Read an Excerpt
WHERE SHOULD WE HAVE STOPPED?
The Story of a Remarkable Family
By Fred Behringer
iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2012 William T. Walsh
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-3231-7
Chapter One
A Wonderful Priest?
William Thomas Walsh was born on March 23, 1922, to William Earl and Gladys French Walsh in Westfield, New Jersey, a small town of about 8,000 people about 25 miles southeast of New York City in Union County. For 10 years, the family lived in a three-bedroom house on West Dudley Avenue in what Bill describes as a "nice town that is still a class place today."
Because Holy Trinity Catholic School was a mile away, Bill and his younger sister, Joan, went to Roosevelt Grammar School for first and second grade. For third and fourth grade, they went to Holy Trinity. Then with a growing family, the Walshes moved to a seven-bedroom farmhouse on three acres in Metuchen, New Jersey (sisters Patricia and Sheila had arrived.) To Bill's ongoing consternation, two acres of the property contained grass that required constant mowing—and mowing was Bill's job, one that took all day, using a push mower or a gas mower that often stalled. Yet this labor resulted in an important lesson that carried through Bill's life: "My father said that's a big job when you start out, but if you just keep going around in those circles, you'll find that the circle becomes much smaller. You'll find that out about all jobs in life, that they look so big in the beginning, but if you just start out on them with the right attitude, you get to the point where it's a breeze to the end. And that's true in paperwork, in reading or anything like that. You get started, plunge in, and it becomes manageable."
Tackling another chore at home brought Bill to the brink of disaster when he attempted to paint the house without a ladder tall enough to reach the highest points. "I decided to put two step ladders together with a big board across them and then put a ladder on top of that. I got up on it and everything seemed fine, but when I stretched to reach one of the little eaves with a paintbrush, everything collapsed. I'm up three floors right under the roof, and I landed in an evergreen bush, so I was really fortunate. I could have killed myself, broken an arm, broken a leg, ruined my back, but God was taking care of me, I guess."
In Metuchen, Bill went to St. Francis Grammar School, where fifth and sixth grades formed one class, taught by Sister Mary Edward, who rarely smiled and kept order with a ruler. Bill's ever-present smiles and laughter caused the nun to label him a "wise-acre," but he did so well in his early tests that she quickly promoted him from fifth grade into sixth. "This was looked upon as an honor by the school and my parents," Bill recalls, "but it turned out to probably have hurt me. I became the youngest, smallest and most naïve person in the graduating class in eighth and 12th grades." In the eighth grade, he placed first in his class academically.
At five foot, two inches and 98 pounds entering St. Peter's High School in New Brunswick, Bill struggled to overcome his diminutive stature as he tried out for sports teams. He played football and baseball but missed the cut in basketball. A thrilling 7-0 victory in football over the New Brunswick High School freshmen stands out in his memory, as does a stop he made by driving a blocker into a ball carrier so forcefully that the runner was flipped into the air. "The cheers from the crowd were the most I ever had as a kid." The St. Peter's varsity coach told Bill, "We're waiting for you next year, Red," but Bill's father would not let him continue with football. He joined the boxing team, continued with baseball and worked at a bowling alley in New Brunswick, where he once recorded a score of 257.
More significantly for his future, Bill became a caddie at Metuchen Golf and Country Club and received a junior membership at the club as a birthday gift. He soon signaled a special aptitude for the game of golf, which he first played with his grandfather as a 10-year-old at Galloping Hill Golf Course. Showing his incredible memory of details from childhood on, Bill recalls scoring 68-64–132 for his first 18 holes. "My grandfather counted every stroke."
Caddies could play every Monday at Metuchen so Bill would play as many as 54 holes once a week. He convinced the principal at St. Peter's to let him skip the graduation ceremony to play the final match for the Metuchen Junior Club Championship, which he won on the 34th hole with an eagle.
Bill graduated in the top 10 of his high school class and impressed his senior homeroom teacher, who echoed Sister Mary Edward's feeling: "William, you'll make a wonderful priest."
Chapter Two
The Years at Villanova
In September 1939, Bill took his father's advice to get work experience before going to college, becoming an office boy at Milbank, Tweed, Hope & Webb, a large law firm in New York City. He earned $15 a week less 15 cents for Social Security. "Essentially we were gofers delivering large manila envelopes. If the delivery point was 23 blocks or more, we were given a nickel for the subway. Unless it was 40 blocks or more, some of us would keep the nickel and walk very fast or run so that we were back in normal time." As we'll learn, Bill resumed running long distances later in life. Lunch at the Horn and Hardart Automat was soup, chicken potpie and water for 25 cents, also presaging a habit of Bill's not to spend money extravagantly.
