1
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011









Terry Mooney
Marist College
Poughkeepsie, New York
Transcribed by: Wai Yen Oo
For the Marist College Archives and Special Collections





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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
Transcript –
Terry Mooney
Interviewee:
Terry Mooney
Interviewer:
Gus Nolan
Interview Date
: September 30
th
2011
Location:
Marist College Archives and Special Collections Reading Room
Topic:
Marist College History


Subject Headings:
Mooney, Terry



Marist College Alumni



Marist College History



Marist College (Poughkeepsie, New York)



Marist College – Social Aspects

Summary:
Terry Mooney talks about his early years and his arrival to Marist College as an
Accounting major undergraduate before switching to Political Science. He discusses the social
environment on campus in the 70s, the friendships he made with people on campus. He recalls
memorable events of his time at the college. Mooney talks about his career path post-graduation
and reflects on the changes of Marist College of his time and the campus in 2011. He also
discusses the philosophical value of college education, community learning, and discusses the
issue surrounding distance learning.





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Terry Mooney – September 30
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00:05
GN:
Today is September 30
th
. We have an opportunity to interview Terry Mooney. Good
afternoon, Terry.
00:15
TM:
Hi. How you doing Gus? Good seeing you again.
00:16
GN:
Thanks for coming and participating in this archives which will be put into the Marist
Library’s Archives and be there for future use by historians and research specialists who will be
coming to find out something about how did this happen? This thing called Marist and. Which is
quite a story. Okay. Basically we're going to talk about three areas before Marist, Marist and then
after Marist. So just a kind of thumbnail if you will, review of where were you born, brought up
high school et cetera?
01:04
TM:
OK. Born in New York City. St Vincent's Hospital. I grew up in the Bronx. Went to
Mount St. Michael. My wife is a graduate of Mount Saint Mary across the river but went to
Mount St. Michael high school in the Bronx where I first encountered the Marist brothers. And
then my summers in Rockaway Beach. Some of the guys from Brother John Wilcox’s and it’s
just a lot of guys who would come to our house down in Rockaway and visit with us in the
summer home. Rick, I forget his last name now he's still a Brother would come down. And he
was a principal at Mount Saint Michael after a while. McAvery, an ex-Marine. He would come
down and then we applied to … My brother. I am a twin if you recalled. So my brother and I
applied to three college back then it was so complicated. Went applied to Iona, Marist and
Fordham. Got in to all three but came up here.
02:28
GN:
Probably caused the Mount experience and the summer experience and getting to
know Marist…
02:32
TM:
John Wilcox, he was a big influence and you know the Brothers were great at the
Mount and so it was kind of a no brainer.
02:43
GN:
Alright. Let’s talk some of the brain stuff while you were in high school. Did you do


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
anything in arts or music or hobbies? Did you play ball anything like that?
02:53
GN:
I was in track, I was in track. Ran all the time. And Howie Borck I remember in high
school, he was an Olympian from the Olympics right before the war. And he was our coach and
then I was the editor of the school newspaper. I was on student government and Brother Daniel
Andrews, do you remember, we used to call him Danny Annie. And He was my guidance
counselor.
03:24
GN:
Here's a question. Do you remember the name of the school paper?
03:29
TM:
The Mountaineer.
03:30
GN:
Alright. That's it. There's a thing called the Iris which is another paper that the Mount
put out and has to do with faculty and students. And the Iris protects the pupil so that's what play
on word there is. Summer jobs anything like that while you were in high school?
03:53
TM:
Yeah, we worked with the Irish mafia with the telephone company down in
Manhattan. So we worked.
04:03
GN:
Summer jobs.
04:04
TM:
There was a summer job and we work at an Irish bar in when we got older,
Fitzgerald’s up in Rockaway Beach, 180st, Rockaway Beach. I remember in high school we had
our first encounter with labor relations. My brother's and I were working in the summer at AT&T
we're working too fast and a union shop steward came up to us and told us, “You're working to
fast. You got to slow down. You gotta save jobs.” So this was the first insight I had to, like okay.
04:41
GN:
What kind of job was this now?
04:43
TM:
We were assigning trunk lines doing connecting one line to another line and taking
orders in and during… connections.
04:53
GN:
Hands-on wire work out there in the field.
04:56
TM:
And so it was kind of interesting.


