Nicholas Welsh and Timothy Welsh

[00:07] NICHOLAS WELSH: Hello.

[00:08] TIMOTHY WELSH: My name is Nicholas Welsh. I'm 33 years old. Today is Saturday, March 18. I'm at Storycorps Atlanta, here to speak with Timothy Welsh, who is my father.

[00:23] NICHOLAS WELSH: My name is Tim Welsh. I am 75 years old. Today's date is Saturday, March 18, 2023. We're at Storycorps Atlanta. My son Nicholas is the interviewer, and he is my son. Great.

[00:43] TIMOTHY WELSH: Well, I'd like to start in the beginning. So with your childhood, tell me about where you were born.

[00:52] NICHOLAS WELSH: I was born in Chicago. My parents were playing Pinochle. My mother had a double run and threw down the cards and said, it's time to go to the hospital. I'd like to say I've been lucky at cards ever since.

[01:09] TIMOTHY WELSH: And the hospital, this wasn't your original childhood home, right? You were born.

[01:16] NICHOLAS WELSH: I was born at Mercy Hospital in Chicago on the near south side. I don't know if it's still there. That's where I was born.

[01:22] TIMOTHY WELSH: And so you were, you know, when you were first born, you lived in south side of Chicago before you moved to.

[01:29] NICHOLAS WELSH: No, no, we lived on the northwest side, Milwaukee and Devon up there. I was baby number five and in a two flat, my grandmother and lived on the flat above, and then we all lived on the flat below. And my parents realized the house was bursting, it as it seems. So my dad's boss, who was a developer for housing after world War two, over 4 million gis returned home, and they all wanted homes. So he said he'd help my dad find a place and build a home.

[02:06] TIMOTHY WELSH: So you mentioned your grandma lived above you. Is that your paternal or your maternal grandfather?

[02:11] NICHOLAS WELSH: My maternal, my mother's mother. Wait a minute. I think she died before I was born. But my mother's sister lived there, too.

[02:25] TIMOTHY WELSH: And so you mentioned there's a boom in housing after the war. Grandpa, your father, he did fight in world War Two, right?

[02:37] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yeah. He was drafted. He didn't think he'd have to go originally because he already had a child and he had some, you know, allergy issues or whatever it was. But after Pearl harbor, he had one arm, one leg, your one, a and off he went. He didn't get over to Europe until I think about 1944. But he was at various four camps going through his training.

[03:02] TIMOTHY WELSH: And you are the fifth. You said you were born in 1948. Were some of your siblings born before the war, before grandpa went over to Europe?

[03:11] NICHOLAS WELSH: Let's see. Pat was born. No. Cause Pat was born in 42, December of 42, so. And we were at war in December of 41.

[03:23] TIMOTHY WELSH: So when grandpa is in Europe fighting in World War Two. Your mother has how many kids at home that she's raising?

[03:31] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, she had three. She. Dad, Pat was born in December 42. Mike was born in December 43. Kathleen was born December 44. And the joke was, isn't it about time you go overseas? So those three were born before dad went off to Europe. And Rosemary was born in September of 46 after he came home.

[04:00] TIMOTHY WELSH: Gotcha. And when did you move? Coming back to, you know, you're born in north side of Chicago. When did you move to your childhood home?

[04:10] NICHOLAS WELSH: Okay. I grew up, well, until at least high school anyway, in the suburbs, lake Forest. My dad went looking for a home, and he was doing some looking at the ads in the paper. And he'd tell my mom about various plots that people are advertising. And then there's one for this place called Lake Forest. And dad asked how much. And the price he gave, whatever it was, was just way, way out of their brackets. So my dad put the hand over the receiver, the phone, looked at my mother, raised his eyebrows and said, this guy ain't for real. But he asked a bunch of questions about the town, then went on. Then later on, he saw another advertisement for Lake Forest, which was substantially less. And he said he wanted to see what this place was like. So he got in the car, took off, and asked my dad what often happened. He got lost. Found himself at the end of a gravel street. And there was a for sale sign on a lot. And he said, well, this looks nice. And that ended up being the house. We built a house there on that street. And that's where I grew up.

[05:23] TIMOTHY WELSH: It was Morningside.

[05:24] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yeah, Morningside in Lake forest.

