Becky: When I called Father Scanlon to do this interview, he must have thought long and
Hard about what his experiences were. Father Scanlon had all of his thoughts written down before we got there and began speaking about his memories of World War Two as soon as we sat down.

Okay. December 7, 1941 I was ten years old. I was in sixth grade. I lived on Providence Street, Worcester, Massachusetts, 165, in front of the park. I can remember the news, the radio…there was no TV…telling we had been bombed. I can still, to this day, vividly remember walking over Providence Street…actually, our mother had said to us…my mother was a great history buff, always dragging us everywhere. Anyway, a day after the hurricane, a few years before that, she dragged Peggy (his sister) and I downtown. She made us walk all the way downtown just to see the trolley cars stuck in the middle of the street because there was no electric on. You know, I remember my mother saying to "go to church,"…there were vespers in those days..."we got a serious problem". I can still remember walking along Providence Street, I was a young kid, wondering what bombs were. The next day, we had no school because it was December the eighth. It was the Immaculate Conception. And I can remember going to Waites Hardware with my father. He was getting some building supplies to work around the house with. And the whole store came to a stop because Franklin Roosevelt spoke of declaring war on the Japanese.

Okay. (Inaudible) as a kid, ten years old turned sixteen, roughly, before the war came to an end. We lived on Vernon Hill, nicknamed "Nobility Hill" , where all the Irish and Jewish people lived. The Polish lived at the bottom of the hill. We had a very, very…that would play a key role in the war…active parish named Ascension. Today, it's done, it's dead (inaudible). We had an old Irish pastor who had been a missionary. One of the things he constantly hounded on every Sunday was "a rosary a day for the boys away". The parish had sent…it was a big parish at the time…a tremendous number of immigrant sons into the military. Of course, they were the ones drafted. Nobody was killed. That's a remarkable thing. Not one kid. As far as I…no one was killed…I know no one was killed. And I want to say, as far as I know, no one was seriously wounded, and they were in the front lines. There was one military funeral that my mom took us to that was in the parish. He was a Holy Cross graduate, Walker, who had married a girl from the parish during the war. He was killed in flight training somewhere in the United States. But, he was not a parishioner, if you know what I mean, but she was. So, it was "a rosary a day for the boys away".

As the kids went into the military and they furloughed, they'd have a week or two off and they'd come back and serve on the altar in uniform. We had a tremendous group. This was a parish that had eighteen priests ordained in ten years. They'd just file out of there. But, if they'd (the kids in the military) come back and they were in church, they'd presume the sacristy and they'd bump…you couldn't serve Sunday mass until you were in college. They'd bump the guy serving and then they would serve.

I can remember, in every window, you would have a little flag. It had a white centerpiece with red trimming and blue. And on there would be a gold star, that meant a kid had been killed, a sliver star, he was Missing in Action, and a blue star meant you had a son in the service, or a daughter. In some cases, like the Epsteins who lived on our third floor, there were five of them in the service, including Sophie. That excited the kids more, knowing a woman in the WAC's.

I can remember very vividly, we were put through…and I think about it now, a lot of it was psychological…we had what you would call air raids. You would have to have certain kinds of curtains in your house, "black out" curtains. And you had to have put out all of your lights. Mr. Page next door, for example, was an air raid warden. He would go along the street and enforce that rule. A friend of our family, Jim Griffin, who lived off of Main South, had gas lights…you know, gas street lights…and he had a stick that he would hit with and kill the flames. Cars: the headlight was half painted black. Yeah, they painted the car's headlight half black so you could never be able to go to high beams. You could never go to high beams, or what we call high beams today. That would prevent, they said, any air force attacks by the Germans. They would be guided to the city by the lights because they didn't have radar much. So, even the street lights, all of the street lights were painted half black so that they would not go up with light. They would force everything down.

The Epsteins lived on our top floor. They were Jewish. I can remember Charlie's car was put in our garage. A guy named McKeon…he later became the fire chief of Worcester, got to be fire chief of (inaudible)…his car was put in there with Charlie's when he went to be Coast Guard. Freddie Epstein was stationed in Alaska. I remember how he'd call his mother…of course they were all Russian Jews, immigrants…she thought it was a joke. They radioed from Alaska through some ham operator who picked up the radio transmission and would be able to call his mother's phone number in Worcester (inaudible).