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
05:00
GN:
What are the years for this? What’s your high school years from?
05:04
TM:
High school years are ’63 to ’67. High school years.
05:08
GN:
Then Marist would be?
05:10
TM:
’67 through ’71.
05:14
GN:
The question I hear is a kind of a no-brainer now too. Why Marist? It seems with the
Marist background and getting to know the Brothers, that would be part of it. But what did your
parents think? Were there other colleges more attractive? Marist was not that well-known as a
college in those days.
05:31
TM:
They didn't. It was kind of up to us. If you recall back in sixty-seven, Marist was an
all-male Catholic college and that's kind of what they wanted for us. Si Fordham might have
been co-ed I don't know about Iona at the time and it wasn't that far away an hour and half.
05:58
GN:
It’s not like going to Siena or someplace out of town.
06:00
TM:
Right and Fordham was in the Bronx. Iona was North Bronx, New Rochelle.
06:07
GN:
Hard to get to from anywhere.
06:09
TM:
So it's always like getting away, going to the country and then it satisfied the
Catholic boys college thing for about a year. Then things changed quickly.
06:24
GN:
All right, while at Marist. What can you say about, let’s go to the field of study? Do
you remember was there a core program? Was there a sixty-sixty?
06:30
TM:
Yeah there was a core program. Marist went through radical changes when I was
here and I came in as an accounting major because I took my father's advice was going to
business at least you will have a job. So I lasted for about two weeks in accounting. Realized that
wasn't my thing. I think John Kelley…?
06:53
GN:
Jack Kelly.
06:54
TM:
Jack Kelly was my first teacher. He predicted back then money would be obsolete by


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
the year, 2000 that we all be using plastic and he's basically right. Money is…who needs money
now, you have plastic.

07:10
GN:
Dollar bills at least. But you need money somewhere.
07:13
TM:
Right so I lasted two weeks. Switched to Political Science and then I graduated in ’71
with a degree in Political Science. Had some great experiences. There was a core curriculum at
the time but it went through radical changes, you know. It’s a time of liberation, politics, the
student rebellion and we'd have big meetings with the faculty.
07:38
GN:
Was the war on at that time?
07:40
TM:
The war was. I remember being part of closing Poughkeepsie. Marist closed for days
at a time after Kent State. and in what is now the mall, we had thousands of students protesting.
Big rally at the armory. I remember we basically shut down Poughkeepsie, the students from
Vassar, New Paltz, Marist marching in Poughkeepsie and then we had friends who were on the
police department in the city of Poughkeepsie. So you see Doc. Doherty would be on one side.
08:15
GN:
He has another story to tell about this.
08:17
TM:
And we would be on the inside you know with the hippies and then he would be on
the outside with.
08:23
GN:
The year before he was the president of the student body. Now he's a pig. He told me
that story. Professors that you had. Do you remember some of those? Lou Zuccarello, you
mentioned.
08:36
TM:
Louis Zuccarello, Maurice Bibeau for Spanish, Gus Nolan.
08:43
GN:
Oh yes, he was well-known. C plus Gus.
08:47
TM:
Then I had Carolyn Landau again and I forget the names. I'm missing some. I had a
lot of really good professors. Michaelson. Do you remember Dr Michaelson?
08:59
GN:
I do, Mal Michelson.


