Up, Up, and Gone!: My Forty-Seven Years in the Airline Industry—From 707S to 787S

By James Farrell

From meeting Charles Lindbergh at Pan Am back in the 60s up till the megamerger of United Airlines with Continental Airlines in the mid-2000s, Jim has seen the rapid growth of the airline industry firsthand. From the jet era inception with the Boeing 707, to the historic introduction of the 747, which he witnessed himself, right up to the 787 introduced by United, he has been on a wild roller coaster ride that took him from Pan Am to Eastern Airlines to American Airlines to Continental and finally to United. Its a ride he hopes will capture the readers interest and take them to exciting places never witnessed before.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 30, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524565022

James Farrell

A retired airline industry professional, Jim has had a flair for writing since he was a child. He has written many short stories about family and work-related pieces. He had a guest column in a local newspaper in the Woodlands, Texas, and has written many political letters to the editor in major newspapers in New York and Houston. Jim had been involved in the early union movement at Pan Am in the ’60s and then became a manager/director in Labor Relations and Human Resources at four major airlines. He has also been politically active since his first vote in 1968. Being Irish American, he possesses a quick wit and is an excellent storyteller.

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Copyright © 2016 by James Jim Farrell.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016919712

ISBN:       Hardcover       978-1-5245-6504-6

                 Softcover         978-1-5245-6503-9

                 eBook               978-1-5245-6502-2

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Rev. date: 03/23/2017

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CONTENTS

SECTION I

And so It Began

Chapter 1 You’re Hired!

Chapter 2 Long and Winding Road to Aviation Career

Chapter 3 Family and Mentors on Road to Career

SECTION II

Pan Am Years: 1966–1985

Chapter 4 JFK Airport: Gateway to the World

Chapter 5 Transport Workers Union (TWU): Local 504

Chapter 6 Houston: The Farrells Have Landed

Chapter 7 Family Trips While with Pan Am at JFK

Chapter 8 Thrilling Pan Am Ride Comes to an End

SECTION III

Eastern Airlines Years (1985–1988)

Chapter 9 Is There Life After Pan Am?

Chapter 10 On the Other Side of the Aisle (Management!)

SECTION IV

American Airlines Years (1988–1999)

Chapter 11 American Airlines DFW HDQ (Frankenstein’s Castle)

Chapter 12 On the Road Again: Raleigh and Miami

Chapter 13 Returning to The Castle and on to Love Field

SECTION V

Continental Airlines (2000–2010)

Chapter 14 Fifteen Months in the Wilderness

Chapter 15 Back Working in NYC Area after Twenty-One Years

Chapter 16 Home, Once More!

SECTION VI

United Airlines (2010–2013)

Chapter 17 Last Harrah: Fifth and Final Airline

Epilogue

To Cathy, my bride of 52 years

Marrying her was the best decision of my life.

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. (Confucius)

SECTION I

And so It Began

Chapter 1

You’re Hired!

Congratulations, you are now an employee of Pan American World Airways… the best airline in the world, a stern-looking middle-aged aircraft maintenance manager, John Baldini, told me. You start tomorrow on the afternoon shift.

It was Thursday, April 14, 1966, and I was at Pan Am hangar 14 at JFK Airport in Queens, New York. While I was happy to have been hired, I was currently working for the New York Telephone Company (it was a subsidiary of AT&T at the time; AT&T wasn’t broken up or deregulated until 1984) and wanted to give them a two-week notice before I officially resigned. When I informed Mr. Baldini of that, he responded, That’s up to you, but you have to understand that we are hiring lots of aircraft mechanics for our 747 buildup, so the men (only ‘men’ at the time) who are hired from today until your start date in two weeks will all be ahead of you in seniority. We are a union shop.

