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| (L-R) Vera Hurley, Borromeo Hurley and newly married George Wright &Madeleine Hurley |
On my mother’s maternal side, we have the Hurley family. My grandmother’s name was Madeleine Elizabeth Hurley and was born on May 13, 1919. She would have been 102 in a couple of weeks but she passed away in February 2006 at 87 years old. She was born in Manhattan to Bartholomew J Hurley (1879-1963) and Elizabeth C Hoffman (1880-1948). Like most Manhattanites, they lived in an apartment building and at the time of her birth, the family lived at 62 East 129 St near Park Ave. The building still stands but appears to have been heavily renovated as opposed to many of the building on the street. Madeleine was the middle child of the family. Her sister, Veronica, or as we also knew her as Aunt Vera, would live near or with my grandmother for most of their lives. There was a little brother, Borromeo, who was born in 1921. According to the census reports they lived on East 129 St for several years until a move to the Bronx, where they lived at 1021 University Ave near West 165 St. The family remained in Highbridge section of the Bronx for many years.
In the 1900 census, Bartholomew was 21 years old and listed as a lithographer. His family lived for a few years in Cornwall On The Hudson when his father, Bartholomew Sr. ran a hotel. He then became a police officer with the NY-Pennsylvania Railroad for a few years. The 1910 census states that he was a theater manager and the family had moved back to the city residing at 166 East 82 St. He eventually took a job with the Independent City Owned Rapid Transit Railroad as a fare collector. This railroad later became the IND line of the NYC subway system. According to my mom, Bart was a token clerk at he the 155 St – Polo Grounds station for many years. I have often wondered how many spectacular sporting events he may have worked in the subway station beneath the action. Did he sneak into the stadium during his lunch break to catch Christy Mathewson win one of his record 373 games? Was he there when Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” defeated their Brooklyn rivals? How about when Willie Mays made his famous over the should basket catch? There wasn’t just baseball at the Polo Grounds either. Maybe he worked the crowds headed to one of the many Army-Navy football games or those between the Ivy League rivals Fordham vs Columbia University. However, he was surely retired by the time the NY Mets played their first couple of seasons there before Shea Stadium was built.
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| The Polo Grounds Stadium |
Some irony is found with ole Bart’s position at the subway station at West 155 St which sat just beyond the shadows of Coogan’s Bluff. Twenty-four years after he passed away I would be walking the same mezzanines as a NYC Transit Police Officer. The Polo Grounds were long gone by then, replaced by several towering public housing buildings of the same name that were notorious for their crime. Eight years after my great-grandfather died and 15 years before I joined the police department, a horrific incident occurred just down the street from the subway entrance. Two NYC policemen, Waverly Jones and Joseph Piagentini, were assassinated by avowed members of the Black Liberation Army. The suspects in these killings were also responsible for shootings and deaths of other police officers in California.
One of the longest and most lonely nights of my career I was posted at the West 155 Street station. It was New Years Eve of 1987 and I was stuck there for 12 long hours starting at 4PM. It was cold and desolate with the sounds of fireworks, or was it gunshots, echoing down the stairways throughout the cavernous subway. The times had changed for certain from the heyday of my great-grandfather to the footpost of my young police career.
