but we still were walking distance down the hill to Holy Family School.
EB: And you stayed in that house after your father died, isn't that when your mother bought…
TS: No.
EB: Or was able to buy?
TS: No, it was too big and she couldn't afford it. So we moved back to Faneuil Place, down the other end of the street and she bought a much smaller home. But by then the war was over and my two older sisters were in college and beginning to take care of themselves, another sister had entered the convent, so she wasn't home. My older brother had joined the Navy, and he was gone. So all of a sudden a family of nine actually, seven kids and a mother and father, were reduced to a mother and three teenage boys within a matter of just a couple of years.
EB: Your sister was the only one of the family who became religious?
TS: Yeah. She entered the convent, stayed in the Ursuline convent for probably five or six years.
EB: What order?
TS: Ursuline, the Ursuline there. A French order.
EB: They have a teaching order?
TS: Yeah, they run New Rochelle College and they also had an Ursuline Academy where my wife went to school and all my sisters went and lots of Catholic girls in New Rochelle went to Ursuline Academy. My sister joined that order but stayed five or six years, got out. Eventually got married and is now a grandmother, I think she had five kids of her own. So, she did not stay.
EB: So you graduated from high school.
TS: Holy Family, and then I went to Iona Prep.
EB: What year was high school graduation?
TS: Went to high school, graduated in 1950. Iona Prep was an Irish Christian Brothers Academy, also in New Rochelle. Down at the bottom of East Chester Road, it was only a stone's throw from the grade school I went to. So, for those years I walked to grade school and I walked to high school.
EB: Well, you said you started working when you were 14.
TS: Yeah.
EB: So what did you do?
TS: Well, my first job was with Howard Johnson as a soda jerk. Well, actually I was a bus-boy to start and then after a few weeks, I was a hard worker, I guess; so they upgraded me to a soda jerk and I learned to be a short order cook and that was summer work and then weekends and during high school. So that would've been, let's see, I actually started that job in 1948. So I would have been a sophomore in high school, yeah. So a sophomore in high school; it was the first job I ever had where I paid income tax and Social Security [laughs]. As a matter of fact, when I got Social Security when I retired, they give you a list of every dollar you've ever put in. So, that was the first Social Security, so that was 50 years ago now.
EB: So, were you helping out at home too?
TS: Yeah.
EB: Paying your own expenses.
TS: Well, I can't say that, but the rule always was, even before that I had paper routes; when my father died, I got a paper route. Christmas time I would sell Christmas wreathes door-to-door and any way you could make a buck and my two older brothers, we all had paper routes. It was made very clear from the minute my father died that we're never go on welfare, we'll never starve, but everybody's got to pitch in. So, if you're going to buy a baseball mitt, you got a job and saved the money to buy the baseball mitt and if you were going to ask a girl to the movies or a date, you made the money. The little bit of money my mother had was essentially to buy a house and pay the taxes and put food on the table.
EB: She must have been phenomenal lady.
TS: Oh, she was; she was tough. She was a tough woman.
EB: You said she worked in a hospital, in different hospitals?
TS: Well, she didn't do too much hospital work. A lot of it was private duty nursing, and in those days, you remember, doctors still made house calls and most people died at home and many people were taken care of at home. We're talking really even before the common use of antibiotics; I'm talking 1944 to 1950 during that period of time. So, a lot of times I remember her putting on her nursing uniform and she'd go out and get a cab, because we didn't own a car. She had to sell the car, she'd get a cab or someone would pick her up from the family and she'd go to somebody's home and do private duty nursing. So, it wasn't employed in a hospital, I don't know if she ever did that. As a matter of fact, she'd used to go and take care of the sick nuns and the sick brothers at Iona. And I only found out this from one of my older brothers most recently, actually one of my older sisters, that she had agreed if my three older brothers and I could stay in this prep school, which was very expensive; she would come at any time to take care of any of the sick and dying brothers. So, we got our education, she bartered her nursing for our education.
EB: I see, so this is where…
TS: That's where the tuition came from.
EB: I was wondering where you got the tuition for something like a prep school.
