William Wiegelman and Maureen Castro

00:00 All right.

00:03 Okay, my name is Bill wighaman. I'm 78 years old today is May 30th. 98 a 2009 Memorial Day and we're in downtown Manhattan. And my partner is my daughter. I'm worried. I'm wearing Castro on 45 years old today is May 30th 2009 were in Manhattan and I'm talking with my father.

00:29 So Dad, I know we wanted to cover growing up in Riverdale. And so tell me about where you lived in Riverdale. I was born I live in Tuckahoe New York and I married for fifty-three years to a very Charming young lady. I've had five children for girls and a boy and four great son in-laws one great daughter-in-law and eight marvelous grandchildren. I was born in St. Joseph Hospital in Yonkers New York, and I was raised in the Riverdale section of the Bronx which is right next to Yonkers and you also have a brother. Yes. I have a brother Robert who is 80 or 81 and he lives in St. Louis, but my father was the Super of a 46 family apartment house.

01:22 And my mother was over from County Kilkenny, Ireland and she was a housewife. Do you know how grandma and grandpa with the apartment house? It was about the only one around in the area at the time and of course, it was a lot of empty lots and stuff and a lot of the people from the apartment house cleared one of the Lots out and put benches in and a barbecue pit and on special occasions. We used to have parties down there in 78 years on the 12th of June, but then night with the parties than we used to go over to Van Cortlandt Park and have a softball game single guys against the married guys.

02:22 Married guys could just about get their legs up onto the curb to get back to the party.

02:27 But it was a lot of fun and the apartment house was at that time. He did bite Coal Fired boilers. And when we used to get a delivery truck would come back up to the sidewalk lift up the trap door and put the shoot down and start dumping the cold down into the cellar of my brother and my father had shovels we had to go down there and move the coal-hole around so there would be room was a little messy. Hello. Yeah, I forget the name of the car. That was Lehigh Coal Company or something that used to come. So yeah, and then of course in the summer, the boy was weren't being used and it had to change the Great Sand the boiler there, maybe four inches long. She had to go in there with a chisel and a hammer and take out all the ones that were bad and then

03:27 Put new ones in did you do that to us lifted up on a hoist up to the main floor of the seller and then they were rolled out through the seller to a empty lot next to the building and we use the report of the the ashes into that lot and my father over the years almost filled the whole lot. In fact, I think he was even offered One Time by Builders to buy the app and it wouldn't sell them for some reason. Now, where did you go to school when you live? Well, I went to PS 81 in the Riverdale and that was about ten blocks uphill from the house and you walked I take it as a swivel often those days and

04:21 In the fourth or fifth grade. I was chosen for Arbor Day to plant a tree in front of the school and I was dressed with straw hat bib overalls and I had a rake and after the planting I had to say trees by Joyce Kilmer a picture. Have you been by where the school is it? Is it fits that I think it is. Yeah, but when I went to school was kindergarten through 8th grade and we went back one year for our 50th Anniversary a bunch of us and we talked to the classes and it was then kindergarten through fifth grade. That's how much it's grown, you know, and then they go to middle school and everything else and I was there when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor we were there and during the war we planted.

05:21 Tree Gardens cuz it was so many empty lots and everybody if they wanted to come participate and get a pot of and and we also had a scrap drives with we scoured all the neighborhoods in rubber metal and everything else and piled it up and then they came and they took it all vegetables to help the war effort. So cuz everything was rationed and all that stuff and my brother my father was a an air raid Warden and my brother was an air raid Warden messenger really when they would have the drills. They had to go out at night put on their helmets and armbands and make sure all the windows were covered. So no Heights would get out and my brother would ride his bike and go from place to place with messages and thank God it was only practice nothing ever happened. So

06:16 But then when I graduated from PS 81 I went to oh, yeah Manhattan prep, which is on the grounds of Manhattan College and it doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, I forgot what year was closed and I went there and I graduated in 1948. So but in 1947, we had a snow storm the day after Christmas of 24 to 25 in of snow. So be in the Super of the apartment house what we did with shovel snow forever and it snowed so hard that they were trolleys that used to run from Yonkers down to the subway at 242nd Street and then into the Bronx up there. They were stopped on the tracks. They couldn't move and they were there for days people stuck on them while they had to get out and walk from there and in fact for a week or so people had to walk to the Subways because they didn't have all the equipment and stuff that they do now.

