Biographic Details

I know somewhat more about Dad’s biography than what he recorded in the previous page’s Autobiography. He was born on 7 July 1914 in Glens Falls, New York, the first born of the three children of Hugh Samuel Lavery and Mary Gabrielle Heffron. Hugh S. Lavery (1886-1935), shown in the photograph below, was an attorney (Cornell Law 1910) whose practice seems to have been “Family Law” (separations, divorces, and settlements thereto.)

Hugh Samuel Lavery, circa 1930

Hugh Samuel Lavery was married to Mary Gabrielle Heffron (1892-1941), only child of John Heffron (1847-1933) and Anna Haley (1855-1929). John Heffron co-owned a shirt factory in Glens Falls, and Gabrielle Heffron attended Glens Falls Academy and then continued on at Mount Saint Vincent’s Academy (now College) in New York City. Dad’s autobiography mentions that his maternal grandfather John Heffron’s house was nearby, at the corner of Glen and Birch St.

Gabrielle Heffron Lavery, circa 1930

The Lavery family lived with Hugh S. Lavery’s father, Samuel Lavery (1850-1928), in his house on upper Glen Street, Queensbury NY. My father’s autobiography mentions a “high curb” in the area, and there are still several large houses there beyond such a curb, but I am not sure which is which. Samuel was the widower of Bridget Falvey (1856-1911). She was not alive at the time of my father’s birth.

Samuel Lavery, circa 1910

Samuel Lavery had inherited a large farm from his paternal uncle, Hugh Lavery (1811-1884), who was married but died without heirs, by way of his (Samuel’s) father John’s estate (1820-1885). “Uncle” Hugh and his brother John were from Magheralin, County Down, Ireland and fled the infamous potato famine, together with their mother, in 1836-1837. Their father, John, had died in the Great Hunger. “Uncle” Hugh had a skilled trade (as a wagon and carriage maker) and invested his spare cash in land and buildings.

Samuel seems to have lived rather well by selling off the land over time….a large fraction of Crandall Park in Glens Falls was once Lavery land. Samuel was also remarkably litigious, even at one point filing a suit against his own mother over posession of various carriages and sleighs. I suspect that Hugh S Lavery’s legal practice was pre-ordained, as it were.

My father said that the Lavery family lived very comfortable lives in the 1920s, throwing fancy parties and exchanging expensive gifts with friends and clients.

However, Hugh S Lavery died suddenly in 1935 (he was only 49 years old). My father, who had been a “clerk” in his father’s law office (a job he did not enjoy at all) suddenly had to work very hard to support his mother and brothers.

He was hired on state conservation job at first, cutting spruce budworm out of leaders on a tree farm. In 1937 he and his brother John Lavery (1917-1994) found jobs in the International Paper facility then in Fort Edward, NY.

At the Fort Edward mill, Dad met Foster Doane (MIT 1920) who encouraged my dad to enroll at MIT. He started there in 1940 (he was 26 and many years out of school…it had to be a shock. He graduated in 1947 after a stint in the Army from April 1943 until he was dischared in 1946.

He met my mother, Mary Potter, by accident on her last night (2 May 1944) as a volunteer hostess at the Philadelphia “Stage Door Canteen” (her day job was typing for the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had relocated to Philadelphia from DC for the duration of the war.) She had just enlisted in the WAVES and entered the service in June 1944. She was discharged from the WAVES in February 1946.

What was Dad doing in Philadelphia at that time? Apparently, he was enrolled at an Officer Candidate School, possibly connected with UPenn, but “washed out” due to a bad stutter he had at the time (which he later worked out with therapy from a speech pathologist). The OCS wash-out is mentioned later in the letters.

The letters preserved here were “courting” letters, as they finally got married in 1947 after Dad finished up at MIT.