Since the New York City area was heavily unionized at the time, particularly in technical trade jobs, and since I was in a union at the phone company (CWA—Communication Workers of America), I did somewhat understand but didn’t really fully understand the impact of all those workers hired ahead of me at the time. I found out the hard way when those very men were able to secure better positions and days off due to their higher seniority as I continued to work at Pan Am through the years. One guy, in particular, Johnny Mazza, always seemed to take a job I was looking to get… at the very last minute before the bid for the job expired. He seemed to have a sixth sense concerning what I was about to do. His hire date was April 20, 1966! Nonetheless, I decided to give a two-week notice and thus began my career at Pan Am on Friday, April 29, 1966.

Chapter 2

Long and Winding Road to Aviation Career

I’d like to say that I’ve always wanted to work in the airline industry since I was a kid, but truth be told, it was more of an evolutionary process and in some instances… pure happenstance.

As a kid in grammar school, I was educated by Immaculate Heart of Mary nuns at Saint Ephrem’s School in the Dyker Heights section of Brooklyn, New York. I was an excellent student, but I realized later in life that my good grades were mostly due to the fact that the nuns pushed me hard and their education by rote system was custom made for me since I’ve always possessed a very good memory.

The other gift given to me, with whom the nuns assisted, was writing. They would have us diagram sentences of all shapes and sizes. Many a time, after diagraming a long sentence, the end result would often resemble a map of the… New York City subway system!

I was talented enough to pass a New York City–wide test that allowed me to attend Brooklyn Technical High School, an all-boys school at the time. It was said to be one of the best public high schools in New York state and ranked high nationwide as well.

It was at Tech that I first got the idea that I wanted a career in aviation. Tech had technical courses that began in your junior year. They had pre–chemical engineering classes (my brother Frank, who attended Tech from 1952 through 1956, took this course and went on to become a chemical engineer), civil engineering, electrical, and aviation. I selected the aviation engineering courses.

But I began to procrastinate after selecting the aviation program. Mrs. Gray, a guidance counselor at the school, recommended I switch to the college prep courses… which she claimed was better suited for me. It also happened to be the course the larger percentage of the six thousand boys (that’s right!) at the school participated in.

I took her advice and switched to the college prep courses. While I didn’t decide to go to college right away, the result of my schooling did land me a job out of high school at Morgan Guaranty Trust Company on Wall Street as an IBM trainee. It was a job that required a suit and tie and paid $60/week in 1962. Not too bad for an eighteen-year-old kid at the time. Plus we received a free hot lunch at the bank’s beautiful cafeteria on 9 Broad Street.

I did get to meet lots of great young people, and we had some fun. Once in a while, a group of them would come over to my dad’s bar and restaurant in Brooklyn (Farrell’s Bay Ridge Dining Room and Bar), and we’d have some drinks together. Life was good.

But in October of ’62, the Cuban Missile Crisis came to the world… out of the blue, and profoundly changed the direction of my life. I’ll never forget President Kennedy’s speech to the nation on the evening of October 22, when he said, It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States… requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

Now, this was no President George Dubya Bush speech about Shock and Awe against the small nation of Iraq on the evening of March 19, 2003. This was a speech about a potential World War III in which millions of citizens, both in the United States and in the Soviet Union, could face the very real possibility of death by ICBM nuclear missiles. My girlfriend at the time, Cathy Zagame, understood the magnitude of the dire situation immediately. As for me, it didn’t really faze me. When you’re a guy of eighteen years of age, you’re really thinking you’re bulletproof.

Like most able-bodied American men at the time (I will spend a lot of time on the topic of chickenhawks down the road in this book… but not right now), that speech raised a real sense of duty to my country. Since my two older brothers, Billy and Frankie, and my next-door neighbors, Paulie and Richie Lopresti had served in the U.S. Navy, I decided then and there that I, too, would become a… sailor.

I went into the brown shoe navy as an airdale. Those not familiar with navy terms, it simply means that I was in the aviation division of the navy. I was an aviation ordnanceman petty officer third class and while there, obtained an FCC Class 1 license. It was this training that gave me, in the final analysis, a leg up in obtaining my first job in the airline industry in 1966.

