Transcript: Tape 3 Side A
DATE: March 10, 1998
TAPE: Tape 3
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: We're going to pick up where we left off last time, we hope. We're recording, aren't we? Yeah, we're okay. Let's see, Dr. Scully I know we talked a lot about your early childhood; which we're going to have to expand on a little, as soon as we get the transcript of the last interview. But there are a couple of questions that I have. I want to ask you about your mother, you said that she was a nurse.
Thomas Scully: Right.
EB: And after the kids came along and she was in New Rochelle, she worked primarily for physicians and helping out when the nuns needed help…
TS: And the Christian Brothers, right.
EB: Did she work in a hospital, ever?
TS: Well, as a young girl.
EB: As a young girl at Barnes Hospital.
TS: At Barnes Hospital in St. Louis.
EB: Oh, St. Louis, okay.
TS: Yeah, and she worked in the operating room when Harvey Mudd was the chief of surgery at the Barnes Hospital. And that was the famous story of…
EB: Was that the Mudd family; the Lincoln, Mudd?
TS: The Mudd family, right, yeah.
EB: Oh, for heaven's sake.
TS: Actually it's spelled M-U-D-D. Harvey Mudd was the chief of surgery and he, I think, was the grandson or a grandnephew of the Mudd who treated, or allegedly treated, John Wilkes Booth. My mother always used to love to tell that story. And it was interesting that when Nixon pardoned him in the 60's; he called up Roger Mudd, who was then an announcer as you remember for ABC, and Nixon gave the exclusive to Roger Mudd so he could announce it on the 6 o'clock news for ABC.
EB: Was this a relative?
TS: Oh sure, he was. Roger Mudd of the ABC news and he's, I guess, retired, maybe dead. He had been a relative also, I don't know the exact relationship, but Nixon was nice enough apparently to give the scoop to him. But my mother worked in a hospital then, she was working at the Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, when she was on vacation in Kansas City and met my father. But then, after she married my father, and in that story we told earlier, they only knew each other about six weeks, went to New York. As far as I know she didn't nurse for the next probably 15 years; 'cause she had seven kids, one right after the other and that was plenty of time. So, as far as I know, she didn't go back to do much nursing until around the time my father had his first heart attack, which would have been in 1942, '41-'42. And then really got back to it fairly regularly as a private-duty nurse, usually in people's homes; I don't think she went back to a hospital, I know she didn't go back to a hospital. Work in people's homes as a private duty nurse after my father died and then of course, as I said earlier, she would barter our education at Iona Prep taking care of the brother's when they were sick. But she would also do other private duty nursing, and then we would use to kid her when she sold her home a few years later and moved into an apartment where she spent the next 25 some years. My brothers used to kid her that she'd go make her rounds of this apartment to be sure that all the old ladies and men were alive and taking their insulin, that sort of stuff. So, there's probably a period of four or five years after my father's death where she would do nursing and make some money at it, but not an awful lot. The one thing you asked me when we ended our last dictation that I was reminded about. You asked what kind of support system she had and I have to add to what I said then; that my older sisters were very supportive of my mother. My older sister might have been 22 at the time, and my other sister was in the convent, as we said, another sister was maybe 19, 18. And they worked, they contributed to the household, my brother also contributed; but I think they were an emotional support for my mother. And I think it's important to say that my mother got a lot of solace from the church, as I said earlier, she converted to Catholicism the day she married my father and like many converts, she was more Catholic than many of us who were born and raised that way. And I recall for a long period of time, certainly after my father's death, she would go to daily mass and, of course, in the part of New Rochelle that we lived in near Holy Family Parish, it was mostly Catholic, Irish and Italian essentially; and I think they had four priests there, in the days when they had plenty of priests, and I think there were three or four masses. I remember being an altar boy and going, getting up and serving 6 o'clock mass or 7 o'clock mass during the week before going to school. So, my mother went to church mass a great deal, if not daily for a long period of time. I remember she was always saying the rosary and I think she depended greatly on prayer and the church and the priest and some of the nuns and brothers all to help her to cope with being, what, a 45 or '6 year old woman with seven kids. And there were some neighbor ladies, I think, were very helpful to my mother, but as we said earlier, there weren't many family members around other than my own brothers and sisters. So, she was a tough woman and a strong woman, and there may have been others, I know there was an attorney friend of my fathers who was always helpful to her. So, I think it's important that we record that she really looked to the church and prayer as an important part of her coping mechanism.
