In 2008, Gwen Ruelle, Mary’s granddaughter, interviewed Mary for an oral history project. The transcript ran many pages. We have included some excerpts here.

On Irish names:

“[My father’s name was] Thomas Joseph Walsh. Most of the names for Irish families were pretty, let’s almost say, prosaic. They didn’t branch out in fancy names or that kind of thing, and most of them were the names of saints but they could be almost anybody. They were named for other people in the family so there was a great repetition of names, particularly for names like John, Thomas, William–very solid-sounding names, you might think. It made it very difficult because every generation would have all of the names repeated so you wouldn’t know which generation it was. We’d get an especially big kick out of John Walsh because John was such a common name and it was repeated over and over. We had John Walsh in Boston, John Walsh in Chicago, that kind of thing, and you couldn’t tell enough about it.”

On her mother’s career:

“Well, at any rate my mother grew up to become a teacher in the local school and once again the English owners of the area were running things and gave tests for the teachers which my mother creamed, she was the top performer in that. But they refused to give her the job of the head teacher of the school because she was a Catholic and that was a way of penalizing Catholics.

“So as a child, even as maybe a three or four year old, [my mother] was clever with a needle and could create some fabric items like skirts and blouses and things like that. And so, when her best friend who was not a catholic became the head teacher (which my mother did not mind if somebody else was going to have it) it put [my mother] out because this was what she would normally be doing. That’s where the skill as a needle woman came into being, because she had another line of work that she could do. And so she went a little further north on her side of the lake and got a job with a woman who was a dressmaker.

“Now this would be probably just about the turn of the century, 1900 or so, and so most everybody’s clothes were being made, you know, for direct design for that person– fit to them and all that kind of thing and they didn’t go in and look through 300 dresses on a rack.”

On her parents’ immigration:

“Anyway, my father was older than my mother by probably five to seven years. He had come to the United States in the 19th century probably in the 1890’s and circumstances that led to my mother’s immigration depended on a visit that he was making to his father.

“So [my father’s father] knew the head dressmaker in the outfit, and he consulted my mother, what he ought to do to get ready for his son when he came home. You know, he needed help being the host, and that’s when, of course, he introduced [my father] and [my mother] to one another. So he was really the matchmaker in a way. He was very fond of my mother and thought it’d be wonderful if she and his son were to marry. So, at any rate, that’s how they met.

“Then my father returned [to the United States]. At the time he was working at the Myopia Hunt Park in Hamilton, Massachusettes. It was a very wealthy group of people that had polo ponies and horses and, uh, a very affluent situation. So my father was trying to introduce my mother into coming to [the United States] and especially after the story of losing her profession, really, you know, and this situation was still in existence, it was not going to clear up right away, and so he was hoping that she would come to [the United States].”

On the choice of Hamilton:

“When [my mother] arrived in Hamilton [my father introduced her to] his friend who worked for a wealthy woman and was looking for someone who could make alterations on a gown for this woman who needed it for an event she was planning to attend. And so my father had told his friend, you know, that my mother could do these things and so they got ahold of her and asked her if she would be willing to help this woman out with her gown.

“At any rate that was [my mother’s] introduction to Hamilton and it turned out to be important, where we lived, because though she was very clever and all that, you know, you have to be known. You have to have someway of living and so on. I know that [my parents] were married in 1912 and I was told that they were the first couple t be married in St. Paul’s Church, the main church in Hamilton, the only catholic church there. And then my brother was born in November of 1913 and I was born in July of 1916 and my sister was born in December of 1917.”

On her father’s early death:

“My father, in the meantime, had become ill with what turned out to be what as known as Bright’s disease. So, in June of 1919, my father died. I can remember just a couple of little incidents of him. I can remember going in the horse and this was a passenger, you know not a buggy-like, uh, buggy with a fringe on top, you know that kind of thing. Taking my brother and me to get an ice cream cone, and I wanted him to get it warmed up, it was too cold. (Laughs)”

On her mother’s widowhood:

“So, at any rate, then that left my mother who was now a widow with three children known as orphans and nobody wanted to rent or take care of anybody like that. There was absolutely no way for anyone to get any help, like there was nothing like social security which would’ve taken care of us until we were 18 or anything of that nature. But, this friend of my mother’s whose name was Mrs. Molton had a very nice house that wasn’t being used at the time, not one that she lived in but some of her property and so she offered it to my mother until she could find whatever she, or decide what she was going to do.

