School Days

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."

My grandfather, William J. O'Hara, was an incredibly intelligent and well-educated man, one of the smartest people I've ever known. He was born in 1930, and graduated from high school in 1948, from college in 1952, and from grad school after he'd served in Korea.

I knew that it was unusual that my grandfather and all 3 of his brothers, coming from an urban family of average means, had graduated from college in the 1940s and 1950s. I figured it was something of a historical anomaly - his older brothers had benefited from the GI Bill, and Pop and his younger brother happened to be especially academically inclined. Put it all together and you end up with 4 college degrees.

It had never occurred to me to think that maybe this was by design, that perhaps they came from a family that really valued education. Then I read Pop's list of "Quotes from my Parents." His mother, my great-grandmother Molly Quinn O'Hara, was quoted saying "Get as much education as you can. No matter what happens in life . . . that is the one thing no one can take away from you."

It's clear that my great-grandmother explicitly valued education, and raised her sons to do the same. Molly herself had an 8th grade education, according to information she herself gave on the 1940 Census. Her husband John O'Hara had a 10th grade education.

1940 US Federal Census, O'Hara Family.

This exercise - thinking about education in the O'Hara family - brought to mind another story I'd heard my grandfather tell, back before I began jotting down the things he told us. When he was a young boy, getting ready to start school, the cut-off date to enter school was December 1. Pop's birthday was December 2.

Pop told of being dragged down to the school by his mother as a six-year-old. Molly quite simply insisted to officials that he be allowed to start school with the kids who were 1 day older than he was. She made her case, and she won. My grandfather, with his signature wit, claimed he would have been six months behind in his life, and the rest of us would all be six months younger, had his mother not prevailed - had his mother not been so invested in her sons' educations.

Stuff My Great-Grandparents Said

I recently mentioned having found my paternal grandfather's responses to one of those "Story of My Life" books full of writing prompts. Pop had answered the first prompt, and then proceeded to ignore the next ones in favor of making a list of "Quotes from my Parents, " which I'll share here, verbatim.

The phrases within the quotation marks are my great-grandparents' actual quotes, with context provided in my grandfather's hand.

MOM: Growing up in the city + off from school in the summer, we had to be back in the apartment after the sun went down because:
"There is no good on the streets after dark."

DAD: When I didn't think I could handle going to Regis High School (a scholarship school):
"If the other kids can do it, you can do it."

DAD: "Don't take yourself too seriously . . . if you do, no one else will take you seriously at all."

"Laugh every chance you get, there will always be occasions to cry."

MOM: "Get as much education as you can. No matter what happens in life . . . that is the one thing no one can take away from you."

MOM: On raising babies:
"Get them before they are two, or they will get you."

As I type these out, I find that they're a lot more revealing than I realized on first reading them, and I hope to do some more in depth posts unpacking some of them in the future. 

Erector Set

I recently came across a few photocopied pages from one of those "The Story of My Life" books, filled out in my grandfather's hand. My aunt had given it to him when he was alive, and he proceeded to fill out only the first three pages. Although he started by answering the prompts, it soon became a list of "Quotes from My Parents," which I'll cover in a different post.

The first prompt, the only one he actually responded to, asked "What did you enjoy doing most as a child? Did you prefer doing it alone or with someone else?" Pop responded

Playing stick ball, having a catch with Dad in Prospect Park, going to Ebetts [sic] Field for the first time with Dad.

I enjoyed my Erector Set. You could build all sorts of things.

The first part was par for the course.  If you'd asked me what Pop had liked doing as a kid, my answer would have been all baseball, all the time. I'm sure I knew that that was an impossibly limited view of my grandfather's childhood, but what I knew of his younger years consisted almost entirely of stick ball, rooting for Dodgers, and playing ball in Prospect Park.

The bit about the Erector Set, though, stunned me. I don't know why it should seem so completely unexpected - Erector Sets were popular, obviously, and Pop couldn't have spent all  his free time playing baseball, but it was a part of my grandfather's childhood that stood out enough to be the only non-baseball activity that he listed and at the same time a part that I had never heard about before.

I didn't know the first thing about Erector Sets, other than that they failed to save the day in the movie The Sandlot, so I did a quick internet search and landed on the website of the Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop, which has a page about the Erector Set. The Eli Whitney Museum has a collection related to A.C. Gilbert, one of the foremost toymakers of the 20th Century, whose products included the Erector Set.