EB: Thank goodness she had that.
TS: Yeah, yeah.
EB: What about your father's parents?
TS: Oh, they were dead. They were dead before I was born.
EB: So, you never knew your grandparents? Either side?
TS: No. My grandmother Scully, my father's mother, died in 1898 when he was six years old. And of course my grandfather remarried Mary Reilly who was a nurse at the Auchincloss'; then my grandfather died the year I was born, 1932. So, I never met my father's mother or father; my mother's parents, they lived into the 1950's they were in their late 80's early 90's, but I don't think they ever came to New York other than when my mother was first married.
EB: People didn't travel so much in those days did they?
TS: No, and I know when I was a little kid, my mother took me on a trip to St. Louis. But I have absolutely no recollection of my mother's parents either. Lots of letters, I have letters that I'm working on now in our family history. He would write letters, my grandfather Temple, my mother's father's name Temple, of course, wrote letters all the time to the grandchildren. I have lots of letters from him, because he was very proud of the fact that his side of the family had settled in Maryland and Pennsylvania, in the early 1700's and were early settlers out west; so he loved to tell those stories. But like a lot of oral history, a lot of it was wrong or it was distorted or when I checked the facts, he'd have some of the facts wrong.
EB: Did he ever write a book?
TS: No, he never wrote a book. Never wrote a book.
EB: No one ever did it?
TS: No. And the Sappington House, which sits in a suburb of St. Louis was built in 1815, it's a National Historical Monument now. It's the first example of a colonial building west of the Mississippi River and that house was in 1815 and that's where my family settled that house and still sitting there. We just had a big family reunion there a couple of months ago, actually November. So, Grandpa Temple, whose mother was a Sappington, loved to tell all about that family. And they were the early settlers on the eastern shore of Maryland in 1693; then they moved to western Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War. Went with Daniel Boone to Kentucky and then moved to St. Louis, just after the Louisiana Purchase. He loved to tell all those stories, now most of that I've independently verified from history. So, no, I didn't know any of my four grandparents, and if I met my mother's mother and father that was when I was a young kid and I have no recollection of it. With New Yorkers, going west of the Hudson River into New Jersey that was going out into the desert, it was going out into the wilderness. I mean, why would you ever go west?
EB: People didn't start that until the 50's really, because before that was the Depression and after that during the 40's was the war years, you couldn't travel.
TS: And when Celia and I were in high school looking to go to college, we never thought about going west of the Hudson. I mean, you went to New England or New York or maybe you went to Philadelphia, but that was about it. I think I had a classmate or two that went out to Notre Dame. As a matter of fact, when I finished medical school, getting ahead of ourselves, and got my internship in the Army, in those days they just assigned you to the hospital, different than it is now. And we were assigned to El Paso, and we had to get out a map and look up where Texas was and where El Paso was, we never thought of applying to the Presidio, for example, in San Francisco; and most New Yorkers, and certainly the way we were raised, had an idea that there was Hollywood out there somewhere and there were cowboys and Indians and this vast expanse. And now, of course we laugh and we go back east to St. Louis we're going almost 2,000 miles, [laughs]and we used to call that the Mid-West, that's east! Now that we've lived out here, a little aside, but now we never travel.
EB: We are going to be jumping around because my questions are rather out of order, because I am just reminding myself of things I should have asked you before. I did want to ask you about your parents, they were married, I figured, it had to be 1921.