07:16 They didn't have salt or anything else. And in fact when they did shovel they used to pull the manhole covers up and put the snow down into the sewers has flowed out into the the river and all that's cuz you can't do that now with all the pollution and I love her around, you know, so then they have all the equipment anyways, but then I graduated from Manhattan prep and I went to Manhattan College for a year. I didn't care for that much and also but then when I went after the one year, I got a job with the Continental insurance company down on Maiden Lane and I was there for 40 years until I retired in 1990 between there. You did join the Army in January of 1951 and I was sent over the career and September 51 until May of 51 and then when I came back

08:16 Was assigned to Camp Kilmer to the replacement Depo Jersey New Brunswick. I used to meet all my buddies that were drafted coming through. So I thought you signed up you were the draftees they are serial numbers used to start with the US and if you joined up who is RA and they used to call is Royal assholes. Everybody have a good time and stuff. So when you came back from the Army went back to Continental and then I Met Your Mother and we got married in May 20th 1956 through Bob hickey.

09:15 From Yonkers. I was at Fort Devens with we took out basic training. Is that where you met him for Devonshire in January in Massachusetts? We all had to take turns keeping the boy was going you know for the barracks. I never could keep them going wake up supposed to be cold and no hot water. I wasn't Tupac brother, right and Riverdale. A good friend PS 81 and his brother went to Gompers vocational with Uncle Bobby. My brother was in the Bronx.

10:15 Together to Gompers though. But yeah, and then we had Tommy Rooney we met eventually who is related to Bob his first Uncle Bob new Irene. Hickey was Irene Schwab at that time and you're my wife your mother new hiring also and they used to bowl together all the time. So and then they got married and they used to bowl once a week and I'd go over to their apartment and Bob and I would stay there while they went bowling and then when they would come back because we have coffee and Pie and stuff and they were always on diets and then they cut the pie and quarters be at on the diet release have a quarter of the pot. So then we got married and we move.

11:15 To Yonkers for a year-and-a-half. That was the first time your mother was ever out of Tuckahoe. We moved back to Tuckahoe September of 58 and you had that we had family first and then we had Sue and then you and Billy was last and were you there for any of them would you doing Mommy how long it took to have a baby and I was waiting I said might as well go home. So I went home. I think there's 8 in the morning and about 4, I was just into a good movie and the phone rang and the baby was born turn off the movie and go to the ice storm. So like 2 in the morning. I was out.

12:15 Chopping the ice to go to the hospital. It was Lawrence hospital about three or four blocks away. So it wasn't too bad, you know, so yeah, but it came along right after Kennedy was assassinated the weekend. You were born on the weekend that President Kennedy was assassinated and my mother your mother remembers laying in bed and hearing all that music and all that stuff and it was a sad time and that sucks. But if there really was a sad time that you were born and died and came along and then Billy came up on and knock on wood. Everything is fine and everybody is doing well. We haven't many good years together and stuff, you know, so yeah. And do you remember when we first went to cycle Ken's was a year old.

13:15 And it was the five of us if I view your mother and I and a two-door Ford with the course of them days. You didn't need the seats. So that's why everybody put it in for everything in the trunk and on the top playpen stroller and eventually I got an old tarp put it on the top and that was in the Poconos. We went to yesterday. We went to the Poconos 1969 to 1990 or so. We went out for like the long weekend or something. We are bringing will Randy came with us women and families year after year and you would get there when I can have all the names posted on the bulletin board. And of course all you kids that knew everybody and I would hit it was a great time.

14:15 His first wife piano was very good and ran the place but there was a lot of good years, but other than that, you know.

14:37 Well now you have a grandchildren and 2 in North Carolina is 17 and child is 6 of June 5th. Annually, I was Dad graduating from grammar school. So we're going down to what you know of because you going to meet us at the airport take us out there. So yeah, I remember store you would told me once about a the convertible and Uncle Jimmy and 1947 convertible. I think that was 1953. I brought bought it when I got out of the service for it's almost out of the service and we went down to South Jersey to a teacher's college and his Betty his wife future wife was.

15:37 What's a convertible roll around another girl and stuff and then when it came time to turn the convertible wind? I put the top up and it ripped right across so I got big thick thread is the only thing I can find it up Resort up the thing and we put it down when we turned it in. So I nobody noticed that if it mess up if we had a 54 Plymouth, which was great. That was a great. I remember the 11 miles to a gallon remember driving to West St. Louis with Grandma in that car and then when the air conditioning yeah, yeah and how it how old was Grandma on that trip cuz she was old and I had my 25th anniversary at work. So

16:37 7474 Oso and she was born in 1895. So what 7918 95-79 but yeah, like I said, we had a lot of good times and stuff and a lot of traveling around and what was the best part of raising 5 kids and living in a very solid showing one bathroom for 4 and 1/2 rooms and the only saving grace the back bedroom was big and we were able to put the bunk beds in there and you girls slept there.