[05:27] TIMOTHY WELSH: And as I recall, when you walk down that street, you could walk straight to, like, a beach.

[05:34] NICHOLAS WELSH: Right there was like, well, you couldn't actually walk down the end of the block. There's the northwestern railroad commuter line tracks, and then Fort Sheridan. Fort Sheridan was built in the late 18 hundreds to store troops keep near Chicago because at that time, there was a lot of industrial and labor disputes and they wanted to have troops nearby, but you had to go across the Runway, and then you're at the lake. I mean, I went to the lake as a kid. Often I rode my bike, but it wasn't there. It was some other place.

[06:10] TIMOTHY WELSH: Gotcha. And that was what I was getting at, was growing up. Do you recall going to the beach? Was that something that you regularly do?

[06:19] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yeah, definitely. Every summer. I remember the earliest memories were my mother never drove a car till she was 44. And when we went to the beach, she would call a taxicab and there's six kids or whatever, and her get out, and the driver just eyes would roll and we'd all pack in the car, go down to the beach. And then as I got older, I rode my bike and went down to the beach a lot.

[06:45] TIMOTHY WELSH: And was that something that you did with your friends? Tell me about some of your earliest friends.

[06:51] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, my good friend Mark Baker, since kindergarten, his father, they lived closer to downtown, but they had a boat, and we went out on his boat on the lake. I know they, he water skied, and they wanted me to do it, too. And I said, I don't know anything about water skiing. He said, I don't know if I'll be able to stay up. And he put me on skis and got me in the water, and it was so cold. I said, I am going to stay up no matter what. And I got up, and I was able to water ski after that. Pretty good, you know, so.

[07:27] TIMOTHY WELSH: Huh. I never knew that about you, that you were a water skier.

[07:30] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yes. I didn't slalom like Mark did. I don't think I jumped the wake, at least purposely. Maybe I did it when he turned the boat, whatever it was. But it was, it was good fun doing that. I had a couple other friends, too, you know, a lot of times we would go down to the beach. There were some friends that, when I got to high school age, or maybe it was early college, it was somewhere around then we go down and play cards on the beach, too.

[07:56] TIMOTHY WELSH: So you still play cards to this day?

[07:59] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yeah.

[08:00] TIMOTHY WELSH: Last night you were playing cards with your friends.

[08:02] NICHOLAS WELSH: That's a lost art, I guess. Once they had video games come in, it just went, the game picked, but, yeah.

[08:08] TIMOTHY WELSH: So what do you think was the biggest impact of growing up in Chicago and Lake Forest in particular and how that shaped your life?

[08:18] NICHOLAS WELSH: It's just a beautiful place to grow up. Very nice, peaceful, good people. That was a very good place to grow up.

[08:35] TIMOTHY WELSH: When you're out and about doing something, is there something in particular that makes you feel nostalgic for home that, like, instantly brings you back?

[08:46] NICHOLAS WELSH: I don't know. Remember when I grew up, the first, like, 14 years were in Lake Forest there, and that's a big part of it. But then I, I went off to school, boarding school at age 14. Until age 18, I came back to Lake Forest. I mean, that's a lot of my growing up as a kid in later years, certainly was in the minor seminary there in Niagara Falls or Hamilton, Massachusetts. Then when I came back, it was briefly. I worked for two years in Lake Forest and lived at home. My mother said to me, I knew everybody else and my friends, they were going, carving their own life and moving out and on and going on. And I felt like I had just right back where I was in the beginning. I'm not going anywhere. And she looked at me and said, you need to learn how to grow up in a family. So I stayed for two years, and then I went off to law school in Atlanta, and the rest is history.

[09:49] TIMOTHY WELSH: And I want to get to that. But you brought up the seminary school, and this is something that I did want to talk to you about. Was that something that all of your brothers went to seminary school, or was that something just you did?

[10:00] NICHOLAS WELSH: No, just me. Just me.

[10:02] TIMOTHY WELSH: And what made that decision? Did you think you wanted to be a catholic priest?

[10:07] NICHOLAS WELSH: I suppose I was in there, too. Yeah, I do remember the first recollection was seeing an ad in some church paper, whatever it was, and there was a picture of this guy standing in these brown robes with a white cape on. And then there was Niagara Falls in the background. I said, man, that looks terrific, you know, and go and live there. And I think that, to be honest with you, that's probably one of the motivating factors. I suppose I was religious to a certain extent. Yeah. I mean, religion was a big part of the family growing up, and I went to catholic school, so.