TS: They were, in 1921.
EB: And they met in Kansas City, now what state is that? Is that Missouri or Kansas?
TS: They met in Kansas City, you know what? That's a good question, Kansas City is on both sides of the river there's Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas; and that was, I believe, Kansas City, Missouri and it's the Muehlebach Hotel and I'm almost sure that it was Kansas City, Missouri, but I don't know my geography that well.
EB: And you were telling me that was a wonderful story of how they met.
TS: By accident, quite by accident.
EB: We have that already. You know, that brings up a question about going away to school, we are jumping.
TS: Well, let's see, my sister was born in '21, so they were married in '20, sorry.
EB: In 1920?
TS: They were married in 1920, because my sister was born April 1, she's an April Fool's baby, in 1921. Oh, the other interesting thing, my mother was married on her birthday. She was married the previous year, I think it was April the 20 something of 1920 was her birthday. She converted to Catholicism, received first Holy Communion, married my father and went off to New York. My sister Mary was born the following year, so it was 1920.
EB: Okay. I would like to have the names of your three sisters and three brothers. You had a brother who died, let's start with him and he died in his 30's.
TS: Yes.
EB: Of a stroke.
TS: Yes. He had hypertension; I was in Spain at the time. I remember my mother writing me that my brother Vini had gone to the doctor, he had very high blood pressure and they had him on some sort of medication. Well, the treatment of hypertension in the early 1960's was nothing like it is today; and I remember writing my brother Vini and I said 'Vini, if you got that kind of blood pressure, go see a specialist in New York City', because he worked in New York City, 'don't depend upon the general practitioner at home' who I didn't have very much respect for, we don't have to go into that, there were other reasons; and I said 'Go see a specialist!'. Well, he got the letter; whether he did or not, I don't know. But a few weeks later, a month later my mother called long-distance, which in those days was a big deal; and said that he had a stroke and he was in the New Rochelle Hospital. So, I went to my commanding officer; I remember this very well. He said 'Fine, you can have emergency leave.' I went to a very good friend who Celia and I have kept in touch with, for the last 35 years, who was the operations officer. And he diverted a plane, which was coming from some place in Turkey or North Africa into Madrid; they picked me up and I was home in New York probably 24 hours after I got the phone call. I got to his bedside, I knew immediately he was in coma that was the end of it. There was no communication and he died. At the time his wife did not want to have an autopsy, and I can understand that.
EB: Was that because she was Catholic?
TS: No, no, I think…
EB: Because I remember that there was a point in Catholicism where autopsies were sort of…
TS: Yeah, you're right, but that had long since passed, that was not a religious issue then. And of course, I was mourning the loss of my brother. Vini and I had gone all through school together, and had I been thinking a little bit more clearly, I might have pushed it a lot more. But you see, since he was under the care of a physician for some 48 hours before he died in the hospital there was no coroner's case. So, I probably should have pushed it and the only reason now I wished I should have pushed it; is because when my father died in '44, my mother didn't get an autopsy. And we know that clinical diagnosis was not very good, so what was put on the death certificate, as you well know, is seldom the real facts without an autopsy and even then, sometimes pathologists can't be sure. So, I regret it now, only because of my own family history and some of what I would consider important genetic information; I really do not know why my brother had the stroke other than hypertension. He may very well have had a berry aneurysm, we don't know. Why did he have hypertension, he was only in his early 30's?
EB: Was he overweight?
TS: No, no, he wasn't.
EB: What was his lifestyle?