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
09:01
TM:
He was a big influence.
08:02
GN:
A rebel rouser.
09:05
TM:
He was but in a senior… they altered the curriculum. I guess it’s changed. We were
able to take this independent study this nine-credit course and design our own environmental
science course and we took it and it was on the study of the Hudson and part of it was on the
sloop Clearwater and so there'd be Pete Seeger singing about the Hudson. There’d the scientific
stuff going on down in the river in and there would photographs.
09:37
GN:
They were great years, weren’t they?
09:39
TM:
Inventive and so that was kind of interesting. Marist allowed you to do. You know
they gave you a lot of leg room too.
09:50
GN:
But you had to produce…
09:52
TM:
You had to produce and it was under direction but you could explore yourself.
09:59
GN:
Can you give me going back to some particular assignments? You talked about the
political science. Did you ever have to go and interview anybody in Washington?
10:07
TM:
I remember I just coming over here this afternoon across the bridge I saw or signed
for Effron's, Effron's is some other kind of local business back in ’68, ‘69. Effron was a big name
in the city of Poughkeepsie. And I had an internship. Apparently, there was some controversy
over parking meters and parking and urban renewal and where was the money going. And so one
of my projects was kind of be an intern, I forget Mr. Effron's first name I had it before. But again
I would attend common council meetings and learn all about the politics of parking meters in the
City of Poughkeepsie and parking. The average pedestrian does not want to walk a quarter of a
mile to shopping. So you’d have to make shopping next to where you’re parking.
11:08
GN:
Yeah outside of the class so now other activities? You run here too? Did you play
ball?


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011

11:14
TM:
Well, I didn't run. I was the editor of the circle for one year and then succeeded by
Paul Brown and then I was freshman and sophomore Class President.
11:30
GN:
The Paul Brown? The assistant commissioner of the New York City police?
11:33
TM:
Yea. The Paul Brown. That's where he got his kind of entree into. And then Paul
became a stringer for the New York Times and broke some important articles. I also was one of
the first students at Marist, you may recall with … I think Phil Glenn maybe but Dave Flynn was
the director of admissions at the time, started this program which they send students out to
recruit and attend college nights and all of that. So that was a big responsibility and is a great
opportunity for me because I ended up recruiting in the Virgin Islands. I ended up recruiting in
Puerto Rico. I was recruiting throughout the Northeast. I had a car expense account. I got credit
for it.
12:28
GN:
That was a senior year project then?
12:29
TM:
That was senior year.
12:30
GN:
Kind of an internship.
12:31
TM:
Yeah and I got… it was a wonderful experience. It was a business experience and I
don’t know if I got paid. I think I had a small expense account and a car and so that was kind of a
hoot. And I was a vice president of student council so I was involved in a lot of that…

12:53
GN:
Turmoil of those years.

12:54
TM:
Yeah. The campus turbulence and Kent State stuff and Woodstock occurred when we
were just between junior and senior year.
13:04
GN:
That was a summer.
13:05
TM:
That was a summer thing but it was part of that whole…



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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
13:08
GN:
It flowed over. What kind of friendships did you develop then? And do they still
hold?
13:18
TM:
Yea my friends, friends for life. You know, Paul Brown, I knew from the Mount of
course. But the guys that we met last week at the alumni reunion, we're all very close. We stay in
contact. In fact I just published some pictures which I’ll send to you from the reunion last
weekend on Shutterfly. We stayed in touch. We’re already talking about getting together next
year again and so probably the closest friends of my life I’ve made at Marist. Paul Brown Phill
Glenn, Steve Wysowski, a lot of good guys.
13:56
GN:
Let me turn this corner a little bit. What were some of the hardest thing you had?
14:00
TM:
The Hardest things?
14:03
GN:
In the other words were there… Did you know Brother Paul? Was he the…
14:08
TM:
Paul Ambrose?
14:09
GN:
No he was small little, Paul Stokes.
14:11
TM:
No I didn't know.
14:12
GN:
He was a dean of something. Maybe after you then.
14:16
TM:
Yeah, I don’t remember him. It was one of things I should mention again… Marist
gave you opportunities to do things. Myself and my roommate, Joe Gabiah who I stayed in
contact with started a business on campus and we started a sandwich business. We would buy
sandwiches for Mamma's in Poughkeepsie and we borrowed the cleaning ladies’ carts in each of
the dorms so we would buy our sandwiches for 33 cents each and sell them for sixty-five cents or
buy the cokes for, you know, twenty cents and sell them for forty cents. We would deliver the
food, you know so we go around the dorms with these cleaning carts and that on for Monday
Night Football and during Star Trek so it was wonderful. We made… It was a great
entrepreneurial experience. We made a ton of money and the kids loved it to the point that we


