Terry Halloran and Brian Halloran

[00:03] TERRY HALLORAN: Good morning. I'm Terry Halloran My age is 84. Today's date is July 21, 2023. We are in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And the name of my interviewer is Brian Halloran And Brian's relationship to me is that he is my son.

[00:24] BRIAN HALLORAN: I'm Brian Halloranna. This year, I'm 58 years old. And again, it's July 21, 2023, in Kalamazoo. I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and I'm here with my mother, one of her three children. I have an older sister and a younger brother. So when I was born, you were just turning 25 years old. And so I'd like to mostly talk about the first 25 years of your life.

[00:54] TERRY HALLORAN: Okay.

[00:55] BRIAN HALLORAN: And we'll maybe kind of bounce around the years between 1939 and 1964. The year I was born, November 23, 1963, was a Monday, three days before Thanksgiving. This was the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. And so I wanted to ask, where were you? What do you remember about that day? Because many people in your generation, they can say that time stood still, and they just remember very vividly. And I was curious about your reminiscence of that.

[01:32] TERRY HALLORAN: Well, I remember that well. Like most people, ours was a unique situation. I think your dad and I were in Hanau, Germany. He was a second lieutenant in the army and had been commissioned out of college. He had just graduated from University of Dayton. We were stationed over there. And I got pregnant shortly after we were married. And had your sister Siobhan. On the 18 November, just several days before the assassination of the president, we had just brought her home for the hospital. Back then, women stayed in the hospital a bit longer than they do now at the post birth. And we had just brought her home. We were living on the german economy. And what that means is that we were living in an apartment owned by people who were from Germany, who lived there, residents. There wasn't enough room on base for the officers, like your dad, who was reserved. He wasn't regular army to house us on base. And we were on the second floor. Neither of us spoke German. But our landlady came up knocking on the door, very frantic, and said something about President Kennedy. We couldn't figure out what was going on. She took us downstairs to see their little black and white tv. It was, of course, in German. And we got the gist pretty quick that the president had been shot. It became like a black hole over there for us because there wasn't anything like CNN. There weren't english speaking stations. There was a paper called the Stars and Stripes, which was the army paper. But they actually had blacked out all information about the present assassination for security reasons, thinking it was maybe something else was going to go on with the assassinating people in the government. So that's, you know, that. That will forever stick in my mind. And until I got back to the states, my mother just was in love with. With President Kennedy. She had saved all the newspaper articles about his assassination and his death and the funeral. So I read those when I came back. But we knew very little other than he had been assassinated. And then I believe that Jack Ruby shot Oswald. We did know that, yeah.

[04:10] BRIAN HALLORAN: So, again, that was just five days after the birth of your first child.

[04:14] TERRY HALLORAN: Yes.

[04:16] BRIAN HALLORAN: Going back a little further in time, you were born in 1939, which was still considered the depression. What are some of your first memories? And, you know, again, you know, just a couple years after you were born, your brother John was born in Pittsburgh. And then when you were four years old, your sister Diane was born in St. Louis. So there's some family mobility, but what are some of your earliest memories?

[04:49] TERRY HALLORAN: Well, I know we lived, and I can remember a bit. We certainly weren't wealthy, and we lived with my aunt and her husband and their two children. And my grandmother, another aunt, lived there. They had a big house in Mount Lebanon, Pittsburgh, a lovely home. And there was pretty much enough room for us to be there for a while. And then after my brother was born, my dad found a job in St. Louis. He had a cousin who lived in St. Louis area, and he found a job there. But I can remember a little bit growing up with my grandmother and aunts and had quite a feminine influence. Literally. My one aunt worked. She actually, all three of my aunts worked. My aunt Alice was a nurse. She had just started nursing or working as a nurse at graduation, nursing school. And so she was working. Aunt Margaret worked, even though she was married. She was a secretary, and my aunt Helen was a secretary. So I think all that sort of influenced me down the road as far as women working and could do it and still have a family, although it was a lot more work. I remember that. And my grandmother cooking, and that was her job, to cook. And we'd eat the minute everybody got home from work. And so it was pretty quiet and pleasant and nice, and they all doted on me, being the first grandchild. But then after my brother was dying, we moved to St. Louis, and there was a cousin, my dad's, that lived there. And we then it was. By then the war was going on, so we had a tiny little apartment south St. Louis. Really small, actually. One big living room area, one bedroom, bath and kitchen. It was a huge bedroom. And we all slept in that bedroom. My mother and dad owned a double bede, sister and I in a bunk bed, my brother in another bed. And we went to the local catholic school, which you walked to. Actually, we were closer to the polish school, St. Hedwig's parish. I'll never forget it. And it was a polish parish in school, and you had to speak Polish to go there. So we went to the german one. They did speak English there. So this is in south St. Louis, which had. All their ethnic groups were still very cohesive at that point in time. And so went to St. Anthony's school till I was in 7th grade. And then my parents could afford to buy a house, a little house out in Webster Groves. And we moved out there and then finished up at once again, local catholic school, and finished up there and then started high school there. And two. And.

