MEMORIES OF 75 YEARS
FAMILY
Born August 1, 1911, in Bridgeport, Conn., fourth of five
children, one of whom was a girl.
My father was a butcher.
He died from an infected cut when I was about 3 or 4.
My
mother died shortly after from TB.
All of us children spent some time in Catholic orphanages. I
can remember only that our main food was beans and hot dogs,
which we all liked, and that the Sisters in charge were very
strict.
In time we were all taken by friends or relatives.
An aunt was a nun at another institution, and she was the
broker who found us places to live.
I was taken, at the age of 7 or 8, with a younger brother, by
relatives, also named Donnelly, who lived in New Britain, Ct.
They owned a brickyard at which the men worked.
My stay with this branch of the Donnelly family was very
pleasant.
We lived on the bottom floor of a two story house
with a veranda on one side overlooking a large flower garden.
There also was an extensive backyard.
A large flock of
chickens was kept there, and when chicken was on the menu,
one of the women would go out and wring a chicken's neck.
My
part in the process was removing the feathers with the help
of large caldrons of boiling water to loosen the feathers.
The family had no car at the time, but one of the men had a
motorcycle which was stored in a small shed in the yard.
It
was in this shed that I and several friends were caught
smoking one day.
This precipitated a real crisis which
luckily soon blew over.
One Summer I caught a chipmonk which I kept in a
.
cage until
Winter.
very few people in the area had cars then, since a trolley
car line ran from one end of the city to the other.
These
trolleys even went from town to town.
I remember about 1931
a group of Brothers, on a dare, went from Lawrence, Mass.
to
Poughkeepsie, exclusively on trolleys.
Everyone could not
afford to use trolleys, although the fare was only five
cents. My bedroom faced the street on which the trolleys ran,
and was the main route to the center of town where the
factories were.
Every morning about 6AM I would be awakened
by crowds of workers walking to work about two miles away.



,
-2-
Christmas morning was something I looked forward to for
weeks.
My presents were usually a new sled, or roller skates
or books.
But one Christmas I was given an Erector set. This
must have aroused my building instincts because I built and
rebuilt every item listed in the book.
Each following
Christmas I got the next bigger set.
I was a voracious reader and read everything that came into
the house.
The grammar school I attended was St. Joseph's, run by the
Sisters of St.Joseph.
Every year at Confirmation ceremonies,
each male applicant received the name Joseph as his confirm-
ation name.
Naturally, I had a dog, and his name was Fido.
As I skat-
ed around town for amusement or on errands, Fido ran along
beside me.
One big event for the family and the neighborhood, was the
purchase of the first radio in the area.
People came from
miles around to listen to the miraculous box.
Tuning re-
quired the manipulation of three knobs, which produced wild
whistles and wailing.
The main endeavor was to try to find
the most distant stations.
It didn't matter what the content
was.
That first radio had many glass tubes in i t which glow-
ed red.
The power was supplied by two car batteries which
sat on the floor beneath the set.
The volume was controlled
by varying the temperature of the tubes.
An exciting occasion every year was moving from home to the
beach.
The family had acquired a Summer home close to the
beach at Old Lyme Shore.
On the day of departure, the men
would carry all the luggage to the car, and the women would
then appear in bonnets tied under the chin, bringing lunch,
linens etc.
Then, the driver would masterfully approach the
front of the car with the crank in his hand.
After several
attempts, the engine would roar into life, and off we would
go.
It was about a two hour trip.
Then the house would be
set up for the Summer.
When the house was bought, i t was purchased from a group cal-
led Old Lyme Beach Association.
Among the terms, i t was
stipulated that if at some time later you wished to sell the
property, you could sell i t back to the Association, or sell
i t privately with certain constraints.
One of these was that
you could not sell to a Jew or an Italian.
How quickly the
Irish had forgotten that not long before, they had been on
the forbidden list.



-3-
The Summers were very happy and passed quickly.
My first
chore in the morning was to get up early, prepare my break-
fast and go for the mail.
My breakfast was usually Shredded
Wheat with a banana and milk.
It now seems strange that
Shredded Wheat is s t i l l a prominent breakfast cereal.
Getting the mail involved pulling our rowboat down the beach
and into the water.
Fido always came along with me.
The
Post Office was about a mile down the shore line, and if the
weather was favorable, required about a half hour of rowing.
After that, I checked the condition of our beach tent, where
the women would later come to sit and chat, well out of the
reach of the sun.
We also had lobster pots some distance
from the shore with identifying tags floating on the surface.
Poaching was a problem, and I daily checked the condition of
the pots.
Earlier, when my uncles had found that I could not swim, they
quickly decided to do something about i t . There was a pier
extending about fifty feet into the water.
One day two of
them took me out about thirty feet and tossed me into the
water.
One dived in after me to offer advice.
Within a week
I was quite a fair swimmer.
Another occupation of the uncles was as members of the Old
Lyme Beach Morals Committee.
During those years, the length
of girls' bathing suits was rapidly shrinking, and the Morals
Committee decided to appoint a delegation to do something
about it.
A certain number of inches above the knee was de-
cided to be the maximum allowed.
My uncles managed to get
on the delegation and spent many pleasurable days, equipped
with a tape measure, checking the legality of the girls' swim
suits.
I should mention that the two uncles in question were
medical students at Georgetown and so had the Summers free.
The Fourth of July was always an important day at the beach.
The older men of the family sat on the front veranda of the
house with their supply of firecrackers and spend a loud and
happy day competing with the neighbors as to who could put on
the best show.
In the evening the sparkler and Roman Candles
made an appearance.
A large lobster cookout was held later
in the evening, together with roasted corn on the cob and
tankards of beer.
Those happy days suddenly ended when i t was decided that I
was becoming a subject for the morals committee.
It seems that I had become friendly with a girl my age, named
Barbara Hood.
We went swimming and boating together.
The
problem, I think, was that her family lived on another beach
next to ours, of which the Morals Committee did not approve,



-4-
and hints must have been dropped to my family that the
friendship must be broken up.
The family took drastic measures.
It was decided that I
should be placed in a strict boarding school.
My aunt,
Sister Evangelista, was informed.
In due time, Br.Frederick
Charles(Ma Tante) appeared at the beach house.
He was
recruiter for the Marist Brothers.
He was served tea and
cookies and agreed to take me for training to be a Marist
Brother at St.Ann's Hermitage in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
Even
then that name intrigued me.
Two of my older brothers, who lived elsewhere, were disposed
of in the same way.
Bill became a Marist Brother (Brother
Maurice William) and lasted until he was 21.
My brother Tom
went to another Order of Brothers and lasted to about the
same age.
Seems as though the recruiters of Brothers found
orphans to be a rich mine.
JUNIORATE
So, toward the end of the Summer, somebody drove me to Pough-
keepsie.
I arrived on a day when the Juniors were having a
picnic at the river.
There were about thirty boys about my
age racing around on the shore and frisking in the river.
I joined them and so had an auspicious introduction to my
new life.
Late in the afternoon we stopped to say the rosary, and then
began building several small campfires with driftwood.
We
were issued a frying pan for each fire.
A large container of
pancake mix and another of baked beans were brought down from
the main kitchen.
Over the fire we made pancakes and then helped ourselves to
beans.
To me i t was fun and exciting.
After evening prayer, facing the river, we filed in silence
to the dormitory and were soon asleep.
Bro.Joseph Albert was our prefect. He was a strict discipli-
narian, but also a polished gentleman.
I still remember our
weekly lessons on good manners:
how to properly use table
utensils, never to leave the dormitory without a clean hand-
kerchhief, how to keep order in our clothes closet, etc.
The routine was exactly the same every day: prayers, Mass,
study, breakfast, employments, classes, and so thru the day.
Saturday was different.
We stripped our beds and put our
laundry in large common bags.
Each item had to have our name




-5-
in indelible ink, or a tag.
The laundry was done in the bot-
om floor of what is now Greystone.
I think there were mach-
ines for washing, but the laundry was hung out on a forest of
lines to dry.
To transport the laundry from the various
buildings to the laundry, we used large two-wheeled carts.
Two would pull in front and two push at the back.
When the
laundry came back later in the week, we sorted i t by name.
Something perhaps unique to the time and place was the Satur-
day slaughter of bed bugs.
When the beds had been stripped,
several spray guns with hand pumps were used and the mattres-
ses and springs were sprayed with something that smelled like
kerosene.
This was supposed to hold the bedbugs at bay until
the next Saturday.
We had long recreation periods every day.
Everyone had to
play.
No one was allowed to stand around and talk.
The
playground was where the Town Houses are now.
There was room
for basketball and baseball areas.
We were divided according
to our athletic ability.
First Camp was for the best, Second
Camp for the next best, Third Camp for the non-athletes, but
they had to play anyway. Third camp was pushed down to a
small field just North of the present Waterworks.
I was
usually in Third Camp or an umpire.
But I somehow did manage to be on the best team in a basket-
ball tournament.
One Summer day, a year after I had arrived,
my folks drove over from the beach to bring me home, perhaps
thinking that this strict school had done its work.
But I
refused to go because I was on the winning basketball team,
and I wouldn't desert them.
The strange ways 'vocations'are
sometimes saved.
When I had completed my seventh and eighth grades, i t was
time for the momentous move to the Novitiate.
Just a note before I move.
When I first arrived I had writ-
ten several times to Barbara.
I never received an answer,
so, completely disenchanted by the fickleness of girls, I
forgot her.
Later I was to find out that the Master opened
all incoming and outgoing mail, and discarded what he did
not like.
So perhaps Barbara came to the same conclusion I
did.
NOVITIATE
The Novitiate was not a place overflowing with excitement.
The cassock was 'de rigueur' all times except when in bed.
An occasional novice striving for sanctity tried to wear i t
even then, but wiser minds prevailed.
The Master of Novices
often had to walk over to a dining room table and command an