TS: No, he was fairly active. He was not overweight, he was always a good athlete; I don't think he drank. I don't know much about the last couple of years before he died; because we had gone to Spain, he was married. They had two little girls, who are now grown women and both are married and have children. But my guess is that he may very well have had hyperparathyroidism, I think my father did too. Ernie Mazzaferri who diagnosed me thought that might have been the case; two men die of hypertension early, and then I developed hypertension in my 40's, but Ernie diagnosed hyperparathyroidism and treated it. I had my parathyroids out and subsequently went into kidney failure, and of course as you know and we'll talk later, I had a kidney transplant. So, my guess is that my father and my brother both had kidney disease, secondary to hyperparathyroidism, early onset of hypertension and early death from strokes, they both had strokes. And I think that probably that was the disease, but we have no proof of that.
EB: You have three other brothers.
TS: Well, two other brothers, there was four of us.
EB: Oh, two, of course.
TS: Yeah, there's four boys.
EB: Any heart disease or hypertension in the other two boys?
TS: Yes. My brother Bob, he had one of the early three-vessel bypasses at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1970's. We had already moved out here to Reno, so early '70s.
EB: How old was he then?
TS: Well, he's now 70 years old and that would be 25 years ago. So he was probably 45 to 48, something like that; and my other brother had some high blood pressure, but has always treated it and both of them are in fairly good shape. But certainly heart disease and high blood pressure is common in my father's family. He had a brother who died young, he had a sister who died young, he had another sister who died in her 20's of kidney disease. The problem is that those are all death certificates with a clinical diagnosis written down by the attending physician who may not have had the slightest idea what was going on. The peculiar thing is that my grandfather Scully, that is my father's father, he lived to be 86, but he had a couple of sons who died early and a grandson that died early. You know as well as I, that those kinds of illnesses are multifactorial. I had three other brothers, one died in his 30's back in the 1960's. That's Vincent.
EB: Vincent and Bob, is that Robert?
TS: Bob and Al, who's James Aylward Jr.; Robert E. Scully and James A. Scully and I've got their names listed here for you.
EB: Alright, I need that and then your sister's names are listed there as well.
TS: Yeah, Mary, Rebecca and Evangeline. Rebecca is a name that occurs repeatedly on my mother's side of the family and so does Evangeline.
EB: Pretty names.
TS: Yeah.
EB: Now, your sisters…
TS: All married.
EB: All became school teachers?
TS: All three eventually ended up school teaching. My oldest sister went back to school teaching somewhat late, Mary. Rebecca, began teaching school in the convent as an Ursuline nun and then she got out of the convent got married and didn't teach for a number of years while she had her family, five children, then she went back to teaching later in life. The only one of the three who started out as a school teacher right in college and taught for 35 years or better is Evangeline, the third sister. She has a fascinating history of teaching all over the world. She worked for British American Oil Company, Aramco. She taught in Iran, she taught in Singapore, she taught in Venezuela, she taught all over the place. Actually, she even taught at the Air Force school in Madrid when we were in Madrid. She was on her way back from a three-year tour I think in Indonesia, not Singapore, Indonesia. She stayed in Madrid and taught school there.
EB: What does she teach?
TS: Most of what she taught was the middle school, eighth, ninth, tenth grade in that period and taught a lot of social studies and history and that sort of thing. Mary was an early school teacher, she focused on reading; and is now, even though she's retired, she's still helping a lot of minority kids, black and Hispanics who live in the suburbs around Hartford, Connecticut where she works. She lives in a suburb of Hartford.
EB: Mark Twain area.
TS: Yeah, she teaches reading. They were all early grade school teachers.
EB: This is just an aside, but I'm curious. Because of your mother's deep religious faith, how did she react to Rebecca leaving the convent? That was unusual then, there was a surge here in the '70s, I remember when so many sisters left the convent. So many, it was just a mass exodus.
TS: And priests too, a lot of that took place after the Second Vatican Council which was in the '60s. She left in the late '40s actually. She got out when I was in high school.
EB: How long was she in?
TS: I'd have to look that up, I'm guessing four or five years.
