Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
Archives and Special Collections Mansfield Library, University of Montana Missoula MT 59812-9936 Email: [email protected] Telephone: (406) 243-2053
The following transcript was provided to Archives and Special Collections by The Gathering: Collected Oral Histories of the Irish in Montana with its associated audio recording. Oral History Number: 435-012 Interviewees: William A. “Bill” Gallagher and Ellen M. Gallagher Interviewer: Bernadette Sweeney Date of Interview: October 25, 2010 Project: The Gathering – Collected Oral Histories of the Irish in Montana
Bernadette Sweeney: This is Bernadette Sweeney interviewing William (Bill) and Ellen
Gallagher, Ellen Murphy Gallagher for the Gathering at their home [full address restricted]?
William Gallagher: Lane.
BS: Magic Mountain Lane, right, outside Philipsburg on October 25, 2010. So, I’m thrilled to
have two for the price of one today. Thanks so much for agreeing to the interview. And I’ll start
off with some just biographical details to set the record straight. And I’ll start with you Bill.
What’s your full name?
WG: William Anton Gallagher.
BS: And where and when were you born?
WG: I was born in Anaconda, at the hospital, on [full birth date restricted], 1941
BS: And where, did you grow up in Anaconda?
WG: Yes, I did.
BS: And have you lived anywhere besides Anaconda?
WG: We lived in Philips, well, in Helena when I went to college. And then we lived in Philipsburg
as a family and we also lived in Troy for a year and then the rest of the time back in Anaconda.
BS: And you, Ellen. What’s your full name?
Ellen Gallagher: Ellen Frances Mary Murphy Gallagher.
BS: (Laughs) Ellen Frances Mary Murphy Gallagher 1 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: (Laughs also) Mary for confirmation.
BS: Yes. I think that illustrates your pedigree clearly enough. And what year and where were
you born?
EG: I was born in St. Ann’s Hospital, Anaconda, Montana, [full birth date restricted], 1941
BS: 1941. And did you grow up in Anaconda?
EG: I did.
WG: And obviously you’ve lived together in Troy and Philipsburg and here as well.
EG: Yes
BS: And in what year did you get married?
WG: 1962. Don’t do that to me!1962, right, Ellen?
EG: Yes.
WG: We do that all the time. I just love (word unintelligible)
EG: Well, if you remember the wedding anniversary date you have it right (word unintelligible).
BS: And you have three sons?
EG: Three sons yes (dog barking)
BS: And what are their names?
EG: Michael, William and Patrick
BS: Michael, William and Patrick. And it’s Patrick we met outside, right?
EG: Yes.
BS: And you have a dog (continues barking)
WG: That’s our dog, WAG. We named him after me. William Anton Gallagher (to dog: Wag cut it out). There’s a car going by. He thinks someone’s coming to visit.
2 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: So you have three sons
WG: We do
BS: And you have how many grandchildren?
WG: Four
EG: Five.
WG: Five. Oh yes, I’m sorry. We had one in Alaska here in little over a year
BS: Very good and they’re, what are their names?
WG: The oldest one is Jack, the youngest one is Kirby and the other boy is Sean, and Ellen can
tell you about the girls.
EG: Kiernan, Francis and McKensie May
BS: Did you say Kiernan.
EG: Kiernan.
B S: Did you say Kiernan? Is that a family name?
EG: No, they just picked it out of a book, an Irish baby book.
WG: It’s actually a boy’s name. I think.
BS: It’s a surname
WG: Oh, Is that what it is.
BS: That’s how, what I’ve come across anyway.
WG: I see. I don’t know any girls that are named that.
B S: It’s very pretty
WG: Yes, she’s a beautiful girl, isn’t she?
EG: Yes (word unintelligible)
3 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: So you both grew up in Anaconda?
WG: We did.
BS: Both Irish backgrounds. Tell me about your Irish background, Bill.
WG: Well, you know I really didn’t have a lot except I had influence with my grandfather and
my father who are both partial Irish. I’m not sure too if my grandfather was full blooded. He
used to always tell us he was born in Ireland and he told these big long stories about all this
stuff and then when he died we found out he was born in Indiana. And he had, we knew he had
relatives in New York. So I don’t really know. He was a, I think he was the brother of six others,
and there were two girls in his family I think too.
BS: What was his name?
WG: His name was William, George William, but he went by William E, William BE Gallagher.
And then my father’s name officially was William George and he went by, William E Jr.
BS: So you went by William E the 3rd then?
WG: No, no. I’m William A. Anton was my mother’s father, Anton Swanson, he was a full blooded Swede and so actually I’m more Swedish than I am Irish but after I’d hooked up with
Ellen who I found in 2nd grade and kind of hung on to off and on and she hated me a year and then we’d go together a year and finally when we got in high school, the last couple years we got together and my 2nd last year in college we got married. But her father had a big influence on me. He was, I don’t know what he was, was he from Ireland, his father was from Ireland?
EG: His father and mother were.
WG: Both of them yes.
BS: So your grandparents?
4 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Yes, my grandparents were from Ireland.
BS: And where in Ireland?
EG: I think in County Cork but I am not positive about that because they were the kind of Irish
that didn’t talk much about Ireland. They always talked about the “old country” and it wasn’t
till later on that I found out that that was Ireland that they were talking about. I think a lot of
Irish were like that when they finally made it here so I don’t know anything about the
background in Ireland. And I don’t know whether they came together from Ireland or they met.
BS: And were they from Anaconda as well?
EG: Yes, they settled in Anaconda. He worked on the smelter and she was a housewife.
BS: And they were, were they the Murphys?
EG: The Murphys, yes. My grandma was a Sullivan and she married my grandfather.
BS: And what was her name?
EG: Her name was Mary Frances Sullivan. And his name was Michael. I think it’s either Tim or
Tom I can’t remember
WG: Tom. Michael Thomas I think so.
EG: Michael Thomas Murphy. But they called him Red Mike on the smelter. Everybody had a nickname on the smelter and his was Red Mike because there were more than one Mike
Murphy, I’m sure.
BS: Yes. And can you talk about your parents Ellen?
EG: My mom was full blooded Scotchman and my dad was Thomas Francis Murphy. He was, I don’t know, he was a good Irishman, he liked to drink, he liked to sing, he liked to dance.
BS: Yes.
5 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Yes, always liked to say he lived by the 10 commandment and the corporal works of mercy.
He just lived his life and he volunteered with the Round Table, which was an organization that
helped the Catholic schools’ athletic program and then they built a church in Anaconda and he
volunteered to help with that and he volunteered to raise money for the Anaconda Central.
They sent us all. It was very important to them that we go to Central.
B S: And how many were you in your family?
EG: Three, an older sister and a younger brother.
BS: Right. And you all went to Central?
EG: We did, yes, we did. I ended up working my way through the last year because of a strike but I had a job at the school, so.
BS: Right
EG: It was a good education too. I was so happy to have it. But it was important to him to have the Catholic education.
BS: And what did your father do? Did he work at the smelter as well?
EG: He did, yes. He, when they weren’t on strike he did but if they were on strike he went out
and found other work. He was a welder; and he was a boilermaker. And he worked for the CCC
up at Fort, was it Fort Peck Reservoir
WG: Fort Bent, Fort Peck. Yes, the Public Works, for a couple years.
EG: Did a few years on the railroad. Did a lot of car lots to make extra money.
WG: In terms of being a welder, I had a, I taught school and a fellow who taught welder who
was a weld also knew her dad. He used to say that Tom Murphy could weld a marshmallow to
6 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. an ice cream cone. So he must have been a really good one. And they called him “Spot”
because he could spot.
EG: Spot welder. They did. I think that’s the reason but I don’t know. That was one of his nicknames but I don’t know.
WG: He had a terrible influence on me in that he made me join the Hibernians, he was always going to these Hibernian meetings and coming home real happy and I thought, that’s a good way to live, you know, teaching kids, on Wednesday, I don’t have to wait till Friday night or
Saturday. So after I was there for a year or two years, there weren’t a lot of people, it was in an old hall, and Eddie McCarthy said, “Why don’t you be the president?” And I said because I’m really only half Irish and I’m really not half because my grandmother was a (Barish, spelling?), that’s what they call Bo hunks in Austria and my mother was full blooded Swede so I was only a quarter. He said “It doesn’t matter and you’re with Tom Murphy.” Another thing about her dad is he was loud, his voice would, I mean he wasn’t trying to be loud but you think I’m loud, you know and that’s how we got along good I think, I was kind of like her dad in terms of how loud I am but he had a terrible influence on me and he was a great guy. But anyway, he’d bring me to these Hibernian meetings and “Billy will tell you about this” or “Billy will tell you about that” and “Isn’t this how it is Billy?” so pretty soon I was President of the Hibernians for a year, yes.
And I really enjoyed it. I met a lot of really neat people and the thing that Ellen said about how poor they were, and a lot of them didn’t want to talk about Ireland but we weren’t looking to talk about Ireland, we were just looking to kind of enjoy life and do our jobs and then have fun when we got together, you know and a lot of these old, there was Paddy Murray and there what was the guy, that was like the “Digger O’Dell”, do you remember? But you know, a lot of
7 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. them, they wouldn’t even talk normally, you’d go downtown and they’d say “Hi, Bill” or “how
are you doing Brother Gallagher” or something and then get into these meetings and they’d
start singing , they’d get up and start telling stories. There’s a guy named Paddy Murray, would
just kind of wander back and forth, couldn’t get ‘em to sit down after they got going, so I think
they used that as a , I don’t know, kind of a, almost a psychological thing. They’d never miss a
meeting. We had two meetings a month and they were there all the time. They’d be praying
and right in the middle of praying they’d be swearing. It was amazing.
BS: Sounds about right.