TS: Didn't have any tuition money, but it was essentially my mother. Now this I heard from my older sister and older brother by the time my father died, my sisters were in college and it was just the boys who had the education, but I also won scholarships and got my education through scholarships. But early on, a lot of our education was really quid pro quo, you know just a barter. She'd go when the brothers were sick and take care of them.
EB: Now, your mother graduated from college, didn't she?
TS: No, in those days they didn't have a bachelor's. Well, they probably did at Columbia in New York. But where she went to St. Luke's in St. Louis; it was, what we would call a RN program after high school, but it wasn't a baccalaureate program, it wasn't a college. So, I don't think she got a bachelor's degree, I think she went there for three-year nursing. Just like, I guess, you can still do today; although most nursing programs have bachelor's degree. So, she had high school and I think my father went to about the ninth grade, I don't think he went beyond the ninth grade.
EB: Really? Well, this was commendable. Here we have your sisters in college, two people who hadn't graduated from college and now they're putting their kids through college.
TS: Oh yeah. I think that was pretty typical of that era. Certainly, my father always appreciated education and one of the reasons, I'm told, that we moved to New Rochelle is because he wanted to be sure that his sons and daughters could get a good Catholic education. And there was the Ursuline Academy for girls, there were several Catholic grade schools, New Rochelle College was a Catholic college, Iona was a well-known school, Christian Brothers Academy for boys and Iona College was there. So, one of the reasons he went there, was he wanted to be sure we got an education. But also the mood during and after the war was, if you were going to get ahead, you had to get an education and Cardinal Spellman was the big-shot in New York and he was building schools all over the whole New York metropolitan area. And it was just assumed, probably stated I'm sure, but just assumed that we would all get as much education as possible and that was the way you get ahead.
EB: So this was stressed in your family.
TS: Oh, gosh yes. Oh absolutely, oh absolutely.
EB: Did all the kids go through college? Your brother, who died, was 30, you said.
TS: Yeah, he was 30 went to Iona College. My brother Bob dropped out of high school to join, like many kids did, to join the service during the war, came back and finished high school; and whether he went back to Iona College, or whether he ever got a degree, I don't think he did. Then I have another brother who went to Pratt Institute, he's a professional artist, still to this day well-known within Vermont; but had been an advertising executive.
EB: And his name is what?
TS: James Aylward Scully Junior.
EB: Oh, he's the junior.
TS: He's the junior.
EB: You were going to get me the names of your brothers and sisters.
TS: Yeah, I'll get you those. And all three of my sisters got a college education, and all three of them became school teachers. Two of them got Master's, so the three of them became school teachers. I'm the only physician in the family; the brother who died was working at the time as a business man for U.S. Can, I guess it was called, Canning Company. The other brother was a professional artist, did very well on Madison Avenue; became the head of Coca-Cola and Buick advertising, was very well-known, and my older brother followed my father's footsteps and became a traveling salesman of automotive parts and…
EB: Did he get a degree?
TS: I'm not sure he did. I don't think he did. He may be the only one that didn't.
EB: Okay, so we have you in Iona Prep School.
TS: Iona Prep School.
EB: …which is a boy's school.
TS: A Christian Brother's academy, and up the street is the Ursuline Academy where's Celia's going to school. So, from the Holy Family grade school, which was both boys and girls. Many went on to the public high school, New Rochelle High School which was also right around the corner. I used to go right passed the Twin Lakes down there at New Rochelle High School that you wrote about with Massoth, every day to school, but anyway…
EB: Now, the Twin Lakes, from my memory …
TS: Right in front of New Rochelle High School.
EB: The two lakes in front of the high school that Dr. Massoth, Harry Massoth, told us about in his oral.
TS: That's correct. I lived right up the street from that. So, I'd walk by those every day when I'd go to school and I'd walk by them when I'd go to Celia's house, when Celia and I were dating in high school. But anyway, from our class most of the boys would go to Iona and most of the girls would go to Ursuline, two Catholic schools. But many would also go to the public high school, New Rochelle High School, which was down the street. I can't tell you statistically how many. So, then Iona and Ursuline were sort of like a brother-sister academy; we'd have dances back and forth and all that sort of stuff.