1938 Advertisement for the No. 7 1/2 Erector

Image courtesy of the Eli Whitney Museum, www.eliwhitney.org

To be honest, part of what surprised me about reading that Pop liked playing with an Erector Set was that my entire knowledge of the toy came from those scenes in The Sandlot, and as a result, I associated it with the 1960s, and didn't realize that it had been around since my grandfather's boyhood in the 1930s. As it turns out, according to the Eli Whitney Museum, the Erector Set was invented in 1913, and was essentially already a classic when Pop was a kid. I found the image above on the website of the Eli Whitney Museum, and it reads, in part, "[Gilbert's] new 1938 Erectors have been completely redesigned and modernized." Pop was about 8 years old in 1938, so this seems to be pretty close to what he would have been playing with himself, in their apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

The last line of the ad, pictured above, reads "The No. 7 1/2 Erector shown here is $10.00. Other sets are from $1.00 to $27.50." We can put that in the context of information gleaned from the 1940 US Census, which says that my great-grandfather, John J. O'Hara, made $2,180.00 in 1939, and paid $25/month in rent. This is a crude measurement to be sure, and rendered inaccurate by the vast changes in relative valuations over the past 70-odd years, but I can't fathom buying a child a toy that cost, at the upper end of the range cited, more than the monthly rent in an NYC apartment! (It should be noted that most people in their building were paying between $30 and $45; it seems that my great-grandfather was getting a deal on rent because his father was the landlord. But still!) I can only assume that Pop's Erector Set was not the extravagant $27.50 kit that was worth more than a month's rent for his parents.

Update: Graduation Day

Over a year ago, I published a post titled (Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Graduation Day, which featured a graduation day photograph of my grandfather, William J. O'Hara, and my musings about which graduation day it had been. Family opinion was divided as to whether he looked like he could be 13 (grade school graduation, from St. Savior's School), 18 (high school graduation, from Regis High School), 22 (college graduation, from Fordham University), or 26 (grad school graduation, from NYU). Obviously, that's a really big range, and the middle range, Regis or Fordham, seemed to be the most likely candidates.

Take a look at the fellow in the cap and gown and let me know how old you think he is. (Answer below.)

William J. O'Hara (L) and Henry Gorra

A few weeks ago, as I was preparing to publish a small booklet about my grandfather through Lulu, I found myself at my parents' house, browsing his old yearbooks. I hadn't meant to take them out - the thought of using his school pictures as illustrations hadn't occurred to me - but I went into the bookcase looking for something else, and walked away with yearbooks in hand instead.

I went through the Regis yearbook first, and this picture wasn't even in the back of my mind - until I saw what appeared to be a graduation day photograph, rows of boys seated upon a stage, all wearing jackets and ties, but not in caps and gowns. If I was right about that being graduation, then Regis would be ruled out, because the students didn't graduate in caps and gowns. The caption, which I don't recall exactly at the moment, was just explicit enough to make it clear that this was the graduating class (Class of 1948), but not quite specific enough to state whether or not they were actually graduating that day.

Next, I started going through the Fordham yearbook, now with this graduation picture very much on my mind. I got pretty far into the book without coming across anything that looked like a graduation picture, but then I saw something better. There was a shot of some other people standing outside of a building that looked like it very well might be the building behind my grandfather in our mystery picture, and it was identified as Reidy Hall. I went right to Google, and searched on the name of the building, which led me to Fordham University Library's digital collection, where a few further searches, and a few new images, left me with no doubt that Pop had been on the Fordham University campus when he was photographed, in his cap and gown, with his childhood friend Henry Gorra.

Blessing of Reidy Hall. Father at entrance, blessing plaque
October 10, 1947
With permission of Fordham University Archives and Special Collections

It's clear that this building has the same siding, same doors, same plaque.

Reidy Hall, according to the Fordham University website, was "a war barracks structure . . . named Reidy Hall in memory of Daniel Reidy, Class of 1935, who died in the assault on the Anzio beachhead in southern Italy."* I had tried to decipher what I could see of the plaque in the original picture of my grandfather, but it didn't tell me much. In this new picture, from Fordham, you can see that the entire plaque reads

Sgt DANIEL C. REIDY
GRADUATED
FROM SCHOOL of BUSINESS '35
KILLED IN ACTION IN ITALY, MAY 6 1944

Had I been able to read the entire plaque in the original photograph, of course, it would have shortened my search significantly.