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2011
would …our cleaning carts would be swamped because we would get ten and twelve kids
wanting a meatball sub or turkey sub or whatever and things would disappear. The hands would
go into the carts so we hired this ex-Marine who was a veteran at the college. Jack Majesty big
Jackman and Jack went around with his German Shepherd and with a sign I ain't never been
beat. And he would challenge the guys who would steal from him. That was good experience and
again they allowed us to do stuff like that and.
15:54
GN:
Well were there dormitory hours? Did they have to be in their rooms and studying at
any given time?
16:00
TM:
And maybe in the beginning. In the beginning again it was all-male. Yeah. There was
an issue by sophomore year. Women began to arrive I think. We had fifty women.
16:16
GN:
Living on campus.
16:17
TM:
some of them good number of them living on campus. They were kind of segregated
they were off in two here, three there and they were part from each other. So rules started. We
started to get rules about visiting each other and all of that on campus and but by senior year,
none of it matter. There were a couple hundred women and the.
16:44
GN:
Structures have broken a little on rules of those things.
16:48
TM:
It became a very liberal college I think by end of the four years. It has become non-
denominational so that all-male Catholic college my parents wanted me to go to was now co-ed
and non-denominational. My father came on campus and I’d have to put him in a wheelchair.
17:09
GN:
Now was the war an issue when you're graduating? Was there a danger of you're
going into service?
17:16
TM:
It was. That was a scary time. I mean they had a lottery. Nixon instituted the lottery
for a draft and so my number is 182. Anybody who was a part of the lottery remembers what
theirs was so I was just outside the range where I could have been reached but if I graduated I


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2011
had 100 or 112 and 98 or I probably would be over in Vietnam. So we're very fortunate because I
didn't have to make the decision and I'm pretty sure I would have left the country.
17:54
GN:
There’s a guy on campus, Jack Eberth. He was from Long Island. And he was called
even though he was in school and he should have been exempt but however the mistake was
made, they said you have to go we can adjudicate it but you have be in service, you know and so
you know he never graduated in his regular time. But Brother Richard LaPietra was the dean
later they gave his diploma at sea. He didn't have to come back which made a big difference.
When he got out of service, he had diploma in hand, a college graduate and he was able to move.
18:32
TM:
A lot of us are radical. We're kind of radicalized at the time over the four years. I
actually came back one year after my sophomore year with an afro so my father, you know. I
went over a lot of guys went over to there was a doctor over in new Paltz which you may not
know about but he was writing notes for guys to get out of the draft, documenting medical stuff
just to get out of the draft. So sitting around the television that night and watching the numbers
being polled was kind of frightening. It was pretty scary.
19:08
GN:
Alright, moving on after Marist what happened?
19:09
TM:
After Marist I went on to SUNY Albany. I mean I decided so much that I like
working being around on a college campus so much I went on to SUNY Albany and got a two
year degree in counseling and education administration so I worked at the dorm. I became a
dorm director for a while and I went on to Elizabeth Seton, what was Elisabeth seton college for
about two years where I became Director of Admissions down there and then went onto…
19:45
GN:
Is that in Riverdale?
19:46
TM:
No it was in north Bronx, north Yonkers actually and then now from there, I went on
to Suffolk Community College and got a job as a counsellor on a new campus I was opening up
in Brentwood and then decided I liked the counseling gig enough and I liked how the


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2011
psychologists are treated on campus. They were kind of like the docs on campus so I went on for
my PHD in psychology and became a clinical psychologist. I finished in 1982.
20:22
GN:
Where did you get that degree?
20:23
TM:
At SUNY Albany so from that two weeks of accounting to ten years later with PhD
in Psychology.
20:33
GN:
That’s quite a leap.
20:35
TM:
Road turns a winding road.
20:38
GN:
You’d never know what going to unfold and the opportunities but to be alert to them
and to respond to them. That's part of the game. So moving on to some other things now that you
can talk about a little in depth, how would you contrast Marist today with the Marist that you
knew? In which ways are they alike? In which ways would you say that they’re different?
21:06
TM:
I suspected the camaraderie and esprit de corps is very similar and I saw it last
weekend at the alumni reunion. There was a great brotherhood and sisterhood of people being
together and happy to see each other. Great bonds are formed and I suspect and that's true today
too.
21:26
GN:
Has you daughter given you glimpse of that yet? Has she had a chance?
21:29
TM:
She’s starting to. Yeah, she's jumped into a bunch of activities like the orchestra,
photographer for the school newspaper, and the intermurals and few other things. That’s she…
ski team so she's trying to immerse himself into college life and she's been very positive of
experiences so far so we're pleased about that. We had it too but she said, this class is a good
class because the ambulance has only been on campus five times as opposed to previous classes.
And I'm sure that occurred when we were here but I have little recollection of it. So the drinking
and the partying went on then and is going on now but maybe more seriously and worrisome.
Maybe I am just older and I would think of it as worrisome.