WG: Yes. When we first got there, they had these big glasses like those that glass there, and
Eddie McCarthy came around and they got these, they call them the “Montana Fifth,” those gallons of whiskey we didn’t have that until around ’70 around here anyway and so Eddie
McCarthy and Pete McNally would each take one. We never had maybe 16 people except for
special meetings, and they’d walk around, start out and they’d fill it about half up with whiskey
and then they’d say “Would you want a little water?” and then they meant a little water and
they’d say “well, you have to be like the priest,” and they’d put a couple of drops in it and then
half way through the meeting here they’d come around again and the glass better be empty. Or
I mean they’re going to be on you! And then you only had the two at the regular meetings. And
a lot that went on at the meetings, and the stories that you can’t really use names because it
was all kind of confidential and, if I get carried away with names, you’ll just have to kind of mark
it off because sometimes I remember names better than I should.
BS: So your father, Tom was a member of the OH?
EG: Yes, and my grandfather—
8 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: Your grandfather also was right?
EG: And I don’t know if any I don’t think my uncle, I had an Uncle Walter Murphy and I don’t
believe that he belonged to the Hibernians
BS: What kinds of things did they do as part of the Hibernians?
EG: You know, it family oriented, they had a Christmas party, every year, they had a Christmas
party and candy and donuts and pop and Santa Claus came and then during the summertime
they had a picnic, where the families got together out at one of the camp grounds, local
campgrounds and then they went on this picnic, but as far as family activities, that was about it.
My dad helped take care of the Hall, there was a lady there called Mrs. Dunne that was the
caretaker, and he was on call I think for her. She would call up and say “Is Tommy there?” “The roof is leaking” or “The toilet‘s overflowed”. That was the old hall. So he’d go up there and help her. He’d get up there she’d want to have a little toddy so sometimes he thought she was just maybe a little lonesome. Yes, but he held several offices; the only ones I really remember are
Financial Secretary and Treasurer in the Hibernians and he let me help fill out the vouchers and write the checks and taught me bookkeeping for his Hibernian doings.
BS: Was it through the Hibernians that he did the volunteering?
EG: No, no, that was just him. But the Catholic schools needed help and then they built the St.
Joe’s so he’d go up after work like so many Anaconda people did and help financially. And he’d go around, we lived in a neighborhood of Italians so he’d go, his block would be our block and the next few blocks down and so he would go, he would go around and each Italian would give him a glass of wine so by the time he came home….
WG: And you’d go with him with a jug of wine.
9 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Right. So he had quite a good time when he went volunteering. I don’t think that’s why he did it to start with but it ended up being a good thing for him.
WG: And it was a Catholic thing, really. I mean but it was Irish but it was more Catholic
EG: Yes, more than
WG: It was an Irish thing but it was more Catholic.
EG: I just figured that it must be because of his upbringing, his Irish upbringing, his Irish Catholic upbringing, that he was like that.
WG: And then after my mother died, my mother was just deathly opposed to drinking, wouldn’t you say, Grandma?
EG: Um-hm.
WG: I mean she’d have a drink every now and then, but she just for sure she didn’t want my dad to be involved with drinking so I think probably that’s the reason he wasn’t a Hibernian. I don’t know why my grandfather was [wasn’t?]. But after my mother died about two years he’s calling me up, “Hey I want to get in that organization you’re in”. And he got real busy. But he didn’t take any positions. He always had to carry the Irish flag and how long was he there, 15 years maybe? or a little longer than that he went to meetings and he’d be on me “Come on, come on with me” and we have 3 or 4 drinks and got to know one another and he was the kind of guy that liked to drink the hard liquor and right to your face have a shot and then pretty soon have another shot. And he got to know Eddie and the younger guys and they just loved him.
You know, he’d travel around with Jimmy Thomas and Jack Kelly and those guys when they’d be going around to different towns and he kind of went along as a driver or whatever until he
10 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. passed away. So he really enjoyed the Hibernians too. But it was through me more than I got
involved through him. Yes, yes.
BS: So did you have brothers and sisters in your family?
WG: We do, yes. My youngest brother, Tim, is a he’s a Hibernian now, he was influenced I guess
by me to become a Hibernian but he’s not real active. He has a place at Georgetown and he
kind of works on it all the time and he’s not real social. I usually call him when I’m going to meetings and once in a while he’ll go with me, you know. My brother Bob, Tim is seven years younger than I am and Bob’s five. He’s, I don’t think ever been a Hibernian. He’s very religious.
He’s into that what’s that group? Yes, the Life in the Spirit movement. He wants me to get in there and you’re not going, to put those hands over me and make me raise up and make - start
talking funny like that but anyway, they’re into that and we understand that but we’re not
involved in it. And then I have a sister who was the baby after a girl died, that was a girl named
Terri (spelling?) died. And then my sister Nancy came along two year later and so we spoiled the daylights out of her. I was what 12 years?
EG: You were 13 years.
WG: Yes, I was 13 years older than she is. And she lives in Helena and had a family of 4 boys but she is divorced now and on her way to another marriage in Colorado somewhere. I don’t know where that is in Colorado, to an Anaconda boy.
EG: Around Steamboat Springs.
WG: And then my, my middle brother that’s Bob works at the Hospital and he has, is it 8 children?
EG: Nine
11 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: Nine. Ellen can name them I can’t, I can name most of them. But they’re good kids, they’re
all neat kids, but they’re all grown too so. Yes so that’s all the family.
BS: So you both went to Central?
WG: and St. Paul’s. She came from St. Peter’s and taught us how to read. We were what kind of reading?
EG: We had phonetic. We learned to read phonetics at St. Peter’s and they did sight reading.
And then when I went to St. Paul’s school the next year because we had moved up to a different part of town. My grandmother had died and my grandfather had diabetes and my mom moved up there with the family to take care of him and that’s how I got to St. Paul’s. And they were sight reading there and nobody could sound out a word so I had to stand up in front of the big, like the easel that had the sounds on it and point to the sounds.
WG: Cutest little thing I ever saw in my life. I knew I was going to marry her. I thought “I’m going to marry her someday”. She didn’t know it though.
EG: She thought I was smart until she really figured it out. Till I got to the math.
BS: And you went on to become a teacher Bill?
WG: Yes, I did. I went to Carroll, and I was a, like I told you earlier; I worked for an insurance adjusters and I thought I was going to do that., I really liked the job, but I’d go out to dinner and people would invariably be like “Hey, I didn’t get my claim, haven’t been around. I’m waiting a
claim.” So I thought Hey, I’m trained in teaching. I’d rather do that. So there was one of my
colleagues, the same year as I, his named (Grappo? name unintelligible) he his dad was from
Philipsburg and he was from Philipsburg, and I was running all over trying to find a job. cuz I
had, we had a baby on the way, wasn’t born yet our oldest boy wasn’t born yet, but it so I knew
12 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. I needed a job I was, and I didn’t want to go back to Anaconda because I thought I’d end up at
the smelter maybe in the office or something and I didn’t want to do that and so I was going in eastern Montana in all these little towns and finally (Grappo? name unintelligible) said “Why
don’t you come along with us and I know a kid my same age is the Superintendent’s boy. I’ll
introduce you to the Superintendent and I’m sure you can get on.” And that’s what happened.
And I got on, for 5 years, did everything, had a wild job to start with, had a senior English,
freshman/sophomore speech class, American government, world history, put on the junior play
and the senior play, was assistant football coach. I mean that was a, but I loved it.
BS: And where was that?
WG: In Philipsburg. And some of those kids now are my best friends. I’m on Facebook with a
bunch of friends, most of them Philipsburg kids you know.
EG: Right,
BS: And then you got your Master’s at the University.
WG: And then I got my Master’s in, in summer’s I’d go along and get my Masters and work for,
you know, I’d get 12 hours and I’d want to be around so that when the kids were playing, I’d want to be at their games and stuff. So I was about maybe one year away, or a year and a half away and we decided well we had a little bit of savings so I said let’s just move over and then I can do what I want in Anaconda in the summers, may be find a job or whatever and be with the kids. And so we got over there and about the third night, I got hooked up with a guy from Butte who was a, elementary teacher, is that what (Rison’s? name unintelligible) job was. No he was a principal, a principal in Troy and he invited me out and he had designs on me I guess because he said, “You know we need a counselor, we really need a counselor in Troy” after we’d had a
13 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. few drinks and I said “Hey I’ve just moved my family, I can’t do that” and to make a long story
short, two days later he brought the Superintendent and then we were at a party again and I
said, “We got to go tell my wife.” And he said” We’ll guarantee you, we’ll pay your way until you get your Masters, if it takes another summer or another two summers or whatever. So I
said okay. We packed up and went to Troy and I worked in Troy for a year.
BS: Yes.
WG: Yes, we didn’t like Troy because it was too far away from everything we knew. It’s way up
by Canada and close, Spokane, it was fun at Christmas to go to Spokane, but we didn’t get any news from Anaconda or Butte people. We’re Anaconda and Butte people, you know and the
unions weren’t strong, we were used to that and you’d go in, and Philipsburg was like that too
and it was almost like a fish market. They’d say “What do you need to teach next year?” individually. And if you got too high or if you were too low they’d figure you weren’t worth too much. That was how it was in Troy. So, I said, “What am I going to tell them, Ellen?” and she said, “Why don’t you ask them if they’ll fly us in and out on the weekends?” because we really want to move so I did (laugh). And that was it. I asked for $2000.00 in flying in out on the weekends and then the Superintendent went to Columbia Falls and he called me and wanted me to go there but we were going to Anaconda and the main reason for going to Anaconda was our kids were starting school and I wanted them to get a Catholic education. And they got about, the oldest boy got
EG: 2nd grade
WG: and the youngest got two years, I guess, kindergarten, and they took over the Catholic
schools.
14 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: On no, that was Bill.
WG: Just one year, yes and they closed the Catholic schools.
EG: That was Billy, thought. Pat didn’t get to go.
WG: No, Pat didn’t, no. And so the influence was not there. It took me a long time. I took a job with job service for a couple months and finally there was a job in January in grade school and I had never taught anything but senior high but I took the job just to do it. The engineer and I were the only guys there. You know, I don’t hate women. She said “at the end of the year
“You’d better get a better job away from that school”. Because, you know, Anaconda was good, times were good so I knew the high school principal, I called him and he said “What can you teach?” So I told him all the things I just told you and he said, “I might have a government job. If you don’t say anything I’ll call you in two weeks and I think I can sign a contract.” And so that’s what happened.
