The Callans and McClarys, by John Edward Callan - Callanworld

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 to-
gether 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