[08:12] BRIAN HALLORAN: Yeah, so I've been interested in genealogy since grade school. And really kind of a national event occurred on television, roots, the mini series. And I think everybody just was glued to watching that on tv. And I can remember in grade school, you know, we all were tasked with learning about our family history. So this has been something, you know, I've always had interest in. But nowadays, in the last several months, there's so many more resources. So I've been able to look through archived United States census records and found in 1940, you know, your family was still in Pittsburgh and lived at the 740 Broughton street. And you can actually pull up nowadays on Google Maps and see the actual house that's still there. It's a little bit up on a hill, and it looks like a big enough house that would be shared by people. And then the 1950 census shows that your family was on Nebraska Avenue in St. Louis with, I think, your father's sister living on Virginia Avenue. Was that Uncle Al and Aunt Agnes?

[09:29] TERRY HALLORAN: They lived on Virginia Avenue. We lived on Broadway.

[09:31] BRIAN HALLORAN: Broadway, okay.

[09:32] TERRY HALLORAN: Yes.

[09:33] BRIAN HALLORAN: This was before you moved to Webster Groves. Yeah. So and so then it looks like you were around maybe eleven years old or a little older when you moved to the Webster Groves area. And you went to Narex hall, which was, I think, a Catholic. All girls.

[09:53] TERRY HALLORAN: All girls. All girls.

[09:55] BRIAN HALLORAN: And then we've talked before, but you graduated. But my recollection is that college money for the family was being saved for your brother, your younger brother John.

[10:08] TERRY HALLORAN: You want to pretty much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We went. I went. The girls, my sisters and I went to Neric's hall and I. It was interesting. My parents wanted us to go to a catholic school, not realizing that it was actually a college prep school and they had not gotten to college. So although my mother was a nurse, but it wasn't a collegiate degree. So that, I think really shaped me, that school, as far as my future careers and once again being taught by women and them influencing me and all of us on what we could do. Yes. My parents didn't have a lot of money and what money was going to go for my brother. So my father had said that he was very pleasant, but told me I couldn't go to college and because I was just going to get married, although I didn't have a boyfriend, so I didn't think I was going to at the time.

[11:13] BRIAN HALLORAN: So what were your parents like during those years of your schooling? You know, that grade school, middle school, high school. What do you remember about family gatherings and your parents and them balancing, be it maybe work, child rearing, even moving place.

[11:44] TERRY HALLORAN: My father ended up with a pretty good job as a salesman for industrial packing company. My mother stayed home, although eventually she would go back to work many years later.

[11:56] BRIAN HALLORAN: As what child?

[11:57] TERRY HALLORAN: As a nurse.

[11:57] BRIAN HALLORAN: As a nurse?

[11:57] TERRY HALLORAN: She was a nurse. And when my youngest sister was in school, she went back to work. They were very social people, loved to entertain, loved sports. They were not highly educated, but they were well read. They had trouble, let's say, understanding what we were bringing back from school that they would joke about, oh, it should be reading, writing, arithmetic, and we're studying Shakespeare, you know, doing things that they never had the opportunity to do, but they were encouraging. They never helped with homework or did anything like that. They themselves weren't that educated, but we all did well as far as that. But they had many friends. They had a lot of friends and they volunteered a lot. My father volunteered. He taught remedial math. He volunteered for several organizations. And my mother volunteered to the local at our school. And she was always very willing to help people. People were ill. She was making soup and taking it over to them. So they were a large family in a small house, a lot of activity, although I can't say a lot of noise, it was mainly a lot of the activity. And having one brother, I'll tell on a little bit, having one brother. And there wasn't all this like you and your brother, you know, wrestling and, you know, all that kind of stuff in the house. One boy doesn't do that. So it was a pretty quiet household, except when they partied. Then it wasn't.

