Family First 90 Years Of Sex, Politics, and Religion

By Lloyd Casey

Family First - Written from 1980 to 2016. It is an account of one family's life during the 20th century.

The family consists of a father, mother, five sons and two daughters. The seven children were born from 1950 to 1969.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Global Summit House
• Release date: Jul 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956074123

Book preview

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Family First 90 Years Of Sex, Politics, and Religion

by

Lloyd Casey

Copyright © 2021 Lloyd Casey.

.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-956074-13-0 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-956074-14-7 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-956074-12-3 (E-book Edition)

Book Ordering Information

Phone Number: 315 288-7939 ext. 1000 or 347-901-4920

Email: [e-mail]

Global Summit House

www.globalsummithouse.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Forward How/Why I Got Started

Chapter One A Four Day Beginning

Chapter Two A Pre- beginning Adventure

Chapter Three One Month of Writing

Chapter Four Slowing Down

Chapter Five Hitting Dead Ends

Chapter Six A Christmas Present

Chapter Seven Ten Years Later

Chapter Eight Six Years Later

Chapter Nine An Early Start on Year 2000

Chapter Ten A Little of This and That

Chapter Eleven An Unexpected Event

Chapter Twelve Goodbye 32 Years

Chapter Thirteen Is It Really Worth It

Chapter Fourteen Hitchhiking in 1947

Chapter Fifteen When In My Teens

Chapter Sixteen Did I Have a Social Life

Chapter Seventeen Four Political Campaigns

Chapter Eighteen How/Why It Has Ended

Postscript I Age 83 And Learning

Postscript II Odds and Ends

FOREWARD

How/Why I Got Started

At some time while in the Las Vegas, Nevada high school, 1941, 1942 and 1943 a story about a father who started to write his children but then was killed by a natural disaster stuck in my mind. I dropped out of high school in the summer of 1944 and enlisted in the navy. I obtained a high school diploma by completing some courses via correspondence while in the navy. My father insisted I should go to a Catholic college. He told me he thought I was losing my religion. An officer aboard ship in January 1946 had a book of colleges. I wrote to St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania

Having grown up in southern Nevada but ending up in Charleston, South Carolina thanks to the navy I decided on a college in the East. The blurb about St. Vincent was of a friendly place in the beautiful rolling hills of Western Pennsylvania. It had been established as a Benedictine monastery and featured a brewery. The only thing I knew about the word Benedictine was it was something Catholic. I was familiar with the word brewery and enjoyed the product. In spite of only three years of high school and the equivalent of a GED diploma I was accepted. I later came to believe the reason I was accepted was that in September 1946 I was one of two students from West of the Mississippi River.

Fast forward now as to how I decided to write a book for our children.

In 1958, married for nine years and the father of four sons, the memory of the father who died before writing to his children came

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back to me. I purchased a portable typewriter and said to myself, Casey, you better get started writing.

A daughter was born in 1959, another son in 1963, a mid-life career change in 1964 and another daughter in 1969 got in the way of writing. In February 1977 nineteen years after having purchased the typewriter I went to a cabin in Wyoming for four days to get started writing. Those four days were a great learning experience. I learned I didn’t have the discipline to write. I learned a blank page in a typewriter is a sure way to create a mental block. Chapter two in this book is what I wrote during those four days. My writing was done in Colorado until Chapter 12 when we moved to Ohio.

In January 1980 I had begun my 54th year of life. Our seven children were ages 30, 28, 26, 24, 21, 17 and 11. I got out the portable typewriter and made a determination to get some writing done at least once per week. I knew I was fortunate to have lived into my 54th year. I had better get serious about writing or what I wanted my children to know about my life would never be known.

On November 16th 1980 I quit writing. In this book chapters one through six are what I wrote from January 6 through November 16. I made photocopies of the 8 ½ by 11 type written pages and gave each of the children a set as their Christmas present from me in 1980.

Still being alive in 1990 I started writing again and again had a Christmas present for each who were now ages 40 to 21. I didn’t get a lot done. Another way to say that; I found I didn’t have much more to tell them. Chapters seven and eight are the result of 1990.

The 1990’s had some special events. In November 1992 I was elected to the Colorado state Senate. When I took the oath of office in January 1963 I was 66 years old. In September/October 1996 I survived an aortal aneurism.

These events led me to do some writing prior to 2000. I figured I could not count on being alive through 2000. But I did live through those twelve months and for the third time our now adult children were given a set of stapled pages as my Christmas present to them. I was then 74 and they were from 50 to 31. The year 2000 Christmas present is chapters nine, ten, eleven and twelve.

We left Colorado after being there for thirty-two years to live in Dublin, Ohio in October 2000. Our move was for mother and daughter to be close to one another as our youngest grandchildren grew. That lasted for five years. Our son-in-law’s work took him to Wisconsin in 2005. During our first two years we became good friends with a man who shared our interest in theater. He died in 2002. His

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death was a very difficult time for me. I had to write about it to find closure. That is chapter thirteen.