So how old was he? If Pop was graduating from Fordham, then the photograph dates to June 1952, making him 21.5 years old. I'm eating a bit a crow, since I was on the side of "he looks too young to be graduating from college!" when we initially tried to figure out how to date the photograph last year.
 

*Howe, Bob, ed. "The College of Business Administration: 90 Years of History." Inside Fordham Online. N.p., 04 Oct 2010. Web. 4 Jan 2013. .

Family History Tour: Park Slope

Over Memorial Day weekend, some friends and I had a picnic in Prospect Park to celebrate our many birthdays (several of which fall in the last week of May). Afterward, I dragged my husband (and he dragged the cooler) on a family history tour of the neighborhood. (That's what you get to do when it's (nearly) your birthday.)

I started out taking excited pictures of St. Saviour's School, where my grandfather, William James O'Hara, attended elementary school. Then I noticed the cornerstone, proclaiming that the building had been built in 1956, the year my 26-year grandfather was married.

We later ran into a gentleman who I think was the parish priest, when he mistook us for a couple searching for the baptism prep class. (Not quite yet, Father!) I asked about the original school, and he told me that a large house that had been used as the school had stood on the same spot where the current building now stands. I found a very brief history of the parish and school, complete with a sketch of what I might guess is the original school building, on the school website, suggesting that my grandfather would have attended grammar school in the old brick house known as "The Little Red Schoolhouse."

St. Saviour's School, Park Slope, Brooklyn

 We also took pictures of the outside of the church, which is where my grandfather was baptized. I tried to get inside to take interior photos, but at 6:30 in the evening on Memorial Day, I wasn't surprised to find the doors locked. (I was surprised that the parish was actually expecting new parents to show up to baptism prep class at that hour on the holiday!)

The cornerstone, dated 1906, shows that unlike the school, the church building was actually standing during my grandfather's childhood.

I also took pictures of 505 6th Street, the building where my grandfather spent his childhood. It was owned by his grandparents, John and Mary (King) O'Hara, and his parents, John and Mary (Quinn) O'Hara were tenants in one of several apartments in the building.

Unfortunately, there was scaffolding on the building next to 505 6th., and so it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building. Instead, I took a photo (above) of the door and address, and a photo (below) of the upper part of the building.

My grandfather used to tell us that because they lived across the street from the hospital (New York Methodist Hospital), there were often cars on their street at a time when cars were not necessarily common on other streets in Brooklyn. He told stories of playing stickball in the street and asking hospital visitors to move their cars, because, "Hey Mister, you're parked on third base!" (In the stories, they always moved their cars. Whether this was because it was a simpler time, with easier parking, or because of rose-colored nostalgia glasses, I'm not sure.)

View of NY Methodist Hospital from outside 505th 6th Street.

My great-great-grandmother, my grandfather's "Nanny," or Mary Gillan Quinn, lived on the next block at 524 5th Street. (My great-grandparents lived with one set of in-laws upstairs and one set around the corner. Blessing or curse?) I took several photos of that building as well. Mary Gillan Quinn lived there in 1940, as well as in 1941, when she died. She lived with "Uncle Terry," her son Terrence Quinn.

I hadn't been to Park Slope since I was a very young child. Growing up, I heard lots of Pop's stories, and when I went back over the holiday weekend, I was able to situate those stories in space for the first time. As Ben dragged the cooler up and down the streets, I was reminded that Pop once told me that they don't call it Park Slope for nothing: when he was a boy, Grandma Molly used to do her shopping at the bottom of the hill. She'd bring a wagon, and the boys could ride in it as she pulled them down the hill to the store. Then she'd fill the wagon with groceries, and they would get to pull it back up the hill. (I'm not sure that Ben found that connection to my grandfather entirely comforting!)

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday: Graduation Day

As we head into full-blown graduation season, I thought this would be a nice photograph to share.

This is a photo of my grandfather, William J. O'Hara, on his graduation day. I don't know the identity of the other people in the photograph, though the guy to his right looks familiar - I'm sure I've seen pictures of him before, somewhere. (Update: The guy posing with Pop has been identified as his close childhood friend Henry Gorra.) I don't know what he's graduating from - just from looking at him, it seems plausible that he could be 13, graduating from grade school - which, if I'm not mistaken, was St. Saviour's - or that he could be 18, graduating from Regis High School. My guess is the latter; I think those other boys look a bit old for middle school. I've had one relative suggest that it was actually college graduation - she thinks Pop looks even too old for high school, but I'm not sure I agree.