-6-
overzealous Novice not to starve himself to death.
All in all, the two years went by very pleasantly.
Every
moment had its ordained occupation.
Rising was at 5:30, fol-
lowed by prayers.
Then the walk, in silence, to the main
chapel in the Juniorate, two by two, led by the Master. The
roads were dirt, with some areas finished with home-made
crushed stone.
In Winter i t sometimes could be tricky.
There was near the Juniorate a primitive stone crusher driv-
en by a one-cylinder gasoline engine.
Rocks were collected
from all over the property by wheelbarrow, reduced in
size by sledgehammer, and fed into the crusher.
Then these
crushed stones were spread over muddy areas.
The first road
to be paved was in
1952, from in front of the new chapel to
the entrance from Rte.
9
near the Gate House.
One of the lovable characters on the staff was Bro.Paul Acyn-
~
dinus, with great knowledge of literature and the sciences.
~
But he was very absent-minded.
There are numerous stories
about him, many probably apocryphal.
Examples: Paul often
stated that he learned to type with his hands in his
pockets, while walking to classes.
He taught singing and
always appeared with a trumpet to give the correct note.
He
had a very raspy voice himself.
Once I cut a gash in my face just above an eye, while cutting
down trees.
Paul realized that I should go to the hospital,
so he asked me to with him to his room to change into cler-
ical garb.
He went into his room to change, and when after a
half hour he had not appeared, I knocked on the door.
He
came out and said that when he had taken off his pants, he
thought i t was time to go to bed, and so he did.
When I was a Junior, I was assigned to him while he fixed the
wiring in a sixteen-foot ceiling in the chapel.
I was hold-
ing the ladder, with him on the top, when he suddenly crashed
to the floor next to me unhurt.
He said "Gosh" and went back
up.
He was the only licensed driver of a car for a while.
one morning he went into the garage by a side door to
the car, started the motor, and came crashing through
opened door.
Early
get
the un-
Many noteworthy things on campus were built by Bro.Paul.
The only one remaining almost intact is the white stone
grotto.
This stone is a form of quartz and may be found in
several places on the west side of the Hudson.
Even now
there is not a crack or leak in it.
He also built the
Stations of the Cross but only the bases of some of them



-7-
remain in the same area as the grotto.
Most had to be
removed when the road to Sheahan was built.
The concrete
stairs in the same area, that now lead nowhere, once had a
Calvary group of statues on the top of the stairs.
Once there was a distinguished looking, six foot high con-
crete wall along Rte. 9 from the South entrance o the North
o1t
entrance. Paul built this over several years with hand-cast
concrete blocks.
I know because as a Novice I was assigned
to work for an hour a day making them in iron molds, four
each day.
It is ironic that i t was I who demolished this
wall in 1966.
It had begun to disintegrate, and some people
said that i t made the campus look like a prison.
The wall
around the old cemetery was built the same way and embel-
bellished with colored glass mosaics.
Novices were sometimes
assigned to go to the city dump and pick up discarded colored
bottles which they brought back and broke into usable sized
pieces for the mosaics.
When I was a Novice, we had no electricity in the building.
The job of replacing the fragile gas mantles was assigned
to a Novice with a delicate touch.
At that time only the Juniorate had electricity. It came from
a generator located just north of the present City Water-
works.
A sizeable brook flowed down a steep hill and Bros.
Altin and Abelus built a concrete dam to provide waterpower.
The brook still flows but inside a large pipe until i t ap-
proaches the end of college property.
A very large overshot waterwheel was made to power a pump
which supplied water for the whole property.
The source of
the water was a seventy five foot deep artesian well drilled
near the waterwheel.
Twice a day somebody had to walk down
the steep hill to grease the pump.
This waterwheel also ran
a generator which supplied 1000 watts of electricity to the
Junior ate.
Before that all the water came from wells, of which there
were several on the property. The system mentioned above was
built because the wells became contaminated by a slaughter
house on Fulton St.
The last well to be abandoned was
located just outside the lower East door of Greystone.
The cemetery for the Brothers
was at the spot where a
monument to commemorate them stands in front of the Mccann
Sport Center.
The cemetery was established when the Brothers bought the
Beck estate in 1908.
The first burial was in 1909.
It was
at the west side of a large low lying field used at that time


-8-
for growing silage corn for the cows.
The level of the
cemetery was then about fifteen feet below the level of the
present monument, which is directly above the original
cemetery.
The whole field was filled to its present level
with excavation material when the Rte 9 arterial was built in
1966.
One of the greatest honors of my Novitiate days was being
assigned to toll, once a minute, the large bronze bell on
the Novitiate veranda as the cortege passed on the way to the
cemetery to bury one of the Brothers who had died in the Jun-
iorate. This bell is now in the tower in front of the chapel.
The fire escape system in the Novitiate was unique.
A two
inch steel pipe was supported top and bottom outside the
building with a tall window close to i t on each floor.
We had to had practice on i t twice a year.
I remember Bro.
Henry Charles, a stern, impeccably dressed, thin man demon-
strating proper procedure to a large group of Novices. He
tucked his cassock under his cord, leaned out and grasped the
pipe, lunged his body at it, grasped his legs around the pipe
and slid down to the ground.
The trick was not to hold on so
tightly that your hands got burned.
The practice was a
nightmare to timid souls.
After taking my temporary vows at the age of fifteen (dispen-
sation was required because I was under the canonical age of
sixteen) I was assigned to teach the 7th and 8th grades in
our Juniorate in Tyngsboro, with orders to finish my two re-
maining years of High School on my own.
Tyngsboro
I
remember taking all my Regents exams in one day.
I was
given the honor of doing this in the Director's office.
This
was almost my downfall, because he had a radio with head-
phones which I kept on all during the exams.
It was the
first time I had heard a radio at my leisure.
The reason he
had permission for a radio was so he could get the correct
time for the clocks in the building.
Luckily, i t turned out
that I passed my exams.
In Tyngsboro there was an old Model T pickup truck.
One Sun-
day I decided to use i t to learn to drive.
I ran into a
ditch off a dirt road.
It would have been a scandal if the
Director found out what I had done, so I walked back to the
barn and harnessed our two massive farm horses (something I
had never done before), and with their help pulled the truck




-9-
back on the road, and finally got them and the truck back
where they belonged without being discovered.
There was a small lake on the property on which the Juniors
skated in the Winter.
But they had no place to put on their
skates or warm up.
I asked the Master of Juniors, Br.Edmund,
if I could cut down some of the thousands of pine trees in
the area to build a log cabin. He said yes, so with some Jun-
iors, we started.
Soon I was on the carpet with the Director. He asked who had
given permission to destroy Church property.
And then pro-
ceeded to teach me the vast difference between a Master and a
Director.
He forbade me to cut any more trees (luckily I al-
ready had enough) or to spend any money on the job, ~ot even
for doors, windows or nails.
Somehow we managed to finish the cabin by stripping large
branches for the roof, and caulking the cracks with moss. The
local farmers were a big help with their advice.
They even
found us a wood-burning stove.
Soon afterwards, New England
had one of its worst storms and most of the remaining trees
were felled. The place was used for many years before i t
burned down.
We also had a swimming pool on the grounds.
It was large,
deep, clean, and cool.
It was a blessing during the hot
Summers. This was formerly a quarry.
In those years, young Brothers who were not otherwise busy,
would be shipped to Tyngsboro to help with the haying and
other farm jobs.
I did that for a couple of years.
Trans-
portation to and from Tyngsboro was provided by a home-made
bus made by Bro. Aloysius, who was a gifted carpenter.
The
school had an ordinary stake truck.
This became the motive
power for the bus. The body was kept hanging in a garage
until i t was needed.
Then the truck would back in under i t
and the bus body would be lowered onto i t and bolted fast. It
really was economical transportation and lasted for many
years.
Because i t was so often overloaded, almost every long
trip had several flats.
Then too, the roads in those days
were very rudimentary.
Bro. Aloysius, the Director, was also the driver.
He would
appear in the fashion of the times, wearing a tan duster,
goggles, and chauffeur's cap.
A funny incident happened one day.
There were two older
Brothers who had been working on the farm for several years:
one was called Pipe Down, a hulking brute of a man who could
back up a recalcitrant horse just by pushing on its head. The