[10:42] TIMOTHY WELSH: Well, I'm glad that you didn't become a priest so that I can be here today. Going to seminary school, it wasn't just religious studies. How did that type of education ultimately shape the, you know, you went to several different colleges and ultimately law school. How did that education drive that. That kind of educational path for you?

[11:04] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, I mean, study. We had study hall in the morning. We had study hall in the afternoon. Before dinner. We had to study hall after school. I learned how to study. I learned how to do school well. And when I left and when I went to college, I was surprised the number of people I met. Oh, I never studied at high school. I never did any of that. I thought this is what everybody did. So it put me on the right path to learning. And doing well in school, I think.

[11:33] TIMOTHY WELSH: Was a kind of strict, regimented kind of approach to learning.

[11:40] NICHOLAS WELSH: I don't know that it was any different than the learning that was available to kids who didn't go, who went to, like, the public high school or whatever, but they just made sure you stayed straight and narrowed when you had homework for your algebra or your physics or whatever it was, you did it as best you could. And then I think that shaped me. I did well enough in high school that I did well, I think, in college and thereafter, I feel like I.

[12:11] TIMOTHY WELSH: Always hear stories of boarding school or catholic school, nuns being very, very strict. Any good stories about.

[12:19] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. You had. I mean, there were good priests, and there were some that I think probably needed some therapy themselves. But, you know, they were good teachers, and they would always listen to. They were always available to you if you wanted to go talk about something. You know, kids growing up in high school age, things develop. They want to talk with someone about it. And so I could talk with them. I never felt like I could talk with my dad. I'm sure he would let me talk with him, but he was. He was a pretty strict guy and short temper, quick with the hands. And I'm glad I had the Carmelites. The father's there too. But you had a study hall. You had to study, and you couldn't talk, goof off or whatever it was. And I remember they had some particular. You would kneel out if you did something on the side of your desk. And if you really did something bad, they would say, kneel on your knuckles. And if you were smart, you would fold your fingers in and put them down beside your knees like it looked like you're kneeling on your knuckles. And then if you had one of those really astute frotters there, you say, no, no, unfold your hands like that on the knuckles.

[13:44] TIMOTHY WELSH: Interesting. You mentioned something before we move on, that I wanted to talk about. You said that your dad was a little bit closed off. How did he feel about you essentially moving far away from home at a young age like that?

[14:00] NICHOLAS WELSH: He had no problem with it. His brother was a priest, his uncle was a priest, and his uncle was pretty much like a father figure, because my dad's own father, he told me one time, I thought my dad was the hardest man on earth, you know, which kind of surprised me, because that's what I pretty much thought of my dad too, you know, but he had no problem with it. I remember one time after, I said I wanted to go and they would set up an interview with someone from the Carmelites to come out, and they wanted to look you over and see why you're coming and whether this is a good fit of. And I said, you know, I've rethought this. I don't think I want to do that. He said, you know, there are some days when you're going to say to yourself, I don't think I want to do this, but probably you should stick with it, at least for a while. So he said, let's go through with the interview, at least. And I did the interview, and I don't remember anything about it, but it went well enough because the next September, I was on a train in LaSalle street station in Chicago on the way to Niagara Falls, Ontario.

[15:02] TIMOTHY WELSH: Hmm. That's interesting, that dynamic. Your father saying his father was one of the toughest in you, saying he was really tough. I, you know, in my own little context here, never thought that you were tough. I think you were very firm, but I wouldn't ever characterize you that way.

[15:23] NICHOLAS WELSH: So I'm astounded because when I look back, I think to myself, I yelled a lot, but I remember not so much with you. You were number five. By then. I was pretty much broken into what raising kids was all about, but, you know, and you could take care of yourself well enough. But your sisters. I remember sometimes I'd yell, and Rory, God knows I'd yell at him, but I would. I remember my dad and I would come upstairs, the bedroom after I send him to bed, wake him up sometimes and say, you know, I shouldn't have yelled at you. I meant everything I said, but I shouldn't have yelled at you. And then I would tell them, and I tried to tell them as often as I could remember. You are everything I always wanted in a son.