“My mother was extremely proud; [she] would not accept any kind of what she considered charity. So when some group came around Thanksgiving time with a turkey dinner she wouldn’t accept it. [She said] she didn’t need it, you know, that kind of thing. We were [at Mrs. Molton’s] until the following September. In the meantime she had been looking for places to live for the moment [so that we did] not need to accept the charity of this friend. But no one wanted a widow and three orphans. She finally found the house that we eventually lived in the rest of our life and only recently has it been sold out of the family. But it had been built as a two family house and we rented the first floor. But it had never been the quality of house that we were used to. It didn’t have an indoor bathroom, it didn’t have a nicely landscaped yard and there were all kinds of tough things, but this landlord was willing to take a chance on her and no one else had. So we moved from one house to the other, walking one day in early September, that would be 1920, to this house.”

On home ownership:

“It wasn’t long though, after that, that the landlord put this house on the market, and my mother nearly had a panic because who else was going to take her in now, if someone else buys the house and put her out. And they could, too, there were no laws that protected anybody. So a friend of hers was visiting who was, you know, a nice advisor, so to speak. She said to my mother, ‘Well why don’t you buy it?’

“My mother never even dreamed of that, and then [the friend] said, ‘Well, go to the bank and find out whether you can, you can borrow money, you know, and pay it back a little at a time.’

So, anyway, my mother did that and she got the money and for $3,000 she bought the house. Now I think she may have borrowed more money because the first thing she did was put in bathrooms. Let’s see. We were living in the first floor, someone else was living upstairs at that time, but eventually she put in bathrooms, cleaned up the yard, planted a hedge of privet, which is a very sweet-smelling English privet, and planted Dutchman’s pipe vines on the porch and cleaned up the whole place–it was entirely different. And, eventually, we moved upstairs so that we could have the second and third floors and have more space and she rented the first floor. That helped her pay the insurance and the taxes and provided us with a home.

On her uncle John:

“In 1921 or so, my Uncle John Walsh (laughs) came to this country. He was my mother’s youngest brother and he lived with us until he married ten years later, really. Because we had no father and my mother was concerned about my brother having no male influence, my Uncle John lived with us, but he was very careful not to take over managing us as his kids, you know? Which some people won’t do, they are so self righteous they know what they think people should be doing.”

On her mother’s career (again):

“My mother’s reputation as a dressmaker and designer grew. People knew her, you know? And it had to be people that had it better than ordinary income because she was doing a very professional job and it would take… [There were] some people who, you know, expected she could make a dress for them for five dollars. That isn’t enough for all the time she would have to put into it and she couldn’t live on it either. So Hamilton was the ideal place for her because there were people who could pay for it and were willing to pay for it.

“And they would come home from a trip to Paris with a sketch and would show it to her and would say they’d like it made out of velvet or maybe tweed and it’s going to be a suit, you know. That was what really made it possible for us to live there because she could charge something reasonable, and she couldn’t do that elsewhere.”

On her childhood:

“During those early years and all the time that I lived in Hamilton, my mother was not very restrictive. There was a small pond not far from us, it was the site of an Episcopal church, built of stone and there were lots of stone around that we could climb on. There were woods with a swamp and we could climb the trees and skate on the ice. We also skated on the pond, so we had quite a little freedom, which I appreciate. The winter I was in the second grade I taught myself to skate on the pond. It took all day; The skates I had were the kind that you fastened on your shoes with a key, you know they were not shoe skates. So, (laughs) they kept falling off, you know, that kind of thing, but I did manage to learn to skate and that was one of my favorite activities for the rest of my life, until I couldn’t handle you know anything on my feet like that again.