Meanwhile, Bill and his parents were ruminating about where he would attend college. Bill leaned toward the University of Notre Dame, but his father said, "In New York it's thought of primarily as an athletic school." His father favored the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, but after Bill's year of working in Manhattan, he wanted to get away from the city atmosphere. His mother liked Princeton University, but Bill thought it was too close to home. They settled on Villanova College (now Villanova University) in suburban Philadelphia with a large campus in a country setting. Selecting a Catholic school tied in with Bill's lingering notion that he might become a priest.
Thus in September 1940, Bill began a love affair with Villanova that has continued throughout his life. He hit the books hard from the beginning and ranked sixth in his class after the first semester, while finding time for a full schedule of sports and activities. Then 5 foot, 10 inches tall and weighing 140 pounds, he tried out for the basketball team but was cut by the renowned coach Al Severance. "He was very nice to me, but I deserved to be cut. He had many prospects much better than I was." Bill found his niche on the golf team, playing number one while winning six of nine matches, equaling the team's record. He improved to seven wins and two losses as a sophomore, ending his college golf career since Villanova dropped golf because of World War II.
Bill also played basketball for his fraternity team and broke the intramural record with 35 points in a game. Later he played centerfield for the baseball team and served as sports editor of the student newspaper and yearbook. He maintained high grades throughout his stay at Villanova and received a medal for finishing first academically in the Commerce and Finance School. Villanova also honored him for taking part in the most extra-curricular activities for the four years.
After a slow start, Bill's social life picked up while at Villanova as thoughts of the priesthood receded from his mind. "There weren't any female students at Villanova in those days," Bill said, "and I was too bashful to ask anyone out from Rosement, a girls' college less than a mile away. I was told by an upper classman that if you didn't go to the Sophomore Hop, you were really looked down upon. I said that I didn't know any girls but if he could get me a date with Pat Kennedy (the sister of future President Kennedy and the future Mrs. Peter Lawford), who was a student at Rosemont, I would go. He arranged it, and so I went. She was very nice, tall and a good dancer, and we had an enjoyable time. I had one more date with her at dinner, but she indicated she was going to transfer to Stanford, which she did, and I never saw her again."
In the meantime, the Walsh family added two more children, David and Colleen. Because he was not living at home, Bill didn't really get to know them until he arrived back home in mid 1946.
Chapter Three
Service in the Navy
With World War II raging, Bill enrolled in the U.S. Navy V-1 program (later V-12) in May of 1942 with the guarantee that he could finish college before going on active duty. That summer he worked in brutal heat for 83 cents an hour scraping paint off gasoline storage tanks at the E.I. DuPont de Nemours plant in Grasselli, New Jersey. He managed to get on the golf course occasionally, winning a club championship at Metuchen, and he caddied at the prestigious Merion Golf Club, not far from Villanova.
Bill learned a little about the cost of a social life on a date with Rosemary Convery, a student at a Holy Child school in Philadelphia, who lived with her parents in West Philadelphia. The check for dinner and dancing at Jack Walton's Roof on top of the Hotel Walton came to $42.50 (there's his memory of details again), and Bill had $45—"every cent I owned"—with him. He left $1.50 for the waiter, spent his last dollar to take Rosemary home on public transportation and walked from West Philadelphia to Villanova, arriving at 2:30 a.m. "Can you imagine," he says now, "walking on Lancaster Avenue for two and a half hours at that hour these days without being shot or robbed?"
Rosemary was Bill's partner at another memorable dinner when they met Bill Heavey, a friend from Villanova, and his fiancée at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. They danced to the music of Frankie Carle and his orchestra, and Carle sat at the table next to them after each break in the music, joined by legendary bandleader Glenn Miller and his wife. Miller, who was in uniform, told them he was leaving to entertain troops in France the next morning. His plane disappeared over the English Channel, and his body was never found. "This was a great shock to all four of us," Bill remembers. "His orchestra was my favorite. I still have recordings of his renditions of the most popular songs of the day."
Bill had traveled to New York for that date from Harvard, where he was on a pass from the Naval Supply Corps School based at the Harvard Business School Campus. He was part of an elite Navy V-12 group selected for the school, which would lead to commission as an ensign. Bill graduated on May 15, 1944, and was ordered to Camp Bradford, Virginia, near Norfolk, a training site for landing ships. There Bill met Barbara Rhea, a freshman at Chestnut Hill College, whose father was a captain in the Navy, and for the first time he felt he was getting interested in a girl. He even traveled to Florida to meet her parents, but the relationship cooled when they realized Bill wasn't interested in a permanent naval career.