EB: Your mother was accepting of…
TS: Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think when she talked and I don't know the details and I wouldn't discuss it if I knew, but I think when my mother talked to the mother superior and to my sister. She understood that it wasn't the right place for her. I know my father questioned whether she should have gone in the first place, primarily because age. I think she had just gotten out of high school, maybe she had one year of college. My recollection is that my mother felt like it was the right thing to do when she left.
EB: From what you told me, she strikes me as the type who would have been very supportive and understanding; that it was a vocation choice that she needed a change in.
TS: Of course, sure.
EB: Your one brother Vini, you were closest to. Was he the closest in age to you?
TS: Yes, he was. As I told you in the last tape, he was about a year and a half older than I. He was born in 1931 in May and I was born in November 1932, so we were about a year and a half apart, but he had a lot of surgery on his eyes when he was in about the second or third grade, and I think around the fourth or fifth grade he lost a year and from about the fourth or fifth grade on we went through school together. I can't remember exactly but my guess is it was around the third or fourth grade. He lost a year of school, and so then roughly from the fifth grade on we went together.
EB: And then Bob, how many years difference there?
TS: Bob was born in '27. That's right, he just turned 70 last year; he's 71 next month. And Al will be 69 in June.
EB: Now who is Al?
TS: James Aylward. We've always called him Al. They always called my father Al, which is the abbreviation for Aylward. Their names were James Aylward. A-Y-L-W-A-R-D.
EB: Oh, a family name?
TS: A family name. One of my father's ancestors was an Aylward. A-Y-L-W-A-R-D. So, my father was called Al and my brother was called Al, and still is called Al.
EB: Well, what I'm getting at here is then Al became the man of the family, obviously.
TS: Bob, the oldest. Bob did.
EB: Oh, okay.
TS: Bob was the oldest, he was born in '27 and Al was born in '29.
EB: So through school, at this point you were still in grade school.
TS: Oh yes, sure.
EB: You still had mentoring by the Catholic brothers of the school.
TS: The nuns initially in grade school and then the brothers when I went to high school. 'Cause all my teachers in grade school were Dominican nuns and all of my teachers in the high school were Christian brothers. So I definitely had mentoring and kept in touch with two of those brothers, for 30 some years, one of them just died, but my older brother, a year and a half or so, after my father's death he was in the Navy and matter of fact serving in the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf when we reinvaded the Philippines, so he was away. Al was always helpful, so during the period of the sixth, seventh and eighth grade, during that period of time after my father's death. It was pretty much my older brothers. There were several friends of my father, I can recall their names, but it's not important to this, who were very supportive. I remember one who would take me to "father and son nights". They used to have, at the church, a couple of times a year, they'd have a bazaar to raise money or they'd have bingo or they'd have a father-son night. I remember one guy would put on these big spaghetti feeds to raise money. And my mother was always anxious that since we didn't have a father, he was dead, we would sort of be left out and I remember there were two men and subsequently, even Celia's father, because I of course was seeing Celia and going to her house and we were neighbors and Celia's dad would take me to things, her uncle would. Several of the fathers of my playmates and they'd call up and say 'We'd like Vini and Tommy' because we were always called Vini and Tommy, we were together; we were in the same classes as I told you earlier. 'We'd like them to go to the church social. We'd like them to go to the father-son night' or whatever. There were a number of men, friends of my mother and father, who sort of periodically would look after us and didn't want us to be left out because we didn't have a father. And I've often thought about that because I can empathize with what it must be like to be a single parent, a mother raising little boys and not having a man or a father-figure around. It must be very difficult.
EB: Except with the cohesiveness of this family unit that you're describing. You all looked out for each other and your father traveled a lot anyway although it must have been awfully traumatic to be 11 years old and lose your father. I'm sure there must have been a way you could almost think he was just off on a trip, because you have these brothers looking out for their little brother.