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2011
22:37
GN:
There is probably no college in the States that does not have this kind of experiences.
22:42
TM:
I mean I worked at Siena. Every college that I worked at had the same issue.
22:48
GN:
What would you say would explain your beginnings here in the two weeks in
accounting? Where did you get the initiative to pursue this PhD at the end of ten years? Is it a
love of learning? Did you learn in something here about?
23:09
TM:
Love of learning. It was inspirational professors. I think there are a few professors
like Louis Zuccarello who took personal interests in your work.
23:20
GN:
Did you know Daniel Kirk when you were here?
23:21
TM:
But I never took any classes with Dan. He taught psychology and head of the
psychology department then but it was a kind of human relations stuff. It was all the in the idea
of the campus spirit was something that… was the seed because I decided I wanted to work
around young people on a college campus and then it evolved from that to the counseling and
then to psychology because that would prepare me the best to do, you know, a high level of
training and education in terms of medication and the counseling, the therapy that I do today.
24:04
GN:
Where did you put most years in your work field? Would it be as counseling now in
college? Did you put ten years there or?
24:15
TM:
Yea, it was about ten years in college and then I began a private practice in about. I
worked college and then I went to … I started a consulting business and I ended up working
doing employee counseling and consulting to large businesses. So General Electric, many of
major banks in our area. All the large school districts. Key Bank. And so I was the Half Gun Will
Travel, the shrink on campus except in a corporate setting. So if there was a problem or a
troubled employee, they would call him Mooney and Mooney will come in. So that was the
continuation of the counselling.
24:58
GN:
Those problems are there even though… most people don't know. They’re hidden


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2011
away. Yet, they have to be dealt with otherwise you get people shooting each other.
25:09
TM:
Yeah, I'd be invited to the Blue Cross Blue Shield holiday party every Christmas but
no one would talk to me cause they were afraid that others would see that they knew me. How do
they know the shrink?
25:23
GN:
That's an interesting thing. What strikes you, I guess a number of things coming on
campus now as to when you came on here at ’68? What's the images that say I don't believe this?
25:36
TM:
The whole… It's kind of the macro environment. It is such an impressive campus, the
Greystone and it's another world. I mean it is a different world than what where you taught,
where you helped build and then.
25:53
GN:
The Donnelly building was our central focus.
25:55
TM:
Donnelly was. I thought Donnelly was state of the art at the time. Yeah and now
Donnelly is impressive in its own right today but it's an entirely a new building. And I worked
out at Greystone. I was with the admissions folks for a while.
26:17
GN:
With Flynn and that group yeah. Who was upstairs? Was Linus upstairs?
26:19
TM:
Linus was upstairs and I was on the Board of Trustees as one of the student
representatives in those times. I attended meetings with Linus and others and you know
representing the students because I was on the student government and editor of the paper. So
we'd go to meetings and voice student opinions so that kind of contribution that they allowed I
think help again grow us as young men into a sense of responsibility in making contributions to
the community that we’re a part of.
26:58
GN:
Now a lot of things have changed in terms of even our sports programs. I mean we
have a girls’ basketball team here, as is competitive nationally. They've come with no more than
just whoever our student body is, no more than four thousand and less than that or almost about
half of that is girls and to be able to get this combination together. Of course, they are not all


