BILL SHOVER Honored As a Historymaker 2003
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Arizona HistorymakersJ Oral History Transcript Historical League, Inc. 8 2018 BILL SHOVER 1928 Honored as a Historymaker 2003 Valley Visionary and Civic Leader The following is an oral history interview with Bill Shover (BS) conducted by Pam Stevenson (PS) for Historical League, Inc. and video-graphed by Bill Leverton on April 3, 2002 at Bill Shover ’s home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Transcripts for website edited by members of Historical League, Inc. Original tapes are in the collection of the Arizona Heritage Center Archives, an Historical Society Museum, Tempe, Arizona. PS: Why don’t you give me your full name? BS: My full name is William Robert Joseph Shover. My confirmation name is Joseph Bernie. I didn’t even know that until recently. They used to call me Bill Bob Joe at times. PS: Tell me a little bit about when and where you were born. BS: I was born in Beach Grove, Indiana, which is a suburb of Indianapolis and I was the first one in my family to be born in a hospital. My Dad was so excited about having a boy. We’d had girls before that. We were kind of an impoverished family. He just wanted to make sure I was going to be okay. It was the same hospital that Steve McQueen was born in a year later. I was raised in Indianapolis, Indiana from 1928, the time of my birth, until I went into the service in 1946. Then I was in the service for a couple of years. I went back in 1948 and lived there until I moved to Arizona at the end of 1962. PS: That’s a condensed version. You said you were the first boy, what place were you and how many kids were in the family? BS: I was the baby of the family. I had two older sisters who are both deceased. We were an Irish family. We had my grandmother and my mother who were born in Ireland. They lived in the home and my AHistorymakers is a registered trademark of Historical League, Inc.@ 1 Arizona Historymakers Oral History Transcript Historical League, Inc. 8 2018 grandmother didn’t speak English. She spoke only Gaelic because they didn’t have schools in Ireland when she grew up. We were just a regular small Irish Catholic family, I guess you could say. PS: Did you grow up learning Gaelic? BS: I learned some bad words in Gaelic and I was five when she died. We had a funny story. The Bishop came to our house for the wake; they called them that in those days. I used some of the wrong words and they spirited me into the kitchen to keep me away from the Bishop. PS: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about your parents and your grandmother? She was the first generation here? BS: She was born in Ireland and so was my mother. My mother came in about 1903. She came on a steamer with my grandmother. She became the cook and they paid a passage of $15 apiece to go from Ireland to the United States. My mom went to grade school for the third grade; she had to go to work. My dad went to grade school, the second grade, and then he joined the Navy when he was 12 years of age. He was tall and the Navy had a limit of 14 at that time but he was so big that he got in. He served in the Navy then he served in the Army after that. Indianapolis was our home all those years. Mom and Dad were married in 1913-1914. And my sisters . one was born in 1916, one was born in 1918. PS: So they were a lot older than you. BS: Right. PS: Did your Dad come from Ireland? BS: He was born in Mooresville, Indiana. He was raised in an area with John Dillinger. He considered John Dillinger a hero, like many people in Indiana did in those days. He taught himself to read and write; he had beautiful handwriting. He went only to the second grade. His father was not there and his mother was dead so he was raised by the sheriff, who made the first arrest of John Dillinger, when he was just a kid. My mom learned enough English to get by and then she educated herself. We were what you’d call a poor family today but we never considered ourselves poor. We had a three-room house. We were rich in family but I guess poor in dollars. Maybe you could put it that way. PS: What did your parents do for a living? BS: My father was a railroader. He worked in Arizona, as a matter of fact, in the early 1900s. They came out in about 1920 because there was a Depression in Indianapolis. He couldn’t get a job. So he worked out here for a couple of years, up at Williams, Arizona, going to the Grand Canyon. He’d send money back to Mom to take care of the family. Then my Dad retired from the New York Central Railroad in the late fifties and moved out here and finally died out here. He died at 95 at the Veteran’s Hospital. Bill Shover video interview 2002 2 Arizona Historymakers Oral History Transcript Historical League, Inc. 8 2018 My mom had died fairly young. She died at 52 from a stroke. Then my sister, one of my sisters, died very young. And my other sister died just recently. PS: Did your mother work outside the home, too? BS: No. No, she took care of the family. We also had two people who were living with us. They were orphans. So she had five to take care of at the time. It was a scrimp, but Dad worked on the railroad and would find things like merchandise that people couldn’t sell. He’d bring home lettuce or carrots or sometimes ice cream, things like that, so it sustained the family. PS: What are your first memories of growing up as a child? BS: They were happy memories. We have lots of friends; had good neighbors around us. Actually, the Church was very involved with my life. When you’re raised in an Irish family, you go to church every day, almost every day. When I went to St. Patrick’s Grade School, it was every day at Mass. I became an altar boy when I was 12 years of age. We lived a mile from the church and I’d go down and do the Mass like at five or six in the morning. I’d go back home, have breakfast and I’d go back to the church. I was doing two masses a day. So I think I over-Massed at times in my life in the early days. But we had a very happy family. My Dad got into politics and that didn’t work out too well. He ran for sheriff of Indianapolis and lost in a very narrow race. My Mom convinced him never to get back into politics so he stayed out of politics the rest of his life. He loved it but he didn’t want to be an active candidate again after that. PS: How old were you at that time? BS: I thought we were going to move into the jail in Indianapolis where the sheriff’s home was. That was 1935 so I was 7. I remember my Dad at a big political rally in 1935. I wondered why all those people were there. And they were just pushing him to be sheriff. But they had a mayor candidate there and other people like that. I remember it was a very happy occasion. I remember the song “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which was the Democratic song of 1933 and they were playing it. I still have a vivid memory hearing that song. Every time I hear Barbra Streisand sing it, I think about that day. PS: So that was sort of your first introduction into politics? BS: First and last. Being with the newspaper I enjoyed that when I was very young in 1951, but we weren’t allowed to get involved in partisan politics. And to this day I haven’t been in partisan politics. I’ve never missed an election. I voted every time. But I can’t, could not and still do not get involved with partisan politics. Bill Shover video interview 2002 3 Arizona Historymakers Oral History Transcript Historical League, Inc. 8 2018 PS: Talking about your family home life and you were the baby. Did you ever have to do chores around the house? BS: Oh, yeah. We were raised on the idea of taking care of the house, which was very modest but very clean. My dad used to say we could eat off the floors and Mom kept the house so clean; linoleum floor, I remember that. My sisters worked when they were in school. They went to Catholic high school but they had part-time jobs and so. I remember the first time I worked was 1935. It was working at the Speedway Race selling extras. In those days it was a nickel a paper. Someone would give you a quarter sometime, tell you to keep the change and that was a big day. So I worked at this track from 1935 until I became an adult selling newspapers: The Indianapolis Star, which I later worked for as a matter of fact.