The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

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The Callans and McClarys ever she needed to. She says she hardly knew George at that time, and was too embarrassed to tell him she had to go, so held it the whole trip. When she got there, the family wouldn’t let her go to the funeral, because they thought it would be too stressful for her. Like the trip hadn’t been stressful enough. A few months after they returned to Long Island, their first son Bernard (“Bernie”) James Callan, was born, on June 20, 1954. Because he was born at the base hospital, Bernie’s birth cost the couple only $12. Jack’s brother George visited them on Long Island and wise cracked that “at this rate, they can afford to have a few more.” Their daughter Linda Marie came 10 months after that. She cost only $7. “It was higher for Bernie because they charged five bucks for circumcision,” says Margery. “Like the military doctor said, “The pay isn’t great but the tips are good.” In June 1955, Jack was discharged, and the couple moved back to Rochester, where Jack got work as an engineer at Stromberg- Carlson, a military contractor that made electronic components for Titan missiles. They took an apartment around the corner from an apartmet that Jack’s sister Betty, and Betty’s husband Bill McGlynn, had at that time. Betty and Bill were divorced a few years later, but at that time had had their first child, a son, Billy. who was about one year old. Later in life, Billy and Al’s oldest brother Bernie would become best friends. Jack and Margery lived in that small apartment just a few months, while they waited for an opening at Fernwood Park, an apartment complex that had discounted rent for veterans to $76 a month. They moved in sometime in late 1955. The apartment had two bedrooms and a small living room and kichen. Despite the cramped space, the couple had many parties there over the following year. Jack’s cousins Bob and Barb Shroppe, and some friends of Betty’s named Joyce and John McGrath, all lived at Fernwood Park as well. Their daughter Maureen Elizabeth was born there on Jan 4, 1957. During 1957 and 1958, Jack attended Rochester Business Institute, a two-year college, from 8 a.m. to noon every morning. He would come home from school, have lunch, take a nap, and go to work from 3 pm to midnight. “When he would come Betty and Bill McGlynn, 1953 ~ 56 ~ home, I would load the kids in the car so he could sleep,” Margery says. “With a bunch of rambunctious kids he couldn’t get any rest. “I was pregnant for Steve when we were having the house built in Gates. There was a big ditch around the house while they were putting up the foundation. I used to climb the planks. Gert swore I was going to have Steve downtown, because I was going downtown all the time to get the house paperwork settled. “When I was pregnant for Steve, and the kids found out, we had just bought a new car. I don’t know what it was, we had junkers most of the time. One day I found Bernie and Maureen in the bedroom crying. I asked what was a matter. I thought they had gotten hurt. They wanted to know which one of them we were going to trade in on the new baby. Since we traded the old car in on a new car, they thought we were going to trade one of the old babies in on the new baby. Kids get funny ideas.” Of course, sometimes those funny ideas have lasting effects. Consider how Stephen Jeffrey got his name. “My next door neighbor at Fernwood park and I were pregnant together. Her baby was born about a month before Steve. She named her baby Jeff, and my kids started calling the new baby Jeff. So when the baby was born, Jack said what should we call him. And I said you might as well call him Jeff, because that is what the kids are going to call him. When he grew up, baby Stephen Jeffery Callan was never fond of this story. At age 14 he started insisiting everyone him Steve. Everyone consented except Linda, who still calls all her younger siblingsby their childhood names: Renie, Jeff, Johnny and Albie. The couple moved to Gates in 1959, and John Edward (Jan 5, 1961) and Albert Francis (April 26, 1965) were born there. “So then all the kids were all born,” says Margery, “and all we had to do was raise them. Life Life in in in Gates Gates In the early 1960s, Margery and Jack, then in their early 30s, were in one of the happiest times of their lives. Jack has good work, and also had time to join the volunteer fire department in Gates, giving them a whole new crowd of friends. They would hire a babysitter just about every Saturday evening and go out dancing with friends and relatives, including Jack’s sister Betty and her boyfriend at the time, Andy, who later became the father of Betty’s twins, Beth and Joe. Despite Jack having a good job, feeding six kids was always a challenge. “I used to say when dad makes a hundred dollars a week we will be on easy street,” Marge says. Until then, she made ends meet by buying fruit and vegetables in bulk in the summer and fall and canning for the coming winters. “I never spent more than $20 a week on groceries,” she says. “I
Margery on her honeymoon, August 1953. used to can every thing. We bought potatoes by the fifty pound bag, and I would go through 25 pounds of flour a week. Uncle Fran was a butcher, so Sunday he would bring the meat and I would furnish the rest. “I would do all my baking on Fridays, and you kids were always in the kitchen. When it came time to make Christmas cookies, I would bring in extra tables and all the neighbor kids would come over and help too. “These were certain things I thought were important. Even with the boys, I wanted them to learn how to do stuff, like wash dishes on Sunday, so they would be better equipped to go out in the world. And I wanted them to know how to eat when they went out someplace, so we would always give them a little bit of wine if we had a little bit of wine. Maybe just a teaspoon full. “Everybody always said the kids were so well behaved. They didn’t know what went on at home. “One time Bernie and Steve had some left over mashed potatoes and started lobbing their mashed potatoes at the ceiling. I went to clean the kitchen later and globs of potatoes were falling down on my head. It was wild with six kids, let me tell you.” When Bernie was about 16 or 17, and Margery was in the