[16:08] TIMOTHY WELSH: Did your dad ever apologize to you when he would lash out?

[16:12] NICHOLAS WELSH: I don't remember. None of them stuck out. It's not just yelling, too. He was fast with the hands, a slap, you know, grabbing by the hair and shaking it like that. I know in our family, my brothers and sisters, we went through therapy when my sister Maureen became so seriously ill that she was hospitalized in a psych ward for about a year or two like that. And she even threatened suicide. And my parents were just beside themselves what to do about it. And so they. My dad came home and looked at my mother and said, we've done something wrong. I'm not going to argue about it. I'm not going to try and say it's not my fault. I'm going to change. I'm going to do whatever it needs to change. And he did. We went through therapy. Most of my older brothers and sisters had left at home, but I was still there. And I would go to the sessions and after the therapist would ask questions about what was going on and how people felt. I know my dad felt like he was beat up after those sessions, but he did. I give him a lot of credit. He made big changes, big changes as a result of that. He was a much better man, too.

[17:36] TIMOTHY WELSH: Was his change that he, you know, worked on anger management? Was it alcoholism? Was it a combination of both? Was it.

[17:44] NICHOLAS WELSH: No, he, you know, all of us were hot headed, I think, when you're younger and you learn to mellow out a bit as you get older. And the same was true with my dad. He certainly didn't yell or get loose with the hands when I. By the time I had come out of high school, out of college, anyway. No, no, but. And alcohol? No, I don't think he had a rule. He never drank any alcohol after dinner.

[18:11] TIMOTHY WELSH: That's interesting.

[18:12] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yeah.

[18:13] TIMOTHY WELSH: Do you think that the experience of the war affected how he got.

[18:19] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yes, yes, yes. He went off to war. He had a couple babies, was never much of a dad because he was always off either at camp or in the war. And he came back and nobody in the US military was telling the troops coming back. Now, guys, you got to think. Remember this. Your wives have been alone and they've been taking charge of things, and you're coming back. They're different. They're not the same. They were. And your kids, they don't know you. You know, you have to reintroduce yourself to your own kids. No one told them that. And my dad said, your Uncle Pat, my brother Pat said, when dad came back one morning, mom would make a. My mother would make some vegetables, or not vegetables, breakfast for them. And dad took the. My dad took the. I guess it was prunes or whatever it was, and put it down in Pat's place. And Pat said, who are you? It's not your job. It's her job. And he kept trying to make him eat it, and he didn't eat it. So my brother Pat said, I just took my arm and swept it all off on the floor. He said. Then dad came out and gave me a good licking after that, you know, but that's. They didn't know. They didn't understand that, you know, you can't just walk back into a house with an infant like that. You're the stranger. You're not the dad. So it took a while for him to get that.

[19:41] TIMOTHY WELSH: Did he ever talk about his experiences in the war with you?

[19:46] NICHOLAS WELSH: Not much. He just said it was cold. And he said, I learned that if the bombs were going, if the. If the bombs were going, you know, he would have take his arm and go from right to left. He said, if they're going that way, they're ours. And he took his other arm and go from left to right. He said, if they're coming from this way, they're theirs, you know? So.

[20:07] TIMOTHY WELSH: He lost his hearing in the war, right?

[20:10] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, that's where we. He lost his hearing later on in one ear. And we kind of figured that it was just holding the rifle by, you know, and firing the rifle repeatedly by your ear like that. We figure that's probably where it came from. But someone once told, and maybe my mother told him one time, oh, you haven't missed a thing. Don't worry about it.

[20:37] TIMOTHY WELSH: That's always something I remember about grandpa, is that he was hard of hearing on one side, and he would always kind of lean in on the other.

[20:45] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yes.

[20:47] TIMOTHY WELSH: Well, I want to talk. I want to come back to kind of the school stuff. You already kind of mentioned this a little bit. So you finish the seminary school, you decide you don't want to be a priest. And as I understand it, you had quite the journey in college, a number of different colleges. Why did you go to so many different colleges?

