Neil Sheehan Interview (page: 4 / 8) Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist	Print Interview

What was it like growing up in Massachusetts when you were a kid?

Neil Sheehan: It was a wonderful time to grow up where I grew up in Massachusetts. I grew up on a dairy farm in western Massachusetts, right on the edge of a town called Holyoke, named after an explorer who had come through the area. There is a mountain called Mount Holyoke which is also the name of the college, not in Holyoke, but in a place called South Hadley. There was one murder the whole time I was growing up, and it was a political killing, apparently, of an alderman who got out of line. But the schools were good.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I went to public schools. My parents were Catholics, Roman Catholics. My mother was quite religious, but for some reason, she did not send us to a Catholic school. She sent us to the public schools. Discipline was very strict. My mother used to say to the teacher the first day she took me in, "When he gets out of line, whale him good," and they would, too. They had those long pointers, and if you misbehaved, you went down to the principal's office -- her name was Miss Moynihan -- and you held out your hand. She came down on it with one of those pointers, and oh God, did it hurt! And if you pulled your hand away, she gave you an extra one. But, you know, it was lots of fun.

There was a lot of work, too. I worked on a farm.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. When I was 11 years old, my father put me to work in the dairy. It was a farm that went from the cows, which my father managed that, right through a pasteurization plant, and then we bottled the stuff, and then we delivered it to customers. People didn't have automobiles then, so you got your milk delivered to you. When I was 11 years old, my father put me to work in the dairy full time, every day after school, four hours, Saturday morning and Sunday morning. Then when I was 13, I was running the dairy, and I was getting paid three dollars a day. So I bought all my clothes. I wanted to be a jazz drummer, paid for my drumming lessons, et cetera.

It was a good time to grow up in that sort of community.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I got a scholarship to a boys' school called Mount Hermon then, now called Northfield Mount Hermon. If you were young and male at that time, you could advance in that world, because the wealthy people in New England -- who were referred to as the "Yankees" by the Irish -- were real social democrats. They believed in social democracy. I was lucky enough to get a scholarship to this boys' school for my last two years of high school, and then I got into Harvard and got a scholarship to Harvard because I came out very high in my class. I had to. It was the gate out of the pasture. You either made it or you were stuck.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

What kind of kid were you? Were you a good kid?

Neil Sheehan: I was fairly good. I didn't cause too much trouble until I got older.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I was an alcoholic when I was younger, and I had serious problems with it, starting in late years of high school and then in college. I didn't realize what was wrong with me. We were encouraged to drink then, and it wasn't until I got in the Army that I discovered what was wrong with me. It was really purely by accident. I was working with a printer who was an alcoholic at the Armed Forces newspaper called Stars and Stripes. He got me into Alcoholics Anonymous in January 1961, and I've never had a drink since. It saved my life, because I would have gone down a bad road.

In fact, one of my roommates in college, we don't know what happened to him. He disappeared. He was an alcoholic. So that was the one problem I had. Otherwise, I was a pretty good boy. I behaved myself most of the time.

What kinds of things were you interested in when you were growing up?

Neil Sheehan: First of all, I was interested in getting away from farm chores. When I was younger, I loved getting out in the woods, fishing. We used to go fishing at the local reservoir, but it was off limits during the war. They thought the Germans were going to poison the water and kill us all. So the reservoir was put off limits to fishing. Then I got my first rifle when I was nine years old, a little .22 I found in my grandfather's farmhouse. We lived in a house about a half-a-mile away from the farm. Then I could get out in the woods and I would be alone and got peace. No one was bothering you. They weren't putting you to work in the hay barn or whatever. And then I got interested in music.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I wanted to be a jazz drummer, and as I said, I paid for those drum lessons. There was no choice about working in the dairy. I was told to go there, and that was it. My father put me to work there, but it gave me a certain sense of independence, in the sense that I had $21 a week, which was a lot of money in the 1950s for a 13-year-old boy. I wanted to be a jazz drummer, and I used to listen to Gene Krupa. I wanted to be like Gene Krupa, and I took lessons, but thank God, my wrists weren't fast enough, and so I decided that wasn't for me.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The way the structure worked, people with money, the professional class in the town and those above it, the mill owners, took their children out of school beginning in about the ninth grade and sent them off to private school. So the public schools were very good up through the ninth grade. You could get into a good college through the public high school, but you had to really be on top of your class, and I wasn't. I was unhappy at this drudgery in the dairy and wanted to get away from it. My mother encouraged me to get away from it, and the way you could get into a good college then was to go to a private school, do well, score very high scholastically, and you could get a scholarship to a good school.

So with my mother's encouragement...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My mother came from Ireland when she was 17 years old in 1924. She worked as a housekeeper for ten years before she married my father, and she did not want her children to be farmers. She wanted them to be educated, and she encouraged me to apply. So I went to the public library, and I got the catalogue of private schools, and I applied to a whole bunch of them. I went down to Andover, and I took the exam and flunked the algebra, and they told me I could come. I'd have to take algebra, but no scholarship. Well, that meant I couldn't go. Then I went to Mount Hermon, and they didn't have any mathematics on their entrance exam. My mother drove me up for the exam. I remember she said the rosary all the way up and all the way back. I did well on the entrance exam, and they offered me a full scholarship. Well, not full. I had to come up with $250, which I earned in a hayfield. So I spent junior and senior year at Mount Hermon, which is now Northfield Mount Hermon.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

In my time, it was split into two schools. There was a boys' school, which is Mount Hermon, and the girls' school on the other side of the river, which was Northfield.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I graduated first in my class, and so I got into Harvard without any trouble. Because what was going on then was the Ivy League universities were taking basically quotas of boys. They would take ten to 15 boys from Bronx High School of Science, maybe ten from Stuyvesant -- the New York academic schools. They'd take ten to 15 boys from Boston Latin. Then they'd take ten to 15 from Andover, ten to 15 from Exeter. My school was not a fancy school, and it had three, I discovered, was the quota, and since I was at the top of my class, I got in. But as I said, my total motivation was to get away from the farm, to get into a good college, to get into the larger world, and to do that, you had to get through that gate out of the pasture.

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