17:37 Mother and I slept on a pull-out couch for how many years after a while the bar would hit us across the back. We put the mattress on the floor and then one year. We opened it up. We couldn't close it again. So we had to take it apart and get it out and then leave is the only one who gets his own react, but everybody get out of the bathroom. I got to go. I'll be trying to get in there and you had to catch the train for work or trying to get ready for school to the subway take it and the train station for the commuter line was only a block away from us, but at that time I really couldn't get off for it. But that I finally decided to take the train and it was great to get in you sit down and read the paper and just watch the world go by and then I had to take the subway. Anyway when I got into a grand central, I remember we used to pick you up on Wednesdays at the subway.

18:37 Can go to Grandma's for dinner every Wednesday and have spaghetti and the cucumber salad and it was a good time. Then. I don't know if you were with them with the big blackout that you I think was 69 or something. I think it was a flashlight in my pocket and I was dumped out at 42nd Street with the blackout. Thank God I could get out of the train Stewart people quitting the trains for hours. And I think I finally got home at 3:00 in the morning and I used to stand on the corner and yellow people. Do you have Brooklyn stat idea Westchester when everybody die laughing 31st Street and I walk from 231st Street home up the major Deegan in the Thruway.

19:32 And it was a beautiful night really was as early November and as I was walking up the lights started to go on down in New York and I was up on the hill going into Yonkers. I'm at your back and you could see all the lights going on and all the buildings. I got home. You mother had made soup that night. I had a big bowls of soup about six beers never went to work the next day, which I don't think too many people did and I went through Subway strikes Metro-North strike from Grand Central to Maiden Lane when the Subways were on strike. So that's from mid mid thumb a ride once awhile to get rides. And one day I was walking to spell Charlie pot came by on his bike. He was going to work to do was up and 74th Street and he was riding his bike to where he works with you right now.

20:31 Skyward Merrill Lynch for 14 years part-time leave the house at like 6 in the morning and not come home until 9 at night or something right across from us originally and then they moved to the World Trade Center near the World Trade Center and we were watching the World Trade Center go up and they were they were filming King Kong on the 50 something for we can look down into the courtyard and watching them feeling King Kong and stuff. So not too much work. I've done that and Continental had a new building built on Maiden Lane down there though the water and it's called 180 Maiden Lane and I had an office which is humongous at the time and you looked out over the Brooklyn Bridge in the water the seaport and we used to watch them practice shaving jumpers and stuff and they were a couple of jumpers and another time.

21:31 The Battleship Iowa came into the Brooklyn side and my brother Bobby served on a highway tour the end of the second world war and then they had to move the out to go back out to sea and I have had a pivoted in the East River and that was a job. I'd like just turned it right around ya and not know workout done that day for the year the Declaration of Independence in the our independence and stuff 1776 sister and husband and then we went up to our bills and I show them the place and we have a great view of everything that was going on and I don't care.

22:31 Emory went to Albany State and Sue went to Westchester and you went to Cortland for the two years and then you join the Navy and Diane went to Westchester. Billy went to Mercy. Yeah, so everybody got her an education Here There and Everywhere and you met your future husband in the Navy and you came down with him one day and we had a barbecue and when you got back the phone rang, and he was supposed to ask me for your hand in marriage tranny chickened out at 3. Like I said, it was 24 years later.

23:31 Bought the house that we grew up in the air if we lived in the house for 18 years and with a five kids and stuff then our landlord passed away must a martinello who is like having your own house with him. And then it said I didn't bother anything we could do whatever we want and he passed away and left the house to his daughters in Massachusetts and they came down one day and so we made them an offer. And the first they said they were sleep on that. They slept upstairs than downstairs in his old place and the next morning. They said they wouldn't take it but then they Source a little bit of work and stuff had to be done. So we boarded I think I paid $33,000 for the house at that time to work now 400 baby a month.