BS: And so you taught English and?
WG: No, just American government to start out with. Yes. Yes, and I was there for about six years and worked at the junior high for maybe 12, counseled at the junior high. Great job, loved the kids. But they’re not people, junior high kids are not people until about three years later.
And I started acting like them. After 12 years I was like, you know if you’re with junior highs a lot of time you start acting like them. And the other thing is, I never got to see a good kid. I was kind of the disciplinarian and the one that was supposed to have all the answers for the ones that were having problems and it just kind of almost burned me out, and I said I’ve got to get out of this. So then when I went back I taught English for a while, 6 or 7 years and I did
15 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Government again, you know, and I do U.S History and English, then I’d do English again and so for 40 years I bounced around like that between the high school and the junior high.
BS: Yes.
WG: But I enjoyed every minute of it. Until, until the last couple years when I worked part time and the kids were changing, and they changed so much that kids who I taught were calling, complaining about how I was treating their kids.
B S: Oh right, okay.
WG: But they didn’t really mean it. Their wives were saying “You gotta call this guy, he’s slamming their kid up against the locker” and these guys was saying “You should have seen what he was like the first couple years around here.” And they were, you know, I wasn’t being brutal to people but we just didn’t take any baloney from them and but as, you had to mellow, you had to get, I don’t know, kids kind of are really spoiled as far as I’m concerned now, my grandkids drive, I love them dearly but they drive me crazy. I don’t know, they’re spoiled to death.
BS: I saw the upstairs though and they got to paint any room they wanted to.
WG: Oh they did, yes, so we still do that.
EG: Spoiling, that’s for sure.
WG: Yes.
BS: So what was it like growing up in Anaconda? Was it a very Irish town or was it a mixture or?
WG: You would you would think Irish but I would think mixture.
EG: I think mixture too because of where I lived. We lived (phrase unintelligible). My I called it
Little Italy all the time because there were so many Italian people around because most of the
16 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. Irish people lived east, the eastern part of town. And my grampa was a that we moved up to
live with was a railroad person so he was right across from the railroad where his house was
and so that’s where I grew up where all the Italians who worked on the railroad lived too, so,
yah, I’d say diverse. There were a lot of different people in Anaconda.
WG: But it was a wonderful life. It was a wonderful life. And it didn’t, you know, kids had the
run of the town almost. On weekends from the time, I was kind of wild, and Ellen wasn’t at all.
But we weren’t together until probably our junior year steady. The priest kept breaking us up
and calling in the room and saying “You’re going to be a priest” and “You’re going to be a nun”
and I’d be the only one in the room would say “I don’t want to be a priest. I want to get married and have a bunch of kids.” And then Ellen was like, but I don’t think you were ever going to be a nun were you?
EG: No, I prayed about it but I didn’t feel the urge to be, especially in the senior year.
WG: So in that respect, it was mostly the Irish people, but we had a wonderful education. And we had the Ursaline nuns and the Benedictine nuns and the Dominican nuns and we almost, very rarely had a lay person in the classroom. And those, they were mean, I mean they’d slap your hands, they were just, they were real disciplinarians
EG: Well only when you
WG: Well yes, if you had it coming.
EG: That’s how I felt anyway. I never got disciplined by them but I know people who did and I figured they had it coming.
WG: And we respected that, you know. If you did the wrong thing, you needed punishment and as you got older you didn’t need as much punishment.
17 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: But if you did something wrong, you would never go home to complain about it like they do
nowadays because you’d get it twice as bad. I’d get it from my mom and my dad.
WG: So would anybody our age. One time we stole some things out of the 3rd street grocery at
lunchtime, I remember, about 6 of us and we were, walking down, the, buses used to come up, they deliver the people from the smelter so there was a natural bus route about every two hours and we were walking, Central was about ten blocks from our house and the store was about eight blocks from Central and after we got, we got, we threw rocks at the bus and broke a window and ran away. We were maybe sophomores or juniors in high school and Father
McCoy, Ellen’s cousin, was a, is he a cousin or kind of a 2nd cousin?
EG: A distant cousin
WG: He was a jerk. Anybody you’d talk to in Anaconda would call him a jerk you know. Because he was real strict. And he, he was just a jerk. He’d call us in in September and say “Youse two still going together? I want you to break up because it’s not good” and then, not just us but he’d do that with anybody that was dating girls. I don’t know I don’t want to say bad things about priests but I didn’t have a lot of respect for him.
Anyway, we got the call, I had to go down to McCoy’s’ office. The first thing he says, this is how jerky I thought he was, he says “Mrs. Gallagher, I don’t know what kind of a home William comes from but I assume it’s a good one” and my mother was on my side, as soon as she heard that. And I thought “Good deal”. But I’d still got in trouble when I went home; and I’d get in trouble from my dad but like I said he worked all the time so it would be “Well, your father he’s coming in tonight at one in the morning but tomorrow he gets off at 4 so you’d better be here at 4:30 because he’s going to deal with that” and he did.
18 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: Yes.
WG: My junior and senior year I didn’t have a car, senior year I did I guess.
EG: There was a whistle that blew at the smelter everyday at 4 o’clock every night and that was
the signal for all the kids in town to go home for dinner. So if you were more than a half hour
later you were in big trouble, at least I was, everybody you talked to was.
WG: As soon as the street lights came on, in the summer, you’d better be home in half an hour.
Every town, I’m sure, every town had those kinds of things.
EG: Yes, when I first moved back into town there were street cars up to the west end I was still going to St. Peter’s grade school and there were street cars. I’d ride the street car with my
sister. Every day we’d go down and eat lunch at school and we’d come back on the street car by the smelter. That went on a regular basis. It stopped at every corner where there was a bar but we lived up close to what they called the car barns there’s a bank now where they used to be.
We got off on the last stop I think, my sister and I. One day, she didn’t wait for me. She got on because I was dilly-dallying I’m sure and one of my cousins, one of my Irish cousins, found me.
He just came out of the bar after, he was walking home and he saw me standing on the corner crying and so he gave me a ride home after we’d walked up the street to his house on Ash
Street and I got a ride home from there. My sister got in trouble but I’m probably the one who should have gotten in trouble because I wasn’t there when the street car left.
BS: What was Anaconda like when the smelter was going? Was it very different?
WG: Yes, it was a lot more like Butte in that they were boisterous. In fact you lived in the same universe. And Butte was, it was always windy up around Butte because Whitehall was windy,
Helena was windy, Anaconda was windy and the reason was Butte sucked.
19 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. (Everybody laughs)
WG: But that’s kind of how Anaconda people felt, you know. But then after you get out and
away from Butte and the competition you had in sports and stuff, then you’d be best friends,
like you’d go to a Shrine game or something. And I remember fighting on the field with the
Shrine games with chains and knuckles and the whole thing. Anaconda and Butte said “We’ll
take on anybody who wants to come down and meet us at half-time.” Or when the game’s over with (word unintelligible).
EG: He was bad wasn’t he? It took long time to tame him.
WG: I remember I had a policeman told me one time “You’re going to jail” he said. We came
out one winter, it was really cold, it was like 30 below, it was a basketball game. There were
four of us, who shall remain who should be nameless and we came out and I didn’t say it but
one of them said. “There’s a police car sitting there”, and it was running and one of them said
“Why don’t we take the car home?.” I mean it was a lot easier than walking as far as we had to
walk. So one of the guys got in, I got in the passenger and he got in the driver’s seat and two
guys in the back and they’re yelling “Car 17 gone” or “Car 14 is gone “ and whatever it was and
we were saying like “Oh, it’s not really gone you know and you’ll find it tonight”. “There was
another car there, a police car there so we delivered everybody and I was second last and so
this kid said to me “Where are we going to park the car?” and I “How about Gene O’Neil’s,” he’s
a guy who always got in trouble and lived not too far from either one of us, “I said let’s just take
it down to Gene O’Neil’s and park it so that’s what we did. But anyway we didn’t get caught but
we got caught doing other things and a policeman told me, his names Jack Lynch, good old Irish
20 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. cop , he said “Gallagher, I guarantee before you’re 18 you’re going to Miles City”, that’s where, it was kind of a place for bad kids was. But I didn’t end up there. I was lucky.
BS: Ellen kept you on the straight and narrow?
WG: Not too much. No, she did later though.
EG: Yes.
WG: In high school I kind of did what I wanted to. I wasn’t, you know, there were people a lot wilder. I never smoked drugs in my life, I never did any drugs, but I drank a lot.
EG: I wouldn’t do that in high school.
WG: No, she didn’t, she’d be a driver. We didn’t have designated drivers but people like Ellen would just do that and we knew they would and they weren’t called anything.
EG: I would never go to the parties.
WG: No, but I would.
EG: But in those days, I don’t think the boys partied with the girls.
WG: No, and at dances we didn’t.
WG: One time at Carroll College, Ellen wasn’t there, I went to a keg at Remni (word unintelligible). And this it sounds like a terrible story but it’s true. There must have been 300 people there I don’t know how much beer but it was like turn it on for 15 minutes and drink and drink and drink and we got in the car and we got about 3 or 4 miles away, we rolled the car, three of us, nobody got hurt, hitchhiked back to the keg, and got in another car maybe an hour later, rolled that car, not as bad, just kind of rolled it off the edge and so as we’re going back some guy says to me: “We’d better be careful about the cars we go back in this time”. We knew this friend of ours kid from Baker Montana had a convertible. And I said to him “Let’s get in that
21 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. convertible. There‘s no way we’re going to roll that convertible. That’ll be safe”. And that’s how we got home. I mean, how messed up was that?
BS: You think of it now, it’s a wonder
WG: Yes.
BS: Wonder you made it at all.