-10-
other was Pete, a very stout man.
To supply themselves with
a little money, each of them started building his own pile of
junk iron which could be sold.
One Summer morning we heard a
loud commotion in the barnyard.
Pipe Down was accusing Pete
of stealing from his pile.
He was carrying a long-handled
axe, and threatening Pete, who ran to the carpenter shop
which was a short distance away, and locked the door.
Pipe
Down followed and smashed open the door with his axe.
Pete
escaped to a nearby barn by a back door.
By this time, we,
the Summer Brothers, realized murder was afoot, and ran over
and surrounded Pipe Down.
He gradually cooled off, and the
next day Br.Director sold both piles of junk.
There was one more farmer, Br. Bassus, who raised the garden
crops.
A gentle, nature loving man who never raised his
voice. What makes him remarkable to me was that each Spring
he would catch a young crow and train i t to follow him in the
garden as he worked. It was advantageous to both of them:
Bassus had company, and the crow, each year a different one,
but always called Jimmy, found numerous worms in the freshly
turned soil.
Jimmy slept in a nearby tree, but was always
waiting when Bassus came out in the morning.
The Fall of
every year. the present Jimmy would disappear to join the
other crows, and a new Jimmy would be trained the following
Spring.
Bassus had no greenhouse in which to start his plants in the
Spring, which gave the other farmers in the area a jump on
him.
We talked this over and tried to figure out a way to
get one built.
We needed plans, a little money, and per-
mission from the almighty Director.
Bassus was very re-
sourceful. He explained to the Director that a greenhouse
would vastly increase the amount of food produced, that we
could cut, in our own shop, the lumber we needed, from our
own trees.
A very hesitant
o
K was given. To our Director,
progress was a sort of decadence.
We discovered that the local Farm Bureau would provide us
with a detailed set of plans and plenty of advice.
Also un-
expectedly, a local farmer was dismantling his greenhouse
and would give us all the glass, if we would remove it.
So, far into the Winter we labored. Bassus was in Heaven.
The crop of vegetables that Spring far surpassed that of
every previous year. But keeping Jimmy away from the young
seedlings was a problem.
I was sorry when the year was over and I was told to report
to Poughkeepsie to begin my Scholasticate.




-11-
SCHOLASTICATE
At that time the Scholasticate was an accredited Junior Col-
lege which provided two years of education.
Greystone had just been renovated from a stable to three
floors of usable space, just as i t is today.
The ground
floor was the Chemistry Lab, the second floor was the Physics
Lab, and the third floor the library.
Classrooms and dorm-
itory were in an adjacent wooden building.
We had meals in a
separate dining room in the Juniorate.
For me, this promised to be a very enjoyable time.
We were
still treated as High School kids, but the discipline was not
as regimented.
At that time, Br. Legontianus (Leggy) was Provincial.
As a
hobby, he had built a six foot wooden boat and planned to
sail i t in the lake (now filled in and the site of the Lowell
Thomas Building) by remote control.
Electronics, as such, was then just a word.
As I was a col-
lege student, and so presumed to be intelligent, was invited
to work on the remote control. At that time radio was still
in its infancy.
The only transmitter I could come up with
was an open high voltage spark, and the receiver was a coher-
er.
A coherer, as a receiver of radio signals, was very
primitive.
It consisted of a two-inch long glass tube, half
filled with silver filings, and closed at the ends with metal
plugs.
It was known that when a strong electric spark oc-
occurred at not too far a distance from the coherer, i t be-
came conductive and could be used to close a circuit. If then
vibrated, i t would lose its conductivity.
In our case a tel-
ephone dial sent out the impulses from the spark, and a step-
per relay assigned power to the correct device to be activ-
ated.
Eventually, we had i t do six things on command: !-forward,
2- reverse, 3-turn right, 4-turn left.
It would also play a
record and shoot a cannon.
We had a big formal christening
with all the communities on hand.
Everything went smoothly
with much loud cheering, and then the boat was put on
permanent display in the Physics lab.
While building the spark transmitter, I became interested in
the Tesla coil, a very high voltage, high frequency device
invented recently by Nikola Tesla, an eccentric genius who
died in 1943. Somehow a group of three of us Scholastics man-
aged to get plans and build one.
To make the massive conden-
ser, we had to 'borrow' glass plates from a surplus supply


-12-
kept in the greenhouse across the road from St.Peter's. We
also had to climb into the carpenter shop thru windows at
night to get several gallons of kerosene, which was used by
Brs.Altin and Abelus, the carpenters, to fuel their one-lung
engine which drove the shop machinery. Altin told me years
later that he knew we were taking kerosene.
But he never let
on.
Finally we put on a show for the assembled communities in the
Juniors recreation hall.
It must have been spectacular.
We
shot six-foot sparks across the stage and between ourselves,
created halos around our bodies, etc.
When the superiors
present saw what was going on, they quickly had collected all
available fire extinguishers.
The three of us were considered very daring for a while.
This experimenting finally was my downfall, and led to my
sudden expulsion from the Scholasticate.
I had received
permission to use a small room at the top of the tower of
Greystone for experiments.
Naturally, since we were for-
bidden to listen to a radio, I decided to build a crystal
set.
One Sunday before vespers, during our recreation time, Br.
Emile Nestor, our Director, walked in on me listening to
music through headphones.
I was caught 'flagrante delicto'.
A crisis meeting of the teaching staff was called, and I was
ordered to take the next train to New York, assignment un-
known.
I went at first to St.Ann's Academy in Manhattan.
They didn't want me,
but finally the Mount took me in to
help teach the eighth grade classes, and later in High
School.
MOUNT
1931-1936
As mentioned above, I arrived at the Mount under a cloud.
But I never noticed i t , and I liked every day I was there.
Only a few things stand out in my mind.
One was that I had
been assigned to teach in a High School; a dream realized.
Naturally I was given odds and ends to teach.
Included were
Geography, Algebra, English, and something called Social
Science.
I started a Freshman bulletin with the name of Freshie, which
printed what I though were the best Freshman writings in my
English Classes.


-13-
Br.Florentius (Flossy) was Director.
He was also a super
politician and managed to get the local government and build-
ing contractors to donate anything he needed.
The Delafield
side of the property sloped severely to the street.
When
Flossy had finished, there was a thick stone wall on three
sides to contain the fill, and a paved road leading to Dela-
field St.
This added a large area of usable level land to
the campus.
These years saw the worst of the 1929 depression.
Each year
fewer families could afford to send their sons to a private
school.
I was not connected directly with this problem, but
knew that things were tight.
We had one dilapidated car.
A
general factotum tried to keep i t going, but had as his prin-
cipal job to maintain the heating system, the laundry, etc.
Gradually I took over the upkeep of the car.
One day, after working on i t all afternoon, I took i t out for
a trial run.
To get permission for a driver's license re-
quired permission from the Provincial, and, among other
things, that you be of a 'mature'age.
When he heard of i t ,
Flossy asked me if I knew of the legal penalties of driving
without a license.
When I told him I had a license, he just
walked away and I heard no more of i t .
At that time almost all of the young monks, about sixteen of
them, went to Fordham University on Saturdays to take cours-
es.
This entailed a thirty minute walk to and from the 241st
street station and another walk at Fordham.
Somehow we acquired a small used bus.
My job was to put i t
in running condition and do the driving.
The monks dubbed i t
the Peanut Bus, and I was the official driver.
The bus last-
ed several years.
Some of us attended classes at the Woolworth Building exten-
sion of Fordham.
We left the Mount after teaching all day,
and had to be back for night prayer. Even on Christmas, one
of the few days we were allowed to go home if we could get
there for a nickel ·subway ride. Those who had to go downtown
on Saturdays were given ten cents for subway fare down and
back, and fifty cents for lunch.
Many of us smoked and the
lunch money was spent for cigarettes and an occasional visit
to Radio City Music Hall which had only recently been opened
and cost seventy-five cents.
To economize, we also bought
bulk tobacco and rolled our own cigarettes.
There was no
talk then about smoking being bad for your health.
At that time, every student had to take gym classes, in the
gym in bad weather, outside in good weather.
To enable the
boys to practice to music, we built an amplifier and a set of