24:31 Grandpa germano, they gave us enough for the down payment and then they moved downstairs. Yeah. Yeah, right, but they moved in in April and grandpa had a fatal heart attack Columbus Day in October and he was buried on my birthday and then grandma was there and Uncle John the great uncle John he live down in the basement. And then when Grandma germano pissed away Uncle John moved upstairs to the apartment house and then when he moved away, he used to smoke cigars and what a job it was cleaning that apartment. Yeah. Yeah, so and then you move down jacket Sprite and now we're downstairs and we don't rent.

25:31 Coming up. And yes, I'll with it comes in handy really does yea though, but the you tell everybody we raised five kids upstairs in that small apartment. They all look at you as a Pete came the first time and he was in the living room. I will set. No, these kids start coming from the back bedroom. He thought they were coming up a ladder or something in through the house so many up-and-coming and stuff but with everything we had a lot of Good Times by there for 18 years. We open up the doors down says we told them on their way home from work stop in and have a drink but they came in they stayed so long that everybody went home and got what they were cooking brought it back. We got big boards put them over the horses and had a buffet and the kids went into one of the rooms and did all their homework and stuff.

26:31 Like 11:00 11:30. Everybody finally went home. Very good neighborhood was Memorial day, which we still have a good group now though. There's a lot of young people coming in with kids, which is good for a neighborhood and stuff, you know, so yeah. So in fact while you know, Sue lives down the street from us now with Mikey and Olivia. They're always up to the house sometime. So which makes everything fine. Yeah. So yeah, that was a good one.

27:09 What's a good life? What about what it is? That's right the graduation of Caitlin and everything at Mikey's graduation. And and where we go to Myrtle Beach again, which we've been doing for like 15 years and we get a house right on the beach, which is great and I don't have to look anything back and forth the but this year Billy and his family had to go to California so they can't afford to go and Diane and Shane and the kids are going up to the Catskills to a smaller group something to eat you up on top of the sombrero in down again and stuff, you know, Sophia, Myrtle Beach.

28:09 Only work 20 21 20

28:13 Are the 21 they usually go right and everybody could eat at the same time. I had a good time in a necklace. We went with you to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon and Mount Rushmore. But what are the touching things with Rushmore was that thing with the veterans, you know what the night we went up and had the veterans come down, you know till Thursday that one gentleman from the second world war which is really something and you Randy and I stood there and pepper. Yeah and imports. What are Mary and Leigh and we're going to the Outer Banks weather Washington where we froze

29:13 So we do try to do some backs of you.

29:22 We are a very close-knit family. Everybody still talks to everybody and they go out of their way like Maureen and her husband came up Thursday night and my son made sure if he came down yesterday to see them because he had a lot of things to do. He's a fireman and he works at the amusement park in Westchester Playland. He's in charge of the Medics and stuff up there and so he couldn't make it except for that time. But he make sure we came down and then the other ones they always end up down at my daughter's house down the street to eat barbecue sauce and whatever so it's a coast it really is closed and every year the sisters and we include my brother's wife as a sister or not sister-in-law and then my sister Diane was younger than me. She has a best friend Sharon who consider an honorary sister every year us sisters go away for sisters weekend and leave all the husbands and the kids behind and I spend a weekend camping and sightseeing all over if we most

30:22 Are the Virginia area Maryland but this year we're doing something different. We're going up towards the Catskills, I guess up in that area Petco Petco Kopec. So the North Carolina sisters, which is myself and my sister Anne-Marie will fly up to New York and then we drive to go camping and we really are a very close family. One thing. My son's wife. Amy said once I was really touched me she says once you cross the threshold of the welcome in household your family and that really touched me a funny story. We always say my parents are very accepting of everybody. You know, whoever we brought home. They they welcomed them into the house and my sister Diane before she was married used to follow the local band around and they always were just called the band these guys there were from Massachusetts and one time they were down here playing and they had no place to stay.

31:23 So we ended up at Mom and Dad's sleeping in the upstairs apartment and they come down and have coffee in the morning Mom. Make sure they had breakfast and but Mom and Dad are always like that. We're having pork chops and it was Jewish and I didn't realize you were at my parents house and they had a tendency to stay till 2:30 in the morning. But do what you told your friends were our friends and like I say, you know, everybody got along and everybody is good. They really are you would want to come from your mom's to have dinner and she still goes we used to write my mom's cooking on my father's sneezes. He would sneeze and record had to be over who was 20-something remember?