WG: And Carroll was a great place. When I went to Carroll, at least 60, closer to 70% were Butte or Anaconda people and that McCoy I told you about? I went down to Anaconda, my good friend Joe O’Conner who was a lawyer in Anaconda said “Why don’t you go to Gonzaga? We’ll room together” because we’d been around a big city and knew what we could do and my grades, maybe Cs . I was interested in athletics and raising hell and girls and all that stuff. I said
I’ll go down. He said “I already got McCoy to sign this thing”. So when I go Father McCoy said: “I can’t do that, Bill” he said. And I said “What you talking about?” He said “You go to Spokane” he said, “You’ll be in jail. You’ll end up in prison. Your parents. If you want to go to college, you’re going to Carroll College.” I said “What are you talking about.” I said “There’s, queers, alcoholics and priests that come out of Carroll College and I’m not going to be none of those things”. And that how it was you know. That was our way to think. But he says “If you want a transcript, I’ll send it to Carroll College.” And you know what, I never even argued with him. I just thought that’s how it is. And I went there and it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
EG: So he did you a favor.
WG: Between 7 and 10 o’clock they had me sitting at my desk or at least in my room with the door closed and my roommate there and I had to study. On the weekends you’d have to be home at 12:30, all the rest of the time you had to be in bed at 10:30 and every now and then
22 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. you could get a after you were there 6 months you could get a ‘per’ it was called and then you
could go back to town , the town you came from, but you’d have to be back by 12: o’clock. And
I did pretty well there, a lot better than I did in high school. I remember I got an F in U S History in high school. And so I made it my major, I did. (Laughter)
BS: You did.
WG: Yes I did. So I graduated in history and sociology from Carroll. It was just, I didn’t like the nun, I guess, but she was a good teacher.
BS: You like the challenge.
WG: Maybe. That’s just how I used to be.
EG: It wasn’t challenge to him either. He just didn’t apply himself in high school is what it was.
BS: So when you were growing up in your house, Ellen, was it, were there particular? Both your parents, your mother was Irish too?
EG: No, she was Scottish.
BS: Your mother was Scottish. So your father obviously was Irish, was there a very Irish kind of an Irish identity to the household?
EG: No, not really, you know, no other than that we were Irish and that was about it. And we celebrated St. Patrick’s Day and we went to church every Sunday and it was a big part of our lives; and then on Sundays we’d go to visit our grandparents. And in our early days, we didn’t have a car but when we moved up with my grandfather he had a car and we used the car to go to one end of the of the town to the other, on Sundays to mass and to visit with the grandparents. You know, in those days, we didn’t, I didn’t really know my grandparents that much. My grandmothers, both died when I was very young. So, I knew my grandfathers better.
23 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. St. Patrick’s Day was a big deal but it was more of a big deal for my parents because they were
going out to have dinner and dance and have a good time but one thing my dad always did, it’s
always started with mass, of course, and so we always knew it was a religious thing. But the one thing he did do before mass, which he never even took even took water before mass in the old days, he would go down to the hall and have a shot of whiskey on St. Patrick’s Day. And Bill and
I continue that tradition every year now in his name, in dad’s name and his dad’s name now
too. It wasn’t real Irish but you would think in my later years, my mom became a member of the Lady Hibernians
BS: She did?
EG: Yes, she did, she didn’t have to. It was an auxiliary at that time so you didn’t need to be
Irish, you only had to be married to an Irishman and then she and Bill ended up being Grand
Marshals together in, was it 1990?
WG: No, it was, maybe 2 years before the Hall closed, whenever the Hall closed. And I’m sure I got because Sadie had it.
EG: That was in the old hall, the new hall, I mean.
WG: Was it? Before they buried the hall?
EG: No it was after the hall.
WG: Okay yes, it was after. I’m mistaken about that.
EG: Maybe it’s ’93 or ‘94 because I think it was a year before my mom passed away in ’95. so
‘94.
WG: And I’m sure I got it because it because of her mother. Her mother was revered in that organization. She went to everything.
24 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Nobody knew she wasn’t Irish.
BS: She was married to an Irishman, she had Irish children.
WG: Yes. That’s right.
EG: Yes.
WG: My dad was real religious too. He was very religious. My mother was not a Catholic and after about, I guess when all the kids were born, when she became a Catholic.
EG: The year we got married.
WG: He would never miss mass. We’d do the same thing they did. We would always go to
EG: And she went too.
WG: Oh year, oh god yes. When she wasn’t a Catholic, she went all the time. She just insisted. I mean, she would take us when he was working on Sundays a lot of times.
EG: Both our mothers were converts.
WG: The whole town was like that, at that time. Anaconda was a very religious community, compared to how, I mean if you didn’t go to church on Sunday, something bad had happened to you or your family, you know. But not only the Catholic Church, all the churches were like that. That was just the neighborhood, kind of.
EG: Both of our parents being that neither mother was Catholic, when they got married were not allowed to marry in the church itself, they had to marry in the parish house.
WG: Yes, both of them. Then after my dad got involved with the Hibernians, he would send money back to our relatives in Ireland. He and mother made two trips and she would only go to
Ireland if he would promise on the same trip go to Sweden. So they did that the first time, and the next time, she didn’t care about going to Sweden, she wanted to go back to Ireland, to
25 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. County Monaghan where they had the Corrigan relatives and to Donegal where they had the
Gallaghers, but he never did meet a Gallagher out there. But he still corresponds with, or he did until he passed away, with the Corrigans.
BS: And have you been to Ireland?
WG: No, no, we never have, we never have. I always thought, and we always talked about it at
Hibernian meeting when they sold the hall that everybody who had a lifetime membership would be sent but that just kind of passed because it would’ve been too expensive. I always thought well that’s the way to go. And my father always said, “I’m going to leave the two of you enough money so you can go to Ireland but we’ve put it into here. (Laugh)
WG: But eventually we might get to go sometime. But we went to Notre Dame, a couple times and you know when we went to Notre Dame games, the first time I went to Indiana to Notre
Dame it was with Ellen and my boys, and it was like dying and going to heaven. It was just so cool. And that’s the other thing about my three boys, they’re, they were all All-State football players.
BS: Oh is that right?
WG: Yes, yes.
BS: Very good
WG: Yes, we’re real proud of them.
BS: That was must have been great fun, within the community.
WG: And Ellen wasn’t, well you didn’t really understand football, like when you were a cheerleader, you didn’t really or did you? I don’t know.
26 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: No, not football, well a little bit I understood it but I, my cousin Alan played and my dad explained it to me but you couldn’t watch it on TV at the time like you can nowadays, like I do nowadays.
WG: When I would hunt, as the kids were younger, we went family weekend. Friday night we’d go hunting, and camp somewhere usually up here and we’d keep track, Ellen would watch the
NFL, and the college games, and when we’d get home she’d tell us the scores of the ones we were interested in.
EG: Not the plays though, as soon as the play’s over, I’d forget. I’m not like the guys, I don’t remember every game and every that
B G: Is he (phrase unintelligible):
BS: Yes. I (unintelligible) played or watched.
BS: Bryan and has been trying to explain football to me
(Screech sound)
WG: That’s our telephone, that’s our telephone, that’s an elk bugle.
BS: Oh, is that what it is?
EG: for just a minute (goes on phone in background)
WG: Then when they’d go on strikes, a couple strikes, he ended up working for the Union
Pacific. He was an engineer. First he was a fireman, first he was a wiper, they’d call ‘em, the guy that’d wipe down the engines, and he was a hostler (spelling), he’d call the people every night, he’d call 905 every night. I remember and he’d say “Which shifts can I handle with my seniority” you know they’d make the board up every night. So he didn’t know from day to day what he was going to do.
27 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. (Some aside conversations. With videographer Patrick Cook, Ellen returns).
BS: So your dad worked for what railroad?
WG: The Anaconda Pacific, yes. The one that hauled the ore back and forth.
BS: You, um, when you, ah, I can see you obviously haven’t been to Ireland but I can see there’s
lots of Irish mementos, bits and pieces around the house.
WG: And that’s from being around the Hibernians I think and being interested in that. The finest
people we meet are Irish people, it seems like.
EG: Well my dad used to sing Irish songs around the house
BS: He did?
WG: What were some of the sayings he used to have?
EG: I wrote them down. And I don’t know if those are even. He had a great sense of humor. He
used to instead of saying Jesus Christ, if he was using the name in vain he would say “Jesus H,
Haitch Christ” he’d say and I guess that means Jesus Heavenly Christ, but I guess, I don’t know, I
never asked him why he said it like that, and he didn’t always use it in vain, he just said it
sometimes in vain and sometimes not. And I didn’t ever know if that’s Irish or not.
BS: A lot of people do at home.
WG: Do they?
BS: and I’ve never thought to ask why.
EG: I think it’s for “heavenly” and I thought maybe he figures it’s not swearing or taking the
Lord’s name in vain if he says it like that. But I really don’t know.
BS: Yes.
EG: And then he, he used to wear a 10 ½ shoe but it wasn’t 10 ½ it was half past ten.
28 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: Yes?
EG: Is that an Irish thing.
BS: It is.
EG: And then he’d say, when my babies were small and would toot, he used to say “My mother
used to say ‘Better out in the big wide world than in a little tiny gut”. And that was his from his
mom that was Irish. And then one of the things he’d say when he got in trouble with my mother, he’d say he got “hot tongue and cold shoulders for dinner”.
WG: When he’d drink too much every night.
EG: Not every night
WG: Well a lot. He’d stop at the bar
EG: Usually Friday nights.
BS: Hot tongue and cold shoulder for dinner.
EG: And then, what else did he say. Oh, if he had to take the same pie two days in a row, my mother baked a new pie every day because he wanted to take a different slice of pie everyday so he could trade it off, but if she didn’t for some reason get one baked, he tell everybody the honeymoon was over. He’d come home and tell her “I had to tell ‘em the honeymoon was over.
Same kind of pie”.
WG: He never complained if he didn’t get.
EG: He’d always trade if for whatever they had, I don’t know what. But she made great pies.
And then he always used to say to us kids to buy our shoes to fit our feet and not our eyes. I don’t know where he got, if these were things that his folks said or some of his own.
WG: Just made ‘em up.