However, upon my honorable discharge from the navy at the end of 1965, I came home to my bride of one year, Cathy (yes, Cathy Zagame… you’ll hear much, much more about her… later!) who was pregnant with our first child, and living in our new apartment on Seventy-First Street in Brooklyn, only seven blocks from my parents’ home.

I do have a somewhat comical story about my mustering out of the navy. My last tour of duty was at Sigonella Naval Station in Sicily and the way one got home to the States was to get a seat on MATS (Military Air Transport Services) aircraft. I got a ride to Naples, Italy and then, a few days later, to Rota, Spain. Once in Rota, I got a ride on a Seaboard Airlines (air freight company at the time) DC-8 that was being leased by MATS. The aircraft flew into McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, which was about thirty-eight miles from Philadelphia. My orders and the orders of two other fellows from my squadron who were mustering out as well (both from Connecticut—Bob Provost was one, and for the life of me, I can’t remember the other fellow’s name) read that we needed to report to the Philadelphia Naval Receiving Station or the closest Naval Receiving Station. Since I now had my apartment in Brooklyn with Cathy and my two buddies lived in Connecticut, I asked them if they were up to going to the Brooklyn Naval Receiving Station (some seventy-seven miles from McGuire) with me… since our orders did give us an option. They were all in.

We arrived at the Brooklyn Naval Receiving Station and presented our orders to the officer of the day. He read them… looked at us and called in every available Naval officer and said to them… Listen to this. These three assholes (pardon my French, but he was a naval officer!) came all the way up from McGuire AFB and instead of going to Philly, they came here! Every one of the officers laughed out loud and asked the officer of the day what he was going to do with us. Well, since these jerk-offs are here, we might as well, keep ’em.

It took a few weeks to muster out of the navy while at the Brooklyn Naval Receiving Station. I was assigned to be a brig chaser. (Carried a .45 and guarded the few prisoners in the brig… or as you would say… jail! They were there for being AWOL or breaking some of the many rules we had in the navy.) And I got home every weekend to see my bride prior to getting out of the navy for good! My Connecticut buddies got home on weekends too! I’m sure they are telling the same story to their kids and possibly grand kids about the time they got their geography a tad mixed up while coming back from Europe and ending their Naval career!

The above incident taught me another life lesson as well. Sometimes, it’s better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

I immediately got a job with the New York Telephone Company and was scheduled to start with them as a frameman (connecting telephone lines inside the telephone plant) on Tuesday, January 4, 1966.

But a funny thing happened on my way to the telephone training center in Jamaica, Queens, New York. The TWU (Transport Workers Union), the union that represented the transit subway workers and, ironically, the same union I would be with at Pan Am, went on strike against the city for higher wages and better benefits.

Since I did not have a car as yet (I would purchase a brand-new 1966 Ford Galaxy 500 in April of the same year), I was told to go to the nearest telephone company facility, and I would be transported from my neighborhood in Brooklyn, where Cathy and I lived in an apartment… to Queens… which was one of the boroughs of New York City, east of Brooklyn. It took me eight hours to get to the training facility in Queens on that first day of work as I was shuffled from one car to the next. Since I didn’t know anyone, I was usually the last guy to get a ride.

I arrived at my training class just as it was about to end for the day. But I was eventually set up with a fellow in my neighborhood that worked for the phone company and had a station wagon (very popular car in the ’60s) and also worked in Queens. He drove me and four other guys to Queens every day for the next two weeks of training. We chipped in for the gas which was about twenty-five cents per gallon at the time.

After training, I was assigned to a telephone plant in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, a very tough, mostly African American area. I found out in later years that Mike Tyson, himself, was raised there.

I was making $2.20/hour ($88/week) with an opportunity for some overtime. Since my apartment rent in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn (mostly Italian Americans there) was $85/month, Cathy, I and my new born baby girl, Cheryl (January 13, 1966) were doing well and on our way in pursuing the American dream.