[13:53] BRIAN HALLORAN: I don't have a lot of memories of your father, Walter. My grandfather, some. But again, going back through some archival information, he was born in 1905 in Pittsburgh. And at that time, they pretty much only went to school up until about the 10th grade. The records would show where he was living. You know, these homes and streets are still mostly there, some of which I was close to seeing last week when I was back in Pittsburgh doing some genealogy. And in 1930, he was 25 years old, living on Greenwood street in Morningside, Pittsburgh, still living with parents. And he was. The census actually show he was listed as a salesman for a heating company.

[14:51] TERRY HALLORAN: He was.

[14:53] BRIAN HALLORAN: In 1937, he married your mother, Veronica, my grandmother. And then again, you were born in 1939. So there's an interesting kind of dynamic. One of his best friends who lived not very far away, growing up one block away, sometimes the families would move and still only be a five minute walk away was George, George Halloran And George was the son of Thomas Halloran who was an immigrant from Ireland. George senior, he became, was born in 1904, and his father sadly died in an accident in 1908 at the rail yards. Nonetheless, the families still live pretty close in an irish catholic community in lower Lawrenceville, Pittsburgh area. And, you know, the time that your dad was five and, you know, George was six years old, they lived a block away. I've seen these streets on Google Maps. And then Washington just there last week. And even a little bit later, when they were teenagers, they lived, you know, just, again, a five minute walk away, perhaps, maybe went to the same school, most likely went to the same catholic church, St. Mary. And then George went to Canton, Ohio, as a salesman at the beginning of the depression in 1930. Then he did marry in 1932. His wife was a nurse. But they had to keep that really kind of quiet in terms of their marriage, because nurses weren't allowed to be married. And then George and his wife, Gertrude, had three children, and then their youngest was their son, George Junior, who is my father. And so I'd really like to hear maybe how you first met. Was it when your brother was off in college? Was it even before then? Because my father's father and your father were very close friends and knew each other. So how did you meet George Junior?

[17:24] TERRY HALLORAN: Well, you said they were very good friends from the time they were young and, you know, hung out all the time. And I think the company they both worked for was Crane, for some reason that comes in my head, crane plumbing or heating or something. But anyway, the first I ever met your dad, George and Gertie and Janet, his sister, and George came to St. Louis to visit us. And Nancy, George's older sister, was already married, so she wasn't with them. I don't remember much about him because he hung out with John and they were doing guy things. And maybe. Let me think a minute. I was maybe 14, maybe he was 1214, something like that. So I just remembered they were there. He was hanging out, and I hung out with Janet. And then I more formally met him when my brother was at the University of Dayton. And George was there from Pittsburgh also as a student. As a student, he had been. Had been to pet in business and then decided to change engineering. And his dad, someone at one of the administrators of University of Dayton who suggested he go there, and one of the priests. And so he did. So he was a couple years ahead of my brother. And then for homecoming, my aunt and uncle in St. Louis were going to drive over to see John, and they took me along, too. And that's when I more formally met George that weekend, homecoming weekend. And then the next couple months, we started a long distance relationship, which was harder back then. It is these days, because you don't have facetime or stuff like that. So we knew each other about. Well, gosh, I'm trying to think. He was. He was a sophomore, I believe, and then we were married after he graduated. So another three years.

[19:52] BRIAN HALLORAN: So I have a newspaper clipping from a Pittsburgh newspaper, December 15, 1961, and it actually has a picture of you, and it mentions that you were engaged to be married to. To George Junior of Pittsburgh, that your parents were formerly of Pittsburgh. So this is an announcement, really, almost a year before your wedding. Do you remember how he proposed or.

[20:28] TERRY HALLORAN: I do. I do. I was over there in Dayton. I had a little volkswagen I bought. I was working, and I bought this little volkswagen, would take it to Dayton. And I was over there visiting, and he was showing me the new chapel on campus. And we were in the chapel, and that's when he proposed.