-14-
loud speakers. A record player was attached to this. It was
quite an innovation then.
Most of us had rooms on the second floor of the Powerhouse.
Since private radios were not allowed, we strung a pair of
thin wires above a high molding along the walls in the cor-
ridors.
I had a small radio fastened under the bed springs
in my room. For ten cents a month each monk was supplied with
a set of earphones to listen to this radio. We would agree
each day on which radio station should be tuned in.
Usually
i t was one of the weekly series of dramas which were popular
then.
As the above shows, not much out of the ordinary happened
during my stay at the Mount.
In 1936 I was transferred to
St.Ann's.
St.Ann's
1936-1942
Because I was studying for an MS in Physics I was assigned
classes in Physics and Chemistry.
The labs faced on Lexing-
ton Ave. and the traffic noise was so great we could not open
the windows.
While taking a course at New York University, I met Dr. Ed-
gerton, who had just invented the electronic flash gun, the
forerunner of the now ubiquitous flash gun.
At my request,
he told me how to build one and supplied the critical part he
had invented.
Before long I was taking stop-action pictures at the basket-
ball games.
Compared to what now weighs a few ounces and is
easily attached to any camera, my unit weighed over a hundred
pounds and was dragged around on a wheeled dolly.
But then
i t was a marvel.
Previous to this electronic flash gun, photographers used
one-shot flash bulbs.
They didn't work well because there
was no way to synchronize them to the camera shutter.
The
school photographer asked me to help.
He would supply the
test bulbs.
I came up with a clumsy device that did the
job.
He told me I should get a patent.
I asked Br.Provin-
cial about it.
He told me i t me i t was not within my voca-
tion.
It really didn't matter because within the year
there were several such devices on the market.
This experience got me interested in photography and I start-
ed a Photo Club with the students and we began working with
the Stanner Year Book.
There was room in the Chem lab to set
up a darkroom, and a dozen or so students were using it.


-15-
Then Paul Ambrose interested me in putting on plays, which
was customary at St.Ann's.
The Business Office did not like
plays because they always lost money.
But as the future
would confirm, PA had a knack for making money.
As expenses
began to mount we were given a very tight budget and told
under no circumstances could we go over it.
Home sound recording on plastic records was moving fast then
and I persuaded Br. Linus William, the Director, to let me
use a large room over the gym to set up a recording studio.
The theory was that i t could be a big help in teaching lang-
guages and in the Public Speaking class.
So we had a room but no equipment.
We persuaded the Treas-
urer Br.Victor (King Tut) to agree to let us use any money we
made over expenses, with the play we were about to put on, to
equip the recording studio. He laughed at our optimism, but
agreed.
There was a lot of enthusiasm among the actors.
The play was
Brother Rat.
For the last dress rehearsal I persuaded my
brother Bill who lived in New York to attend disguised as a
famous New York play critic. We had told the players that a
Broadway critic was coming.
The whole group was electrified
and word spread in the local neighborhoods.
The actual presentations were sell-outs, and we made a $500
profit.
King Tut tried to renege on his promise, but I
bought the equipment and sent him the bills.
The biggest story of the time was the King of England's ab-
dicating his throne to marry Mrs.Simpson, and I recorded his
speech of abdication, and sold quite a few copies.
About this time Brother Francis Borgia AG, came to St. Ann's
on his visitation.
He visited the studio and I demonstrated
what the machines could do.
He decided to record his fare-
well message and authorized me to sell copies to all the Mar-
ist schools for $10 each.
I sent out a notice of this to all
the schools. Only one bought a copy.
Just before recording his speech, the AG said i t was too bad
the machine could not talk Latin, as i t would be more moving
if he could give his farewell blessing in the language of
Rome.
He was amazed when I told him the machine could speak
Latin too.
Around this time TV was just making its appearance.
It was
decided to raffle off a TV set as the first prize of the
annual raffle.
Dumont Electric made one of the first sets.



-16-
The screen filled an eight inch circle.
An elderly Irishman won the set.
When i t was set up in his
home he became furious and told us he would not have people
watching him in his own home.
So I left the audio part of
the TV, and set up the video part in my room.
The programming each day started about 7 PM and lasted one
hour.
It was mostly ads.
The man who had won the TV died
a year later and his daughter insisted we return the set.
we
did and that was the end of my private TV.
While all this was going on, I came down with a bad cold
which kept me in bed for two weeks.
Finally the doctor said
I was overworked and ordered a month's vacation away from St.
Ann's.
I asked him to write a note to my Provincial to that
effect.
He did, and the Provincial told me to go home for a
month.
When I called my family with the news, they said i t was the
middle of Winter and I should go South.
They sent me a
round-trip train ticket to Miami and $60.
This news I passed
on to my Director who told me that my permit told me to go
home and if I went to Miami I would be committing a mortal
sin.
Naturally, I went to Miami.
I got a nice room over a private garage on Collins Ave. for
five dollars a week and managed to survive on what remained
of my $60.
Somehow the Director found out about this and notified me
that I had been expelled from St.Ann's, that my trunk had
been shipped to Tyngsboro and that I should report there.
TYNGSBORO
1942-1943
I suppose I was sent to Tyngsboro as a punishment, but I
liked the place almost from the start.
And besides, I had
taught there the year after my Novitiate.
I was to replace Br. Jerome who had been farmer there for a
long time.
Recently he had become i l l , and spent quite a
while in the hospital.
When he left the hospital he also
left the Marist Brothers.
On the first day I was told to help with milking the cows.
It seemed easy at first and I lasted the evening session.
But the next day both of my arms seemed to be paralyzed and I
could not even move my fingers.


-17-
After a conference with the other Brothers who worked on the
farm, i t was suggested that I take over the job of removing
the Winter's crop of manure, and they would do the milking.
As all of them were elderly, I soon found out why.
The walls of the bottom floor of the barn were made of mas-
sive blocks of granite of which there was an endless supply
on the property.
The cows and the horses were kept on the
second floor.
I think there were about twenty cows and two
horses.
At this level there were trap doors in the floor
thru which the manure was pushed to fall on the floor below.
Since Br.Jerome had left some months before I arrived, no one
was available to remove the piled up manure.
When I opened
the wide doors to the lower level, I was faced with immense
mounds of manure from one end to the other.
The next day I learned how to harness the horses and connect
them to the manure wagon.
This was a remarkable piece of
machinery constructed entirely of steel.
When the wagon was
going forward and the gear was engaged, the floor moved tow-
ard the rear where rapidly revolving steel forks threw the
manure in a wide swath on the ground behind i t .
After backing the wagon into place, I used a pitchfork to
load i t , wearing knee-high boots.
Load after load was hauled
to the field about twenty minutes away.
It was spread mostly
on the garden fields as there was not enough for the hay
fields.
Before I had finished this job, Spring was approaching.
Bas-
sus and his new crow, Jimmy, were busy preparing for the Sum-
mer crop of vegetables.
When the hay fields began to green, I requested fertilizer to
increase production.
I was told that God in his wisdom pro-
vided what was needed.
In an attempt to prove my point, I
managed to get a few bags of fertilizer and spread i t through
the field as far as i t would go.
The hay in this area came
up green, healthy, and twice as high as the rest.
But s t i l l
no more fertilizer.
It was about this time that we realized that we would soon
have four horses.
The present two horses had been bought
recently.
They both began gaining weight very rapidly.
The
vet on one of his visits, told us that each of the mares was
about to foal.
They did, and after a few months the colts
were sold.
When our schools closed for the Summer, several young Bro-
thers came to help with the chores.
They lived in the Tyng
mansion and worked in many areas, especially on bringing in




-18-
the hay.
We
.
did not have a resident bull, so an arrangement was made
with the neighboring farmer, Mr. Little, for his bull to ser-
vice our cows.
The more knowledgeable farmers told me when
the cow was ready, and simply to put a rope around her neck
and lead her to Mr.
Little's farm.
They also explained that
if the cow wandered off the road, attracted by luscious grass
I was simply to wrap my arms around her horns and wrestle her
to the ground.
It happened, and i t worked.
We continued
along the road.
When we arrived at the farm we had to pass in front of the
cattle barn. I yelled that I had arrived with a cow. Mr.
Little shouted to tie her to a five foot fence some distance
further on and he would release the bull.
Suddenly a massive
bull came roaring towards me when the cow and I were almost
to the fence.
Somehow I managed to tie up the cow and leap
over the fence.
Nature took its course. The bull completely
ignored me. The cow and I quietly returned home.
The Summer went by pleasantly and at the retreat I was named
to Lawrence.
CENTRAL CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL 1943-1951
The school was growing rapidly at this time.
The monthly
tuition was only five dollars a month.
We soon realized that
we would not be able to accommodate all the new students.
The cafeteria was located in the basement of the building.
It was decided to build a new cafeteria in a separate build-
ing on the jail side of the school building, and the vacated
space would become classrooms.
I was named as leader.
They
must have thought that because I had been a farmer, I could
put up a building.
So during the Summer, with the help of
about a dozen Brothers from other schools, we put up a wood-
en building.
Br. Joseph Alexander and I put on the finish-
ing touches at night during the beginning of the school year.
The school roster continued to grow that year and we planned
to put up a four-classroom building adjacent to the new caf-
eteria.
The war was now draining almost all building materials, and
a permit was necessary for any new building.
The only mat-
erial available was wood.
Not knowing what its future
uses might be, i t was designed with no supporting partitions.
With the help of an engineer at Lawrence Lumber Co., massive
---