I used to brown bag my lunch back then. Mostly, it consisted of a freshly made sandwich with a piece of fruit. I would eat in a small break room with some of my coworkers. One fellow, who was a big-time

Wall Street investor (well, maybe more like small time), would bring a Wall Street Journal and a New York Times to work every day and leave it in the break room for anyone to read.

One day I was reading his NY Times after finishing my lunch when all of a sudden a nurse came in, dressed in a white uniform and cap as all nurses dressed back then, and started to set up for something.

Next thing I knew, she said to me, OK, we’re ready. She motioned me over to some sort of a chair that reclined and, before I was able to say a word, started to take my blood! She was as rough as could be, and since I had never given blood before, her actions caused me to shy away from giving blood for over fifteen years! It wasn’t until 1981 when I was the union chairman for aircraft mechanics and ramp workers in Houston, Texas, at Pan Am that I finally gave blood again. There’s an interesting story for that too, but… I’m getting ahead of myself.

A few days later, I was again reading the NY Times during my lunch break when I saw a big ad for aircraft mechanics at Pan American at JFK Airport.

Coincidentally, when I was in the navy I was stationed in Keflavik, Iceland for six months from December, 1963 until May of 1964. I was part of a Naval Patrol Squadron, VP-24, based out of Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia and six of our twelve plane squadron were in Iceland on a coordinated NATO mission.

Each Wednesday morning, a Pan Am DC-8 would land in Keflavik, fuel up and go on to Glasgow, Scotland. When I saw that big blue ball on the tail of that aircraft, I said to myself, Wow, it would be nice to work for that outfit.

When I returned to the States in May of 1964, while on leave, I sent my resume to Pan Am at their headquarters in Grand Central Station, New York City but never really gave it a second though after that.

The ad in the NY Times for Pan Am had a telephone number to call. It was their Personnel Department at hangar 14 in JFK. I called that number that very day and asked them if they still had my resume. The lady paused and some seconds later said, Yes, we do. We’d like to set up an interview with you this week.

You know the rest. I was now ready for take-off with Pan American but had no worldly idea what an incredible ride and adventure I was about to start in the airline industry. It would include meeting Charles A Lindbergh and actually getting to chat with him at hangar 14 at JFK Airport in 1967. How cool is that? Plus it was a raise of thirty-eight cents an hour. That was an additional $15.20/week. Real money back then! I was truly on my way to fame and fortune (I’m getting carried away with myself. It was certainly a bit of fortune and not, as yet, real fame!).

Chapter 3

Family and Mentors on Road to Career

I would be remiss if I didn’t speak of my family, important male mentors and the Catholic nuns who helped and guided me toward my chosen career.

That being said, I must start with my parents. I was the eighth child of Frank and Grace Farrell. As the fourth boy, I evened up the score with my four sisters. I often remark that I’m especially happy that my Irish Catholic parents didn’t believe in birth control. If they had, this book or I, for that matter, may never have begun!

My dad was a hard working fellow who worked on the New York waterfront. For the most part, he was a deck hand on tugboats in the busy city harbor. He worked for Moran Towing (till this day, you can spot those tug boats with the big white M embossed on their black engine smoke stack) and also a smaller tug boat company, Neptune Marine Towing. Their boats were distinguished by the trident on their stack. I understand Neptune is still in business as well, but it is now a very small company operating out of Saint Petersburg, Florida.

My dad had some great stories about his job. One of my favorites was his take on Al Capone. As most of us know, the New York waterfront was a place where the Mafia had a good stranglehold, dating back to before the roaring ’20s. Capone was the same age as my dad and was an up and coming goon for Johnny Torrio, a gangster who was more well-known at that time. Capone was a fat guy with a big scar on his face. He got the scar from a fight he had when he was a bouncer in a joint on Coney Island, said Pop. We laughed at him. None of us, especially the Irish guys, paid any attention to him. The next thing we knew, the mob shipped him out to Chicago. I guess it was around 1920 when he left; he would have been around twenty-one years old. Never heard another thing about him until he, all of a sudden, became a big shot gangster out there.