I remember, as a kid, going to films that were war stories. Supposedly, you know, that was to psychologically get you ready. Peggy helped me with this one. The Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli starring Maureen O'Hara; The guy, you know, was a marine that wasn't going to join back. He paraded down the street and then, all of a sudden, you saw his pants and everything flying off and they gave him his uniform, you know.

I remember going with Peggy to see the Sullivan Brothers, the Five Sullivan Brothers who were killed in action. Going to see…it was an idea for the British…The White Cliffs of Dover. Irene Dunn, Peggy tells me, was in that. You know, if you went to see these things, at the time, you would come out and want to join the Marines. That was the whole idea of it; you would want to join the Navy. But, it was the whole idea, to psychologically, you know, to tell you where they were.

I remember rations. You know, there was stuff that was rationed. No candy. You couldn't get candy, sugar, butter. I remember going down to Kennedy's with my dad…on Front Street…and standing in line for a pound of butter for about an hour. Bacon fat: you could see it back for a pound back. they claimed they'd make bullets out of it…they claimed. A lot of it was psychological, you know. I remember a guy named Clint Garrity, he's of Sullivan, Garrity, Donnelly Insurance that advertise the Holy Cross games. His car was at Sullivan's house. All of his furniture was in my great aunt Doris' apartment. You know, he was a bachelor. He went off to war, so we put up his storage.

The cars had artificial tires. There was a rubber shortage, gas shortage. So, on the car window, where today you'd see the sticker that you'd passed you break exam, there'd be A, B, C, or D stickers. A was you'd get that much. B, a little more. C, you got a lot of gas. If you were a priest, a doctor, or a tradesman, you got a D. if it was like you at Holy Cross, you got an A because you did very little travelling.

Okay, of course we had trolley cars, in Worcester, by the droves. So, everywhere you went, it was in trolley cars. They were great for the environment. They should have kept them. You could also hop on them and if you didn't have money, you could hop on the back and get a ride up the hill.

When I was twelve, two years into the war, I got a job packing potatoes and sugar at Argento's Market on East Central Street. Argento's, at the time, I didn't know if it was black market...be careful of the black students when you say black market today…but, I remember as a kid, I was twelve years old, my folks traded there. You'd get all the meat you wanted, all the butter you wanted, all the stuff you wanted. You doing alright there (pointing at the tape recorder)?

Becky: (Looking at the tape recorder) I think so.

I can remember, one time, we got big bags of a hundred pounds of sugar and Nick had us load up his truck. Two kids, myself, and a kid named Charlie Toomey…I believe he was a marine…and a driver, we went to all of the customer's houses and just dropped a hundred pounds of sugar on their back porch without even telling them, because they had paid for them. You know, it was so easy to get. You'd take to him, at the end of the month, all of your coupons, and Nick saw that you were taken care of.

I can remember VJ day and VE day. VJ day, I think, was August sixteenth, or Fifteenth, rather. We all went downtown to see the parades. It was wild. It was wild…guys hugging and kissing every (hesitates) woman they met. (lLeaning toward Matt) You can't say chick in front of a woman, of course. As a parish, there was a great emphasis on prayer. It was a unique, you know. It had a great effect on the parish. Praying for the kids away…"A rosary a day for the boys away"…you heard that every single Sunday at the mass. And God help the guy that left early.

I can remember my father working at the American Steel and Wire, which is down in the valley at Millbury Street where that little river is. They got an E award for excellence. They had a flag that they produced well. All the employees were given a little pin to wear on their coat, so that they'd know they were part of the war effort, that they'd done well.

I had an aunt Mary and she was a waitress. She came over from Ireland. She went to work at Wyman Gordon's where they made a part for all the airplanes. Wyman Gordon's here in Worcester, of course, is now defunct, but the building is here, if nothing else. Somehow, the government would inspect all of the workers. By the way, everybody had a little badge (inaudible). But, Mary got scooped by the government. They saw her Irish background and the fact the she had been fairly well educated in Ireland, and they asked her to come to Washington to work for the Secret Service. It would be the forerun of the CIA, which is the office of (inaudible). Planning was involved, strategic something. Donovan, General Donovan, headed it up. She worked there for many, many years. She lived at Fort Hood outside of Washington. We loved her to come home, occasionally, by train. She got candy and gum at the base. You couldn't get it anywhere else. It was all there.