TS: And friends. That's true, my older brothers would stick up for me, and I did say on the previous tape, I think I was spoiled rotten; and I'm sure there was a lot being done for me that I was totally unaware of. I can remember once being called in by one of the priests when I had played hooky. Obviously, my brother Vini and I played hooky shortly after my father died and I'm sure in retrospect it was a reaction to that. And he called us into the principal's office and wanted to know why we weren't in school for two days and why we played hooky, forgotten where we went actually, and he was very gentle; he didn't scold us, he just said 'Your father would expect better of you' or something to that effect. And I do remember early on in high school, I didn't play hooky, but I went to school once without my homework done in Latin or something and one of the brothers took me into the closet and he didn't hit me but he took me by the collar. We had to wear shirts and ties and jackets to school.
EB: All the same uniform.
TS: No, they weren't uniforms, but you had to wear a shirt and a tie and a jacket and the only time you could get away without wearing the jacket is if you had a sports sweater, you had a football sweater or a basketball sweater; and I can remember one of the brothers, as I've said earlier I've kept in touch with for years, Celia and I knew he died, did the same thing 'You got a future, your family would expect more of you, this behavior is unacceptable' it was that sort of a thing.
EB: Was this still the era when, having gone to parochial school, I remember this well, where they actually would spank you.
TS: Oh, sure. Corporal punishment; they didn't do it very often.
EB: No, but it was not considered a capital offense.
TS: They'd rap your knuckle. Celia and I were talking about the other day. I remember one of the sisters, her name's not important, but nuns used to wear rings, not wedding rings but they looked like a wedding band.
EB: They still do.
TS: It was their marriage to Christ and she'd come around and if you were sort of dozing off and not paying attention she'd rap you on the top of the head. [EB: laughs] Hit you on the top of the head with that ring, hurt like hell.
EB: She knew exactly what she was doing.
TS: And I remember in high school one of the Irish brothers, an older man, probably then in his 70's; 'cause I know he died at the age of 90. But, he used to carry a strap, a leather strap; to be honest, I never saw him hit anybody.
EB: But you knew it was there.
TS: You knew it.
EB: So that did the job.
TS: He taught Latin. And if you came to school without your Latin homework, which I always did first, or you wised off, as boys will do or anything; he'd take that strap out and he'd rap your desk, not more than two inches from your hand. But I have to say honestly, I don't think he ever hit anybody that I ever saw.
EB: It's like training a puppy, you don't really hit them with that rolled up newspaper, but you smack it in front of them, so he knows it's there.
TS: And one of the guys that I grew up with, somehow got it from him, took it out of his briefcase when he was out of the room, I don't know how he got it. He took it home and on his father's buzz saw, cut this 12 inch leather strap into three or four inch pieces and put it in a box and wrapped it all up with Christmas paper or some kind and put it on his desk when he came to school. He came into class the next day or couple of days later and opened this; and he almost had an apoplectic fit. He got red in the face, stormed out of the classroom and we didn't see him for several days. We had a substitute teacher for a couple of days and finally he came back, he never mentioned it.
EB: Boy, that's panache to not mention it, to be that angry.
TS: He was furious; maybe he never wanted to admit to his colleagues or anybody else that he had this leather strap. I don't recall any of the brothers or sisters hitting any kid in my presence, but boy they'd scare the hell out of you. Except she'd hit you on the top of the head with her ring and this guy would hit your desk with this. And I can recall a few times and it happened to me once; where one brother grabbed me by the collar and sort of lifted me up, making it very clear what the message was 'stop screwing around and get your homework done'.
EB: Well, all of this apparently worked because you didn't end up in Sing-Sing.
TS: Or reform school. I didn't end up in reform school.
EB: Wasn't that the closest prison to you?
TS: Yeah, I didn't end up in reform school. But this was a prep school; you were expected to take these courses and they expect you to get into college. I mean, there was no question.
EB: Everybody who went there, this was the intent. You know, that does bring up something, we're going to jump around; I want to ask you about your subjects in school. But you went from prep school to a school in Hamilton.