29 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: And then he had a Scottish saying that was “Tis a broad bricht moonlict nicht” which means
it was a bright light moonlight night”. I think he learned that from my grandfather MacDonald,
they were M-a-c MacDonald.
BS: Yes.
EG: I think that’s all. Oh, he heard the banshees once in a while, when someone was ready to die, and I always though he heard something special but I don’t know what that was all about.
WG: He would hear ‘em?
EG: He would say he heard banshees.
WG: When I was teaching junior high, I had a boy, I’m sure he wouldn’t care if I used his name,
Fitzpatrick was his name, and he came to school upset one morning when I was counseling so I
called him in and “What’s going on?” and he said “My grampa said he heard these things the
other night and my dad tells me he’s going to die.” And I said “How old’s your grampa?” and he
said “he was 82” or something like that and I said “Well, what did he hear?” “Some kind of band
stuff, some kind of band stuff, do you know about that?” ” And I said “Well, I don’t know too
much about it but I’ve heard about Irishmen and banshees and maybe you know there’s a book
out about owls and when you heard the owl call your name and so maybe it’s kind of like that.”
And he said” Does that mean he’s going to die?” And I said so what would you say, you know, so I said:” Well, we’re all going to pass away some day. How sick is your grampa?” And well, the next night the guy was gone.
EG: I never thought too much about the banshees but Bill’s mom and dad were on their second trip to Ireland and when she came home, she said one of the relatives that she, that was sort of like an outcast of the family, she was doing wrong things all the time, and she said she just cried
30 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. and cried and cried and cried and cried when they left, and I said to Bill after , I said “I wonder if
that was the banshee crying all the way from Ireland and because she was dead in six months.
WG: Yes, my mother was.
EG: Yes. She said she was crying and crying and crying and saying all that. She said “Why are you crying?” and she said “I know I’ll never see you again.”
WG: “I’ll never see you again.”
BS: Oh, my goodness.
EG: Yes, so I asked this Betty Shelty (spelling unclear), who was this Irish person who belonged to the Lady Hibernians, if you had to be in Ireland, to be actually there to hear the banshees, and she said, “Well, she probably heard the banshees crying, I don’t know”. But it just gave me the chills down my spine when she told me that. It was just really weird.
WG: How did that come up?
EG: Maybe it was just because I’d heard my dad talk about the banshees all the time when somebody died and I just figured it was some. He was here, but I don’t know if he ever heard anything or heard the doctor say they’re going to die, which it probably was.
BS: And you, and we had the pleasure of interviewing Eddie McCarthy last week and he showed us all the pictures of the burial of the hall so clearly there’s a strong tradition there. But you talked there about the banshee and people passing, were there any particular funeral traditions to Anaconda, or to the Anaconda Irish, do you think?
EG: There was always two nights of the wake when we were growing up they had a wake, but it was always at the funeral home. Bill had a family member
WG: But they weren’t Catholic. He was killed in the service, in the 40’s.
31 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: I was talking about the aunt (Hilda or Holda)
WG: Oh, oh. But Bob Swanson, when I was like 4 or 5 years old. The casket was in the home,
but it wasn’t a Catholic service. But I just remember that I had to go the bathroom or something
and went out and bumped into this body that I didn’t even know and I
EG: Yes, they always had two nights and then afterwards you’d come up to the house and have
luncheon and drinks and stuff like that, for at least two nights, sometimes three nights.
WG: The church really wasn’t involved with it like they are now.
EG: No, it was always in the funeral home.
WG: They’d send the food to the homes and then people would they’d use that for the two
nights.
EG: Um hum, yes. If anyone died in Anaconda, my dad was one of the first ones at the door
with a salad that my mom had made. You know, they always took care of the people who had
passed away, their family and stuff. My dad must have went to every wake in Anaconda.
WG: Yes, that just how guys were.
EG: My mom never went to wakes unless she absolutely had to. But my dad went to every one.
And then if it was somebody he knew and needed to be a pall bearer, he’d lay off work and go
to that but
WG: See, my dad didn’t do that because he worked all the time. He would never go.
EG: But I always thought that was an Irish thing. He’d, you know is it you know visit the sick and
bury the dead” and that’s Catholic.
WG: You know I taught with a fellow I knew, he wouldn’t care if I used his name, Paul Sullivan
that taught until last year, he was older than us and he’d do the same thing. He went to every,
32 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. if he knew the person, he’d go the morning before school or go at lunch time and sign the book
or he’d be at the wake or he’d be at the funeral. A lot of times you don’t have wakes now you
know, like they did then. I’ll bet that guy went to about 10,000 funerals and wakes probably.
Everybody he knew in Anaconda that passed away.
EG: My dad spent a lot of time at wakes, it seemed like, so
BS: That tradition of waking has, it’s not as prevalent anymore?
WG: Lot of times they don’t even have a service. They just bury them in the summertime
somewhere or, scatter the ashes.
BS: So it’s straight to the burial.
WG: Yes, and the rest of that
EG: I think I’ll be leaving that up to my kids whatever they want. It’s actually for the survivors.
WG: When we were raised though, when we were raised, those nuns told us your body’s
coming back and you don’t put tattoos on it and don’t ever get cremated. Or bad stuff’s going
to happen. And I remember I got kicked out of Central three times and that was one of them.
And the other one was, we had a big argument in religious class. Father Bertori (name unclear)
said, we were talking about you had to pray out loud for it to make those would count more
than the ones. And I said “What about people that can’t talk? They don’t get to have this good
prayer, you know.” “Git outa here” he’d say and I’d go up to the guy that finally hired me in
Anaconda and Father McCoy’d already made the call and he’d say “You’re wasting your time,
Bill. You got two weeks at home. I already talked to McCoy. And yes, nuts.
33 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: You, so you talked about their St. Patrick’s Day being a particular festival and the wakes
being handled in a particular way, were there any other, I suppose cultural moments, or
moments in the year that were particularly connected with the Irish community?
EG: I think when we were in grade school, they always had an essay contest for Irish an Irish
history essay contest. It was sponsored by the Hibernians.
WG: When we were in 8th grade they taught Irish history, we had a semester of Irish history in
eighth grade.
EG: My dad would have been so happy if I’d won that prize (laughter). I made him happy in a lot
of other ways but that wasn’t one of them.
WG: I don’t know who ever did win it. A story about that is we spent a lot of time with the old, when I got my Hibernians, these were the classic Hibernians, the Billy Brennans and I mean these were all guys off the smelter, that wore the old white hats and had great stories, they were the guys that cooked the hot dogs for the kids at the picnics and most of them weren’t married, and if they did, they didn’t marry until they were in their 40’s, but, this where was I going to go with it? Tell me I’ve lost it.
EG: Being involved with all the older Hibernians.
WG: They’d tell us stories, so this Billy Brennan one time told me a story about. He was
supposed to have been the valedictorian in the eighth grade at St. Peters. And he said “I just
worked hard because my dad said, ‘I don’t want you up here on this hill, I want you to get some
further training.’” And he was really a sharp guy but he was an alcoholic, and he was a thing
called a “Markie” (word unclear) because they drank Marko (word unclear) this.
EG: They’d drink anything
34 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: I think yes, so anyway, he said “the nun came down and grabbed me by the ear after they
read the list and I was the top and she said “Francis, do you have a suit and a tie?” And he said,
“No, no I don’t.” “What do you have?” And he said “Well, I have my overalls, and I have another
pair of overalls, and I have a white shirt, I have 3 white shirts, tee shirts, just like I go to school”
and she said “You can’t, there’s no way you can do this. Because you have to stand up on the
stage and you have to give a little speech and you have to have a suit and a tie on. Is there any
way you can get that?” And he said “I didn’t even go home and ask my parents.” But he said
“And you know who did that” And he said, named some lady, I’ll just make it up, he said “That damn Mary Francis Brennan. She got to do it.” And when he told me that story he was still mad and he had to be, 60 years later I guess. He was fired up. And I said, “Well, Francis, you’ve done a lot of good anyway.” And he had, he was a great guy. He was a super fellow. He and Simon would take care of one another, he and Simon (McKittrick name unintelligible).
BS: You mentioned, Ellen, that your father sang a lot. Do you remember any of the songs he sang?
EG: I thought about it the other day and wrote down a few
WG: She does it too. She sings the songs.
EG: I don’t sing songs.
WG: You sing to the new grandkids.
EG: I sing doody-doody-doody doo. That was one of my dad’s songs. And it makes him dance.
WG: So we skype him. Soon as she starts that, this little guy 16 months old, starts dancing in the background to grandma’s songs.
35 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Yes, but he used to, I think he sang more Irish American songs like Galway Bay and Peggy
O’Neil , Finnegan’s wake, Great Day for the Irish, and what else? Oh, the Rose of Tralee, and I’ll
Take you home again Kathleen and Dear Old Donegal. All of those I think are more Irish
American.
BS: Oh, Rose of Tralee, my dad used to sing that.
EG: Okay. So yes he used to sing that. And then he’d sing us the Dolly with a hole in her stocking.
BS: I don’t know that one.
EG: I don’t think that’s an Irish one. And Just Molly and Me when he was in trouble with my mom. He got in trouble with my mom a lot. He ate a lot of hot tongue and cold shoulder. But
he’d sing Just Molly and Me and try to butter up to her. And that doody-doody-doo one, but
that’s about all I can remember. I was trying to think the other day about it but most of them
were, then if he and his brother ever got together like at my brother Mike’s wedding, they
came up to our house after the reception and they sang and sang and sang all these Irish songs.
WG: Yes, if you just get them started they’d go the rest of the night.
EG: Yes.
WG: Our family was never, our boys, we didn’t sing a whole lot. But one thing I remember
about singing, I had a student, a student, maybe a D student, and probably one of the poorest
kids I ever taught in Philipsburg and on St. Patrick’s Day we’d make it a point to go to all the
different bars, Ellen and I, after the celebration was over and when the kids were taken care of.