EB: Now, so you went to a parochial school all through your schooling.
TS: Oh yeah.
EB: Did you always have teachers who were in the religious order?
TS: In those days, yes. Every teacher we had in grade school was a nun, a Dominican nun. And I think every teacher, but maybe one, probably a football coach; but I think every teacher that I had in high school was an Irish Christian Brother.
EB: Okay.
TS: And Celia, I think, had maybe with one exception, almost all Ursuline nuns. Of course, that's changed dramatically because men and women, they're not going into those orders, haven't for 20 years.
EB: So they didn't have, in your time…
TS: Very few lay teachers. There might have been one or two, often a football coach, occasionally there would be, I don't know, someone. But I recall, I think I could name all my teachers in high school and in grade school. I think every one of them was a nun in grade school and a Christian Brother, in high school. The head of the band was a lay person, the football coach, of course, was a lay person. But the actual teachers, I think, were all brothers.
EB: So, you had the typical parochial school upbringing, were you an altar boy?
TS: Oh gosh was I. I was an altar boy from third or fourth grade, had to learn Latin! Had to learn Latin to answer the prayers in mass and when we went to high school there was no elective. I mean, everybody took the exact same lock-set college prep. Everybody was going to college. You had to take an entrance exam to get into Iona, as you did to go to Ursuline and if you didn't pass the entrance exam; then they figured you couldn't pass the, whatever they were in those days, we used to call them the New York State Regents Exam.
EB: The Regents Exam.
TS: Now, they have SAT or ACT, but the New York State's Regents.
EB: I remember this.
TS: And you had to pass them, and it was just assumed short of [inaudible] that every graduate of Iona would go to college. And most of them, I'll tell you this story in a minute, most of them were going to go to Fordham, Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Georgetown and there was no thought about going to a "nonsectarian" college. You didn't do that. That was the path to hell. So, when I went to Iona I took the three years of Latin, and four years of math, trigonometry and that whole thing, and history; there was no typing…
EB: No business.
TS: No business. The only thing that was extracurricular was football, baseball, and choir or orchestra or something, that was it; and that was after school, nothing during, it was serious business. You had to take all that stuff, which I did; and, of course, Celia did, I think, four years of Latin and French and who knows what. So, it was very much a classic prep school, pre-college academic program, and the intent was you were going to go to college and maybe beyond that.
EB: Now, these were all private parochial schools, where you actually had to pay a tuition.
TS: Oh yes.
EB: This wasn't public subsidized at all.
TS: No, absolutely not. Now, the grade school was a parish school. So any member of the parish of Holy Family could send their kids to the grade school.
EB: I see.
TS: Kindergarten through eighth grade.
EB: Without tuition.
TS: Oh no, no tuition there. You just had to be a member of the parish; which usually meant that your mother and father went to church on Sunday and put money in the plate.
EB: And darn well better gone to church on Sundays.
TS: And also contributed money in the annual whatever they collected.
EB: I remember when I was…
TS: You had to be a member of that parish.
EB: When I was in grade school, in a Catholic grade school we had little envelopes.
TS: Yes.
EB: And you gave this envelope, they were dated.
TS: Of course, they knew exactly where the envelope came from.
EB: Oh sure. We were given these envelopes with a number on them and you put that in every…
TS: Every Sunday. We would have our envelopes; each kid would get theirs and each parent and you would put your money in the envelope and when the basket was sent around during the offertory you'd throw it in the basket. So, excuse me if I misinformed you. The grade school was a part of the parish, if you belonged to that parish; and there were five Catholic, I think when we were being raised, there were five Catholic parishes in New Rochelle. Blessed Sacrament, Holy Name, forgotten them and so, you went to whatever parish school your parents went to that church. But when it came to high school, no those were private and you paid tuition or you got a scholarship. And as I told you earlier, my mother would often barter her nursing service for my tuition and my brothers' tuition. Celia's family paid big tuition to send her to Ursuline, so they were private prep schools.