32:23 But every time we have a meal and dad would start sneeze and we rate the the meal on how many he would seize Uncle Bill and Aunt a while back. I was she lives in Queens now in a while back. I was sneezing and the phone rang and it was her and she said God Bless you. That's why you're outside. Yes, but she just happened to call I got out. So yeah, but it is so they could to one big family there were nine kids total and then the two sets of parents and it didn't matter if you know, it was like whose parents were who's we all just lived as a big family and we live together, you know, they lived right next to us. They rented also before they bought the house down the street and so they were brought up together and they used to call on the phone so much. We finally bought princess phones and stay.

33:23 Gangnam from one house to the other so that instead of running up bills and all that stuff they would use those so I was going to say it but then they brought the house down the street which my other daughter eventually bought Susan drove us down here. I've been down here in the years since I retired now, but does she goes that was a nice ride on the West Side Highway and she came down every day last week week week with our kids and she knows the way blindfolded and the kids had a good time and they want the Time Square for the Marine stuff. They went up to Playland. The Marines were up there in a little box stuff and I let stuff and it's a fact Mike wanted to get out of school Tuesday so we can watch the ships go out.

34:23 Collarbone it up when we would bring friends for the first time and you took the First Amendment and you would be our tour guides since you work down here and go get a girlfriend. When you live in an area that you very seldom visit anyting get out. It's like a back when I was in the apartment house and there used to be a group of people that used to come up every Sunday to go over to Van Cortlandt Park, which is across from us is a big part that ran Falls blocks and blocks and blocks and they never built anything on it, which I'm surprised these come up for picnics. They would store all that stuff in the cellar of the apartment house and then just pick it up every Sunday and then bring it back and stuff. If so,

35:21 When did Uncle Jimmy and you move like when did you both leave the apartment and go left? I came back from career in 53. I was discharged January of 54 and shortly after that. They let my father go from the apartment house. And so we had to get some place to go and I know this fella that ran a hotel and Bar in Yonkers a Gordie something. I forgot what his last name was but he was big and everything in Yonkers. They had a bunch of property and he got us an apartment up in North Yonkers on one of the biggest hills in Yonkers and it wasn't a big apartment, but then he gave my father a job at the hotel, but it was a night job, right and your mother and I were married at the time living in Yonkers and I used to take him to work most nights. Then he would take the bus back but and also one night coming down the hill.

36:21 My folks the brakes gave out on my car and luckily the emergency held a bit and I was able to Coast into the curb that I had to take it the rest of the way down to the garage at the house. That was on like a curve. Was it an apartment in a house that they lived in but there was a three family house and they were on this really Steep Hill you come around the bend if you were on the road to go down to Warburton. We had an ice storm that you wouldn't believe and I used to work. I looked out the window and I saw people sliding down the hill and everything else. So I got my mother's soft. I spread it across the road to the other side work my way down and walk down to Getty Square to get the bus down to the subway.

37:21 There was a milk delivery truck coming down one of the hills and he went to make a turd and he slid backwards 6 box down the hill but luckily, you know, nobody had heard of anybody sell any milk. You about that part, but I'm sure we have brown drawers.

37:46 No, I don't think so. Did his whole family moved to New Jersey or did he just move there after they were married?

37:54 You don't remember. I just remember going to Colts Neck and have him so much and his mother died in 72. I think it was but I forget where Jim was at the time, you know, so yeah, but yeah, he's to be in Colts Neck and we still go down to the South 40 and that was a beautiful place that you don't know this but his younger brother just passed away. But yeah.

38:32 Or just got about one minute left in that. I don't know if anybody can sum this up. I didn't give it a shot. You obviously you guys are very close to All Families to you in particular. I don't know. I don't know what it is. Really, I'm very curious and I like to ask a lot of questions and I think a lot of that also comes actually for my husband. He loves to ask a lot of questions. He's to sit with my dad's mother and talk to her counselor about Ireland coming over and and all that. So it always made me curious about our families and backgrounds and and things like that. And so I just like to ask a lot of questions find those things out there but over everybody always helped everybody with stuff and what her husband we went out to Grand Canyon and within 10 minutes, he knew everybody out there like they did where they came from. He is such a friendly individual, but that's the way we all are.

39:32 Like there's no bickering with anything and they'll go out of their way to help each other still have the barbecue sauce and we got hurt at Maureen's house in Durham will go to other daughter and Asheville. You don't know problems. My parents raised us as parents not you know, I mean there were friends too, but they taught us, you know, you respect your parents and you you love each other and that's how they race supposed to be. So we were saying about something that happened with the police officer in Yonkers and he said you told us to obey the police respect them don't interfere and I'm glad that you know this it's something and that's the way they all are.