[20:49] BRIAN HALLORAN: Okay.

[20:49] TERRY HALLORAN: And had a ring.

[20:50] BRIAN HALLORAN: All right. So you set a wedding for 1962. And this was going to be November 22, 1962, which is interesting. Thanksgiving Day.

[21:05] TERRY HALLORAN: Right. And the reason we picked that was because my parents had been married on Thanksgiving Day 25 years before.

[21:15] BRIAN HALLORAN: Okay. So this kind of leads up to, really an eventful week. November 15, 1962, is your birthday, your 23rd birthday. And again, this was a Thursday going into your wedding week. And very sadly, you got a call on Saturday that George Sr. Had suddenly passed away. And Pittsburgh. Do you remember?

[21:59] TERRY HALLORAN: I do. I took the call. It was Saturday evening. Maybe about. Or late afternoon, maybe about 4430. And I got the call, of course, it was a dreadful shock. My dad was taking a nap. My mother was out of. I went to wake him up and tell him, and he was just coming out of sleep. So he. It was just such a shock. It was hard for everybody, everybody to.

[22:34] BRIAN HALLORAN: Believe and process, and because they were preparing to. They were coming to St. Louis for the wedding at the home of the bride.

[22:44] TERRY HALLORAN: Right. They were going to travel, I think, on Tuesday, fly. And so. And then your dad was at work. He was working at a department store. He was in St. Louis then, preparing for the wedding. For the wedding. And he had been. He had taken some classes at St. Louis University in the summer and worked part time at this department store. It was Christmas getting on to the holiday season, so they hired him just for wow. In St. Louis. So it was like.

[23:21] BRIAN HALLORAN: So George's sisters both told me last week that you had to spend your honeymoon money to fly to Pittsburgh for a funeral and then fly back to St. Louis. And maybe you can verify if this was, you know, part of the story that, you know, winter storms were coming in November and you had to be driven to Cleveland and then catch a flight from Cleveland to St. Louis, getting there the morning of thanksgiving, the morning of your wedding.

[23:58] TERRY HALLORAN: That's when we got in. Like, at one in the morning. We were. The funeral was. We flew to Pittsburgh maybe on Sunday.

[24:07] BRIAN HALLORAN: He was buried on a Tuesday.

[24:11] TERRY HALLORAN: It was buried Wednesday, Wednesday morning. No, I can't remember. Maybe it was Wednesday morning. He was buried Monday and Tuesday. Back then. They had long weeks, like two days.

[24:23] BRIAN HALLORAN: Yeah.

[24:24] TERRY HALLORAN: And I think that was Monday and Tuesday. I think it was buried Wednesday morning. I can't remember right now. And then we left. And that had to do with storms. And we had to drive to Cleveland, or someone drove us to Cleveland, and gertie came with us.

[24:39] BRIAN HALLORAN: Right. So she had just buried her husband.

[24:42] TERRY HALLORAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was in shock. I'm sure we all were. And, you know, people encouraged her to. I mean, they didn't force her, but, you know, it was. It was a hard decision to make. Should she stay back home and. Or should she come for her? It was hard to see.

[25:00] BRIAN HALLORAN: And from what I heard of discussions that, yes, I guess the wedding could have been delayed, but it was back in Pittsburgh, your hometown, the town of the bride. Only some of the relatives for Pittsburgh were coming, that maybe 400 people were invited because you're. It was big, I think, pretty social and connected.

[25:26] TERRY HALLORAN: Yes.

[25:27] BRIAN HALLORAN: And that everyone would be there, so it must have been, but I think.

[25:31] TERRY HALLORAN: We ended up with 250.

[25:33] BRIAN HALLORAN: Okay.

[25:34] TERRY HALLORAN: I think it got exaggerated.

[25:35] BRIAN HALLORAN: Still, this is quite. It's a big wedding, quite an eventful week, from your birthday to your wedding day. With that in between, we got in.

[25:46] TERRY HALLORAN: At one in the morning. There was supposed to be a rehearsal dinner the night before, which there was. We just weren't at it. And it was a restaurant, south St. Louis, that my father had frequented a lot. Nice italian restaurant. But. So we weren't involved in our own rehearsal. The rest of the wedding party was. And they went to the dinner. We got in around one in the morning, and then met with the priest about nine for a mini rehearsal. So speak. Went home and changed. Wedding was at noon, I believe.