-19-
wood trusses were designed.
We had recruited many more Bro-
thers to help during the corning Summer vacation.
The heavy wood members were cut to size and bolted together
at Lawrence Lumber under the supervision of Br. Edward Mi-
chael.
When the walls of the building were up, the trusses
were taken apart, labeled, and trucked to the site where they
were bolted together again.
As we could not afford to rent a
crane, we located a master rigger who said he could place the
trusses with the help of a single tall telephone pole.
The
pole was guyed in three directions and a winch attached to
the base.
The trusses were assembled on the ground at their approximate
locations, the cable was attached, and little by little, each
one was raised to its correct location and braced to the ad-
jacent building.
We got them all up in one day.
Br. Joseph Abel was Director.
He was sure there would be an
accident, so he stationed himself at a window overlooking the
job with the telephone number of an ambulance at hand.
The yearly retreat time was approaching.
We finally got per-
mission for the workers to make a separate retreat at a
neighboring monastery some time later in the Summer.
On the
opening day of school the whole building was in operation.
It was called the Annex.
During the War, ham radio operators were not allowed to
broadcast except on a special frequency given the name WERS,
(War Emergency Radio Service), and assigned a frequency in
the six meter band, which was very new then.
I knew a couple
of local hams and we met once a week to build the sets and
organize a procedure for the protection of Lawrence and
vicinity, in case of an invasion by the Germans.
I soon got my first ham license, WINS, and sometime later my
Advanced Class License. At the request of the War Dept.,
I
taught classes in Morse code.
The students were soon sending
and receiving code faster than I could, so the group built a
motor driven, variable speed transmitter, and the students
wore headphones, seated around a large table.
When the War ended, I mounted a rotary beam antenna on the
roof of the Annex, turned by an automobile steering wheel in
my room just below.
Br. Joannes shared the quarters.
The
ham bands were not yet crowded, and for a couple of years I
was talking around the world every day.
We began to realize that Central was going to continue to
grow.
We talked i t over and decided to build a permanent



-20-
building with a large basketball court, twelve classrooms,
offices, and the necessary shower rooms, storage rooms, etc.
But where to get the money?
John Lawrence, the Director,
told me that if I thought i t could be done, he would assign
me full time to the job.
In my innocence, I thought i t would be easy to raise
$200,000: get 200 people to each give $1000.
So for months,
I spoke at hundreds of meetings to any group that would lis-
ten.
Most of the promised donations were in pledges over a
year's time.
It was the most harrowing time of my life, but
finally we had the $200,000
promised.
Some big donors gave
just to get their names in the paper but never paid.
We finally got permission to start. We naturally could not
afford to contract the job.
We found two skilled carpenters,
Fritz Woerker and his son.
War Surplus was a department of the Federal government form-
ed to dispose of the huge volume of supplies gathered for the
War, but no longer needed.
They held sales on specific days
all over the USA.
Veterans and non-profit groups could get
anything on sale for 1 percent of its evaluation, which was
only a fraction of its actual cost.
So I started covering
every sale in the area.
Mostly I needed construction mater-
ial.
In a short time I had a very large crane, 50 wheel-
barrows, assorted tools by the dozen, a large concrete
mix-
er, a 30 passenger bus, heavy loading machines, etc., etc.
The excavation for the building was almost completed and
the concrete walls and columns started to go up.
But the
money was not coming in fast enough to pay the b i l l s .
The
local War surplus centers were rapidly depleting their
stocks.
I had to expand my sources for all this equipment.
On a large map of the USA, I marked the locations of all the
War Surplus Depots. I got a list of all these depots and the
dates they would open. Most opened for only one week, and at
varying intervals as new equipment came in.
To get the best
choice, i t was necessary to be at the depot when i t opened
the first day.
Br.John Lawrence reluctantly gave me permission to go by car
on a country-wide buying tour.
He worried about my vocation.
His last words to me before I left were: "Better men than you
have fallen."
Before leaving I rented two large stone barns
located on the Searles estate in Methuen to be temporary re-
positories of the purchases when they arrived.
I also arranged with a local Ham, Bill Loeffler, for a daily


-21-
radio schedule.
It was set for noon each day.
When possible
I would set up my portable station and contact Bill.
I would
give him my location, the items I had bought, and approximate
date of arrival in Lawrence.
He would then call my secre-
tary and give her the information.
Most of the purchases
came by rail freight.
The Brothers at Central would transfer
the material to the storage barns.
I took the northern route
across the country heading West.
At the Pacific coast I went
East and then returned along the highway from Miami to
New York.
After about one month I was back.
As soon as the basement of
the new building was ready we moved everything into it. A
final reckoning later showed a profit of $50,000.
I had
bought every bit of copper and brass pipe and fittings I
could find.
These items were very scarce after the war and
brought top price.
Our radio contact turned out to be very reliable.
I had to
send a telegram only once and that was because I had been ar-
rested for speeding and had no money to pay the fine.
Normally I would find an elevated location along some country
road, stretch the antenna between two trees and then call
Bill.
One day, on the way back, at Pompano Beach, I spotted a man
painting his motel buildings.
His name was Tom.
I stopped
and arranged a price for the night.
The next morning I set
up the antenna on the beach in front of the motel and by
chance made contact with someone who lived in Tom's home
town in Arkansas.
Tom was watching and listening but refus-
ed to believe it.
I let him take the mike and talk himself.
When convinced, he was so delighted that he said I could stay
free in the motel as long as I wanted.
I stayed a week and got in some good deep-sea fishing.
I
sold the fish to a local restaurant and they threw in a free
meal.
Pompano was then a very small town, not at all the
Florida resort i t is today.
I continued contact with Bill
every day.
One day he told me that Bunny, my secretary, had
an urgent message that I should call Br.
Thomas Austin, the
Provincial, as soon as possible.
I did by phone and he told
me to come immediately to Mt. St.
Michael.
Seems they had
the final plans for the proposed gym and he wanted me to
check them.
I managed to hold him off t i l l the end of my
week's vacation.
I went to the Mount, but naturally found
that they had very capable people handling the job, so I
bowed out and went home.
The building was coming along. There were no serious acci-


-22-
dents.
The foreman's son fell from a scaffold and a steel
bar pierced his leg so he was not able to move.
His father
Fritz climbed up and got him loose.
One high concrete wall snapped a tie rod while being filled
and began to bulge.
The next ten seconds everybody holds his
breath. If the failure of the first is followed by what
sounds like a machine gun volley, of all the other ties snap-
ping, you have lost the wall.
If there is no further sound,
you may have time to install special ties to hold the wall.
wall.
We were lucky this time.
At one stage of the construction, we had a mountain of dirt
from excavation in the middle of the future gym floor.
We
had no money and no trucks to move it.
So we placed large
ads in the local paper stating that on the next two Satur-
days we would load the fill free into any truck that came in.
We had a caravan of trucks the two Saturdays and were left
with a level floor.
The concrete floor contract was given to a small contractor
who had a good reputation for quality but had never done a
large job.
The owner's name was Mr. Ramey.
He used no in-
struments, but figured everything by eye.
So I set up a
transit and gave him levels.
He went broke when he was half
finished, so the rest of the job was done on a cost plus bas-
is.
The day after the high wall at the back of the stage was
poured, we started to back fill it. The pressure of the loose
material began to t i l t it.
We quickly began to remove to
remove the fill with a crane.
Fritz organized a crew to in-
stall heavy braces to hold the wall temporarily.
Finally we
were able to jack i t back and hold i t with permanent ties.
In this case and in many others, local companies and individ-
uals rushed to our help with machinery, tools, and even hand
labor.
The people of Lawrence are very friendly.
The roof arches were fabricated in the West and shipped in
pieces on freight cars.
They were over 100 feet long, not
like the 40 foot ones we had erected for the Annex.
T-Mike
and his crew assembled one a day, and our War Surplus crane
easily put them in place.
Fritz's precision was clearly shown when the first arch was
slowly lowered to the two steel pins more than 100 feet apart
that were to hold them.
They mated exactly.
It was a custom
then for the foreman, if he were a brave man, to walk across
the top of the first truss.
Fritz did, to the cheers of
those below.
Several Brothers followed him.