On January 2, 1945, Bill reported to New Orleans to board LSM 330, a medium-sized landing ship, and departed for the Panama Canal, passed through the canal and went on to San Francisco and subsequently to Hawaii, Guadalcanal, the Philippines, Guam and Saipan. Serving as disbursement officer for as many as 25 ships, Bill had to transport as much as $650,000 in cash. LSM 330 was ordered in late July 1945 to prepare to take part in the invasion of Japan, but in early August, he recalls, "The atom bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and everything came to a halt."
The war was ending, but Bill's service in the Navy continued until September 1946 in the Philippines and later in New York City, permitting him once again to commute from Metuchen. By then, he had decided to attend law school and gained acceptance to the schools at Columbia, Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. He chose Penn.
Before he started law school on September 4, 1946, Bill found time to resume golf at Metuchen and tied the course record of 66. "I was winning money on most of the days I played, and it was very enjoyable to be playing again, not only for the game itself but also for the renewed friendships I was enjoying."
Chapter Four
Law Student Meets Model
A professor told Bill and 158 other first-year students at the Penn Law School to "look to both sides of you because one-third of you will not make it to the second year." Bill advanced, but only 103 of the students who started were still with him. "My marks were pretty good—in the upper 25 percent of the class. I must say that Law School was much tougher than college or Midshipman School, and I felt fortunate to have done that well."
Bill was also fortunate to draw a seat assignment next to Bob Lindsey, who knew of Bill's goal of 10 children. The Law School students attracted numerous invitations to dances at Penn sororities, and Bill dated eight of the girls he met at the dances. Not bashful about his future plans, he asked each of the eight how many children they would like to have. The answers ranged from zero to two. "That was not very encouraging. I never dated any of them again, and I'm sure they thought I was some kind of nut who had somehow been admitted by the Law School."
Enter Bob Lindsey with word that he found "just the girl for Bill." Barbara Straub grew up in Oil City, Pennsylvania, with six siblings: Kathy, Marty, Nancy, Bill, Dick and Jane. She had graduated from Georgetown Visitation Convent in Washington, D.C. and was working as a fashion model at leading department stores in Philadelphia, including Bonwit Teller, Lit Brothers, Strawbridge & Clothier and Gimbels. Lindsey introduced her to Bill in December of 1947. "She was beautiful and a lovely young lady of 19," said Bill, who then was 25. "I could hardly wait until our first date so that I could learn more about her. On our first date in January 1948, we had a very enjoyable time talking about the joys of growing up in a large family. She was one of seven children, and I had five younger brothers and sisters. We talked, I recall, about how many children we wanted to have."
One date led to another, and Bill took Barbara to meet his family in April. "I admire Bill's choice very much," said his father. His grandmother fulfilled a longstanding promise by giving Bill her engagement ring, saying, "Billy, you have to get engaged to her. You can't leave her out there where someone else might propose to her." Bill and Barbara became engaged on April 26, 1948.
The year of their engagement, Gimbels selected Barbara as the Cathedral Bride for the store's annual bridal show. She remembers, "I was so excited that they invited me to be the top model who was in the most important gown in the most important part of the show." And Bill was excited to be in the audience.
Their wedding took place September 17, 1948. Proceeding from their first date to the wedding in less than a year seemed to be rushing things, as Barbara looks back today: "I think now how lucky we are. That could have been a disaster. We both basically came from the same backgrounds and the same religion. I think all of that made it easier. When people get married, you have to make adjustments to her way of life, his way of life and what's going to be our way of life, whether it's how you celebrate Christmas or how you celebrate birthdays. You have to do your own thing. I think because we both came from similar situations, the adjustments were not huge."
Although they both wanted a large family, Barbara says with emphasis, "We married because we were in love. I wasn't going to get married until I was 28 or 30 years old. I was having a nice career, and then when I met Bill, it was like, boy, I fell hook, line and sinker very quickly. I think the fact that I had never really loved anybody before, it was very obvious to me that he was the right one."
Bill received his law degree in February 1949. While still in law school, he started selling life insurance part time to help make ends meet, not realizing the future career significance of that venture. With a government subsidy for a returning veteran, the couple lived on $300 a month since Barbara discontinued modeling after her fifth month of pregnancy. They moved from West Philadelphia to Plainfield, New Jersey, where Bill secured a clerkship with a Union County District Court judge in order to qualify for the New Jersey Bar exam. And he continued to sell insurance at night while practicing law during the day.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from WHERE SHOULD WE HAVE STOPPED? by Fred Behringer Copyright © 2012 by William T. Walsh. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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