The Mafia actually pretty much stayed away from the Irish. They messed mostly with their own kind. Plus they knew the Irish didn’t give a rat’s ass about them and were more than willing to tangle with them. If need be.

It was on a tugboat in January 1951 that my dad had a tragic accident. He got his leg caught in a thick tow line between the tug boat he was working on and a barge it was towing. The accident occurred at Hell Gate, a particular treacherous tidal strait in the East River. It separates Astoria, Queens from Randall’s Island.

Dad lost his right leg, below the knee as a result of the accident. But after a lengthy stay in the hospital and physical therapy, he was pretty much as good as new. He was able to drive a stick shift car and bought a bar and restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn with some of the settlement money from his Worker’s Compensation settlement.

He was a tough business owner too. His brother, Mickey, owned a few speakeasies during Prohibition so my dad went to him for advice on how to run a restaurant and bar. Don’t take any nonsense from any customers. In fact, the worse you treat them, the more they’ll come back. Let me tell you, that’s advice you’ll never get at the Wharton Business School at Pennsylvania University but it sort of worked for my dad. His business was in the middle of a blue collar neighborhood and his no nonsense style with a broad knowledge of life and the Brooklyn Dodgers… brought him a loyal customer base.

He had twelve children by the time he opened his restaurant and bar in 1956. The boys had over taken the girls, seven to five. So when I say knowledge of life, I don’t say it lightly. For example, a good Catholic, my dad would often say, Come on… I’ve got twelve kids and when I have a family issue, I’m supposed to go to a priest who has meals made for him and no kids… for advice?

Two important life lessons came from my dad that guided me toward my great career in the airline industry. One was to get to your point without making a speech, as in the above example concerning religious counseling, and the other… a strong work ethic. That and being fortunate enough to have good health allowed me to obtain twenty seven years of perfect attendance during my career. Another topic I’ll expand on in a later chapter.

My mom was actually an orphan and married my dad at a very young age. My dad was fifteen years older than her, and they were married in the teeth of the Great Depression.

She gave birth to thirteen children with one girl, Agnes, dying at the tender age of two years as a result of a tragic household accident. Her little baby shoe was bronzed, and I saw it from time to time in my parent’s bedroom.

Mom was the most selfless person I ever knew. She always put her husband and her kids ahead of everything in life. She and Dad both were old-fashioned in the way they raised us with truth and fair play being paramount in their method of guiding all of us.

In the very early ’50s we were one of the first families to have a TV set. As was the custom back then, kids who didn’t have a TV would go over to a neighbor’s house who had one and watch programs such as Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle, I Love Lucy and Cavalcade of Stars with Jackie Gleason.

One of my friends and neighbor, Tommy Havilland, would come over from time to time. However, this one particular day, he and I had an argument and I was determined to get back at him by not allowing him to watch TV. I waited for him to knock on our door that early evening and as soon as I heard the knock, I opened the door quickly and told him he couldn’t watch TV. He was really surprised and as he turned to walk away, I was more surprised as I saw my mom behind me and she had heard every word I said. Said my mom, Tommy, come on back, you’re more than welcome to watch TV. But Jimmy won’t be watching TV with us tonight for he has to go to bed early. As a kid of about eight years of age I was humiliated as Tommy came in and said with a big smile I can still see today… Good night, Jimmy!

But, let me tell you, I learned a life lesson that evening that has stayed with me. Don’t ever try to get even over trivial matters that won’t matter at all after you have time to let them simmer down.

Also in the ’50s, a kid like me from Brooklyn, New York had the Dodgers to root for! Oh my… you have no idea what a great team they were. Six of them are in the Baseball Hall of Fame… Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider (my favorite) Pee Wee Reese, Sandy Koufax, and Don Drysdale.