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
from New York City. I mean. They’re from Indiana. They’re from Cleveland.
27:30
TM:
They're recruited nationally.
27:31
GN:
Yeah, they draw nationally to it, you know. Comment on the stadium. Do you think it
was worth nine million dollars to put up that stadium?
27:41
TM:
Well you know it would struck me was it's a nice stadium but there's only seating on
one side unless I missed something but look like it was only…
27:48
GN:
Well the fur is over there in the back of the enemy camp.
27:51
TM:
There is seating over there.
27:54
GN:
Well it's cement seating. It's just the walls you know you sit on these little piers that
are along there.
28:02
TM:
I mean it is an impressive stadium. The whole everything about this campus is
impressive now. So it doesn't seem like it done in a small way everything is done to make an
impression. And it has. I suspect that's part of why the college has become increasingly
successful because anybody arrives in this campus is impressed by it. I understand the Dean of
the School of Architecture from Yale helped design it. So the Greystone, who knows what this
will look like when the ivy growing over it in fifty, a hundred years. It's going to be really pretty
impressive but it’s impressive already. I mean the Boathouse is fantastic. We used to have river
day down there.
28:51
GN:
We have come a long way. River Day is now very organized which you guys would
revolt against.
28:56
TM:
River Day is no more. That’s when the ambulances showed up on River Day. May
1
st
, River Day.
29:03
GN:
Well the first spring day, it started when the first local melting of the ice and ice
began to flow. Well it's taken a different posture now in student life. It’s not as violent and well I


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2011
wouldn’t use the word violent but it was…
29:20
TM:
There was drinking then and I mean the drinking that I am complaining about today
was going on … When I was a freshman, they had a clambake every year. That was the annual
with the pool on the north end of the campus.
29:32
GN:
Yeah you remember the outside pool?
29:34
TM:
The outside pool and the clam bake and chicken. That was fun.
29:40
GN:
Marist reputation has grown again. You know, we have the poll for instance the
Marist Poll is kind of a recognized national statistic that would come out.
29:51
TM:
And my daughter’s now got a job working there. So she’s working four hours a week
on the Marist Poll, making calls, opinion calls.
30:00
GN:
Actually doing the calling.
30:01
TM:
Yeah, she's actually doing the calling. So you know she's trying to integrate herself
and she's actually doing that stuff so which I think is great.
30:09
GN:
Let me move on in the same kind of area. You have made this decision because
you've decided to send your daughter here. Fortunately she’s smart and so you're getting partial
scholarship or full scholarship. But how do you handle a question of somebody and saying
should I go to college? Should I pay forty thousand dollars a year you know for my child to go
away for what they're going to have at the end of it? You know what comes out of it?
30:45
TM:
Frankly, my daughter looked at eleven colleges and we replied. She accepted to all of
them, got money to some of them. Getting to campus is impressive. You drive to New Paltz and
you look at this place. And it’s like day and night. Let me give you a little story when we arrived
here. Kara, she's in a music program so she came a week early because she was part of the music
camp that was in August. Yeah and so she was assigned two mentors. My daughter's Korean
American. She's adopted and so they signed her two mentors who happened to be Korean


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Terry Mooney – September 30
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2011
American violinist who are also adopted. So whose last name is O’Bryan so there’s Irish Korean
American violinists. That's the kind of touch that Marist has that you wouldn't get at a big
university college. I thought I think there was a kind of sensitivity to integrating Kara into you
know because there was a concern that there’d did be very few Asians on the campus and she
is… I mean there's a I imagined about 5%. I don't know what the population is but I imagine it's
not a very large population. So there was a sensitivity helping her feel at home with other
violinist but also people happen to be Korean American and adoptees so that was a nice touch.
32:17
GN:
How would you think someone pick that up? You've been in college programs and
the recruiting officers, are there ways to cross-check those things.?
32:28
TM:
Well yeah I mean you know in the applications Korean-American, Korean but she
came for the auditions during the summer and she met Art Himmelberger and auditioned in front
of other people so they got to know her right away and so those she didn't meet these other
violinists and I think they put it together two and two together. I suspect they wanted Kara
because she’s got the music scholarship and she's a very talented violinist. So they kind of
recruited her a little bit. And he's hoping as Art has said. He’s hoping to build a full orchestra
around her and some of the other violinists who now coming to the college so in a few years.
Maybe we’ll have a full symphony orchestra which would be wonderful. And Kara could be part
of that as I keep telling my daughter. You can do anything if you put your mind to it. This place
with the right support, you can do it.
33:30
GN:
Very interesting story, thank you. But I mean that is one part of. It is an opportunity It
is also… There's a difference between you know, learning how to live in making a living, you
know. And I think part of this, you know, interested in music, interested in art, and so on. You’re
not really concerned about you know how much money am I going to make at the end. In fact
she may not make a lot of money as a violinist professionally.


