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Book excerpt: 'Call Me Ted'
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A TED STORY — "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" Lucy Rooney
(Lucy Rooney, Ted’s aunt, was married to Florence’s brother George "Bud" Rooney, who passed away in 1993. Lucy continues to live in Cincinnati, Ohio.)
During their courtship, Ed was very charming and he pursued Florence with everything he had. But their marriage ran into trouble early. His behavior was almost like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He told Florence they could raise their children Catholic, but after Ted was born he said he’d sooner jump off the roof than do that and he wanted Florence to stop attending church herself. My sister-in-law was elegant and strong but Ed dominated that household. He also seemed to favor his daughter, Mary Jean. He could be brutal to young Teddy and the abuse began early. I recall one occasion when Ted was sick with a cold or flu. He was still just a little boy but when the doctor paid his house call, he found bruises on Teddy’s body. Sometimes, when Ted was sitting in his high chair, Ed would come behind him and flick his ear with his fingers, hard. He said it would "toughen him up." Perhaps it did but it was certainly a difficult environment for a young boy to grow up in.
My father was not an easy man but I knew that he loved me and that he took a strong interest in my education and development. By the time I finished the fourth grade, he and my mother were concerned about the quality of the education I was getting in public school. At this same time—the summer of 1947—my parents were preparing to leave Cincinnati to move to Georgia . By this time, my dad had decided to make his career in the outdoor advertising business and had acquired a small billboard company in Savannah. The opportunity was a good one and I’m sure he was pleased to be moving back south. Had the decision been left to my mother, I imagine she would have tried to find a Catholic school or some other private institution but my father insisted that he made the money, so he made the rules. He was a conservative man in every way.
(At the height of the Cold War he used to tell me that "the commies" were going to defeat the United States and would shoot everyone who had more than $50. For years I never walked around with more than $49 in my wallet!) My dad also placed a high value on his experience in the Navy and he believed that a military-style education would be good for me. When we moved to Savannah in October of 1947 I attended fifth grade at Georgia Military Academy, or GMA, located just south of Atlanta (the school exists today as Woodward Academy). As a nine-year-old with a November birthday I was one of the youngest kids in my grade and by arriving in October, I was joining my classmates a full month late. These factors alone would have been hard enough, but going to a southern military school as an Ohio transplant was a real recipe for disaster. It was now the late 1940s but I’d swear some of those kids thought they were still fighting the Civil War.
They wanted nothing more than to make a little "Yankee" like me miserable. Some of the boarding students had been there since the first grade and these were some of the toughest kids I had ever seen in my life—it was like Lord of the Flies. I decided I needed to show them that I was tough, too. I shared a bunk room with three other kids and on my first night there I announced to my roommates that I was going to be "the boss." They seemed to be okay with my plan but what I didn’t consider was that there were four more kids on the other side of the bathroom that we shared. They were considered part of our group, and after sizing them up I figured I could handle them, too. When I let these guys know I would be their boss as well, they took the news a little differently.
After looking at each other for an instant, all of a sudden they jumped me. Three of them held me down while the other one kicked me in the head. I thought they were going to kill me. My other three roommates stood by and watched, and my attempted dominance of the room group came to a swift, painful, and humiliating end. It was a grim start and it was several months before things got any easier. One time, some kids spread a rumor that I had badmouthed General Robert E. Lee. It wasn’t true but the news was enough to send a group of my classmates after me like a lynch mob. They chased me yelling, "Kill the Yankee!" I ran like hell until I got to a row of lockers and managed to squeeze inside one and pull the door closed. They came around the corner and guessed I was in one of those lockers but I stayed really quiet while they milled around outside like a swarm of bees. There had to be fifty of them and although I was really scared and short of breath, I stayed still until they gradually lost interest and drifted away. They didn’t chase me much after that but they did make it a common practice to storm into my room and jump on top of me on my bed. Ten kids at a time would pile on and I’d nearly panic because I couldn’t barely breathe.
I stayed as tough as I could, though, and by the end of the first semester I had become one of the guys. Some of the military training rubbed off on me and I suppose there were benefits to the overall experience. But my parents took some pity on me and the following year I was enrolled in Savannah public school where I spent my happiest year so far. It was great for me to be out of that confined military school environment and I enjoyed being able to spend more of my free time outside and in nature.
My dad’s sporting magazines used to run ads for the Northwestern School of Taxidermy’s correspondence course. For 50 cents a month they would send you a different how-to booklet and I was probably the first eleven-year-old who ever signed up. I used to find dead birds and squirrels, or on occasion I’d shoot them with my BB gun. The house we were living in had a garage with a little office room inside. My parents never used it so that’s where I did my taxidermy work. It was a pretty complicated process but I found it fascinating and I learned a lot about nature and biology. Another bright spot during that time was the arrival of a twenty-one-year-old black man my father hired to take care of his new sailboat. His name was Jimmy Brown and little did I know that for the next fifty years Jimmy would be one of the most important men in my life.
Shortly after buying a fifty-foot schooner (which he renamed Merry Jean, a play on my sister’s name), my dad realized that the boat was going to be a lot of work. He hired Jimmy after several friends recommended him as a capable handyman. Jimmy was raised by his mother and spoke with an accent typical of the kind of rural fishing village he was raised in, on a small island off the coast of Savannah. He learned a lot about fishing and fixing boats before being drafted into the Army and served with a medic division in the final stages of World War II.
As soon as Jimmy arrived, he and I started spending a lot of time together. He was like an older brother but we behaved more like two good friends. Eventually, he became like a second father to me. With my dad away or at work so much and my mom spending time with my sister, Jimmy and I would hang out—we’d fish, sail, go cast netting for shrimp, or just explore together. A birth defect left him with a slightly withered arm but Jimmy remained physically active and loved being outdoors. He taught me a lot about nature and a lot about life. I loved every minute of the time I spent with him and he became one of my best friends ever. Because of my love for him, and my father’s color blindness, I grew up without a shred of prejudice. All in all it was great to be home, but consistent with the pattern of my childhood, that stability would be short-lived. Another change loomed.
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