I left the Academy and spent Christmas at home. I hadn’t been home in 18 months.
When I went to Fordham, the college president was Father Davis and the dean was Father Culhane. Davis towered over Culhane, and he usually spoke like this: "I think and Father Culhane feels,'' he would say.
The other priest I remember at Fordham was Father Dulles. Sara and I visited him many years later when he was a Cardinal, and we had a wonderful conversation with him about church philosophy.
At Fordham, I participated in the theater group, which was very active. One of my classmates in the theater was Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame. I still pursued my old girlfriend, Diane Farrell, who was attending Manhattanville College. I went over to see her at some dances that were held there. I did it for several years, but without any success.
I worked at the radio station, WFUV, doing things with my friend Billy Mitchell from Xavier, in the engineering area. He had given up the idea of being a Jesuit priest. We used to do some of the away basketball games, particularly at Holy Cross. When we went up to Holy Cross, we stayed with friends in the dorm and slept on the floor. The monitor on the floor we stayed on was an old Jesuit priest. He told us there were three people we were to pay attention to -- God, the Pope and him -- and not necessarily in that order.
At Fordham, I joined the ROTC. One of my summer camps was at Fort Eustis, which was outside Williamsburg, Virginia. The commanding officer was an old friend of my uncle's from the war. I made an appointment and went over to see him. He was an old drunk. His name was General Duffy. My uncle says that when they landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, he set up his headquarters and put a sign outside that said “Duffy’s Tavern.”
My uncle tells the story of the Battle of the Bulge. Later, his group ran the supplies and they had then been transferred with the trucks for George Patton’s army. My uncle was in charge of all of this since he ran his own trucking firm in civilian life.
When the Battle of the Bulge started in December 1944, Duffy told him to take his trucks and save the gas. There were thousands of 50-gallon drums. It was obviously a stupid idea. My uncle said that when he was a few miles away, somebody set it off and there was a grand explosion. The story is done in a 1965 movie called “The Battle of the Bulge'' starring Henry Fonda.
Summer Camps
While we were at Fort Eustis, we used to go into Williamsburg at night and have sandwiches at a famous tavern called Chowning’s Old Ale House. The waiters dressed in colonial costumes. We used to come in and ask for ale for our men and hay for our horses. Then, when we ordered an Old Virginia ham sandwich, we would jokingly ask the waiter how old the sandwich was.
Then, for a week, we went down to Virginia Beach to Fort Story for amphibious training. We trained in those ducks that could float in the water and then go up on land with wheels. We damn near sunk them. Our technique was not the smoothest.
Another summer camp was at Fort Bliss, which was across the Rio Grande River from Juarez, Mexico. It was a terrible place. It cost you one cent to go over the border and two cents to come back.
The summer jobs in college and my time off in medical school were for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA). It was in the old New York Times building on 43rd Street. I used to correct the crossword puzzles, cartoons and write the Dorothy Dix column. She had died, but they owned the name, so they kept her advice column alive. Everybody took turns writing it until I would take it over in the summer.
One of our columnists was Grantland Rice, who was the biggest sportswriter of his day. He even made up his own All-American Football team and printed it in Colliers magazine.
One summer, a golf tournament was held at the Baltusrol club in New Jersey. That Friday, there was a heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium, which was a common occurrence in those days. Rice came back from the golf and put his story on the wire. NANA then wanted him to go to the fight, which was scheduled to start at 9 p.m. and come back to the office to put his fight story on the night wire -- then go back to Baltusrol on Saturday.
Rice said forget it since he lived in Croton-Harmon, New York. He told NANA to send someone with him to bring his copy back to the office. That was my job.
Rice took me to dinner at Jack Dempsey’s restaurant on Broadway. He was a famous heavyweight champion from 1919 to 1926. While at dinner, many people who were like Damon Runyun characters came over to talk to Rice in hopes of getting into his column. I sat there quietly and listened to all the stories, but I was never introduced to anybody.
The best part of the story was that every Friday we were paid in cash. As we left the office, Rice gave me an envelope and told me it was his fight copy and told me to take back to the office after the fight. I wondered how he could write it before 6 p.m. and the fight would not be over for another four hours. He even wrote who would win and in what round.
When we were at dinner at Jack Dempsey’s, it was no trouble putting a bet down. I figured if he was risking his reputation, I could risk my salary. I worried that if his story were not true, my father would kill me. I bet my salary and I won. I sat with Grantland Rice at ring side that night.
McSorley's
We had many other interesting columnists like Ring Lardner. As I mentioned before, I was in charge of the crossword puzzles and learned how to create them. I used that information later in life to make one up for our friends on special occasions like birthdays.
It wasn’t all work at Fordham. I frequently had long chemistry labs on Friday afternoon. If my friends were going down to Greenwich Village, I would take the Third Avenue "L'' train and meet them at a place call McSorley’s Old Ale House on Seventh Street.
McSorley's had been there before the Civil War and probably had not been cleaned since then. At the time, women were not allowed. I met my friends there one Friday and wanted something to eat. In those days we Catholics did not eat meat on Fridays. I asked for a grilled cheese sandwich. The waiter brought a package of linderkranz cheese and some saltines. I told him I wanted a grilled cheese sandwich. In his Jewish accent, he me it clear to me this was not the Ritz.
In those days, the Stork Club on 53rd Street was a big-time place. It started during Prohibition, when booze wasn't legal from 1920-1933. We learned that if you were of age and dressed nicely, you could get in the room downstairs. It gave the place a nice atmosphere. It wasn’t expensive for guys our age. As a gift, they handed out red suspenders with the name Stork Club on them. I still have my pair. It really was a great way to impress a girl.
I did well at Fordham, but I did not like it. I spent many an hour at the university pool hall. It would come in handy later on in my life and probably more useful than anything else I learned there. When I applied to medical school at Wake Forest, I was accepted.
My Blind Date
That Easter of 1954, one of my friends invited me to a party at the Pelham Country Club. I had a blind date with a girl named Sally Maust. We dated all summer, and our relationship became serious.
One of our first dates, we were out so late that when she tried to drop me at the train station, there were no more trains back to the city. She suggested that we just go back to her house and get the first one in the morning.
We stayed up and talked all night. At about 6:30 that Saturday morning, down the stairs came Ray, who wanted to be taken to play golf at Winged Foot. That was when I met him. With Sally behind the wheel, we dropped him off at Winged Foot before I was taken to the train station.
Ray never asked any questions why I was there all night, and I offered no explanation. Not a great beginning with the father of the girl I would marry. Would you have believed it?