I was an all-around sports fan but baseball and the Dodgers were my biggest love back then. Baseball was in its golden era. There were players like the Dodgers had that I mentioned above plus Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Stan The Man Musial, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Eddie Matthews and on and on.

Actually, when I played Little League ball in an Italian neighborhood (Brooklyn was like a mosaic… Irish in one section, Italians in another, Norwegians another, etc.,) since my school, Saint Ephrem’s had no little league team, I was told by my teammates, all Italians, that I looked like Mickey Mantle.

You would think I would have been proud to hear that and take it as a compliment but nothing could be further from the truth! I was a National League fan and a Dodgers fan and the Yankees and Mickey Mantle were in the American League and always beat my Dodgers in the World Series, time and again. We only beat them one time… in 1955 and we beat them in Yankee Stadium in game seven! How sweet was that? On the other hand, I would have loved it if they said I looked like Duke Snider… my favorite player of all time!

I was a pretty good player and in 1957 at the age of thirteen I received an award as the Most Valuable Player on my Banner Democratic Club team. I got to meet Brooklyn Dodgers Gino Cimoli, Rube Walker, Joe Pignatano, and Gil Hodges! I played first base that year and when Gil Hodges, the greatest Dodger first baseman who should be in the Hall of Fame today heard that I played first base like him he told me, Someday you’ll play first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers." I was in seventh heaven… for sure!

But the best part of that night was my mom was there to see it all. She was very proud of me and I learned a valuable lesson about family. Always stay close to your family and be with them when they celebrate any type of achievement but also be with them when they are experiencing a loss, be it small or as tragic as a loved one passing.

I lived with my parents and siblings until I was nineteen years old and on my way to the United States Navy. By the time I left home there were but four siblings at home… brothers Mickey, Kevin and Timmy and youngest sister Pattie. But when I was old enough to remember (I remember Pattie coming home from the hospital as a new born a few days after her birth on February 1, 1949, so I was going on five years of age), we had nine at home… sisters Gracie, Eileen, Maureen, Loretta, baby Pattie and brothers Frankie, Joey, me and Mickey. Kevin and Timmy would come as surprise babies in the latter part of the 1950s. My oldest brother, Billy, was serving in the United States Navy at that time.

In their own special way, each and every one of my brothers and sisters had an influence on me. While Billy was in the service when I was a kid, the fact that he was married when I was eight and began raising his own family with his new bride, Ceil (she was my first sister-in-law, and while I gave her a hard time when I was young, I was a bit of a wise guy when young—more on that later—she has become my favorite of all!), he taught me how important family was as well. In addition, he was just a great male role model. Bill and Ceil raised six great kids, have twenty-two grandkids, and ten great-grandkids. Unfortunately, Bill passed on August 31, 2015, the second of the twelve Farrells to leave us. I was in the middle of writing this tale when he left us at the age of eighty-four. He had been sick for a time, but it was still a big blow to have your big brother leave you. He is sorely missed by all of us.

My sister Gracie was like a second mom to us younger kids, me, Mickey and Pattie. She was eleven years older than I, so in her late teens and before she was married to one of the Lopresti boys who lived next door (Sal), she lived with the rest of us and watched us close.

Out of high school, Grace, a very attractive young lady, got a job and would give me, Mickey and Pattie a dollar to split as kind of an allowance. I was about ten, Mickey was nine and Pattie was five. Every third week, one of us would get forty cents and the other two… thirty cents. Doesn’t sound like much today but thirty and/or forty cents could go a long way back then. I collected baseball cards and they were only five cents a pack with a big piece of chewing gum thrown in (if only I saved them… instead of clipping them to the spoke wheels of my bike to make noise, I’d have a small fortune). A Sports magazine was twenty five cents. I was in high cotton for sure.

