Editor’s note: The Leader asked Jefferson County immigrants to tell their stories: where they came from, why they chose to come here, what life was like back there and how it was different here. Three of those stories from first-generation Americans are told in the June 29 Leader. The story below is from a second-generation American, a High Ridge resident whose parents emigrated from Ireland.
Phil Lavery of High Ridge recalls watching Vietnam War coverage on TV with his father, Tom Lavery, who came to the United States from Ireland in the early 1950s.
“We watched Walter Cronkite every night, and this time they were showing people in California protesting the war,” Lavery said. “My dad just shook his head, and said, ‘Some people just don’t realize how good they have it in this country.’”
Lavery, 58, said his parents came here as young adults dreaming of better economic opportunities.
“My dad worked on horse farms, and he got his pay in the form of some food,” he said. He and his young wife came to the U.S. in the steerage section of a boat, similar to what is portrayed in the movie ‘Titanic.’
“They came here looking for a better life and they found it,” their son said.
Shortly after coming to this country, Tom Lavery was “snapped up by the Army,” his son said, and sent to paratrooper training in Georgia.
“They told him over in Ireland that he would have to watch out for all the snakes here,” Lavery said with a laugh. “His first night jump, he stayed awake all night, scared to death, because the other guys had teased him about the rattlesnakes and copperheads.”
In 1961, the Lavery family built a house in Jefferson County and settled here. Lavery said both his parents eventually became citizens.
Both the Laverys had thick accents when they came here.
“Dad kind of lost his accent, but my mother didn’t,” Lavery said. “If I got in trouble in grade school, my mom would have to go to the principal’s office. She would get excited and start talking real fast and the nuns couldn’t understand her. To the day she died, you could tell she was Irish.”
Lavery said his mother made trips back to Ireland over the years, but his father never set foot there again.
“He didn’t hate Ireland or anything; he just didn’t want to think about it,” he said. “He was happy here.”