-23-
Soon afterwards the roof was sealed and we felt safe from the
weather.
In the Spring we began looking for rentals of the
hall to make i t productive.
The first was a banquet for Fr.
Carney, from St.Mary's, celebrating an anniversary.
The hall
was crowded and soon became stuffy.
Among the surplus
material we had bought, were tremendous turbine
fans which
were designed to ventilate battleships.
They were accident-
ly turned on at full speed,
and i t sounded like a hurricane
let loose.
They were quickly slowed down and the guests went
on with their dinner.
We organized Friday night dances for High School students,
but St. Mary's also did and we had few patrons.
Among the War Surplus items were 500 pairs of women's nylon
stockings, which were still very rare and expensive.
So we
advertised that at the next dance, the first 100 girls to
come got a free pair.
Of course the boys followed the girls
and from then on we had a full house.
We also soon hired a
twelve piece band instead of records.
During the Summer the
Brothers installed a cafeteria next to the gym.
The ovens,
stoves, etc.
were all War Surplus.
A Coke at that time was
ten cents.
The sale of construction equipment brought good prices.
The Province lent us $50,000 to finish the building, and we
did numerous things to try to pay back this debt. Suddenly I
was told that I should go to France for six months of
religious studies.
SECOND NOVITIATE
The Second Novitiate takes about six months.
Br. Philip John
Br. Richard Aloysius, and myself composed the group from the
U.S.
This was in 1951 when transatlantic planes were not
common or too expensive, so we went over and back on the
Queen Mary.
It was an uneventful trip.
We had a few days
before reporting to St. Quentin where we would spend the
next five months.
Each went his own way as we had dif-
ferent objectives.
I visited Paris, Nice, and after the
Second Novitiate, Casablanca.
I found the Second Novitiate very interesting and also a
chance to improve my basic French.
The classes were con-
ducted in French.
Br. Henri Noe was the Master of Nov-
ices.
His talks were well prepared and well delivered,
although, due to the subject matter, sometimes boring.



-24-
There was an adequate library on the subjects we were study-
ing.
I got interested in the many volumes on higher spir-
ituality.
The attainment of the state of ecstasy I found intriguing.
It seemed to me that if I followed all the suggestions, i t
might happen to me.
It involved self abnegation, self denial
and inflicting pain on the body.
I never lashed my back, but
I
went as far as putting pebbles in my shoes.
Finally,
while
standing for the thirty minute meditation. I think
I had a
period of ecstasy.
I don't think a proper description can
be given, but
I
remember i t as a complete separation of body
from soul and an intense union with some spiritual entity.
When the meditation period was up I was later told that I had
to physically be brought back to reality.
My comrades
thought
I
had fallen asleep, and perhaps
I
had. It never hap-
pened again.
Knowing that I had had some experience building with con-
crete, the Master asked if
I would build a Stations of the
Cross on the extensive property.
There was no money for any building materials except sand
and concrete, but the heavy crosses could not be built with-
out steel reinforcing rods.
We also needed some form lumber
and some tools.
I wrote to friends and relatives at home, telling them what
I
was asked to do, and that for a donation towards the con-
struction, I would bury a sealed wine bottle at the foot of
each station, each bottle containing the name of a donor.
I didn't promise any miraculous cures, but I guess the
thought of having one's name encased forever in a little bit
of blessed land in France must have intrigued many, because
I received enough American dollars to build the Stations with
a little left over for expenses on the way home.
As the six foot long white crosses were ready, the Brothers,
in their cassocks, hoisted each one on their shoulders and
carried i t to its prepared footing.
Later they were all
solemnly blessed by the local priest.
MARIST
COLLEGE
1952-
When I was named to Marist College in September 1952, CCHS
was in the midst of preparing a Home Show to help pay off its
debt for the new building.
we hoped to make i t the biggest



-25-
event since the gym opened.
I was involved in organizing and
in selling space.
Paul Ambrose set my teaching schedule so that all classes
were on one day.
I acquired an old Ford car with a rumble
seat, and commuted every week.
The roads were not the high-
ways of today. Many did not even have guidelines in the
middle.
After things had settled down, PA told me the real reason for
my being in Poughkeepsie.
The Marian year was only two years
away, and he was trying to get permission to build a Marian
chapel for the occasion.
When he was told to go ahead with
the plan, another person was hired to take my classes, and I
would be full time on the Chapel project.
I told him we could do i t for $75000 if the Brothers did all
the work.
This was agreeable to him, and we started.
A site
was chosen at the West side of a former corn field, on a
small promontory.
Mr. Pratt, the architect of Central Catholic's new gym build-
ing agreed to make the plans, came down to see the site and
get some idea of what we wanted.
The chapel for the local communities was in the old mansion.
It was very long and very narrow.
The Juniors had the front
rows, followed to the back by Novices, Scholastics, staff
Brothers, and at the rear, the old men who were in the in-
firmary on the second floor behind the chapel.
Windows
allowed a view of the altar.
It was not an ideal chapel.
,
So M. Pratt, PA, and I decided on a round chapel so that all
the groups were clustered around the altar.
As soon as weather permitted, the scholastics started digging
by hand for foundations.
They didn't have to dig deep as the
site was on solid rock.
Soon we acquired an old crane for
$3000, and some War Surplus equipment from CCHS.
We did have to do some blasting for the boiler room at the
West side, on top of which would be the sacristy. A neigh-
bor did the blasting at first, but as he was not usually
available when I needed him, I finally did i t myself.
As Spring approached I went to New York and visited all our
schools, to try to get volunteers to work during the Summer.
Some twenty Brothers agreed to come.
Two of them were to be key men for all our future projects.
Br.Mark, and later Br.Brendan Regis (Panther), did the cook-


-26-
ing, and Br.
Edward Michael would be construction boss.
Without them the whole idea would have floundered.
Of course
PA was the kingpin of the whole enterprise, smoothing the way
with work crews of Scholastics and money to pay the bills.
At the same time that we were digging footings, we were pre-
paring to provide the usual services: water, sewer, and elec-
tricity.
Sewage then required only a septic tank, which we dug
the chapel and then piped i t to a swamp which existed
lower level towards the river.
St. Ann's sent sewage
same area.
From there i t seeped into the river.
behind
at a
to the
Electricity and water were was close at hand on Waterworks
road. But obtaining a tap from the water line became a prob-
lem.
It seems that an anti-Catholic feeling existed to some
extent in the city.
We applied for a water permit on April
13, 1953, to the office of Mr. Dean who was city engineer.
but did not receive the permit until September 18, 1953.
For
a whole month, starting in July, we sent a Scholastic, wear-
ing his Roman Collar, to Mr. Dean's waiting room, where he
presented his reason for being there, and then sat down to
wait. Finally Mr. Dean died or retired and a Mr. Hacket took
his place.
We soon had the permit for a six inch water line.
It was so large because the fire department required that we
have hydrants.
Up to this time, the water supply for the whole property was
a small 1/2 inch pipe.
That is one reason why in each
building, St. Ann's, Central {Scholasticate), and Novitiate,
had a large water tank near the top of each building.
This
tank took care of the early morning large use of water.
Con-
necting all buildings was a two inch pipe installed earlier
by Br. Abelus and Br. Altin.
Work proceeded rapidly on the building, and in July the roof
trusses arrived.
These were made of wood and fabricated in
a Western State.
There is a story attached to the roof.
It
was originally designed to be made of cast concrete, the same
as you see in the ceiling of the perambulator near the out-
side of the building.
I began to realize early that this complicated concrete roof
would be very time consuming to build, and perhaps beyond the
skills of our untrained workers.
Also at this time, Mr.
Pratt did not keep up with the plans for the chapel and oc-
casionally I would find errors.
He also would not talk to me
on the phone and my messages were relayed thru his wife.
This was not like him, who was always very punctual and pre-
cise.
I finally drove to Lawrence to consult with him.
His


-27-
wife then told me he had a tumor in the brain which was af-
fecting his speech.
He later died of this.
At this meeting we agreed to change to the timber roof you
see today.
Mr. Pratt took a vacation and drove out West to
talk to the engineers of Timber Structures.
They worked very
fast, and from July 7 to July 28 several carloads of roof
beams arrived and were carried across Rte 9 on the shoulders
of the Scholastics to the site of the building.
The erection of the roof, with the help of our crane, was
simple and fast.
Gus Schmidt from Timber Structures came to
supervise.
By the end of August the roof was complete.
The
steeple and the cross went up soon after.
It was not the one
designed by Mr. Pratt, as that one was of bronze and much too
expensive.
We designed a simple one of aluminum tubes which
you see today.
It did blow down in a storm soon after erec-
tion, but some added reinforcement solved the problem.
In October 1953, Br. George Francis Byrne, a teacher at Mar-
ist, died of a heart attack and was buried after services in
our new chapel.
Byrne Residence is named after him.
Before Winter set in we had started the first paved road on
campus.
It went from the WW road to the entrance near the
Gate House, including the entrance to the chapel.
The chapel
was dedicated on May 2, 1954 with the usual ceromonies.
A few words on the original window scenes from the life of
the Mother of Christ might be interesting.
In January 1954
I went to Haiti on vacation during the Winter lull in con-
struction.
While there I met Arthur O'Neil, an American who
had retired to Haiti.
In New York he had been an outstanding
leader in the development of high fashion color photography.
I told him I was looking for a young woman to pose for these
pictures.
He strongly suggested a Mrs. Rita Traulsen, who
before her marriage had been one of the most successful mod-
els in New York.
When I came back from Haiti I contacted her
and she was delighted with the idea.
For several successive Sundays I went to her home in Bayside
and took the pictures in black and white, had them enlarged
onto heavy film, and then colored by an expert in the field.
Each measured 24 ft. by 4 ft.
In addition to the head of
Mary, there was an adjoining text from the New Testament ex-
plaining the scene,
They were considered unusual and an em-
bellishment to the chapel.
Several years later a delegation of priests from the Chancery
office came to Marist for the usual occasional inspection of