TS: Colgate.
EB: Which is not a religious school, is that correct?
TS: No, no.
EB: Wasn't that unusual then? Wasn't it considered you'd all go to…
TS: You're bringing up a very interesting point. Colgate was actually founded, like many schools in the early 1800's by Presbyterian or ministers of some kind; I've forgotten who founded Colgate, but it was a nonsectarian school. It changed its name actually from, I think it was Union College or something like that, in the 1870's or something when the Colgate family, the Palmolive-Peet Toothpaste Company, endowed it and gave them all sorts of money. But you raise a fascinating point because, remember now, I'm the youngest of seven. Vini, was not a good student, he decided when we graduated from Iona he was going to join the Navy and he did; and the Korean War started, and he joined the Navy. He may have started Iona College for a couple of months before the war started; because I recall we were freshmen in college when the Korean War began. And I remember the president of Colgate bringing in the whole school student body into the chapel and he said that they were going to institute an Air Force ROTC program, which I joined like a lot of other people. But back to the point, when I was applying to colleges in my senior year, I was a very good student; I was one of the best students in the class, had won a lot of awards and there was no question academically I had very good grades. I did well on the Regents Exams, and I applied to Fordham and Notre Dame and Holy Cross and a few others and my mother said 'The only way you can go to college is by getting a scholarship, I have no money.' And I understood that, and I think some of the brothers understood that, some of the Christian brothers who were close to my mother. But I also applied to Colgate and a few other colleges and the reason I applied to Colgate, to go back a minute; is in my third year, I had been selected in New Rochelle by the American Legion to represent New Rochelle at the Boy's State, which was being held that summer at Colgate. Boy's State was the American Legion thing to teach boys about government. There was a competition, I remember very well going down to the American Legion Hall. Six or eight of us and to get up in front of this panel and talk about ourselves and what was our background in high school and why we should represent New Rochelle. I won the competition, so I was sent. It was nice; I went there for about a week. Coincidentally, to having seen Colgate, it was a beautiful, gorgeous campus; I fell in love right away, up in the Chenango Valley in upstate New York, near Syracuse. Coincidentally, I found out that Celia's uncle had been a graduate of Colgate and had been a fraternity brother of the Dean of Admissions. So, after I get back from that experience, he asked me one day; when I was over, seeing Celia we were dating as a matter of fact. We were seniors in high school then and we used to babysit his kids, who were younger. He asked me where I was going to go to college, and I said 'Well, I've applied to a number of places; I think my family would love to see me go to one of the Catholic colleges, but I've applied for scholarships and no one has done anything. I can't go to any of those places without a scholarship.' So, he said 'Well, let me call Bill Griffith on the phone at Colgate.' And so he did. Bill Griffith sent me an application and said 'Apply for one of these scholarships.' Well, it turned out, and I think there are some things in life that are probably providential, I got a full ride scholarship to Colgate offered on the basis of my academic experience at Iona; and I don't know all the details, maybe Celia's uncle had some influence on that, it may very well have been that they wanted to get some kids from a Catholic prep school 'cause there were very few. I think I may have been the first, I'm not sure of this, but I may have been the first kid from Iona, Irish Christian Brother Catholic Prep School to go to Colgate. There had been some before me; a few that, I think, had gone maybe to Princeton or Yale. But let's face it, 99.9% of the graduates of Iona up to that point, it's not that way now, but up to that point they went to Georgetown, Fordham, Holy Cross and Notre Dame, that was it. Well, to finish the story and this is the absolute truth…
EB: Well, let me interrupt one thing. Did you say full bright scholarship?
TS: No, a full ride.
EB: Oh, a full ride. That's what I thought.