Rosie the Riveter came in around this time. I remember, as a kid, it was very unique that women went to work in factories. I would say, up until that point, women did not work. You were considered very poor if you went to work as a woman. Your (a woman's) job was in the house, you know, raising the children, have your husband's meals ready. Then, all of a sudden, we needed women to make stuff for the military. So, that's where that came from.

I remember we had some busses in Worcester at the time. The thing that they did use…I remember some came through during the war to replace the old, old busses…and everything on it was wood. The wooden handles to hang on to, the hanging handles up above. And I can remember, very vividly…because it broke on the bus driver one day…he just went to shift and (makes snapping noise), you know, like a baseball bat, off it came.

People were encouraged to have "Victory Gardens" in their backyards. You bought seeds, planted vegetables, tomatoes so that you wouldn't use the products on the market. You were encouraged to can. I can remember my mother canning stuff. You know, the jars and the rubbers that they would use. I remember in schools, even in Catholic schools, they would sell "Defense Stamps". If you put so many "Defense Stamps" in a book you could buy a war bond, you know, so the government would have money. My father at the mill and all these people were encouraged to buy war bonds, you know, by the month if not weekly.

There were cadet nurses at St. Vincent's Hospital, the old St. Vincent's on Providence and Winthrop Street. And the girl downstairs in our three-decker…we owned a three-decker…she was a cadet nurse. They wore a gray uniform. The best way to describe it to you kids, it was nurses ROTC. They were trained before they pre-trained. It was three years of nursing, they would then serve in the military, wherever the military needed them. Betty did that because, just as she graduated, the war was over.

I remember, as a kid, the ROTC unit at Holy Cross and the V-12 coming to Vernon Hill Park and playing football there. They wanted to exercise. I later found out in life that Worcester Tech had a V-12. I never went to Worcester Tech until the day the Bishop assigned me there. And I grew up in Worcester.

Newsreels. If you could go to a movie in those days, the only thing you saw were newsreels. They were put in between the films because there was no television. But, you'd see these black and white movies of the landing in France and place like that. Popular songs: "Johnny Got a Zero", meaning a zero for airplanes, the Japanese. "Johnny" was dumb, but he did get zeroes. He was able to beat them down. Guys started to put on there airplanes…and you had a lot of kids from Vernon Hill who became pilots…and they'd put their girls name on the airplane or the pinup girl, they called them, started around then.

I can remember the USO, which is still around, entertaining. But, they'd be at Union Station because that's where everyone left to go into the service, and came home. They would be there to greet the kids. Becky's going to love this one. I can remember soldiers bringing home their war-brides, which was a very neat thing. And Father Foley, Father Mike Foley…the Foley's went to Holy Cross, all eight or nine of the kids. One of the girls played on one of the basketball teams. She is a doctor today in the Midwest and Mike and John became priests. Their mother was considered a war-bride. She came from Philadelphia. Yeah, that shows you how small our community was, you know. That was everybody. If you dated a girl from Boston, that was highly unusual, you know, unless you met her in college through "cattle call" from up there. That's what the girls who were bussed in from other schools, we called it the "cattle call".

I remember Mexican workers being imported by the railroad. And they would run to Vernon Hill Park on Saturday and Sunday…more Sunday that anything…so they'd have somewhere for a picnic because there was no meals.

I forged a birth record. When I was fourteen, I said I was sixteen and got a job at the Worcester Market. They were glad to get a guy, you know. There were plenty of women and no guys. I went down and worked in the vegetable counter and became a short order cook. They showed me how to cut some meat.

I can remember wedding days were moved up like crazy. People who were supposed to get married, let's say, two years down the road, all of a sudden, it would be announced, or word would get out that Becky and her boyfriend were going to get married Saturday morning. You know, we had the war situation.

Girls had…Peggy gave me this one…girls had no nylons, because nylon was used for parachutes. So, they used to paint there legs like a little tint of brown and then put a black stripe down the back.