-28-
Catholic chapels.
Soon after we received a severe censure of
the pictures as being too worldly, and were ordered to remove
them.
We had no choice but to comply.
On Sept. 9, 1954, there was a very large Marian Year Rally in
the chapel and on the lawns surrounding it. There must have
been over a thousand people present.
Naturally, this had
been organized by Br. Paul Ambrose as a fullfillment of his
long held dream.
Before the Chapel was finished I was told to start to start
plans for the next building.
The Provincial Council had de-
cided that facilities for a completely new Scholasticate were
to be built behind the chapel.
So in the Spring of 1954, work was started.
This building
was to provide a study hall, dining room, and kitchen as a
minimum.
By now our work crews had some experience in building, and
work proceeded faster and more smoothly.
It was of concrete
except the roof which again was to be by Timber Structures.
The height of the apex of the roof was almost thirty feet.
When the library moved in later, more floor space was needed
so the center opening was closed.
On Christmas Eve 1955 the traditional Reveillion was held in
the new building.
On Christmas Day the kitchen equipment was
ready, and from then on all our meals were taken there. Much
finish work remained to be done and we worked on i t until
Spring.
In March 1956 we began the last of the
ings.
Mr. Tidd was now the architect.
three floor dormitory, with connecting
bathrooms It is now called Fontaine in
rose Fontaine.
Scholasticate build-
This was to be a
areas for showers and
honor of Br. Paul Amb-
The three story section was built of steel to save time.
There was very little welding to be done as the steel beams
were bolted together.
There were still no private rooms for the Scholastics; cur-
tains separated the cells.
This method made for good vent-
ilation, but very little privacy: all lights out together
etc. But for the first time, the residents had ample modern
bathrooms and shower facilities.
Shortly after the Brothers had moved in and before we had
finished the stair rails, a young Canadian Brother fell from
the stairs and ruptured his spleen.
He died the next day at


-29-
St. Francis Hospital.
Much later another Scholastic asked me one day if he could
practice welding.
After discussing the dangers involved,
mostly from the danger of fire, I told him to go out to the
middle of a playground with his equipment.
To protect his
clothing from sparks he put on an Army issue raincoat, and
for more safety, he buttoned i t up the back instead of the
front.
It turned out to be highly inflammable.
A spark hit
i t , and a moment later he was encased in flames.
There was
a ball game going on nearby and people rushed to help him.
It was too late.
He died two days later in the hospital.
These were the only serious accidents we had in over the ten
years the building projects went on.
While the dormitory was being built, the college was opened
to laymen from the local area. To provide a place for them to
gather for lunch and study, Adrian Hall was built.
It was
named for Br. Adrian, the music teacher at the college who
had recently died.
The site of the building has an interesting background.
On
the lower level to the West was a large wooden building.
It
was the workshop of the campus and contained several items of
wood working machinery and a forge.
The farm equipment was
repaired here and general maintenance work done.
Close to this building was a small pond where ducks were
raised.
When automobiles began to be used, a windmill was
constructed to charge the batteries.
At the time that Adrian
was under construction these buildings were eliminated and a
paved basketball court laid out in what is now part of the
mall.
Around 1925 two long, one story wood buildings had been erec-
ted near the site of the present Marian building.
These were
to provide dormitories for Brothers coming in the Summer for
the annual retreats.
They contained curtained enclosures for
beds, toilet and bath facilities, and a long galvanized met-
al trough for washing.
The present Marian building was the first gym.
It was built
about 1950 under the supervision of Br. Francis Xavier
Benoit.
Benoit house was named for him.
The brick walls and
the roof were built by contract, but the Brothers did all the
other work.
Br. Francis also did extensive building at the
Juniorate in Esopus.
The whole area now bordered by Champagnat, the Student Cen-


-30-
ter, Marian and Adrian, was originally a rocky hillside
sloping towards the river.
When I was a Scholastic, and for
years before, the young Brothers spent their weekly work day
leveling this area to make a ball field.
The procedure was
to remove as much of the hill as possible with picks and
shovels.
When rock was encountered, holes were drilled, dyn-
amite loaded in them, and the rock blasted.
The drilling procedure was primitive.
One person held the
two inch diameter drill by hand.
Two others, opposite each
other, and each with a sledgehammer, alternately hit the top
of the drill.
When the drill went as far as i t could, i t was
exchanged for a longer one.
The loosened material was loaded by hand into wheelbarrows
and run to the en-d of the level fill.
During my stay as a
Scholastic, we persuaded the Director to allow us to purchase
a Model T dump truck for $60. We had found i t in an auto-
mobile graveyard.
The engine was a heap of disassembled
parts.
Somehow we managed to make i t work again, and i t made
the leveling of the hill much faster and easier.
I heard
later that the next year i t was dumped into the fill area be-
cause i t cost too much to maintain.
Years later when we were excavating for the foundations of
the Student Center, we ran into this rocky fill to a depth of
fifteen feet.
The nearest we could find a machine to drill
holes in this fill to place caissons on solid rock was in
Cleveland, Ohio.
We contracted the job to its owners.
A 30"
auger drilled down to bed rock.
As i t went down, a 30" dia-
meter auger followed it.
A man with a flashlight went down
to check the bottom.
The cylinder was filled with concrete
and withdrawn. Dozens of such holes were drilled.
The book
store and the River Room are built on this foundation.
Another note on the Brothers' dining room.
To hold up the
apex of the ceiling and the second floor, the architect had
planned for a concrete structure at the base of which was to
be a fireplace.
On further consideration i t was decided i t
would be too overwhelming for the room, and changed i t to two
steel beams with a five foot space between them.
After the
roof was on, Mrs. Fisher designed an abstract mosaic,twenty
feet high to fill this space.
We laid out the glass mosaic,
section by section, on her kitchen table and then assembled
the pieces between the steel beams.
It stayed in place until
the space was needed for an elevator when the building became
the library.
At the beginning of 1958, the Council voted to put up a class
room building.
We had only about 200 students at the time,
but for some reason i t was decided to erect a building which


-31-
is still the second largest in area on the campus. Someone
must have been gifted with clairvoyance. At the time we
thought this building would provide sufficient space for
years to come. Within a year we started a dormitory.
On May 6, 1958 Cardinal Spellman came to bless the buildings
we had just finished and to preside at the ground breaking
for the proposed building.
The first Summer we had 85 Brothers on the working crew.
They all lived in two wooden buildings located close to the
present entrance road to the Mccann gym.
They started work
at 8 AM, stopped for lunch and then back to work t i l l 5 PM.
On days when a large concrete pour could not be interrupted,
lunch was brought over from the kitchen in a large black
hearse that someone had given us. This was euphemistically
called a picnic in the grove.
At the start the only mechanical equipment we had was an old
backhoe and a small crane for hoisting concrete.
The second
year we had added a large dozer and a bigger crane.
At the
end of the Summer of 1958, the lower floor had been leveled.
Scholastics in groups of ten, took over from the Summer Bro-
thers,and each group worked for two weeks.
The next year saw the building enclosed, and the following
year the service lines were placed and the parking lot paved.
In September '61, the building was opened for classes and
living facilities for about 40 resident students.
In 1961 a contract was given for Sheahan Hall and opened
for 130 residents in 1962.
A sewage disposal plant had been built to take care of Don-
nelly, but when i t became necessary to build dormitories,
this plant was too small.
Something had to be done quickly.
Bro. Paul Stokes, a faculty member, was a friend of Tom Mah-
er, a city official, and he asked Tom about the possibility
of connecting to the city sewer system.
He suggested that we
tie into a sewer manhole which was on the other side of Rte 9
about 400 feet south of our south entrance.
That summer a crew of Brothers dug across what is now Leoni-
doff Field to the south entrance and along the edge of Rte 9
southerly.
The pipe went over the railroad overpass and con-
tinued along the road.
We still had to cross Rte 9, which is
a state highway.
One day while we were digging this section,
a state trooper stopped and asked to see our permit.
Of


-32-
course we had forgotten to get one, so the work was stopped
and we hired an accredited construction company to finish the
line to the manhole.
This took care of us until the Mccann Center was built, and
simultaneously a new City of Poughkeepsie sewer line was
built thru Mccann Field near Rte 9.
We were allowed to tie
into this line, and the line described above was abandoned.
This marked the end of my building career.
From then on I
was the Clerk of the Works for the future buildings.
Champagnat Parking
When the Champagnat Dormitory and the Student Center began to
be discussed about 1973, i t became evident that a large park-
ing facility would be needed.
At the time, the present Mall was a parking lot, but Pres-
ident Linus Foy and many others wanted i t to become a land-
scaped Mall much as i t is now.
The nearest large area available was a hillside behind the
present library building.
Before the Chapel was built in
1953, there was a continuous sloping field from that loca-
tion all the way to the present tennis courts.
It was a
large orchard covered with full grown fruit trees.
The top-
most section became the site of the chapel, and below i t were
built the present library and Fontaine Hall. The remaining
section was to become the new parking area.
There was a six foot high steel mesh fence along both sides
of Waterworks Road erected and owned by the City of Pough-
keepsie.
The city allowed us to remove i t at this time.
The upper area was bulldozed towards the tennis courts. Much
of i t was rock and had to be blasted.
It was finally level-
ed and paved.
It made room for 282 cars.
If we ever need
room for more cars, a second level could be built above the
present space.
The entrance to this higher level could be
entered from the road in front of the library to avoid ramps
within the building.
This will not be done for a long time
because i t would intrude into the view of the river.