I can't tell what building they're in front of. The piece of a sign that's visible in the upper right-hand corner reads

Sy

GRA

FROM SCHOOL of

KILLED IN ACTION IN ITA

Pop was born in 1930, so a grade school graduation would have taken place around 1943/4, and a high school graduation around 1948/9. At first, I thought that his sign might help date the picture, but it seems more likely that it's a plaque commemorating an alumnus who was killed overseas, who could have been a graduate of either school, killed at any point during WWII. 

Happy Birthday, Pop

Today marks the birthday of my grandfather, William James O'Hara - the second since he died, or or what would have been his 79th. He was born 2 December 1930, at St. Mary's Hospital in Brooklyn, to John O'Hara and Mary Quinn O'Hara. They lived at 505 6th St. at the time. He was the third of their four sons.

St. Mary's Hospital was in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn until it closed in 2005, after 123 years in operation.

Pop was baptized at St. Saviour's Church in Brooklyn, on 21 December 1930, when he was 19 days old. His sponsors were Joseph O'Hara - his father's youngest brother - and Elizabeth Quinn, who was presumably related to his mother, though I'm unsure of who she was. Molly's sisters were Agnes and Helen, and her brothers married women named Alice and Bobbie.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Nan's Engagement Ring

My grandparents, Marilyn Mulcahy and Bill O'Hara, were married 7 July 1956 at the church of St. Vincent Ferrer. Their witnesses were my grandfather's brother Ted and my grandmother's childhood best friend, Nancy Budd.

Several months before the wedding, Mrs. J. O'Hara - that's my great-grandmother, Mary Quinn O'Hara - had a diamond ring appraised for insurance purposes. It's described as follows:

ladies diamond solitaire ring, platinum

1 diamond weighing approx. .65 carat

modern cut, white, imperfect

2 tapered baguette diamonds weighing approx. .20 carat

It was worth $400.00.

I don't know anything about this ring, nor do I know where it is now, though I'd imagine one of my aunts does. I wonder why it appears to have been not my grandfather but his mother who had the ring appraised. Is that something mothers did for their soon-to-be-engaged sons? Maybe she was just the person in the family who already had an account at the jeweler? Or - since it's not a receipt for the purchase of ring - could it have been a ring that was already in the family, and she was having it appraised before giving it to Pop to give to Nan?

Looks like I'll have to start asking around about this family treasure!

First comes Love, then comes Marriage, then comes a Bermuda Honeymoon!

63 years ago this week, Nan and Pop were on their honeymoon in Bermuda. After being married on July 7, 1956, at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in Brooklyn, with Uncle Ted and Nan's best friend Nancy Budd as witnesses, they clearly left for Bermuda, as they were on their way back to New York 9 days later. Their ship, the Queen of Bermuda, sailed July 16 and arrived in New York on the 18th. If they left immediately after the wedding, and sailed 2 days on either end of the trip, they had a week-long honeymoon vacation at their destination. I imagine that the designation "5 HB" in the column for baggage means that between them they had 5 pieces of handbaggage, but I'm just guessing on that.

Happy Anniversary

Just hours late, in honor of what would have been Nan and Pop's 63rd anniversary, here's my favorite picture of them when they were young. I had to pull this picture off an old CD, so there should be more where this came from soon, now that I've got this CD out. It's undated, so I don't know whether it's from their courtship or their early married life, but would you just look at how happy she is! And how he looks at her!

That's a beautiful bathing suit, too. I've been looking for a pretty, stylish, one-piece suit, considering more of my free time these days goes to genealogy than to exercise (though clearly no such concerns were behind Nan's decision to wear that suit). I love how it's pretty, flattering, and feminine, yet more modest than most of what's available in the pretty and feminine department for women my age these days.

Happy Birthday, Pop

In memoriam:
This picture of the whole family with Pop was taken at the last O'Hara Christmas Party at "The House," though it may have already been "The Casa" by then. I think it was in 2005.

We miss you, Pop. Happy Birthday.

(Goodness, what Pop would think if he knew he were the subject of a whole blog post on the internet! - in the unlikely event, that is, that he knew what a blog post was, or understood what the internet was.)


Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May his soul, and the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace. Amen.