I got to get a name spelled for you. If you want an excellent topic, there is a Colonel…if you had more time, I would almost take you to see him. There is a guy, a Jewish guy, of Worcester…I was with him yesterday afternoon….he is now in his last eighties, if not early nineties. Colonel Yarock, he's Jewish, he's a bachelor. I'll get the spelling. I'll call before you leave. The military detective, the MP, will get me the spelling. Colonel Yarock tells a very interesting story. It's kind of unique. About five years ago…I had met him for forty years…I had the nerve to ask him, "How is a Jew, who had been a Prisoner of War, survive?". He told me a very, very unique story. So, you may use it, and I know he wouldn't mind. Colonel Yarock was a low ranking officer. I believe he was in a plane crash. It had been his first mission or something. He was picked up by the Italian soldiers and made a Prisoner of War. When he got to the Prisoner of War camp, he'll tell you, he debated with his fellow Americans…that's why I think it was an airplane…what he should do as a Jew…because this would be curtains for him if he went to the Germans. And there was an Irishman, who had been killed, who I thought was a higher ranking officer from the way he (Yarock) spoke. He was undecided about whether he should use his dogtags or his own, or what. In there, he asked if he could see the chaplain of the base. And, he said, within an hour or two, down came a big bruiser, Italian priest who was the Army chaplain. He said, amazingly, the priest had a fairly good grasp of English, so they could converse. He told the priest his concern. And the priest said, "You've got a very real concern because we are handing you over to the Nazis". The moral problem, the priest thought, that it was not right that he wear somebody else's dogtags because it might encourage the Walsh family…I think his name was Walsh…that their son was still alive. And he didn't give him much hope.

The next morning, bright and early, two MP's came down to the war camp and were looking for Yarock. And he said goodbye to all his fellow Americans because he thought it was (inaudible) for being a Jew. He turned around and was brought up to the camp, the Italian camp, with an MP at each side of him. He was brought into and sat down. The MP's said they would be outside and that an officer would be in shortly. When the officer came in, it was the chaplain. He was the captain of the Italian Army. And he told him that he had thought about his dilemma. And he said, "I wish you would allow me to notify my Bishop who will notify the Vatican that you are a Prisoner of War. We will write on your papers that the Vatican has been notified". And then he said, "I can almost guarantee you they won't kill you because of that". So, he (Yarock) said yes. Now, he never knew the other half. He was on a death march through Germany, Poland, you know, he spent four or five years as a Prisoner of War, and they never did touch him. He always thought it was because of that.

Now, the other half of the story he never knew until he came home from the war. His mother lived on Cutler Street, which is down the lower part of Providence St., she lived in the top floor of an triple decker, and one morning she got a telegram and the army soldier showed up-don't forget that Air Force was Army in those days-telling her that her son was MIA and presumed dead. And his mother told him afterwards that it was the worst day of her life. When about 3:00 in the afternoon she got a call from the pastor of St. Stephen's Church in Worcester, which was, her home, is within St. Stephen's church. The pastor was a Fr. Ruddy-well, the pastor I'm not quite sure of his name-and uh, he was a very rough Irishman. He called and said, "I'm coming down to see you," and she thought he was coming, you know, and she said, "I don't need company!" They kind of flared on the phone and she said, "Well, I'm coming down!" And he came down and he said to her, I have a message from the Bishop of Springfield, who called me a few hours ago, and he had been called by the Apostolic Delegate from Washington, and the message is, Your son is alive, as a prisoner of war under Vatican protection. So although the Army told her that her son was missing in action, dead, she knew through the Vatican that her son was alive and under their protection hopefully would be saved.

Later he found out, 4 or 5 months after they [Vatican] did it for him, they had been doing it for other American soldiers but the Red Cross objected, and the American government told them to cease doing it. An interesting story.

Now, that's what I jotted down, what do you want to ask me?

MATT: You spoke about women working in the war, was your mother working during the war?

No. My mother was offered a job, working as a seamstress, and she told the story, she was offered the job at a hospital, and she told my father about it, and he's typical Irish answer was, "Sheila, do I take good care of you?" and that was the end of conversation.

BECKY: Now how old was Peggy?

She was tow years younger.

BECKY: So she would have been too young to work in the war.

Yeah.

MATT: You said one of your neighbors was involved in the WAC. Did you know other women who were involved in that during the war?

She was not only woman we knew who was involved; there were WAVES, WACs, I don't think the Marines took women right away, but it was so unique to see her in uniform every kid came to her in uniform, she was a typist at some base. The idea was, they would go in, they were not part of the army, they were not technically part of the US Army, they were an auxiliary, and it was only later that women could really be in the army, and they weren't really given combat training, they were the typists and the office hands to free up men to go fight.