TS: A full ride. They were called War Memorial Scholarships, established after the Second World War to honor the Colgate dead and the alumni put all this money into there. They gave about, I don't know, 20 or 30 of these scholarships and I was offered one. Well, the minute I was offered a scholarship, that solved the problem; that was the only way I was going to get to college. Otherwise, I would have joined the military, probably would have gotten the G.I. bill. I could have stayed home and probably gone to Iona College, which was young and fledgling at the time.
EB: And you did say Iona College.
TS: They had a college, run by the same people, on the same campus. It still is there today, it's grown of course; the prep school has moved to another campus.
EB: So that would have been co-ed, right.
TS: No, that was all boys.
EB: That was still all boys, I mean, through college as well?
TS: Oh, yeah, sure. At that time, it isn't now. I think some of the brothers said 'Here's a good student, why don't we encourage him to stay right here?' But it was a young college, it had been started just prior to the war and during the war. As a matter of fact, when we were in prep school, they just were developing their faculty and they were getting a very small class of students; be that as it may, after I sent in my application, I got several calls from the Admissions office saying they hadn't gotten my transcript. So, I went into the principal, an Irish Christian Brother, who will remain nameless and he said 'Well, I'm not sure if I'm going to send your transcript. You go to that school and you'll lose your soul. You'll associate with who-knows-what sort of heathens, and I don't know that I'm even going to send it.' So, I was absolutely flabbergasted; 'cause he had already sent my transcripts to the other places, but none of the others offered me a scholarship, which is fine, it's a competitive world. So, I went home and I told my mother, who just absolutely broke down in tears, she said 'Well, that's the only way you're going to get to college, we know Celia's uncle. He's a good man.' As a matter of fact, to go back, the man, whose wife ran the dancing class that Celia and I went to in the sixth and seventh grade, was also an alumnus of Colgate had been an All-American football player there in the '30s and a classmate of Celia's uncle; and so he also put in a good word, 'Oh yeah, we know Tommy Scully, he's a well-respected young boy in our community.' So, I think his recommendation plus Celia's uncle; anyway, here I got the scholarship and the principal of the school won't send my transcript. So, my mother called the Monsignor, who was the parish pastor, told the story, he said 'I'll take care of it.' So he called up the brother and in those days the brothers used to go to mass at Holy Family. They didn't have their own chapel, they would go to mass at Holy Family Church up the street; they're only half a mile up the street. So, Monsignor Fitzgerald, was his name, called the principal on the phone and said 'the only way this kid is going to get to college is with a scholarship; and if he hasn't got the moral foundation now to survive four years in a "nonsectarian" college, going to a Catholic college isn't going to make a difference. I urge you to send his transcript immediately.' I heard this from my mother, the principal called me in the next day and he said 'Well, I've thought it over and I'm going to send your transcript.'
EB: He didn't mention the Monsignor?
TS: He never mentioned the call from the Monsignor.
EB: He didn't mention the steal fist with the velvet glove over it, did he?
TS: Now, that story is second-hand from my mother, but I'm sure it's the case because he did then send it, I did get the scholarship, I ended up going to Colgate and I'll leave it to God to decide…
EB: Whether you stayed a good Catholic.
TS: Whether my soul will be saved in the long run.
EB: From what you tell me about your mother and knowing what she accomplished in her life, she would have gone as far as, was it Bishop Spellman?
TS: Cardinal Spellman. What you want to hear that story?
EB: Oh sure, do you have a Cardinal Spellman story?
TS: Oh yeah, and this story has been actually written.
EB: He was like the Pope to us, when we were growing up. He was as powerful as the Pope.
TS: Cardinal Spellman, as far as New York, sure he built the whole school system. Well, he also was the one who encouraged the Irish Christian Brothers to open Iona College just during the early part of the war, because they needed more colleges; Fordham and Manhattan were the few in that area. So, he encouraged them to do it, and got them some support. But one day, old Brother Ryan, was his name, was dying; and he's a man in his 80's and my mother is his nurse. She's nursing, as I told you, I guess I'm in high school at this point; I think I still might have been in eighth grade.
[End]