Transcript: Tape 2

DATE: March 3, 1998
TAPE: Tape 2
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)

Thomas Scully: …first side of a second tape. Testing 1, 2, 3. [Microphone cuts out] Okay, we're now recording, here we are.

Eileen Barker: We're on the second tape. Still talking to Dr. Scully and we've been talking about Catholic school; and I don't remember where we were when this clicked off.

TS: Oh, you were talking about support systems for my mother when my father died. It was 1944, I'm 11; my oldest sister is 21, she's in college, the war is on. Actually, he died just a few days before or after "D" Day, I've forgotten. Anyway, my mother was a fairly self-sufficient woman as I recall, I know she must have had friends that she cried on their shoulders. I know there was an attorney friend of my father that helped her buy the house, when my father died. I know that she got support from several of the Dominican nuns where the younger ones were in grade school. But all of her family, small as it was, were all out in St. Louis and she wasn't very close to the only sister-in-law that lived in New Rochelle. There were some other cousins and some other friends of hers and my father's who lived in New York who were supportive. As I've learned from my older sisters, she was very dependent, for a lot of support, on her three oldest daughters. I've never asked them about that, they may have felt put upon, I don't know. I do recall from time to time, several of my older sisters would express resentment that they sort of had to be the big sisters for these little boys and iron their shirts for Sunday mass and do things like that. But I guess my mother's approach was everybody has to pitch in. But as I said earlier, I always recall from the time my father died, that if you want any money in your pocket or you wanted to do much, you had to get a job. So there was a never question, my brothers and I, whenever there was a vacation, we did any kind of a job we could make a buck at. So, and as I said at the end of the last tape, I'm repeated myself I realize, but to get my thoughts again; a lot of it was 'we're in this together, we support one another, we help one another. We don't discuss our problems outside of the house, we don't cry on other people's shoulders.' Stiff upper lip and do it on your own sort of thing.

EB: Even with the sadness of losing your father at such an early age, it sounds as if this was a very loving and happy household.

TS: I recall it that way, but of course I was the youngest and I think I was spoiled rotten; I'm quite sure I was. I think my older brothers and sisters, in most instances, looked after me and whether that was a combination of love, as well as, a feeling of they need to protect the little brother and see that he didn't get into bad company.

EB: How many years between you and the next child? It was a brother right?

TS: Yeah, we were a year and a half apart; but as I told earlier, he and I went to school together because he had to repeat the second or third grade when he had some eye surgery. So, we went all through school beginning around, I don't know, the fourth or fifth grade. We were classmates all through grade school and high school; then, of course, I went off to college and he went into the Navy. Only later came back and went to college after he had gotten out of the Navy, the Korean War was on so he joined the Navy. I think there was around a year and a half to two years; I think my mother and father had the seven kids in the course of 11 years, because my oldest sister is 11 years older than I am. So I was 11, she was 22 at the time of my father's death.

EB: So just by virtue of the fact that you went to school with your other brother, what is his name?

TS: Vincent.

EB: Vincent.

TS: Vini.

EB: Vini.

TS: We called him Vini.

EB: Was he your closest…?

TS: Oh, yes, by far, yeah. Oh, sure. 'Cause the next one Al, who's the artist; he would have been about, I guess, three and a half, four years older. So, he was like a senior in high school when I was a freshman; and then Bob had already gone off to the war when I started high school. So, yeah, Vini was my closest. But then of course, I went off to college, he goes into the Navy. The Korean War's on, he comes back; I go to medical school and get married. So, for a number of years our contact was an occasional Christmas at home. I mean, basically, I have to say when I left New Rochelle to go to college in 1950 that was essentially the end of my life in New Rochelle.

EB: And the beginning of a new era.

TS: Yeah. It was essentially the end of that era; except to come home and see my mother, come home and get married, come home for a funeral or a wedding, that sort of thing. But, I was into the rest of my life then.

EB: Well, let's talk about Cecilia. You said you met her in high school.

TS: No, no, no. I met her in third grade.

EB: Oh my. Well, let's go to back to third grade. You met her.

TS: Met her in third grade…

EB: You were going to the same school then?

TS: Holy Family School, the nuns. And the teacher came in and said 'We have a new little girl who just moved into the parish and is coming to school; and we don't have enough desks, would anybody share their desk with her?' So, I raised my hand and she came in and for the first day or two, we sat on the same chair. The desk was connected to the chair by a rod and it was all moved in one big unit and you had an ink well. The school was way over-crowded, they didn't have enough chairs for everybody; so there were others sharing chairs 'til they could get some more chairs in. So, finally, after a week or so or two days, I've forgotten how long. Then in the sixth grade, Jennifer Jones and Charles Bickford came out in The Song of Bernadette.