In the summer of 2006 there was a family gathering to celebrate the birthdays of us parents becoming age 80. The twenty years from 1980 into 2000 had produced memorable living and dying experiences. There were thirteen of fourteen grandchildren living. One of our daughter’s-in-law had died. There had been two divorces and re-marriages. I got thinking about the Christmas presents of 1980, 1990 and 2000. If I lived to be eighty-four in 2010 should I do another? The seven of them talked about what I had written. I asked how many knew where the papers were. Just one knew; our son, the journalist.

The result of talking about the Christmas presents was the request by them for me to write about at least one of my West coast East coast hitchhiking trips in 1946, 1947 and 1948.

Then there was curiosity expressed as to whether my teen years were anything like theirs.

Another curiosity was did I have anything resembling a social life before I married. And finally, why don’t you write about the four political campaigns you experienced? I accepted the requests and got back to writing on those subjects. They are chapters fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen.

In the year 2007 I gathered all the typewriter written pages and retyped them using a computer. I am not a computer expert. What I know is the result of trial and error. When one of our most skilled computer sons was visiting that summer he organized the computer file into one type face and one font size as well as putting it all in chronological order. I figured the only way all of this would ever be something family members of the future would ever find was to have it in a book. Each of them received a book, "Christmas Presents

– Life in Progress" for a Christmas present in 2007.

Some very loyal friends who borrowed a book encouraged me to try to find a publisher. Why? Because every family has a story. I hope if what I have done is published it will inspire other fathers and mothers to write their story. I have been lucky. I have had twenty-nine years to work on my story. No one knows how much time they will have. The thing to do is start. Then it is a matter of persevering. Some of your descendents will be fascinated to learn what life was like back in the 20th and 21st century. This forward has been written in July 2009. The postscript was written in 2010 Because my inherited Irish/Belgium Catholic faith has been such an influence I needed to end my story with the news that learning should never end. For me, no longer thinking I need to

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believe the unbelievable has been a freeing experience and my faith is stronger than before.

Once more, you have a story. Every family has a story. Make a resolution to get started writing. I managed to do it. So can you. viii

CHAPTER ONE

A Four Day Beginning

SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 1980

In 1958 I purchased this typewriter I am using. It has taken twentytwo years for me to begin to use it for the reason I bought it. I am lucky to be alive these twenty-two years later.. The reason I bought it was because I might die before I wrote our children some legacy thoughts about family and life in general. I thought I had lived quite a lot in 1958 since I would be thirty-two years old, married for nine years and the father of four sons.

How wrong I was. Now, twenty-two years later, at age fifty-four, married thirty-one years and with five sons and two daughters I really have lived quite a lot. In 1958 we were living in San Mateo, California and I was selling insurance. We moved across the bay to Clayton, California in 1960. In 1964 we moved to Yakima, Washington where I was trying to educate adult Catholics about the dramatic changes resulting from the Council of Vatican II I had spent the school year 1963/64 obtaining a Master Degree in theology to prepare myself for this mid-life career change.

My candidacy in a political campaign in 1968 prompted the bishop in Yakima to fire me. In 1969 we moved to Northglenn, Colorado. I had found work in a Catholic parish in Denver. That lasted for three years. My teaching was considered too unorthodox by a new pastor assigned to the parish. It was difficult at age 46 to get back into the commercial world after ten years of Catholic adult education. I had two short lived selling experiences, a few years as ticket manager of the Denver Symphony and a short lived ticket manager job with a professional hockey team.

In 1978 I caught on with a start up technology company manufacturing tape and disk drives for main frame computers. Now, two years later, I feel my life has settled down. This is the time to discipline myself and get after what I have put off for twenty-two years.

I may have another thirty years; then again, I might not even have one. Two years ago when I got the job with Storage Technology Corp. at age fifty-one I decided to enjoy as much as possible each day. Just take life one day at a time. Make whatever I could of the day and accept whatever happened without celebration or regret. That idea came from a poem by Rudyard Kipling entitled If . One of the couplets in the poem is If you can meet with triumph or disaster and treat these two imposters just the same. At age fifty-one I considered my triumphs as our twenty-eight year marriage and our seven children. The disasters included working for the Catholic church, the symphony which closed due to a strike, the job with the hockey team and two political campaigns.

Three years ago I went off by myself to a friend’s cabin in Wyoming to get a start on writing something. That didn’t work. The motivation for sticking with writing this year is to turn it into a Christmas present for each of the seven children, ages 11 to 30. It may not happen but my hope is each will find what I write interesting enough to read all of it.

I was fascinated by the stories my grandfather Casey told me. He was in his late seventies. I was nineteen and in the navy. It was the spring of 1946. The destroyer on which I had served since June1945 was being decommissioned while in the Wando river which flowed into Charleston, South Carolina.