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Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
33:04
TM:
She probably won't and she knows that she's not going to make music or art, her
career because she'll have difficulty with that. But it's although now … She's also a techie like of
these young kids so the idea of digital arts. There's good possibilities there in terms of the digital
art careers and even combining that with music at some levels. So I think she's thinking
expansively in terms of hoping to figure out a way and a path to do that. Yeah and it's possible. I
mean look at me, I started off in accounting and ended up psychologist with … I have a large
company with fifty employees now in three cities. I was an accounting major. My father was
right. Get to know business and he said two things, get to know business and learn a computer.
Back then we didn't have computers in our home now or even on campus. Now they are all over
the place.
35:08
GN:
Yeah you carry them with you virtually.
35:10
TM:
You carrier around with the droid or whatever so you get old and you think of those
things, your father was right. Your mother was right.
35:20
GN:
What’s your daughter’s interest academically? I mean she's gone to do this stuff so
far as the cultural part of it is concerned? Where is she going academically?
35:34
TM:
She's undecided right now but she’s probably go Digital Arts or maybe
communication. She's going to do the Florence program at some point so my brother was
studying abroad. He went to Spain. That was a great experience with Joe Belanger coordinating
that and my brother’s still bilingual so he uses his Spanish all the time.
35:59

GN:
Is that so just from the Spanish…?
36:00
TM:
He studied the University of Madrid and he picked it up there and he uses it all the
time.
36:07
GN:
What is he doing?
36:09
TM:
Now he is retired but he goes back and forth to Spain. Last year he walked. There’s a


19
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
trail in the northern Spain, begins in the Pyrenees through Bilbao and to the coast. And he did the
whole thing, six hundred kilometers… What do they call it? It’s a pilgrimage that they do in this
place to places stay along the way. And now he's gone back to be an essentially kind of a host or
when the pilgrims rest at night. He has a bed for them for and prepare them their meals and some
place for them.
36:49
GN:
I didn't think of inviting him to come but would he be open to this kind of thing? You
think? Give him a call? Get him…
36:53
TM:
Yeah sure he would be a hour and a half away.
36:59
GN:
Yeah he's in Albany.
37:00
TM:
Yeah he’s in Albany too.
37:04
GN:
What would you say now about some of long-range Marist impact? In other words
what we're doing this for the archives and I were trying to say, here’s the story of Terry Mooney
who came out of the Bronx you know thought he'd become an accounting major and now has
doctorate and has a company and so on. What's the message that that the school played in this
happening?
37:37
TM:
I think the message is that … here's a place where you can grow. It's not like my
other son went to the University of New Hampshire where there’s twenty thousand students. It’s
vast, many majors and many offerings. But that was one of our concerns. Are we limiting
ourselves in terms of what her options are? She’s undecided but here's a place with the right
mentors and the right people. You can grow your seed here. And I've found that support here and
I think she can … She’ll find it here too with the right people.
38:18
GN:
Comment on this if you have a chance to go and talk to the Board of Trustees. What
are some things you would encourage them either to change in one hand? Or to hold onto in
another? You know one of the things that concerns many of us is the future. Where will Marist


20
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
be in five years from now? We’re in such a changing world right now. Like distance education.
Should we insist people come to campus for undergraduate? Is there a need for that? That
students have to interact otherwise they become too isolated?
38:56
TM:
I think there's a need for community. I grew up in the Bronx where my neighborhood
was my floor. And so I would walk out in Rockaway where we’d be in our porch and talked to
neighbors. So a college campus is a community with remote or distance learning. You're
reinforcing isolation in a world that is already where estranged people are strangers to each other.
And so I think it destroys empathy and so our ability to kind of you know get this out these
friendships in these bonds. These bonds that I've talked about in terms about my relationship
with these men and women that have had for forty years now. That's a big part of my life and it
is as you've experienced.
39:45
GN:
There's a danger here now and I don't know maybe some suggestions from you.
College student plus their own cellphones play such an important part in that isolation where
they don't talk to their friends coming out of class. And I take a class here over in Lowell
Thomas and as soon as they start out of class they're on their phone talking to somebody but not
the person next to them. What would you … might recommend as a bond-building thing for this
kind of thing? Was intermural a thing in your time?
40:26