“We had to help my mother, who was having to earn our living, so we did a lot of things, probably more than most kids do. Almost every afternoon or sometime before dinner we would have to come in from wherever we were and cook the dinner so my mother wouldn’t have to stop what she was doing. Every Saturday my sister and I divided up the rooms. We got a chalkboard out and would put down the room and which of us had to clean it this week. And we also tried to help by doing whatever we could. We did the gardens. I weeded the gardens which Rita hated, but she was willing to clean the chicken coop, which I hated, so that worked out very well. We made jams and jellies and canned tomatoes and string beans but we would buy a bushel of peaches and can those and, you know, we did all kinds of things like that, which helped out.”

On her sister Rita’s athletic prowess:

“By the time I was a junior in high school a new high school was built. It had a gym in it, which we had not had before. And so I did not learn to play basketball, for example, because we had no place to play it. My sister, however, was a year behind me and she was in the gym classes and so on and she turned out to be a real whiz of an athlete. My mother went to every single game there was, she just loved watching her play. Sometimes Rita would make so many goals that they were embarrassed to keep her on the team. They would take her out just because the score was getting so lopsided [and] it was just totally frustrating to the other team. She was just really great and she continued, you know, playing golf and every kind of swimming and every kind of [sport] with great success.”

On her education:

“So, in my day, it was just on the edge of where everybody went to kindergarten, but Hamilton didn’t have kindergarten quite yet. So, when we went to school at 5 years old we were in the first grade, so that meant that we got through early, also. We were, you know, on serious business from the word go, it was no kindergarten type of thing.

“When I was in the 5th grade I found an error that the teacher had made in some math problem and I corrected her. I don’t know how I managed it but I guess we parted friends. At any rate I was quite proud of that. (Laughs)

“My brother and sister and I always knew that we were going to college–that was part of the life plan that my mother had. It was especially [unique] because it was 1933 the year that I graduated high school, and for all of us it was Depression time. Also, because my mother was a widow and nobody expected us to go to Walsh, Mary. Phone interview, March 24, 2008, Ashland, New Hampshire college. People would say, ‘Oh, it’s too expensive.’

“It never was so inexpensive, because even at Harvard and Radcliff, you could go for $250 dollars a year. My mother, of course had a great admiration for teachers, as she had been one herself in Ireland. So twelve miles from Hamilton there was a Salem Teacher’s College.

“That summer I had just turned seventeen and I had a job with a lady who had a very nice home whose maid was on vacation so she hired me for two or three weeks. So I served her lunch, or dinner, you know, nothing heavy, keeping things neat and together and what not and I made maybe $40. But $25 was enough for the first quarter. It was a hundred dollars [for the year].

“Now it was ‘33 when I graduated from high school. I did not know because no one ever told us, you know, how much tuition was anywhere, or what was offered anywhere. You know, no help at all. So it was very much since then that I have learned that Radcliff and Harvard were only $250 tuition. And we should’ve gone! Just stayed on the train longer.

“And also, no such things as scholarship. They did know there were such things as scholarships, but they didn’t know where to apply for them– there was no thought out process. Now, of course, they hire two or three people to do that kind of stuff and take care of those matters.”

On her IQ, accidentally discovered:

“[When I was in college there was] testing being done. And somehow somebody found out what the code was and whose grades were the highest on these. Well they were really IQ tests or that type of thing. And they found out that I had the highest in the whole school, so I kind of figure that I could have gone [to Harvard or Radcliff]. But, there’s no need in crying over spilled milk.”

On naming rights:

“I did work very laboriously [in college] but also I was interested in extracurricular activities. Two friends and I started a drama club which we hadn’t had before and there was no one on the faculty that wanted to take on a drama club. We needed to have somebody authenticate what we were doing. [They] didn’t have to do anything, we were doing it. So, our accounting professor, Doug Phillips, said he’d take that on, he’d sign things that needed a signature from the faculty or whatever.

“Years and years later– you know I’ve been out of college 70 years. Anyway, I went back and they had built a theater. We were playing in a hall with a stage but it wasn’t a real theater. So they had built a real one and so forth and they had named it The Phillips Theater not knowing that he didn’t know a thing about drama. (Laughs) They saw his name on any kind of document there was, you know.”