Grandpa lived in Norfolk, Virginia. I had not seen him since a trip from Nevada to Virginia in 1936. It was only a half day trip to Norfolk where I could re-connect with my grandparents and two aunts. I felt I had traveled much since enlisting in August 1944. I had been to Idaho, San Francisco, Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, almost to Japan, through the Panama Canal, Philadelphia, New York and Charleston.

My travels were nothing compared to Grandpa and his were in ships with sails. He proudly proclaimed he sailed when men were made of steel and ships were made of wood rather than wooden men and steel ships. He had been born in Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland. He was brought to Massachusetts by his widowed mother along with four other children. He was two years old. He ran away from home at age fourteen and spent the next nine years on merchant ships. During those years he visited ports on both coasts of South America, Africa, India, Australia, two ports in China as well as ports in Norway, Sweden, England, Germany, France, Spain and Italy.

My big adventure prior to the navy was learning to fly. I did that in the fall of 1943 and spring of 1944. My goal was to be a pilot in the war. That goal had to be discarded when I took an eye test and learned one of my eyes was much less that 20/20. I had to settle for the navy. Every recruit was given a battery of tests during boot camp to find out where they would best fit. I became a radioman which required learning the Morse Code and being able to type forty words per minute.

Before I enlisted in August 1944 I had soloed flying. The eye situation was only a problem with military flying. The decommissioning of the destroyer lasted from February to June 1946. Once a week when I had liberty I went to the local airport where I flew enough to obtain a private license which allowed me to take people with me. The airplanes I flew had an upper wing, one engine and seating for two. I had no problem landing; just shut one eye to avoid the depth perception difference. My eyes are still good enough now at age fifty-three to get by without glasses. I’ve often wondered how it is I am as healthy as I am since I have never been into doing things to maintain health.

My health might be the result of such things as whooping cough, measles, chicken pox, boils, ring worm and colds during age five to ten. During the three years we lived in the Moapa railroad building we swam in a stream called the Muddy river. The stream was a favorite place for cattle to do what they do. We got used to dodging manure as it floated by. Between the antibodies I built up from the early childhood diseases and then a reinforced immune system thanks to the river I have been healthy. I’m no doubt lucky in having inherited some stout hearted genes.

In 1966 I started smoking cigarettes rather than cigars. I had become a candidate in a county political campaign and cigarettes were more acceptable for an aspiring politician than cigars. I became addicted to them. I was forty years old and had been on an idealistic adventure for three years trying to teach adult Catholics they were Christians. This adventure being a layman working for the Catholic bureaucracy offered no fringe benefits such as retirement so I looked upon nicotine as an alternative form of retirement. It would kill me before I reached retirement age. Nothing about retirement appealed to me.

Life, in my mind, has always been an adventure. The adventure of two persons bringing an egg and sperm together started my life. I was very lucky because these two persons, my mother and father, had a love relationship that lasted until death. With the stability of their marriage I had all the food, shelter, clothing, health and emotional care we humans need to get a start on further adventures. I have done a great amount of reading on every idea written as to what comes after life as we knew it. I have opted with those who say life never ends. I like the quip, It isn’t difficult to believe in life after death. The difficulty is in believing in life before death.

People peak at a variety of times in regard to becoming mature. The first time I was aware of this was in the eighth grade. There was a boy who was through puberty fast. He was taller, stronger and better looking than every other boy in the class. Three years later as a junior in high school he was shorter, weaker and not as good looking as several other boys. He had peaked too soon.

When the family moved from Southern California to Moapa, Nevada which was sixty miles North of Las Vegas I was in the third grade. There was no electricity and no indoor plumbing in Moapa. There were five Casey boys and two Grandin girls who lived in the three railroad buildings along the tracks. Twelve children came from homes in the North Moapa valley and ten Piaute Indian children came from the reservation. The school had two rooms for these twenty-nine students; one room for the first, second and third grade and the other for the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade. The Piaute children spent whatever number of years they came to school in the first three grades. I was in the largest class five students, in the fourth and fifth grade.

When we moved to Las Vegas I was in the sixth grade.

In Las Vegas we lived in a house which had electricity and indoor plumbing. The population of Moapa was seventeen; the population of Las Vegas was 10,000. Each class from first through eighth had three sections. A professor at Stanford University had determined students would progress better if they were grouped according to learning ability.

The students just accepted what was happening to them; the dumbest in section three, the next in section two and smartest in section one.

In regard to peaking, I do not feel I have peaked as a mature person. I don’t think I’ll ever make it. I’d like to peak at the next big life event. The one going from life in time to life in eternity. I have been very close to ten people who have made this move. A very pretty sixth grade girl went through it long before she should have. She and her father were killed when a train hit their car at a railroad crossing. She was in the first section room. Her death opened a desk and I was