I lived with a very famous war chaplain after the war, Fr. Ed Connors, a Holy Cross graduate, who, uh, 39 Infantry division was his army, and he came close to the Congressional Medal. I remember how proud Worcester was because the headlines about Connors, and how the Navy did not want to give him the medal because he was not an Annapolis graduate, and they had never had a non-Annapolis graduate, if I remember this right, win the Medal of Honor. You realize that Holy Cross is, outside of the military, probably as many Congressional Medal of Honors than any other colleges or universities.

BECKY: You mentioned hearing FDR's address on the radio. Did you listen to the radio a lot?

No, but the whole store stopped, and I can just remember we all stopped. Of course, I later saw the newsreels, but I can still here this voice saying "We've been attacked," and a lot of the guys saying, "Well, we're going!

BECKY: Did most of your information come from the newsreels then?

No, no, the radio, mostly. The newsreels were months and months behind. You might go to the movies once every three months and you might see a newsreel six months ago!
(Brief discussion about other matters which shifts the conversation back to the Red Cross)

MATT: Why did the Red Cross object? [to the Vatican helping prisoners?]

We used to have, when I was fire chaplain in Worcester, we used to have a lieutenant's association made up of college aged kids who would come to fires and place people in housing and everything and the Red Cross comes by, and they got no satisfaction, they said they were the sole, you know…..I can remember after the hurricane, or, uh, tornado in Worcester, right after graduation I came home from seminary and every Catholic charity, the Salvation Army, gave you mattresses for nothing, and the Red Cross I can remember, had a COD for that.

MATT: Would you say that your childhood was affected at all by being in the war?

Oh, certainly! Everywhere you went, you knew that you were in war. What we never went through, and only later I came to appreciate this, until Sept. 11 was an attack on our own country. TV-the Vietnam War, if you look back on it-you know, [inaudible] is going to war, and you had no idea what it was, and you look at Vietnam and you can see it on television.

[Discussion shifts to Holy Cross graduates during Vietnam]

MATT: So if you'd grown up 10 years before or 10 years after…..

Oh definitely, we went through rationing, and people being notified, and kids who had been killed in action, and this. The generation ahead of me was gone, not in the park, you know, if you look at it that way. Two generations ahead of me just disappeared. You see soldiers come home….You didn't really date a girl outside of the neighborhood in those days. I can remember like Carol Paige….i think too it [the war] made couples love each other a lot more. Interesting if you read history your realize the GI Bill was put in to counteract the military draft riots, and then the war brides after World War II, and the guys came home and there were no jobs, we had to walk a lot; there were no cars. There was a shortage of things unless you knew where to get them; everything was rationed-oil, gas.

BECKY: How long did it take you to realize what was going on? I mean you were 10 or 11…

I knew right away. You knew right away. Let me put it this way without sounding high class. I got a fabulous grammar and high school education, so we were well aware of what war was, in the sense of studying war, and I can just remember walking around the street and there was a very eerie feeling, the whole street was very quiet, people were glued to their radio, you could see them sitting around the parlor in the Dinning room, just listening to the radio.

BECKY: Do you remember when FDR died?

Not as vividly. I remember hearing it but not as vividly. You see, we didn't have television, so you knew, you don't remember pictures like you do today-like JFK getting shot-you saw that on television. I can remember the Freedom Train coming through Worcester and going in to the Union Station and seeing all the Declaration of Independence and all this. My mother was ver funny, she came from Ireland and had no great desire to go back, the real Irish don't. And she, this was America and this was a good life, and we don't try to keep alive what we left behind. She came from Ireland and worked for a Yankee family, that sent her to college. So in one sense, she was a bit of a cut above the other women, they all came to her to do their taxes. My father owned some property with my father, and we had very little money but we'd always buy property, and then when we had to go to college they would sell a house every so often. For mine, Peggy went to State. And there was no financial aid.

[Discussion about Holy Cross financial aid during the 1950's]

Well, we had people like Bud Noonan, clerk of the district courts, the one who files the complaints against you when you're caught by the Worcester cops. Bud went off and joined the Navy at 14, with a forged birth record, or at 16, you had to be 18, and they only kept him for six months. So you had kids do that during high school, some of your buddies ran off to join the service.