EB: The way Bishop Manogue High School is run here.
TS: Yeah. Right.
EB: The same type of thing.
TS: You pay tuition. Do you pay tuition?
EB: I don't know how they run the grade school things here. I think that's probably free.
TS: But you have to be a member of that parish.
EB: Yeah, and the Diocese of Reno probably subsidizes…
TS: I think so. Sure.
EB: At any rate, the emphasis was that your training prepared you for…
TS: To be a Catholic layman, you were to be a good Catholic; you were to be an educated person, you were to go on to a university and take your roll in life as a good person.
EB: Was the emphasis though, to recruit you to become religious?
TS: No, no, none whatsoever.
EB: No emphasis at all put on that?
TS: No, no. Not that I was ever aware of…
EB: Didn't they expect that a certain number…
TS: Well, yeah, there were. Several of my classmates entered the Christian Brothers…
EB: Just several? How many would you think?
TS: Oh, two, I mean I know one's dead and the other left after 40 years…
EB: So, just a very small percentage went on to become…
TS: We started high school with, I'm guessing, 50 kids? And two, I think, became Irish Christian Brothers and one, I think, became a Roman Catholic priest, entered the Jesuit order. Now, I guess if you expressed some interest or you thought that you somehow had a vocation to join the religious order and let that be known, they certainly would be supportive of you. But I don't recall any proselytizing; there had been some in grade school. I remember somebody came around when we were eighth graders and wanted us to consider entering the religious order; but, of course, my mother, a lot smarter, went '12 or 13 years old, that's crazy, you can't make a decision like that.'
EB: Had your mother converted to Catholicism?
TS: Yes. Oh, I didn't tell you that story, better go back. She was baptized and received her first holy communion and was married all on the same night in the church basement.
EB: Well, she certainly must have loved this man.
TS: Oh she did, and when he asked her to marry, he said, 'I got to go to New York and Chicago, I'll be back three weeks' or whatever. She went to a friend of hers, who was a Catholic, who tried to talk her out of it, said 'you're making a big mistake; you don't become a Catholic or marry a guy from New York, you don't even know'. And I'd heard all those stories, various paraphrases. Not quotes, but paraphrases. Apparently, she took enough lessons from this Catholic priest who said he would marry her, that she was baptized Catholic, she received her first communion and married my father all the same night. And the only people there, I told you, was the landlady of her rooming house and the church janitor.
EB: Did she then go on, was she confirmed?
TS: Yeah, later. I don't know the details. But like many converts, she became more Catholic then those who were raised as Catholics.
EB: Obviously, if she's raising the children.
TS: But frequently that's what happens to converts of any kind.
EB: Yeah.
TS: I got to say, I don't know my father that well. I was 11 years old when he died. I have very vague memories of him and much of what I know of my father I've learned second-hand from my older brothers and sisters who idolized him and have given me a very positive feeling about my father, but it's not my own memories as such.
EB: What are your memories of your father?
TS: Not much, because he was a traveling salesman. He would come home on Friday night; there would be a lot of activity and preparation for his coming. A bath and we'd all be spruced up and we had to get haircuts or whatever, if we needed them and my mother would dress us up; and we'd spend the weekend, and much of the weekend he'd be with my mother and they'd play golf. He played a lot of golf; he was a very good golfer. As a matter of fact, he was the Club Champion at several [inaudible].
EB: I do remember from Dr. Massoth's description. Of course, he goes back to another era in New Rochelle. I think his was the '20s and '30s, but it was a big golfing area; lots of private clubs.
TS: Oh sure, oh yeah. Well, Winged Foot is world famous and Winged Foot is right on the border, and Wykagyl Country Club is world famous.
EB: What was that, the last one?
TS: Wykagyl Country Club.
EB: You'll have to spell some of these things…
TS: And Winged Foot used to have the U.S. Open; Winged Foot, last year. So a lot of the weekends were that. But even at that, I was the youngest and, I remember going, my father was going to play ball, throw the ball around or any of that kind of athletic stuff was with my older brothers. I was eight, nine, 10, I was a little kid. I remember it as a positive thing, but I don't have a lot of very specific memories of him; although, I have vivid memories of his death.