[21:12] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, the first college was Mount Carmel College in Niagara Falls, Ontario, the seminary college. You would go through high school for this. They did two years in Niagara Falls, and then you did your last two years in Hamilton, Massachusetts, and you met the kids who were from the east coast. And we all finished up high school there. Then we come back to Niagara Falls for what they called fifth year. Really. It's a freshman year of college, and it's in the freshman year of college. I realized this. I don't think this is for me. And I left. And then I went to Loyola, which is in Chicago. I was working in Lake Forest or Highland park, one of the two towns. And I would take the train down to the Loyola Lewis Towers campus near the loop. And then I decided I wanted to go back and try the seminary once again. So by that time, however, they had moved their college campus to Marquette University. So I went up to Marquette for a year there. And somewhere in there I said, no, I think I had it right the first time. So I left.

[22:29] TIMOTHY WELSH: Well, hold on. What made you think I want to go back to the seminary?

[22:34] NICHOLAS WELSH: I've often thought about that. I mean, it had a certain attraction. Part of it was the guys. They're my best friends. You know, these are people that I saw every day across the table during school, after hours. Whatever it was, I missed them. I didn't have them around. Not a lot of them. Anyway, the other was the Vietnam war was going on, and I honestly think part of it, me, was thinking, if I go back to the seminary, I don't risk being drafted. I think that was buried in there someplace, too.

[23:07] TIMOTHY WELSH: You brought up the Vietnam war, and that was something I wanted to talk about. But more specifically, as a result of the Vietnam war, there's this massive counterculture movement. That's right. When you're in college, I mean, you're in college in the mid sixties. How much did that dominate college campuses? Or was that kind of overblown?

[23:28] NICHOLAS WELSH: No, no, it was. It was very big on college campuses. Very big. From small college campuses to larger ones. And it's hard to describe just how completely divisive it was. I mean, people were angry. My parents grew up during the Depression. Were you lucky you had anything? And you were very watchful of it. They went through a war which was many people didn't come back from, and, you know, they finally could exhale, like, in the fifties, and then this war started to develop, and they just couldn't see how this world was changing. And there were communists on the other side, and there were communists under every bedpost, you know, and guys in my age didn't see it that way. I mean, we saw Vietnam as, what do we have to fight this war over there? They haven't decided yet what they want to be or who they want to be. Why do we have to do it? We don't think that a Vietnam becomes communist. The rest, they'll be in Iowa next week. So it was very divisive, and they had riots on campus. And I remember somebody in the state house in Illinois after Kent State, where they killed a couple students and stood up and told the general assembly in Illinois, a nation that hates its youth has no future. And that's the way a lot of people felt.

[24:59] TIMOTHY WELSH: Yeah, you brought up Kent State just now. That was actually something that I noted. I wanted to talk to you about because that would have happened. That's 1970. That's as you're finishing undergrad just before you go to law school. What was it like being a college student and seeing college students massacred like that? How did that make you feel?

[25:18] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, it was very troubling. I mean, at that time, I don't think that's after I quit seminary. Second time I was back at work, I ended up at Southern Illinois University down in Carbondale, and I went there, I think, in 70, it was after Kent State, because all the students were just returning back to campus that year. It was not easy to watch. We knew something big and very divisive was going on. I wasn't as cocksure about it as a lot of these activists were, you know, who were going to fight it come hell, come high water. My brother Mike went off to the war. He was drafted, and I knew I could very well be next.

[26:04] TIMOTHY WELSH: So you were still in school during Kent State when it happened. Did they, were college campuses sending students home? Yes.

[26:14] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yes. It got to that boiling point where there wasn't much learning going on. People were. Students were just demonstrating everywhere. Well, not every. There were a lot of people who didn't demonstrate. They, of course, don't make the news, but, I mean, it was happening in a lot of places.

[26:32] TIMOTHY WELSH: So I want to keep going a little bit further down the line here. So you said you finished school at SIU. That's where you met mom, right?

[26:43] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yes. Yeah.

[26:45] TIMOTHY WELSH: And after that, you went to law school at Emory. Why did you choose Emory? What brought you to the American south?

