RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY NEW BRUNSWICK AN INTERVIEW WITH JOHN T. CAHILL FOR THE RUTGERS ORAL HISTORY ARCHIVES INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY SHAUN ILLINGWORTH ALEXANDRIA TOWNSHIP, HAMPTON, NEW JERSEY JANUARY 7, 2014 TRANSCRIPT BY SHAUN ILLINGWORTH Shaun Illingworth: This begins an interview with Mr. John T. Cahill in Hampton, Alexandria Township, New Jersey, on January 7, 2014, with Shaun Illingworth. Thank you very much for having me here today. To begin, please tell me where and when you were born. John T. Cahill: I was born on Staten Island, New York, … on October 31, 1929. SI: Can you tell me your parents' names, for the record? JC: My father's name was Thomas Cahill. My mother's name was Gertrude Cahill. He was a stationary engineer, employed by the City of New York at a big water pumping station. SI: Starting with your father's side of the family, what do you know about your family's background, where the family came from? JC: Yes, there are, in the local cemetery there, four generations. My father's father came over as an infant in 1845, from Ireland, and he's interred on Staten Island. So, basically, the Cahill side of the family came in 1845 and resided on Staten Island. SI: What about your mother's side of the family? JC: My mother's family were English, that her maiden name was Willoe. They came to the United States in the 1870s. I don't know too much about that side of the family, but the Cahill side, I know a lot about. SI: Do you happen to know, roughly, where in England they came from? JC: No, I don't, but the Cahills came from Bantry Bay, Ireland, which I have been there and seen the area over there. I had one sister, who's still alive, and she's five years older than I am. … Growing up on Staten Island, it was a very rural area, because … there was no connection to New York City at all. The Verrazano Bridge didn't exist and, from Staten Island, to get to New Jersey, where I've resided in New Jersey for forty-eight years now, we had ferry boats, which don't exist anymore. There was a ferry boat from Bayonne to Staten Island, there was a ferry boat from Carteret, New Jersey, to Staten Island, there was a ferry boat from Perth Amboy to Tottenville, Staten Island. So, that was the way people went over to New Jersey. They had these very small [ferries]--and the Bayonne Ferry, of course--they had these very small ferries that commuted across and there was a lot of cross traffic at that time, because … New Jersey was in close proximity to Staten Island, literally hundreds of yards, compared to the City of New York. … Growing up as a teenager, I attended a local Catholic grammar school, then, went to public high school and graduated from high school. SI: Before we discuss your schools, can you tell me a little bit about the neighborhood that you grew up in? 2 JC: Yes, it was a residential area. All of Staten Island was residential. It was pockets of built- up areas, and then, long areas, miles, of nothing, literally woods, and it was a big farming community. A lot of truck farms, they grew vegetables for New York City and Brooklyn. SI: If you could describe, roughly, what area of Staten Island this was in, would you say it was in the north, south? JC: It was West Brighton, they called it, which was basically the center area of the area, and it was a good place to grow up, very quiet. … Of course, going back to when I was born, there weren't a lot of cars around. I mean, literally, if there was a street with twenty houses on it, if two people, two families, had automobiles, that was a lot. They all depended on buses and some parts of Staten Island had a train that ran across it. … SI: Going back to your parents, do you know how they met? JC: How my parents met? That's a question I can't answer. I cannot answer, but my father was born in 1895. He served in the First World War in France. He was in the military. In fact, he had a very slight disability. He'd been gassed when the war was going on. So, my mother was born in 1905, so, she was--1902, I'm sorry--so, she was six years, seven years younger than my father, but a very stable upbringing, no problems that I could see as a child, growing up. SI: Did your father ever talk about his time in the service? JC: Yes, a little bit. … He was in the field [artillery]. They called it the Coast Artillery, but it was the big guns. They were 105-millimeter guns and he just never talked too much about the war, not at all, just that he'd been over there and, of course, I have his whole discharge papers, with all the different campaigns that they fought in over there. … That's about it, but, no, he never dwelled on it. He wasn't the type of person that talked a lot about it. … SI: Was his job at the pumping station on Staten Island? JC: It was on Staten Island. It was a huge electrical pumping station, big, big complex, and it was absolutely spotless. They kept it so clean, but what … it did is, the water that came down from Upstate New York went into a reservoir, then, they energized it and put pressure on it to pump it up and down the hills through Staten Island. SI: Going back to your neighborhood, would you describe it as a mixed neighborhood or was it mostly Irish or some other ethnicity? JC: It was basically Irish, I guess, and German. Staten Island, back in '29, in the early '30s, it had no minority neighborhoods. There were very few people of color on Staten Island. There were a group that lived out [at] what they called Sandy Ground and they were actually descendants of slaves that had settled out there in the 1870s [1820s and 1830s], and then, there would be a little section that was an Italian section, but … that's just the way it was, I mean. … I 3 credit that to the isolation of Staten Island, the difficulty of getting … to it and there were not a lot of manufacturing jobs. So, it was a middle-class, low-density area. SI: You were born just after the Crash. JC: I was born the day of the Crash. SI: Okay. JC: October 31, 1929, was the day of the Stock Market Crash--just I always remember that, reading that. [Editor's Note: The Stock Market Crash of 1929 refers to a period of extreme market volatility at the end of that October, peaking on "Black Tuesday," October 29th.] SI: Do you have any recollections about how the Depression may have affected your family? You would have been pretty young, but did you hear any stories within your family? Was your father's employment affected? JC: No, no. He was always gainfully employed, I mean, … well, basically, probably, because he was employed by the City of New York. I mean, he was a city employee … and they had to keep drinking the water, so, he was all right. No, we did not suffer through the Depression at all, I mean. My family seemed to be immune from it, and all my relatives, the uncles, the aunts and everybody else, nobody really had a bad time. SI: Growing up in that area, there were a lot of other family members around you. JC: I had uncles, aunts, cousins, a lot of cousins. It was quite an expansive family. There were a lot of them and they were, … one was a carpenter, the other fellow was an engineer for the railroad, the B&O [Baltimore & Ohio] Railroad, and they were all gainfully employed. … On my mother's side, I had a couple of uncles that actually worked in Panama, in the marine field down in Panama. … I only saw them very rarely. SI: When you were growing up, before you became a teenager, what sort of things did you do for fun? JC: Oh, typically, there was a little park there and the big thing we did was, we'd play baseball in the summertime. A bunch of us would just get together and play baseball. There were some ponds and lakes nearby, loved to go fishing in there, and that's about it, typical teenager. There wasn't a lot to do. I mean, nobody entertained you and, if you could scrape together eleven cents, you could go to the movies on a Saturday. That was about it. I don't think there was the impetus that families put on what their children are doing today, compared to then. Back then, I equate it to, "Open the door and out you went," and that was it, "Come back for lunch and be home before the supper time." [laughter] Nobody worried where you were or what you were doing or tried to entertain you. You entertained yourself, somehow. SI: You went to parochial school. 4 JC: Yes. SI: Tell me a little bit about your grammar school and what that was like for you. JC: Oh, it was a good school. I mean, they taught you well.