I was a sports nut and followed all kinds of sports. Baseball, college football, pro football, auto racing (IndyCar was the only game in town back then), hockey… even soccer.

Grace always kept a close eye on us and made sure we stayed on the straight and narrow. One time she saw me watching horse racing on TV and she told my mom that I shouldn’t be watching it. It could lead to a gambling problem, she thought. The only problem… how could I find a way to place a bet and with forty cents… how could I make any money?

As mentioned, Grace married Sal Lopresti in 1955 when she was twenty two and they have been married for sixty years. She, too, taught me the importance of family, work ethic and to strive simply to be an all-around good person as she remains till this very day.

My sister Eileen was a pretty girl and a tomboy as well and nine years older than I. She was a big-time Brooklyn Dodgers fan. The story goes that as a teenager she shook hands with Jackie Robinson and vowed never to wash her hand! She took me to my first Dodgers game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn in 1952, and I, too, fell hard for my Bums.

She also helped teach me to dance and was just a fun loving girl. She had lots of guys after her and even dated Tony Lopresti, another Lopresti brother next door, but they became just pals and good friends. She would marry Fred Stagnaro, a New York City cop. I’ll have more to say about Fred later but suffice it to say Eileen taught me to enjoy life to its fullest.

Unlike Eileen who was a brunette, my sister Maureen was a pretty strawberry blonde. She was seven years older than I. Yep, no question, the boys on our street where we lived were all interested in her.

From Marty Monahan, to Bobby Mulligan right back to our neighbor, Richie Lopresti, they all competed for her attention.

She went to Bay Ridge High School, an all-girls school and sister school to Brooklyn Tech, the all-boys school that my brother Frankie and I attended. She resembled Rosemary Clooney, a big-time singer back in the ’50s, but it was mostly because of her hair. Actually, she was much, much prettier than Rosemary.

Maureen went on to marry Rich Lopresti, the second of the Lopresti boys to marry one of my sisters. She was very close to my mom and taught me to always cherish our mom for our mom was one in a million.

My brother Frankie was my educational mentor. I went to the same high school as he and looked up to him as the guy with the brains in the family. He was five years older and our dad relied on Frank for all kinds of tasks, including putting wiring up in our attic where the boys slept. After blowing about a dozen fuses (that’s what we had in homes back then), Frank finally got the job done.

He was a fun loving kid with a great sense of humor. However, my mom was not at all amused the day he decided to tie a rope around all the furniture in our bedroom and give it a big tug… only to have the furniture fall in on him and cause a cut to his head! Frank laughed it off as was his nature.

We did play sports together and I recall a time when we went down to Shore Road, near where the Verrazano Bridge now crosses from Staten Island to Brooklyn. We didn’t have the best of baseball equipment at the time. Our hardball had been around for a time so we had plenty of electrical tape covering it to keep it from coming unraveled altogether. Our bat, too, had tape around the top of the handle to keep it together as well. Since the ball was heavy, you had to pitch it in to the batter much closer than sixty feet. At around thirty feet, I pitched one into Frank and he lined the ball right back at me! It hit the top of my skull and went straight up in the air! I was fine but had a bump on my head the size of a softball… for a while! Thank God I have a very hard Irish skull… in more ways than one!

Frank married his childhood sweetheart, Midge, and went on to become a chemical engineer. He taught me, as mentioned, the importance of education… something that once you have, no one can take from you. Sadly, Midge passed away in the summer of 2014. I was able to attend the funeral in Medford Lakes, New Jersey where they lived for many years. They were married for over fifty years.

Brother Joe was my spiritual advisor. He always wanted to be a priest and went into a Catholic seminary in Northeast, Pennsylvania as a very young lad. The seminary was for Redemptorist missionary priests, a Catholic order that went into many areas across the globe to preach the Catholic religion, many times in hostile territory.