[26:53] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, after I finished undergraduate school, I went back to Lake Forest. I got a job working in a bank. And it wasn't very long before I realized this is not what I want to be doing with my life. So. And my dad had always wanted one of his kids to be a lawyer. I mean, he sent Pat off to Notre Dame to be a lawyer and go to law school. And Pat was briefing his cases in Chinese, and he says, well, maybe this isn't what he wants to do. Brother Mike, you know, he made it. No, no, I'm not going to go to law school. But it seemed somewhat interesting to me, so I thought, why? Nothing. I applied to a bunch of schools, and I got accepted at three. Loyola of New Orleans, Pepperdine of Santa Ana, California, and Emory. My dad said, pepperdine, they always lose in football. Don't go there, you know, and he said, loyola, they had that goofy french law down in Louisiana. You'll never be able to use it anywhere else. Emery. I don't know anything about Emery, but go there. Emory was my first choice anyway.

[27:59] TIMOTHY WELSH: And why was that? Why did you want to?

[28:00] NICHOLAS WELSH: I had been to Atlanta several times. My good friend Mark Baker, his older sister Mary Ann, married a guy from Georgia here, and I often went with him on trips down south, and I guess to keep him company so wouldn't get bored. So I had been here several times, and I said, this looks like a nice place.

[28:22] TIMOTHY WELSH: I was going to ask what your impression of the American south was. This is early 1970s. Yeah, it's a much different place.

[28:30] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yeah? Yeah. Well, I never in a million years ever would have thought I would have lived in the south. You just growing up in the fifties and early sixties, the south was just, it's almost like a different country. You know, they're, they're different down there, whatever. So I didn't think about it. I went to law school here and I thought this is the most beautiful place I have ever been. I mean, you have to remember I come from the upper Midwest and I lived in the suburbs, but they're not like suburbs today. It was only about a mile and a half and then you're into cornfields and wheat fields and it's just empty land up there. It's not at all like it is here.

[29:11] TIMOTHY WELSH: So did you feel when you came to school here like Atlanta was different than the rest of Georgia? Did it feel like its own place or did it very uniquely feel like the American South?

[29:24] NICHOLAS WELSH: I don't know that it uniquely felt like the American south. Not entirely, anyway. I mean, it was often said Atlanta is in the south but not of the south. So I knew it was different. And, you know, it had a reputation going back into the sixties. Ivan Allen was mayor of Atlanta in 1964. He is the only mayor in the south who endorsed before Congress the passage of the Civil Rights act. And they had a vigorous progressive movement of leaders in the south. When King won the Nobel Peace Prize, there was going to be a celebration for a banquet for him and they were trying to sell tickets and tickets weren't selling. And I can't think of Miles B. Lane, I think it was head of CN's bank, went around to the other leaders, bigwigs in Atlanta and said, we are not going to have a bunch of empty seats at a banquet for Doctor King in Atlanta and have that go on the papers. You will get tickets and you will show up at this. And they all did. They all did.

[30:37] TIMOTHY WELSH: After law school, you moved around quite a bit before you came back to Atlanta.

[30:44] NICHOLAS WELSH: Yeah.

[30:45] TIMOTHY WELSH: What brought you back to Atlanta?

[30:49] NICHOLAS WELSH: The short story is we lived in Chicago and your mother spent two winters sitting on the heater. And we looked at each other and said, you know, we know better. So we came back after law school. Your mom wanted to go to school. She wanted to go to photography school. So she was accepted at Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, California. So we took off there. I looked for work for months and I couldn't find a job in California. But my cousin Kathy Ryan, who is a school sister of St. Francis, she was a lawyer and clerk for a judge in Chicago. She was leaving that job for another. And she put in a word for me. She got me the job with Judge Cohen in Chicago. So that's how we came back to Chicago.

[31:40] TIMOTHY WELSH: And when you came back to Atlanta, you didn't get the job first, right? Mom got a job first, right.

[31:48] NICHOLAS WELSH: We came back to Atlanta. I went down. I came down here and looked for, I don't know how many weeks, whatever it was wasn't successful. And then she came down and look for it, and she landed a job. But I was overly anxious about not having any work. We were on Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, driving downtown to go to work, her place in my place. I pulled over in the middle of Lakeshore Drive, and I said, we need to think about this. We're going to go halfway across the country, and I don't have a job. She said, yes, we need to think about that, but right now, you need to get back on the highway and get down to work, and we'll talk about it tonight.

[32:26] TIMOTHY WELSH: So when you did ultimately get a job here in Atlanta, it was your first job, which ended up being the job you retired from at National treasury employees nTEU. When I think of the American South, I don't think of the labor movement. How was it working for a labor union in the deep south?