EB: Did he die at home?
TS: Died at home. He was actually practicing down at the local golf range with my older sister; yeah, my older sister was with him. And he had chest pain and actually another friend brought him home from the golfing range. He was preparing for a tournament that weekend and brought him in, I can see it today, he was on the living room couch; and the priest came and gave him last rights and I'm sitting over in the corner and they took him down to the hospital where he died. I think he lived in the hospital for about 48 hours, I don't know the exact timing. But in those days the wake was at home, so they brought him back and he was laid out in the coffin at the end of the living room for three days and three nights. The war's on, so very few people had cars. It was taxis and the railroads, the way you got around, but hundreds of people came to that house; 'cause he was a well-known man in town, a well-known man in the church, was a very good business man in New York. So, people came from all over to the wake, and all I can remember is neighbors and friends kept the dining room table filled with turkeys and hams and food for three days and three nights. So anybody who came had a meal on their way out the door and they'd pay their respect and I can remember him being laid out. And I can remember the funeral at Holy Family Church and the place was packed and the first time I ever remember half the people had yamakas on, because my father's business was almost all with Jewish people in New York. Most of his business associates were Jewish and many of them came to the church and had never seen anyone in church with the black skullcap, what is it called? Yamaka.
EB: Yeah.
TS: Or whatever you call it, I'm not sure. So many of his business associates were Jewish and they all came to the wake. But the last part of that story was, which is the truth, he must have died on Thursday or Friday; laid out, I think, the funeral was on Monday. But on Saturday morning, two men get out of a cab, all dressed up in their golf outfits had come up from New York by train, come and knocked on the door. My brother, older brother, lets them in, and they say 'Is this Al Scully's home?' and he said 'Yeah' and they said 'We're here to play golf with him.' And they showed up, they were going to be in this tournament with my dad; and as I said, few people had cars, so they'd come up by cab, took the train to New Rochelle. And they arrive and my father is laid out in the living room. These two men practically had a stroke and stayed the entire weekend, never left our house. Can you imagine? Now, my brother remembers that story, I don't, because he was the one that let them in and he still tells that story. But, anyway, so that was the typical tradition, you laid them out at home for three days and whatever it was; and you took them down to…
EB: And there were no burials on Sunday. I remember that.
TS: No, never, no. That's exactly right.
EB: I think we have a little more time.
TS: It was always Monday or Tuesday. Then, I can remember the long ride up to Cold Spring which is a little town directly across the river from West Point. The town is Garrison and the little town next to that is Cold Spring, which is now doing very well in the renovation of the Hudson River as you know. And he's buried there, my mother is now buried there; there's a Scully cemetery there. So that's where he's buried and I remember that. But I don't have very many memories of him as a little boy.
EB: Tell me, what was your mother's support system when she lost her husband at such a young age? Did she have any relatives at all there?
TS: No, they were all out west. My father's older brother and his wife lived in the same town, the two wives didn't get along.
EB: I see.
TS: So my mother was not very friendly with her sister-in-law, although my father and his brother were in business together.
EB: Oh they were?
TS: Yeah, they were business partners.
EB: So, this was your uncle and was he supportive of you, of the kids?
TS: Not terribly.
EB: So you really just had your mother and your siblings. You didn't have any relatives; did you have any close relatives?
TS: None. No, no close relatives there, no. That's right, I can remember these expressions of well, comes out in various ways. 'You don't wash your dirty laundry in public. You keep your problems to yourself. You don't discuss problems outside the house.' So, if you're having trouble paying the rent or paying the bills or buying clothes or getting shoes or whatever; those weren't things you discussed with anybody. You might discuss them with a priest in the confessional; you might discuss them with the very closest of relatives. So a lot of my mother's support were really the nuns, the Dominican nuns, where all of her kids were in school. She got a lot of support from them and some neighbor ladies, but she was very self-sufficient.
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