EB: I remember it well.

TS: And the nuns said 'Everybody should go see The Song of Bernadette about Lourdes'. So I was the precocious one, I was the only one with enough guts to ask a girl to go to the movie. So, I invited…

EB: You really started early.

TS: Yeah, sixth grade.

EB: Do you know how unusual it is for a little boy in third grade to even agree to letting someone, a little girl, sit at his desk; much less volunteering it?

TS: We knocked that out.

EB: Oh, we did?

TS: [inaudible] [microphone scratches]

EB: What was Cecilia's name?

TS: I'm going to hold it because something is going on. Okay, I'll just hold this. So anyway this is the truth, and so, I asked my mother could I take her and she said 'Well, do you have the money?' I had a paper route and I had enough money and I think you could go to the movies for 15 cents or 20 cents. So, I asked her, and she said that she'll have to ask her mother; and apparently since everyone was saying everybody should see The Song of Bernadette. Sixth grade would have been 1944. Yeah, my father had just died, I'm not sure. Anyway, so she said 'Yes.' so, I took her to the movies. And The Song of Bernadette was, I don't know how long; the end, oh gosh, we were all crying. I mean this poor saint was dying of tuberculosis and all that sort of stuff and tears rolling out our eyes. The lights go on and Celia puts her little bunny fur hat on and her hair is filled with bubblegum. My brothers and all the neighborhood kids and all the classmates who wanted to see would Tommy really take a girl to the movies were sitting behind us, throwing gum in her hair. So, she broke out in tears, I don't think she talked to any of them for long time. [EB: laughs] She can tell you the details. We went a candy shop or an ice cream shop and the lady there was very nice and cut the bubblegum or whatever it was, out of her hair. So then in seventh grade, it's now 1945, the war is over. And somebody gets the idea, and I saw an article in the New York Times just this last week, somebody gets the idea that all these rowdies should learn how to be gentlemen and ladies. So, they start a dancing class, it was called the Woman's Club down in Lockwood Avenue in New Rochelle and Ms. Ferguson was the lady that ran the dancing class, I remember her well. And so, all the kids in our school, and a lot of other schools all joined this dancing school which was on Saturday evening or Saturday afternoon. The boys had to wear suits and white gloves and the girls had to wear little gowns and all that sort of stuff. So, Celia and I, and lots of other kids of course, went to dancing class in the seventh and eighth grade, learned how to dance. And then we dated through high school, and college, and medical school; I never dated another girl, only dated her. So, we got married.

EB: When were you married?

TS: Married in '56.

EB: And you were already out of medical school?

TS: No, I was finishing the second year of medical school. You asked me her name, her name is Celia. C-E-L-I-A Geoghegan, it's spelled, G-E-O-G-H-E-G-A-N, but it's pronounced -G-H-E-I-N. It's an Irish name. G-E-O-G-H-E-G-A-N is Geoghegan. Her father was raised in New Rochelle; her mother came to New Rochelle when she was a high school girl and they met in high school. Matter of fact, they met in high school before the twin lakes, the new high school that Massoth talked about was built in the mid-20's, but they had gone to the old high school further down town which is now the city hall.

EB: Yes, he described that. So, it's possible that they might have been in Massoth's era, wouldn't it?

TS: No, a little bit earlier. They graduated when New Rochelle High School was then became Albert Leonard and I think the year or two after they graduated from high school, the new high school was built by the twin lakes. Probably around…1918

EB: Well Dr. Massoth went to the old school.

TS: Oh, he did? Well, they might have.

EB: Yes, very well because he…

TS: I'll have to check that.

EB: Because he must be 83.

TS: Celia's mom would be 93, so 10 years older, 10 years. Yeah, Celia's mom and dad would be 93 if they were alive.

EB: Because he describes the old school and he talks about the new school. But what we want to do now Dr. Scully [microphone cuts out] as I said that's the boring part.

[Microphone continues to cut out]

EB: Your years prior to getting married, and we'll cover that as we go through the schools and talk about…

TS: College and medical school.

EB: And your entry into medical school and if you'd like we'll stop this now and we'll talk about that on our next interview.

TS: We're stopping right now.

[End]