[26:21] BRIAN HALLORAN: Yeah. And so then that begins your first year of marriage life, which you had mentioned that you're pregnant. Shortly thereafter, you were going to go to Germany. How'd you tell your family that you were getting ready to go to Germany, that George was being deployed and that you were going with him?

[26:41] TERRY HALLORAN: We had. When he was getting out of the. Or getting out of college and actually doing his paperwork for entry into the service he had requested overseas, either Hawaii or Germany. Of course, everybody wondered why, but so they were aware in advance that, you know, that was going to happen. Of course, you have to remember, they moved away. My parents had moved away from Pittsburgh, so they. Our society wasn't quite as mobile as it is now. But, you know, I don't think it particularly upset them. It was. And even being, you know, I was pregnant. But, you know, they just figured when they'll, you know, they'll see the baby when I come back home with the baby, I think they were pretty pragmatic about some things, and back then, people didn't have the money or the means to fly over. Now, Gertie did come visit. Gertie came visit.

[28:00] BRIAN HALLORAN: This is your mother in law? Yes.

[28:01] TERRY HALLORAN: Yeah, yeah, my mother in law.

[28:02] BRIAN HALLORAN: So you certainly did have a very eventful first year. You know, the day of your first wedding anniversary, you have a four day old daughter. And that's also the day before the president was shot. Moving another year later, you're pregnant with me. I was born in St. Louis because it was time to be back in the states. And then just over another year later, our third sibling, Kevin, my brother. I was born in Michigan again. You weren't even 27 years old then.

[28:39] TERRY HALLORAN: No, and my oldest wasn't even two and a half.

[28:45] BRIAN HALLORAN: So that's kind of the capsule of innocence, I think, the first 25 years, which I didn't know all the information about that. So for generations, listening to this years from now, is there any wisdom you would want to pass along that would want them to know? Listening to your story and, oh, how it shaped you.

[29:16] TERRY HALLORAN: I recommend now that young women finish college. I had had two years of college before your dad and I got married and then quit thinking I would be a housewife. That's what people in my generation did, even those who went to college, as soon as they were finished, they got married and had families, and very few worked. So now, I certainly encourage young women to finish their education. I eventually did mine, but made it harder. And I looked back and people said, and people ask me, oh, you know, wasn't that difficult having three children in such a short time? And you wish you would have done it differently. And I say it was difficult, but I wish, I'm glad I did it the way I did with these three.

[30:13] BRIAN HALLORAN: That's great. Well, I guess one of my earliest memories, maybe it's because you've told me when I was really little, I would sometimes pretend to be a little bear cub. Do you remember what I would sometimes ask you to do? It'd be, put your paws around me.

[30:36] TERRY HALLORAN: I do, yes.

[30:38] BRIAN HALLORAN: I thought you were the mother bear.

[30:41] TERRY HALLORAN: Yes. And I wondered if I had been remiss in teaching you that on a human, it's a hand, not a paw.

[30:48] BRIAN HALLORAN: Well, I still like your paw. Hugs.

[30:51] TERRY HALLORAN: Yes. Yes. You would say paws. Yes.

[30:54] BRIAN HALLORAN: Well, I want to, you know, thank you for sharing that with us. I know I kind of brought this on a short notice, and some memories are, you know, harder to maybe discuss or think about. But I'm really glad that you were able to do this with me.

[31:14] TERRY HALLORAN: Thanks, Brian And I really am happy that you were aware of this and have educated me in Storycorps. Some of the things in life are difficult to talk about, but they happen. And as we survived them, which is great. Yeah. I really. I'm so really thrilled. Not just to have you thrilled. We've done this because this way you can get some and now have background material on me more than you had before, and you can pass it down to your other, to your kids, and because otherwise things are lost, you know? And that's why this program is so wonderful. Yeah.

[32:06] BRIAN HALLORAN: Well, I've always just taken from you your amazing resilience.

[32:11] TERRY HALLORAN: Thank you.

[32:12] BRIAN HALLORAN: And I love you.

[32:14] TERRY HALLORAN: Thank you.