TM:
Intermural was a thing. In my experiences shutting them off for three days you know
a kind of opportunity just talk to each other … Use the old phone and we were at a tweet-in last
week at the Hancock building with Dennis and people who were standing right next to him
tweeting him instead of saying, Happy Birthday, President Murray and shaking his hand. They
would tweet him and it would go up on the screen and I think that's to your point is that. You
need to pick up the phone need to spend some time. The happiest couples that I see are those
who spend a half hour a day just talking to each other not texting each other not emailing each


21
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
other but talking to each other. But that requires them to put down the cell phones stop texting
and so I think you know leaving those things putting them away. Back when I was started in ’67
we had hazing. Back then and we had to carry a rock. You had to give it a name. We had beanie
at the time and it was a bonding experience. I think these there's a danger in all this technology.
And it’s certainly impressive means the campus and the technology is very impressive but I think
there's a danger in our society that we've become isolated. People don't talk to each other
anymore and families don't even eat together. They go home. And then they’re on the soccer.
They're on to this. So you eat on run. There's no family meals any longer and which I think at the
end destroyed the family. You may get into the soccer game where you may end up going a great
violinist but where’s the family…
42:18
GN:
So the communication within the family has to be part of what we got to build up.
And looking back at the college is part of your family now while you're here. Make an effort to.
42:29
TM:
If my daughter leaves here in four years with that same … with hopefully some of
the strongest bond that she'll ever make? Then I will would have felt important that the forty
thousand dollars a year that we're paying for this would have been worth it. Because I think those
friendships will be an important part of her future, her career and it's a big deal. Yeah I was
really happy to see a lot of those guys last week and they were happy to see each other. That's a
big deal.
42:57
GN:
I think the point you're making is a good one now. Now I mean is it's a kind of a
philosophical one of saying you know what can we do. We have so many attractions here and so
there's no end of people trying to get in something like ten thousand application to get a thousand
people on board. You know well it's about the freshman class will be a thousand.
43:24
TM:
They said eleven thousand over eleven thousand four hundred to get in one thousand
slots.


22
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
43:31
GN:
And so there is that attraction. There is a physical attraction the place as you say is a
campus is absolutely splendiferous. Look, we kid about Vassar has a nice college but they don't
have the river so we do have the river. But besides that there's the interpersonal. People got to get
together, have to talk together, have to respect one another and have to see something more
important. Would a good course in psychology do that…?
44:03
TM:
It could again with the right teacher.
44:08
GN:
What are you doing next September?
44:10
TM:
I would love that actually I do a course here. I learned a lot but both from a patient
I'm always honored to have been allowed to be a part of a person's private life when they allow
you in. It's really, you have to respect that privilege to be into the very most private part of
somebody’s life. And so I'm always honored by that and I've learned a lot from the work I've
done over the years. I've seen thousands of people with all kinds of mental health problems and
issues and that's so I’ve learned a lot from the people that I've worked with. I'm still working
three days a week, three and a half days a week.
44:49
GN:
Very good now. Well I think that's about what we have to ask and share with you.
Unless Terry, you might have something that I didn't ask you about that you’d think would be
worthwhile to add on to our dialogue. But we've been at it from was forty-five minute a little
more than that and I thank you for coming and I’m going to ask you to give the address of your
brother or a telephone number. I’ll touch with him see if he wants to get down here sometime
before the end of the year.
45:18
TM:
Is Nick Benny still around?
45:21
GN:
No but the Derby’s is still open. Frank’s would be much later than you that was
across the street. Nick Benny, he used to sing at our public events.
45:38
TM:
It was a good Italian restaurant in town.


23
Terry Mooney – September 30
th
2011
45:40
GN:
The restaurant is still there but he's not there. It’s not really Italian, some cuisine of
the international or whatever.
45:50
TM:
We got to the other place […]