Wars and work dot memories of 92 years

By MAUREEN MCGUINNESS- | Comments: 0 | Leave a comment

As a youth working in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Thomas Lynch never imagined that he would be around to witness the dawn of the new millennium.

"I never gave it a thought," said the 92-year-old parishioner of St. Mary's Church in Oneonta. "I think it's all been great. These kids today have come so much further than us in just 100 years. I saw the whole industrial revolution. I never had any idea it would come to this."

Born on July 11, 1907, in Caribou, Maine, a town located 20 miles from the Canadian border, to an Acadian mother and an Irish father, Mr. Lynch was the oldest of nine children.

Teen years

He spent most of his youth in Lawrence, where he was educated in Sacred Heart School, a French parish. The nuns spoke English in the mornings and French in the afternoons.

He attended school through the seventh grade and then went to work in textile mills made famous in 1912 by the "Bread and Roses" strike. The two-month strike of 25,000 mill workers, half of whom were women, began when mill owners lowered wages for women and children, while increasing the speed of the machinery. The strike led to a number of deaths and mass arrests before higher wages were gained for mill workers across New England.

"On my 14th birthday, I went to work in the biggest woolen mill in the country," he said. "I was the oldest of nine children. I had to go to work to help the family."

Work life

Mr. Lynch made what he described as good money -- $14.75 for a five-day week. "Mother got the $14 and I got the 75 cents," he said.

He worked eight-hour days until he was 16; then his shift was increased by 40 minutes. (The eight-hour workday for children was gained through the strike.) While the strike led to some reforms like that one, mill owners weren't anxious to work with organized labor. The mill where Mr. Lynch worked closed when he was 20.

"They went south for cheaper labor and no unions," he said. "They fought the union. They closed rather than go union."

Family life

Despite going to work at 14, Mr. Lynch has fond memories of his youth and describes his family as typical. "Everyone I knew was the same," he said.

"My mother's mother never heard of an ice box, let alone a refrigerator," he said. "They had no running water. They kept the perishables in the well. They thought they did a great thing when they moved the pump from outside into the kitchen."

During his visits to his grandmother, she would tell him to go pick strawberries from the nearby patch and bring them to her. She'd wash them, and then go to the well to get the cream she kept with eggs and milk in a bucket to keep cool. The strawberries and cream were a big treat for Mr. Lynch. However, when he thinks back, he imagines the germs and bacteria that must have existed in the unpasteurized cream kept in the well.

Ice cream, now a simple treat, was once a luxury. "It was hard work to make ice cream," Mr. Lynch said. "But everything was hard work back then. Nothing was easy."

Changes through time

As a child, Mr. Lynch was among the first to be vaccinated for small pox. "It wasn't like now, with a nice clean needle," he said. "They scratched you with a piece of glass. Everything is different now -- and it's a good thing."

One change Mr. Lynch is particularly pleased about is the roles open to women.

"I'm a great admirer of women," he said. "When I was a kid, you kept them barefoot and pregnant. My mother could barely read or write. I can still see my mother, pregnant, on her hands and knees scrubbing the floors. I think women will do a better job than the men. It's good to see female CEOs."

Crises

War touched Mr. Lynch's life twice. "I was 11 when the [First World War] was over," he recalled. "I remember the big parade and what a great time it was. They had a fabulous parade. Everybody was happy because everyone had someone in the war."

Drafted for World War II, he was told to report to Utica where he was to be part of the next contingent of the Navy to leave the area. The next week, however, those plans changed.

"They decided they wouldn't take any more fathers over 35," he said. He was both. Mr. Lynch and his wife Ethyl had married on Flag Day in 1930 at St. Mary's in Oneonta. They were married for 66 years, until her death in 1996. They were the parents of two sons and a daughter.

Oneonta days

Mr. Lynch visited Oneonta in 1929 and ended up staying. He got a job with the gas and electric company where he worked for five years, before being laid off during the Depression.

He then was a part of the Work Projects Administration (WPA), a government agency created to put unemployed people to work on public projects during the Depression. He was one of thousands of men who built a tuberculosis hospital in Oneonta. "It was heavy work for 35 cents an hour, all WPA money."

He then went to work for the Post Office, where he stayed for 40 years before retiring, a luxury his father did not experience. "All he thought about was retiring at 65," said Mr. Lynch. "He died at 64."

Inventions

When the elder Lynch first began his job with the phone company, he would have to take the train and then rent a horse to reach towns where phones were being installed. The dawn of the automobile changed that.

"When the first cars were invented, the telephone company had them," Mr. Lynch explained, so his father had use of a company car. The one-cylinder auto traveled at 15 miles per hour. "That car was a great thing," he remembered.

When he was older, Mr. Lynch purchased a used 1922 Model T coupe with four cylinders for $75. New models at the time cost between $300 and $400. Cars weren't the only form of transportation that impressed Mr. Lynch.

"I remember the first trolley," he said. "You were amazed that it was going without any horses pulling it. The first airplane -- we couldn't imagine how the guy wasn't falling out of the sky."

Other inventions also had an impact. "I remember when the radio reached us," he said. "It was a great thing. We could get the news and everything."

Memories

Mr. Lynch remembers many things clearly from his nine decades of life; some are painful. When he was three, his little sister, who was 19 months old, died.

"They said it was crib death since she was a healthy kid," he said. "We had kerosene lamps, and she was laid out on the table. I can remember it like yesterday."

Despite the hard work and heartaches, Mr. Lynch said he has lived a good life. "We went from candles to kerosene to gaslight to electricity," he said. "Every step was great. I was fortunate for a guy who came from nothing."

(12-23-99) [[In-content Ad]]