Joe, four years my senior, was also very athletic and he and I would play one on one sport games that we created on our own. As mentioned, we didn’t have a lot of sports equipment, so we had to make do with what we had.

We had a basement that was tiled in our home in Brooklyn so we played one on one rough tackle football with each square of Kentile representing x amount of yards. We had a pipe in the basement that hung parallel to the ceiling and a few inches down and away from the wall so we played basketball with a small pink ball called a spaldeen. The object… get the ball through the space between the ceiling and the pipe. Pretty hard if you have a guy in front of you who was trying to stop you.

Outside over the garage in our backyard we put up a very small metal trash can (about six inches in circumference) with the bottom cut out and used that same spaldeen to play basketball as well. Joe always pretended to be representing the Saint Louis Hawks for he was a big fan of Slater Martin. Martin, back then, was a top guard in the NBA. I was the Boston Celtics and a big Bill Sharman fan. No one in Brooklyn back then was a Knicks fan. They sucked! Hum… they still do!

Joe knew a lot about religion so I was always quizzing him on it. I remember asking him about eternity… and if it ever ended. Said Joe, Imagine an eagle flying over a mountain the height of Everest and as it flew; its wing dipped and ever so slightly touched the top of it. If that eagle’s wing did that continually, back and forth to wear down that tallest of mountains, it would be the equivalent of one day of eternity.

Yes… Joe taught me how important a strong faith was especially in times of tragedy or death in the family… and was also a great playmate and role model.

Joe married three weeks before me in 1964. Sadly, his wife, Diana, has passed away. I was able to get to the funeral in North Carolina in the early part of 2015. While it was a sad occasion it was also bittersweet since we were able to reminisce about all the good times through the years. Diana was a beautiful girl. Sadly, she had a lot of health issues in her later years.

My sister Loretta was the closest sister to me in age. She was almost three years older. She was a picture of my mom who was very attractive in her own right. She, too, loved sports as a young girl and could play stickball and hardball with the best of us guys on Seventy-Eighth Street. We had an empty lot right across the street from our home and we would play hardball there. She was always the one you wanted on your team. One time, Loretta was playing the catcher position, of course with no equipment. Someone hit a foul ball and it hit her on the head and she blacked out for a while. A neighbor who lived right next door to the empty lot came out and helped us attend to her. She came around after he gave her some water. Next thing we knew, she was ready to… play ball!

Loretta married Bob Kuddar in 1963, and sadly, they are both gone. Bob left us in 2001 as a result of a stroke and Loretta was the first of us twelve Farrell children to pass. She left us suddenly in early 2011. It was a great shock and tragic loss to all of us.

Loretta taught me the importance of family and to take good care of our parents… which she, herself, was very, very good at.

I didn’t only have my dad and older brothers for male role models growing up; I had some right next door… the Lopresti boys.

Sal and Richie, who married my sisters Grace and Maureen respectively, helped me become a solid guy by their example of being just that… themselves.

As a teenager, Sal worked at Al’s, the local candy store on Eightieth Street and Seventh Avenue, a short walking distance from our home. After Sal’s stint there, my brother Frankie, I and then my younger brother, Mickey, worked there in our teen years as well. The fact that Sal vouched for us surely helped us land that job. It was a fun job for after school and weekends and would put a few bucks in our pockets. It was a hangout for young teenagers and we made the greatest egg creams (soda fountain drink made up of chocolate syrup, seltzer water, and milk!) in all of Brooklyn at that joint.

Rich was a very good athlete and played on the Seventy-Eighth Street rough tackle football team. The team was made up of all the older kids on the block and had, of course, very little football equipment. But Rich had this great yellow football helmet with a blue stripe down its middle. They played other organized football teams down on Shore Road, where all the playing fields were and did pretty well. Rich was a slashing halfback and could catch as well as run. It was easy to see him with that bright helmet on galloping through the opponent’s defense! He was really very, very good.

But it was Tony Lopresti who I was the closest to back then. He was nine years older and a big-time