And we’d just go around to all the different bars. And the wildest bar in town was called the
Mill, and it was like, these kids that went to Medical school, I took them in there one time and
36 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. they said its kind of like going to the psych wards because everyone kind of walking around. But
when I’d go in there, they’d’ say “Mr. Gallagher, I;m so glad to see you” because people
wouldn’t go in there, normal teachers would never go in there these people when you’d go in
there, you had to be careful when they’d buy you a drink because you had to make sure it was
capped and stuff.
EG: something that you opened yourself.
WG: but I’m in there one day and the first part of the story we’re sitting at the bar having a
drink and at the end of the bar there was a guy that I don’t know, and all the rest of them just
coming up and then they’d leave and I’d buy a drink and say yes or no and have a couple with different ones, the guy at the end of the bar, would go, and I don’t know if I should do that
(makes a gesture) but that’s how he do it. Every time I’d look at him and so finally I did it back. I
didn’t know this guy and so I just kind of did the same thing back to him. And he just sat there.
And then he moved over a stool and I think he said something like “Why don’t you come here someday besides it’s not St. Patrick’s Day?” Or something and I said “I really don’t have any occasion.” “Think you’re better than me?” “No, I don’t think I’m better than you. Don’t be starting with me.” So I’m starting to get up and a big blond kid named Anderson was his last name, grabbed me on the shoulder and said “Mr. Gallagher, are you having a problem?” and I said, “No, no, this fellow and I are just talking, we’re talking sign language and now we’re talking.” And finally so he went over and just kind of grabbed the guy and threw him outside.
And I don’t know what he did with him but he just took care of it. It’s like. But the next year we went there again and it’s, and I don’t know who
EG: talk about Virgil singing
37 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: So then, at the end, as soon as that was over, there was a Virgil (last name unclear) was his
name, he said, “Mr. Gallagher, you’ve had kind of a bad time tonight. Would you mind if I sang
Galway Bay to you?” I said” I’d love it, Virgil”.
“Let’s go outside”, he said and so I said “Okay” and so Ellen and I and was it Tom (last name
unintelligible)?
EG: Yes, I think it was
WG: or maybe Adam. It doesn’t matter who the other one was. So we went outside and he
sang it, this poor kid from Philipsburg
EG: Gorgeous voice.
WG: Best I’ve ever heard guaranteed best I ever heard in my life. I never seen him again and I
don’t even know whatever happened to the kid. But he was a Finlander from Butte. He wasn’t
Irish.
EG: But the reason our kids didn’t ever sing was because I wasn’t blessed with the Irish voice
my dad had and I didn’t want to wreck music completely by singing too much.
WG: When I was in high school, in high school I had a chorus teacher and they were going to
start a, thing like, what was it, a thing like what was the name of the organization, band or, not
the fifes and the drums but what was the choral thing they were going to have?
EG: I don’t remember.
WG: They were going to have drums and they were going to have bugles anyway they were going to march around, he was just trying to get music going. So he was just trying to get music going. He had me try a drum and I couldn’t figure out how to do the drums
EG: Oh, the Drum and Bugle Corps.
38 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: Yes, Drum and Bugle. I couldn’t blow the bugle. So he said, “you can be the head of it, Bill”.
We were juniors or seniors. And I said “What are you talkin’ about” and he said “I’ll get a toilet plunger and I’ll show you” and so that was my job and I didn’t have to go to chorus and sing, but he’d teach me how to run the toilet plunger at the beginning and I never had to go to a parade. And then, a thing I did in junior high is I don’t know anything about Irish dancing. And so when the kids were 7th and 8th grade, we would bring in dancing teachers who thought they knew how to dance but not like they dance now. And so, every year I was at the junior high,
probably the whole beginning of March from the first of March until St. Patrick’s Day, we’d get
a group of girls together and march in the parade.
BS: Right
WG: And we had a great time doing that. And a lot of times it had nothing to do with Irish
dancing. Until Cait got involved Cait Francisco and she’d come and teach them the right way
BS: Oh she teaches the right way. She had me dancing.
EG: She did. I have pictures of you too. If you have an email address I’ll email them to you. The
125th, I have pictures of the dance.
BS: Oh it was great fun. I haven’t danced like that since I was in school. And it all came back to
me thanks to Cait.
WG: That’s great
EG: I love dancing too. My dad liked, and my mom.
WG: You really like to dance. I don’t like to. I‘d just as soon drink and watch.
EG: So when we were all together in high school I’d dance with everybody else.
WG: I got her after the dancing you know.
39 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: I notice you are wearing a claddagh ring there.
WG: Yes, I am. I’ve two of them. Ellen bought a gold one but it bent on me. They tell me I’m wearing it backwards but I have that big thing on there so I turn it around it bothers it so because I like to wear it all the time.
BS: It’s well worn.
WG: It is. I’ve had it a several years.
EG: Since you were a Grand Marshall.
WG: Is that when I got it?
EG: Yes, they didn’t have a gold one and so I got the silver one and then the gold one later for you.
WG: Yes. I just don’t ever take it off hardly.
EG: We enjoy the Hibernians and do different things with them. We’re not as active as we used to be since we’ve moved out here
WG: Yes, it’s hard to be out here.
BS: And you moved here in?
WG: ’03.
WG: We actually had that house since ’98, the little house but we would just stay 2 or 3 days.
EG: so we lived there and worked
WG: We think it’s a little bit of heaven out here. We, as you’re coming along, when you start
down that hill, when you get off, onto the oil, when you start down that hill, there a place
called “Lord’s Ranch” so we say “As soon as you pass the Lord’s place you’re going to get to
heaven pretty soon”. (Laughter)
40 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. B S: It’s just stunning. And you’ve hunted all your life?
WG: Yes, yes we have. It was kind of a tradition. It must have been a cheap thing to do and I don’t know that you save money doing it because gas was always, you know, not as expensive as it is now but the vehicles and things you’d spend money on.
BS: Yes
WG: but we’ve always hunted and every one of our kids really likes hunting and fishing.
EG: And now our grandkids are starting into hunt.
BS: Is that part of the reason you bought this place?
WG: Yes. Just where it was more than anything.
EG: they hunted all our lives, his life.
B G: Yes we (unintelligible)
EG: Since we lived in Philipsburg.
WG: Yes, a lot of people have other places to go but this is kind of our spot. In July, when we first moved here in the summer, on the bottom of that back field there’s a big field behind that bunch of trees there, we’d see a hundred, maybe a hundred elk, just marching out and we’d get pictures of them, but now since the wolves came, about five years ago, six years ago, they’ve cut the herd. In the winter on the knobs over there we’d see 200 or 300, sometimes 400. Last winter we saw 35.
BS: Oh.
WG: Yes, the wolves just terrorized them. So, and you still can’t kill them officially but everybody, you know has a ditch and the hole and you take care of it but that probably that shouldn’t be probably, on the tape.
41 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: Yes, it’s just stunning. And how often do you go out?
WG: I don’t go as much as I did.
EG: He doesn’t.
WG: I used to go every, well, I didn’t go every day even when we’re here, even now but every
weekend for sure. I mean whenever the boys can get time off. And now our Bill came down for
bull season for 10 days and that was to hunt and now he’s coming the 9th or 10th of November
for another 10 days.
EG: He got a permit this year
BS: Yes
WG: An out-of-state license
EG: A permit, so that’s what he’s. So that’s why he’s coming this year. He comes for
Thanksgiving most of the time.
WG: They just like to kill things. (laughs) But we do have rabbits. Did you see any of our rabbits?
BS: No
WG: The granddaughters got two for Easter about 4 years ago and this summer now we had 17.
First we used to bring them in and a pain in a butt though, pick up their mess and all that so finally I said “Hey, let’s just see if they make it out here” and so there’s places all around
Nevada they call bunny ranches so we say this is a Montana bunny ranch. But they’re mostly black, and there’s 2 or 3 white ones but I hope they make it through this winter. Because there’s too many, I usually feed them dog food when it starts to get cold but, but then the dogs are out there and the coyotes are around, skunks are around.
EG: And there eagles and the hawks. Take their chances
42 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: There’s a nest over in the tree. Guess you can’t see it.
BS: No.
WG: Unless you know where you’re looking. We had two eagles born there the summer. We
watched them with the ‘scope, the ‘scope upstairs, we watched them as they grow up and for
about 2 months, the mother just leaves them, the mother and the father feed ‘em, soon as they
get big, maybe 6 weeks, they’re there by themselves. They bring a big feast for them. And if it’s just one, eagle and until he gets enough guts to get out on that edge and fly he’s alone in that nest, isn’t he? It’s just unbelievable.
EG: They’re huge too. Those babies are huge.
WG: Yes
BS: So, aside from the hunting and the Hibernians, are there any other? I suppose that keeps you busy enough.
WG: Sports
EG: Our grandkids. We watch the kids in their sports.
WG: Yes. If you watch one, we’ve got two in Butte and two in Anaconda and if you go to one in
Butte, you better go to one in Anaconda pretty soon. It’s kind of unwritten but
EG: They’ve never said it.
WG: No, but it’s an unwritten rule.
EG: It’s probably just in our mind.
WG: And we love it, we love it. We really enjoy it.
EG: We go as often as we can.
WG: They’re pretty good athletics too.
43 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: You have a family tradition obviously with you.
WG: I don’t try and coach them. I just, before I’d be on the kids in school, and be on the kids all the time screaming and yelling and you get upset watching seeing all the mistakes made and get up early in the morning watch Notre Dame play and see how you really tackle and all that kind of stuff. I told these boys “You know two things we’re not going to coach your kids and we’re not going to try and raise them. You didn’t try to raise ours but we’re going to spoil the baloney out of them if we can”.
EG: Yes
WG: But what happens, our kids make a lot more money than we do so they spoil us more than we spoil the kids and their kids are like, well, we really don’t need that, and then pretty soon they have it from their parents, which is a good deal. Because I told my boys, probably 4 or 5 years ago, “Hey, we took care of you, guys, 25 years, all we want is maybe 20, 15 or 20 back and forth if we need propane or whatever and turned us out to the woods and we love it. And they
understand. (phrase unintelligible)
EG: We have financial aid. And people say, “how can you afford to live out there”. We say we have financial aid from our kids. But it works.