[32:49] NICHOLAS WELSH: It was okay. You know, my assignments were locals all throughout the south, and I was only going into workplaces that were organized, you know, so I knew the south was not a big union area. They had an organizing campaign in the twenties or thirties. I can't think of what it was. It was disastrous. It didn't work out, and it never recovered labor. Organized labor never recovered in the south as much. But then again, there wasn't as much industrialization in the south as there was in the north. And I think that's the biggest reason why. So by the time south industrialized after the war, the employers learned how to deal with their workers without being so overbearing.

[33:38] TIMOTHY WELSH: I learned better anyway, I remember once asking you about the type of law that you practice and, and I remember you almost describing it less about a passion for labor and more that the type of law and the job that you had allowed you to spend more time with your family than if you were a lawyer who had to bill and get hours.

[34:00] NICHOLAS WELSH: Oh, yeah. Several of my classmates from seminary days went off and became lawyers. And one of them said, you know what? The job he had with one firm in Washington, I think, Steptoe and Johnson, he said, you had to have so many billable hours. He said, that's just a nightmare. While I worked for them, and I had heard the story of that from other people around as well, going through law school. And I said, that's not what I want to do. I want to do legal type work, but I don't want to do that. The job I got with the union is actually a field representative job. They wanted lawyers to do it, but it's a field representative job. And that is to say, you work with a local, you help them build membership, you help them hold elections, you help them lobby Congress, you help them process grievances, solve problems and work out issues. So I like that. And I taught, I taught classes how to be a steward, how to look at good cases. I like that.

[35:00] TIMOTHY WELSH: And I think one of the things that was great Washington, you know, having, you know, you able to be around more, you didn't, you didn't seem to, I remember you traveling a lot, but you didn't seem to be buried in your work all the time. Did you, did you feel at times like you were buried and unable to spend that quality time with, with us when we were little?

[35:24] NICHOLAS WELSH: I don't, I don't recall that now. I mean, maybe I had thought sometimes I would like to do some more stuff with you all, but I don't remember that. And I know that there are guys that I went to law school with who felt that very much that way when they went to work for some law firm. But NtEU had a pretty good idea of work life balance. So I was able to spend a lot of time with you guys. Hopefully it was quality. But.

[35:56] TIMOTHY WELSH: I wanted to kind of conclude here by asking you about, we've just talked about your early life all the way through to once you started your own family, what is one thing that you've learned throughout your life that you would hope future generations, possibly listening to this in the future would remember, embrace.

[36:21] NICHOLAS WELSH: Return to, you know, I know the question you were asking. I saw it before we came in. I was thinking a lot about it, and I don't know. One answer is, I would hope that you learn a couple things. One is to forgive yourself for making mistakes, shortcomings. Everybody does. But don't punish yourself. I mean, fess up to it. I did something wrong. I said something stupid. I apologize for it and move on. That's something I still have problems with sometimes. Every day. Every day I think of at least two or three things I either said or did. I wish I had never done that and just feel guilty. I mean, you'll sometimes hear me muttering off in the and decide. Timmy, let it go. Timmy, let it go. And that's what's going on. The other thing, though, is to have what my mother, your grandmother Edith, called a zest for life. Go out, find adventure, make it happen. Don't just become too comfortable doing the routine. There's always something new to learn, something more that unfolds. So, and I'm gonna. That's important because that's the only way you get and keep friends is if you do that. And you need friends. You need a good spouse, but you need a family, but you need friends as well.

[37:57] TIMOTHY WELSH: Well, thank you for sharing all your stories and taking the time to talk with me here.

[38:03] NICHOLAS WELSH: Well, thank you for asking me. This is very enjoyable. Thank you. Timothy, could you give your parents names? My father's name was Francis Welsh, but everybody called him pat. There's another story how that happened, but I'll leave that, I guess, for another interview. My mother's name was Edith Welsh. And your siblings names? My oldest brother is Pat. Next came my brother Michael. Next is my sister Kathleen, then Rosemary, then myself, then my sister Eileen, and then my sisters, Peg and Maureen. Then my two youngest brothers, Danny and Brian.

[38:45] TIMOTHY WELSH: That's ten if anybody's keeping count.