Junior Chamber of Commerce, he approached her one day and said, “Mom I really have to give you a pat on the back for what you have done with yourself. Staying involved while raising the family.” Margery says she replied, “Bernie, I have always been this way, it’s just that you are finally growing up and seeing me as something other than a piece of furniture.” Money was always tight, but they made ends meet. Margery was so proud of the kids for understanding as they got older. One time Mary Pat Callan, the daughter of Jack’s brother and sister-in-law George and Joanne, came to visit. She told Maureen that she wouldn’t be caught dead in the shoes Maureen was wearing. Maureen said “When my mother and dad can get them they will. I am getting them on Friday because I don’t need them until then.” Bernie always came home from school early. He and Margery would spend time together before the other kids came home. “I always felt left out as a child, so I always tried to make special time for each one of the kids,” she says. On this day, Bernie said, “if you had gone to work, we could have had a lot more things.” Margery told him, “Your father and I talked it over, and we decided it was more important to be here when you went to school and got home “Years later when Bernie and his wife Mimi had their daughter Marissa, they came to visit for Easter. It was right after she was born. I asked him when Mimi was going back to work, and he said, “She can’t go back to work, she has to take care of the baby. “ How times change. Irondequoit Irondequoit in in the the 1960s 1960s During those years, Jack worked out of a home office selling State Farm Insurance and later, sorted mail at the U.S. Post Office. They moved to an 18room antebellum mansion in Hilton in the fall of 1966. That winter, Jack lost his job, his car broke down, and the oil heating bills for the mansion were $500 a month. “Jack hitchhiked through blizzards into Rochester to look for work, but to make ends meet, they closed off most of the house, huddled in two bedrooms under blankets, and the following spring moved back to the city, taking a rental house at 3430 Culver Road in Rochester. Jack got work at R.T. French Company as a junior ~ 57 ~ The Callans and McClarys accountant. For the first several months of his job, they could not afford to buy a car, so he rode to work with his boss, Don Belmont, who lived nearby in Irondequoit. “We rented the house at first,” Margery says. “Mrs. Reynolds, the woman who owned it, was going to live with her daughter, but didn’t know if it would work out. So she rented it to us, with the understanding she might want to move back in at any time. Her family told her not to rent to a family with six kids because the house would be destroyed. “We were just recovering financially from when we lived out in Hilton, We had to get our credit all straightened out, and we started saving money for a downpayment. We rented about six months. Mrs. Reynolds would stop in now and then. I had wall papered the rooms, and we had painted the outside of the house. One day she said, “Marge, if I furnish the lunch, can I invite my sisters for over, I just want to say, I told you so.” A short while later she said she would sell it to us.” For one of Margery’s birthdays in Irondequoit, Bernie, then about 17, bought her a dining room chandelier. As he was working at Don and Bob’s, a hamburger stand at the time, it was obvious he had been saving a long time for the special gift. Margery and Jack have moved the chandelier from house to house their whole live since. They hope to one day pass it on to their granddaughter, Marissa, Bernie’s daughter. During this time, Jack was
Page 1 and 2:
The Callans and McClarys Presented
Page 3 and 4:
Introduction My earliest memory is
Page 5 and 6:
too, whenever we heard his knock on
Page 7 and 8: Chapter 1. Feudal Kings and flax sp
Page 9 and 10: Nadsluaig on the brink of Loch n-Ua
Page 11 and 12: Chapter 2. Widows Widows and and ha
Page 13 and 14: our Callans to live in Ireland. Whe
Page 15 and 16: year-old Philip in the widow Rose C
Page 17 and 18: from this home site in 1890. By tha
Page 19 and 20: Children of Philip and Kitty Callan
Page 21 and 22: Callan, a brother of Mary. Zita McC
Page 23 and 24: is also related to our 1821 Callan
Page 25 and 26: Ann O’ Reilly from Ballymachugh.
Page 27 and 28: about my search for the nonexistent
Page 29 and 30: Chapter 6. A seminarian falls in lo
Page 31 and 32: Matthews, friends of the family, wh
Page 33 and 34: Chapter 7: Bernard Callan and Mary
Page 35 and 36: playing it. Ed eventually would pla
Page 37 and 38: as he watched the early days of tel
Page 39 and 40: Dorothy, and had four other childre
Page 41 and 42: many years,” says Betty. “When
Page 43 and 44: ecame Al Callan’s grandmother. Mo
Page 45 and 46: Chapter 10 George Callan and Gertru
Page 47 and 48: CHAPTER 11 The Messier-Byrd Family
Page 49 and 50: second wife was Lorraine. Francis a
Page 51 and 52: one that she carried in her purse,
Page 53 and 54: college. He worked at Otis Lumber y
Page 55 and 56: Nancy recalls, “she asked me one
Page 57: playing Canasta with her future mot
Page 61 and 62: Chapter 14 Letter from Mom: Margery
Page 63 and 64: put me on the pill anyway. He told
Page 65 and 66: ter. They said there was a guy on o
Page 67 and 68: Al First Place, Pie Eating Contest
Page 69 and 70: McClary. Additional oral history fr
Page 71 and 72: Chapter 17 John Robert McClary and
Page 73 and 74: Chapter 18 John Raymond McClary and
Page 75 and 76: Chapter 19 Clinton McClary and KAth
Page 77 and 78: in his yard, which was also kept ve
Page 79 and 80: emain comparable to that of her fri
Page 81 and 82: It was a comforting environment at
Page 83 and 84: Chapter 20 Dolphin Davis and Opheli
Page 85 and 86: Chapter 21 Dolphin Chaffee Davis an
Page 87 and 88: Chapter 22 Robert JAmes Murray and
Page 89 and 90: Sunday Sunday April April April 2,
Page 91 and 92: calling her that once in awhile but
Page 93 and 94: kick the top of the door from the k
Page 95 and 96: followed the example of her mother,
Page 97 and 98: and Hubert was too formal). Bert gr
Page 99 and 100: and came back to a well decorated a
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The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

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