BS: It’s such an extraordinary place.
EG: And they love it.
BS: I’m sure they do.
WG: And they’re so involved. Like every night, especially when they get to junior high, they’ve got something going every night and on the weekends.
EG: They were here a lot more when they were younger.
44 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: Yes, yes.
EG: Pretty soon they’ll be going away too they won’t be here at all.
WG: No, they’ll be bringing the girl friends and the boy friends for the hot tub and the sauna
and other things we have here.
BS: You’d have to show this off wouldn’t you?
EG: We’ve had a lot of their friends up here already. From the time they went to school and had
friends, the grandkids, we said feel free, it’s wonderful that they want to bring them here. We
feel fortunate to live so close to so many of them, the grandkids.
WG: And they’re not, I don’t know as families I don’t think, they’re not as religious as
EG: We didn’t pass it on as well as our parents did.
WG: No probably not.
EG: The times too.
B G: Is that what it is? Yes. It seems like all of our colleagues have the same situation too. And I
don’t go to church. I’m fighting, another the Missoula guy.
EG: I got in big trouble when our kids were little, I made them go to religious ed faithfully and
then when it came time for confirmation, I signed them up and I signed everybody in the
neighborhood up and my kids came home and said “You signed Johnny and Bobby up” and I
said “I didn’t, I just told their mothers about it and their mothers took care of it”. And I got into
big trouble.
WG: From the kids.
EG: My kids.
BS: You’re wearing a handball tee shirt there as well.
45 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Oh its baseball.
BS: Oh, baseball.
WG: My grandson went to the World Series in Colorado Springs
EG: Steamboat Springs.
WG: Or Steamboat. So I got to go and watch him. The Bitterroot, he wasn’t on the team but he
had a call, he’s a good pitcher, he’s throws real hard and he’s only had a…and a hitter too, he’s
only 12.
EG: 13.
WG: 13. They called him up and said “Can Sean come and play with us? We’ll take care of
everything. It’s only cost you $200” and so I said “Pat, I want to go too”. So I went. I tried to pay
my way but they wouldn’t let us do anything after we got there.
EG: They’d already had their fund raisers.
WG: And we still didn’t eat, like with the team kind and all that, we of lived on our own, you know we were living in condos, that million dollar places I’m sure. It was really neat.
EG: Ski condos, you know.
WG: ESPN was there for the final game. But they did get in the final game; his team got third, but he was there. Which was a good deal. There was a lady there from, I don’t know who she is but she was up on the scaffolding and I had my Bristol Bay hat on and I said “I came all the way from Alaska to watch this. You better get us on TV?” and I had the kids there with me and she said “I’ll sure try”. But we didn’t get to watch it because we weren’t there for it.
BS: So, obviously this, with regard to what the Gathering is trying to achieve we’re looking to talk to the Irish and the Irish Montanans and get a sense of what it means for them, what it
46 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. means for you to be Irish and Irish Montanan. So if you were to sum that up or to write a
history of the Irish in Montana what do you think should be included?
WG: Religion is important.
EG: Um hm.
WG: A lot of it is lost already I think. I wish that, there’s a few videos out from Hibernian’s St.
Patrick’s Day things from the past and there’s a, I don’t know, how, you can’t re-create that.
What you’re doing is probably the best, you know you’ll find all sorts of stories about St.
Patrick’s Day and what they did. I have one other story. When I was the Grand PooBah with her
mother that time, we used to go to the rest homes and they still do. That was a big deal. When I
first started in the Hibernians, you’d go to the rest home and then you’d find out all the
members, men and ladies that were sick and you’d spend the rest of the day going to those
houses. And drinking at the houses. We went in to a guy’s place one time and he’d had just
gotten home two days before that from having heart surgery in Missoula and his wife was real
concerned about him and so as soon as she’d go get the cookies and whatever one of the guys
had a bottle and pretty soon there it was he was having a shot and he lived through it and had a
good life because of it. I don’t know anyway, you just can’t re-create those things. Anyway, I
went to the rest home another time, when I was with a Grand PooBah, I don’t know, I think it
was the senator from Montana and it could have been the representative but it was a mucky-
muck guy and as we were walked down to go into the general area where there was singing
and had the kids dancing and have a few drinks out of the medicine cups this lady comes out
and she says “Oh, Billy Gallagher, is that you?” and she comes out, and I had this senator or
whoever with me and I’ll call him Max, okay, and he said this lady down there wants to talk to
47 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. you and I recognized her as someone who used to live near my grandparents when I was 7 or 8 years old, her name was McElvy, and I said “Oh, Mrs. McElvy, how are you?” so I give her a hug and they used to run this trucking company, so how are the boys,, do they still have the trucks
so we were talking about things and this senator is real gracious and finally he looks down into
her face and he says: “Mrs. McElvy, do you know who I am?” and she looks like this at him and
he says: “Do you recognize me Mrs. McElvy, do you know who I am?” and pretty soon she backs
offs and she looks at me and says “No, I don’t know you, sonny, but if you go down that hall
here to that desk is where the ladies are working, they might not know who you what your
name is but they know what room you belong in.”
WG: (Laughter) Used to tell that story on and off a lot.
BS: That very funny, and quite wicked.
WG: True too. It’s a true story too. You can’t make em up that good.
EG: Don’t you think, the Irish, well the ones in Anaconda it was always faith and family first with
the Irish and all the family were included in that, well I thought, when I was growing up well
probably all the people I knew, were all Hibernians or a few Scotch people.
WG: There were some of the old ones that I talked to, they didn’t want to go back to Ireland
because it was such a, they didn’t have any good memories, they left, and they had
opportunities, to go back, and I don’t remember, like the Monaghans were from around
Carrickmacross and there’s another town that’s starts like that and there this was a little rhyme
this fellow used to say, this Corrigan fellow. He wouldn’t mind if I used his name, he’s not
around any more but he used to say there wasn’t an honest man between such-and-such and
Carrickmacross, on the lane, or the road. And I don’t know, you know at that time when he
48 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. used to say that, that was just kind of a saying. [End of Disc one] [Start of disc two] I don’t think
anyone ever asked him what he meant by that. It was just kind of how he was. And then we
also had those old timers that would come and if they’d show up at a meeting you’re going have a fight because they’d just be kind of sitting back waiting for something to happen. Then they’d mention a couple really like abortion,
BS: Right
WG: not that, they didn’t do that then, but an issue that there were two sides as to, and always
Democrats, never any Republicans that I remember. My father used to say there’s no such thing as a good Republican, don’t even think about it, you know. (laughs). Yes, and usually, the Irish that I knew, too, they didn’t, a lot of them could have been bosses on the smelter but they didn’t want to assume the responsibility, they’d rather be one of the guys.
BS: They’d rather be one of the guys?
WG: Yes, the union guys, and most of the time, the people that would assume those responsibilities, like my dad used to say, “They’re phony jokers.” Used to call them that.
B S: Why is that?
WG: I don’t know. I don’t know why that was. It wasn’t just Irish people but for the most part that’s how they felt.
BS: Wouldn’t it have been more financially to their advantage?
EG: Oh it was.
WG: Oh yes. But see , every few years they had a strike in Anaconda, so nobody was ever going to make a lot of money and get rich and the thing you wanted to do was get your kids out of that situation to college. And I know that when I, Skipper Kelly gave me jobs, Bobo’s dad, on the
49 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. railroad, because my dad worked there and then one summer there was a strike and I didn’t
have a job because there was a strike and I went on to the smelter, got a job on the smelter
shutting down parts and I know that summer my father, it was the junior year, my father talked
to the boss that had me and said “Put him in the miserablest, rottenest places so he’ll really
want to go to college, because he’s going to make good money and he’s going to think he wants
to be an electrician or something and we want him to get out of here.”
BS: Right
WG: And that was their whole goal, for working and just being part of that, and that’s kind of
how the Hibernians are now, they just kind you know, they’re kind of fun boys that have fun with and fun ladies, they didn’t really mix a whole lot, they just kind of, it’s kind, kind of almost a union thing but it’s not union.
BS: Yes, right.
WG: It’s really hard to explain though.
BS: And do you think most of the men working in the smelter were anxious to get their children out?
WG: Oh yes.
EG: Um hm.
WG: Oh yes. It was universal. Yes, even the ones, I’ve got a friend who’s a principal in Belgrade and he was called in by a nun, he was a character too, and into athletics, and said “Kevin, what are you going to do?” And he said “I want to go to college and play football” and that’s what he’s thinking. He was a smart guy. And she said “Get it out of your head. You’re going to be up there working with your dad. Don’t even think about it. You’d better call your dad, or sit down
50 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. with your dad, and find out what kind of a trade you can get.” And he says “You know, the
minute she told me that I thought “I don’t believe you, you’re from Chicago, you don’t even
know what it’s like around here.” And she was probably a good nun but he took it like that and
he became a, he’s a principal in Belgrade now, in the high school. And the people love him, he love’s kids, and his father loved. You know. And his father loved. And that would be a really neat thing, if you could get a hold of people like that. When video cameras first came out, he had his father and another old-timer on the video and it was like, the funniest stories you ever heard in your life about the smelter.
BS: What was his name?
WG: His name was McNeeles.
EG: Kevin McNeeles,
WG: Kevin McNeeles and he lives in Belgrade and his dad was Mike and the guy that he talked to—
EG: Alonzo.
WG: Alonzo Maguire. And I don’t know
BS: Alonzo Maguire?
WG: Alonzo Maguire, yes.
EG: I wonder if I have the phone number.
WG: Do you have a Michael
BS: So as you look back, over the, the AOH has been a big factor in identifying with Irishness and keeping that together and been kind of reinforcing that I suppose?
WG: Oh yes.
51 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. BS: In more general terms, are there any particularly strong moments of either joy or sorrow, or
of major significance in your life where things shifted or changed?
WG: Like Joyce would say. I don’t know. That’s a hard one Ellen.
EG: I wasn’t listening.