-33-
SPRINKLERS
The Summers of 1981-82 were very hot and dry.
People began
using sprinklers on their lawns and gardens to such an extent
that the city water pumps could not keep up with the demand.
A city ordinance was passed outlawing the use of sprinklers
until the emergency was over.
At Marist this meant that when
the students returned in September the athletic fields would
be almost unusable.
With the Hudson river, full of water, flowing next to the
campus, we began looking for a
-
means of tapping this supply.
Research through the City Water Dept. files revealed that the
old water pumping building, which had by then been demomol-
ished, had had, under the ground floor, a 25 foot deep well,
which was connected to the river by a large pipe.
Even at
low tide, there was ample water in the well.
The new Water Dept. installation no longer used this well. We
obtained permission to remove the debris with which the well
had been filled, and also to use an abandoned 24 inch pipe
which ran under the railroad tracks up to the west end of our
maintenance garage.
We brought in a large backhoe, and after
locating the well, which was about 12 feet by 12 feet in
area, dug out the debris until we had a five foot depth of
water at the bottom at low tide.
It was a simple job to push high pressure tubing through the
24 inch pipe under the railroad tracks and up to the back of
our garage.
We also pulled up the necessary wires to operate
the proposed pump.
We now needed a hydraulic engineer to design the system.
A
Mr. Marty Dretel, president of D and S Pump Supply Co. of
Brewster, N.Y. was contacted, and he came over to gather the
needed data.
He supplied a five horsepower pump and needed
controls.
In the meantime the trench to and around Mccann Field was
dug, the 3 inch pipe placed, and sufficient standpipes in-
stalled. The controls are in the garage.
It was put to work
immediately and has been working when needed since then.
The Business Office also says that the system considerably
reduced our water bills during the Summer.


-34-
SOME DATES NOT MENTIONED IN ABOVE TEXT
1905 McPherson property bought.35 acres.Bad condition.
1908 Purchase of Brock estate.
65 acres.
1909 First burial in cemetery
Tents erected for Summer retreat dormitories.
There was a large swamp West of Greystone.
It and other
wet areas were drained because they bred mosquitoes.
The Scholasticate moved from St. Ann's Academy to
Central.
1911 The North American Province was divided into the
Province of Canada and the Province of the United
An intercom system was installed to connect all
buildings.
It could not have lasted long.
When
I arrived in 1924, a courier was dispatched to
notify the person needed.
This year there were seventy Brothers taking Summer
courses in Poughkeepsie.
The lake (future pool} was drained by a twelve inch
concrete pipe that ran under the Waterworks Road near
the present Benoit House.
The trench was dug by alter-
nating groups on the property.
Several wells were dug on the property·to provide
drinking water.
The railroad bought a piece of land near the river.
1912 Railroad builds two bridges over the tracks.
1913 Electric power was supplied to the Jun
iorate from our
water wheel East of the railroad. An artesian well 60
ft. deep was dug at the same location to supply water
for all the buildings.
A generator run by the water
wheel supplied power for the pump.
1916 Electricity finally connected to the Juniorate.








-35-
IN THE EARLY DAYS
Present Gate House was first called The Chateau at this time.
Waterworks Road was first called Pumping Station Avenue.
Present Greystone and nearby wooden buildings called Central.
St. Peter's School teachers lived in St.Peter's and gave i t
i t ' s present name.
A small wooden building was added to the
West side for a kitchen and dining room.
Greystone was the carriage house with horses on the ground
floor, carriages and hay on the second.
On Sundays two large wagons took the Juniors to and from
St. Peter's Church where they formed the choir.
:j---
1858
~1870
,f-
1905
,f-190 8
1909
1910
1911
~912
1913
MARIST COLLEGE CHRONOLOGY
Greystone built as two story barn.
Gatehouse built. St. Peter's built as gardener's
cottage.
.
McPherson property bought./ 35 acres
Beck property bought./ 65 acres
Brothers teach at St.Peter's.
First burial new cemetery.
Tents served as dorms and classrooms during Summer.
Swamps West of Greystone drained because of
mosquitoes.
St. Peter's Brothers move to St. Peter's on campus.
Scholasticate moves from St. Ann's Academy to
Central, which was nane given to Greystone and a
gr.oup of small buildings close by.
Intercom telephone connects all buildings.
One public telephone on campus •.
Seventy Brothers take Summer courses.
12" vitrified clay pipe for sewage and storm install-
ed from near pool to South of WW.
Dug by Novices.
Two bridges crossing tracks built by RR. The last of
these was removed in 1980.
Dam built north of Waterworks. The stored water ran a
water wheel which turned a generator to supply elec-
tricity to St.
Ann's, a_nd to pump water to all the
buildings from a newly dug 70 ft. deep artesian well.


1914
~1915
1920
1921
~1922
1928
1930
1947
Kl953
>(1957
1957
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
~972
1973
1974
-36-
Juniorate first building to have electricity. Silo is
built.
Stop using city water and use own wells because of
cost.
Grotto begun.
Underground concrete caveau for
v•getables built near the barn.
First garage built. Calvary built. Feb.20 so much
snow had to use sleigh to get priest from St.Andrews.
Three story addition added to St. Ann's.
·
Outdoor Stations of Cross built near Calvary. These
were removed in
1962
to make room for a road to
Sheahan.
Concrete block wall along Rte
9
begun.
Finished
1923.
Sewage from Knaus slaughter House contaminates wells.
Two story addition to St.Peter's. Demolished 1969.
Bought stone crusher to make material to pave roads.
Old Gym built. Later reconstructed as Marian.
Chapel built.
.
Linus Foy named President.
Fontaine and Adrian built. Water Tower near old barn
dismantled.
Donnelly opened. St. Ann's demolished.
Sheahan built. Barn torn down.
Byrne, Boathouse, and Leo
·
bu.ilt.
Sewer lines connected to city system on Rte 9.
Champagnat built.
Remove wall along Rte
9.
St. Mary's demolished.
Arterial Highway construction fills South Field.
Cemetery covered. Gate House remodeled.
Benoit and Gregory built. First Computer installed in
Adrian.
Leonidoff Field dedicated. Named after distinguished
local physician, who contributed to its building.
Wooden section St. Peter's demolished. Greystone
remodeled.
Mccann athletic field opened.
Fill valley East of Benoit-Gregory.
St. Mary's
demolished.
Start Mall. First street lights.
South
Mall. First street lights. South entrance road paved.
Bee House and small wood dormitory demolished on
South campus.
Aerial survey map of campus made.
South entrance road paved.
Modern sculpture in Mall.
Sign at Main Entrance (near Gate House). Designed by
Mrs.Fisher, as also the large_ black vertical sculp-
_
ture near Gatehouse.
Fill.started for Mccann parking lot.
Thi~ was
the site of a ski l i f t that started near Sheahan.
Start separation of storm and sewer lines. Tennis









"
fH75
1976
~977
1978
9
979
~980
1982
.$---1983
~984
)5--1987
-37-
courts built.
Library moved from Donnelly. Computer moves to
Donnelly.
Acquire more land at river.
Kirk
House built.
River renovations including gabion wall. Mccann
opens.
Chapel renovated after fire.
City sewer line installed at East edge of campus.
Stairs to Mccann parking lot built.
Campus sewage lines connected to new city plant.
Elevator installed in Student Center.
Dennis Murray becomes president of Marist.
RR bridge over tracks removed.
North entrance opened.
Maintenance Center opened.
Town Houses built.
New gate to river on WW road.
-
Sprinkler system using river water built.
River area improved •
Dedication of remodeled Old Gym as Marian Hall
West athletic field opened.
Gartland Commons opened
Lowell Thqmas building dedicated.