BS: I saved the hard one until last.
EG: I just give it to him.
WG: When did we have our epiphany, or have we had one, if that’s what you mean.
BS: I guess.
WG: We’re going along and all of a sudden your life turned out like this because?
BS: I guess major moments of change, or, as you kind of look back on it identifiable.
EG: I don’t know, maybe after I had Pat I, used to get kind of uptight about the house and
WG: We should ‘em her about Pat.
EG: When I had Patrick. I had to have C sections and I quit breathing for 45 minutes. So, woke up in the middle of it couldn’t breath and had what I thought was a near death experience but after that it changed my attitude about being so uptight about life.
WG: We weren’t going to have a third, but we decided we wanted a girl and..
EG: You decided.
WG: Well I guess I thought if we had a girl it’d be just like her mother, and there’s got to be one of them around. So anyway, we decided to have one and so and my boys were excited to have a little girl. You didn’t know in those days.
EG: Yes
52 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: So we decided, and the boys were excited. You didn’t know, in those days, whether it’s a
boy or a girl so we got over there and so when I called, I went, the guy came out and said the
baby’s good and your wife’s going to be fine and go out and come back maybe an hour, he
didn’t there was a problem, the guy that came out so I called the boys and I don’t know which
one of got on and I said “We didn’t t get a Patricia, we got Pat, you’ve got another little
brother.” And the other guy got on the phone and said “Dad, it’s probably a really good thing
because I don’t think a girl could survive in this family.” (laughs). And they couldn’t have been
four, three and four you know. And then when you got cancer too. That was a, she had breast
cancer too, tell her about it.
EG: Right, in ’91, breast cancer but it was right at the first stages, you know, just the very early
stages so I didn’t have chemo or anything.
BS: That was in ‘91?
EG: ‘91 yes,
BS: My goodness.
EG: a long time and so yes, it was life changing.
WG: For all of us, for all of us, yes. And she, Grandma (Ellen), made the decisions she wanted to
make, it was her life and her body. I thank God, she made all the ones I would have, you know.
And the kids.
EG: Yes, I had a lot of support. They were very supportive you know, yes, we’re without a
daughter.
WG: We have girl dogs.
EG: Yes, we have. I think those two things are something
53 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: I think so too. I think those are, have been mind-changing.
BS: and moving out here of course.
WG: Well, I don’t think, it hasn’t been, for me at least, it hasn’t. Has it for you? That much of a transition?
EG: No, only in the fact that we retired and came out here. And had less stress and all that stuff that goes with working and that stuff.
WG: And we are real social but you know we’re run, probably 3 or 4 days a week we’re gone somewhere, we go to the Grizzly games, we have tickets for, season tickets for that. We go to the kids’ stuff.
EG: Yes if we need to socialize, we go do it.
WG: Yes, but it is a change because we don’t get the paper, we get the paper at noon.
EG: That’s the one thing I miss is the newspaper in the morning.
WG: We’re news people, we like to keep track of what’s going on. But the TV brings more news than you need, more than you want.
EG: Yes.
WG: Yes. I don’t think, I’m not as religious as I used to be. And I’m not sure why. Ellen is. And I know that we’re both going to die someday soon, not soon but I mean we’re getting to the point where you’ve got to start thinking about that, you know. But I still, am like, I‘ve got to do my own thing. I found out I have asthma and won’t listen to my doctor and he keeps telling me to do this, do that.
EG: Eventually you will.
WG: But that’s just how I am, but Ellen is still very religious.
54 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: Oh yes,
WG: And she keeps me, we’d better do this we’d better do that. But I don’t always go to church
on Sunday, anymore, fighting with the priest, but he’s my age and he’s like me and I’m probably
too much like him, you know, and he should be retired.
EG: He is retired but he keeps coming back which is nice for some people.
B G: I should sit down and talk to him, but you know.
EG: I decided a long time ago that you can’t let all these human beings interfere with your
relationship to God so you‘ve got to just keep on doing what you’re going to do.
WG: I don’t think we pray like we used to either, do you?
EG: I do.
WG: I mean we used to pray out loud together, and the rosary and. See my ‘Bo hunk’ Austrian
parents from my grandmother Gallagher’s side, they said the rosary wherever they went, every
day all the time. Yes, that’s just how they were. So you visit them at the cabin, and in the morning they’d say it and at night before you go to bed you’d say the rosary. And the grandma
Gallagher, she lived to be 105, she’s Austrian and she’d be “I don’t know why God wants me
here anymore.” And I asked her onetime, and she didn’t used the word bastard, when I’d say it
and I’d say “Gramma, everybody loves you.” She’d come up here, she wanted to come up here
for her birthdays
EG: Yes
WG: I used to call it the cabin, this was the cottage and this wasn’t even here.
BS: Yes
55 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: And she’d say…And I’d say, what happened, how come all these people think you’re
wonderful and great and she’d say “I’ve outlived all the rest of them”.
EG: She’s outlived all her enemies.
WG: And my dad never swore a day in his life that I heard
EG: No, I never heard your dad swear.
WG: Ever.
EG: He just didn’t know about “Jesus H. Christ”.
WG: He was very religious. He was very religious too. After my mother died, he went to church every day.
EG: From the time she got sick
WG: Yes every day. She had a brain tumor.
EG: From the time he retired, he’d go to (phrase unintelligible)
WG: Every day. That’s religion. That’s Catholic.
EG: He really did have a
BS: I didn’t ask you, Ellen, did you work outside the home?
EG: I was at home for 18 years with the kids’ lives, to start with or Mike’s life anyhow the rest of them were behind, and then I went to work when they got to be getting to go to college.
WG: They wouldn’t quit in four years. They wanted to be doctors and lawyers.
EG: And we didn’t really pay for much of their schooling. They got scholarships and stuff. We’d
still want to bring them home and they’d need other stuff.
WG: (phrase unintelligible).
EG: So I think I worked from 1980 til 2000.
56 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: Yes
BS: What kind of work did you do?
EG: I worked as a secretary in a flooring store and that closed because of the smelter closing
down and then I went to work at the police department as a dispatcher but I only worked there
for about 9 months and then I had a CPA in Anaconda named Jack Corrigan came and asked me
if I wanted to work daytime because I was working night shift and I knew him as a person but I
knew he knew how I could work from my job at the carpet store. He was our CPA.
WG: He was my cousin.
EG: He was your cousin. But he asked me to be his secretary, so I went to work there.
BS: Oh good.
EG: Yes, and I finished up, it was nice. It was a good job, he was a very nice man to work for.
BS: And your sons are a doctor and lawyer, is that right?
EG: Um-hum.
BS: And your other son works.
WG: an Indian Chief! (laughs). He works for the airlines—
EG: in Alaska.
WG: In Anchorage, yes. And our son that’s a doctor was going to the University of Chicago, he got accepted there and it was a kind of these fancy, Harvard kind of things, you know and it’s a big deal and he was, I can’t remember exactly what the amount of the board and room tuition was but let’s say it was $28,000.
EG: I think that’s close to being right
57 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. WG: In that year, I made 26,000, so I called the guy before we could send him I called the head
of the—
EG: the Dean of the med school,
WG: So I called and I told him what I just told you
BS: Yes.
WG: I said we can’t afford very much. You know, we’re going to try and help him, and he
doesn’t have very much, and I can give him cab fare when he leaves here and comes to visit,
but he said “Bill, you don’t need to worry about that”, he said. “We screened we know what
these kids can do and how much money you make” and he says “We’ve known that for 2 years and we go back farther than that”. And the first year he didn’t work, he worked through college at Carroll but the first year he didn’t work. The next year they called him in and said: there’s a scholarship at the University of Chicago by a friend of McClain, who wrote A River Runs Through
It.
And anybody, he was in the Medical School, this friend of his, and anyone from Montana who comes to the medical school, we’ll pick up the tuition, full amount of tuition, as long as your grades are at least average, you know. And he did well in school, he never would even get a B in everything you know, Mr. Perfectionist.
EG: But he still ended up with over $100,000 of loan.
WG: Yes
BS: $100,000?
WG: Yes, just under $100,000 and he signed a contract in Butte and in two years it was paid for.
But how do those kids that age? And that’s the other thing. It was run by the Jews kind of
58 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. controlled, the Jewish people, all right and run by the Republicans, and they keep Democrats
out, you know. I mean it’s kind of bizarre, how would you ever break through that, unless you
had a brain, you know.
BS: Well, good for him.
WG: And he did, he could care less. He just did his thing and he loves medicine and he’s married
to—
BS: What kind of a doctor is he?
WG: He’s an orthopedic surgeon.
EG: And he’s doing well.
WG: You wouldn’t know it. If he walked in here you’d think he was working at the smelter.
EG: I’d talk to him when he was working, he’d say “working my way back home, I’m working my way back home”. He had some good offers to stay back east.
WG: When he was in Kansas City, he had a great offer, they said “If you stay with us one more
year, you’ll be the 12th person and our people are making a million dollars a year. And we guarantee the second year you’ll make at least make that much” and he said “I’m going to
Montana. I’ve got a job in Butte (everyone laughs) and it ain’t like Notre Dame and Kansas City.
He said “You’re absolutely nuts.” And that same, when I left Troy, that same guy said “Why do you want to go back to Anaconda?” and I said “Because they’re my kind of people.” I mean the
people who aren’t from here don’t understand it. You’d understand it because it’s like (word
unclear).
BS: Yes. My husband’s from Butte.
WG: Yes so you’d know.
59 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula. EG: I said to Mike when he was going to school “You must have been in the minority” because
he was a white English speaking male. You know there are so many others, that females are really taking over now and when he went to school with more females than males I think But, there’s nothing wrong with that either but the boys are getting put out.
BS: I’d like to take a few photographs if you don’t mind.
WG: Do it. It was fun.
BS: Thank you both so much
EG: Oh you’re welcome. Thank you.
EG: Enjoy it.
BS: And I do have.
[End of Interview]
60 William Gallagher and Ellen Gallagher Interview, OH 435-012, Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana-Missoula.