The Long Goodbye… Hey Gerry, We Owe Ya One

HEY GERRY, WE OWE YA ONE

The Long Goodbye

By Jack Coll

2-17-14

     I arrived at Calvary Cemetery a little early for the service, I found myself under a pine tree seeking shelter from the steady but soft snow, adding to the more than two and a half feet already covering the tops of the headstones.  Visibility was poor at best, the cemetery looked like a white lake with no end in sight.  The funeral procession was running a little late, so I settled into my thoughts, a time for reflection.

I was waiting for Gerald “Gerry” McTamney, it wasn’t like him to be running late, he was coming home, it all started in West Conshohocken for him.  Somehow I still think he loved West Conshohocken more than he ever loved Conshohocken but he would never admit it.  I thought about the time he told me that his mother forbid him to marry anyone living in West Conshohocken, she told him that he’s more than likely to be related to her.  As a kid Gerry would beat the streets of the tiny borough that he grew up in, by 1945 he was somewhat of a typical West Conshohocken “Bad Ass.”

By 1950, World War Two was behind us, but the Korean War was looking for players, and Uncle Sam needed Gerry to play on the team.  He met it head on, did what he had to do and headed home to settle in with his bride Mary Burns.  Gerry was a pipefitter, worked hard, raised three kids and settled in on West Eleventh Avenue.

Guys like Gerry don’t settle real easy, always looking for something to do, he told me on several occasions that he really had no intentions of becoming a councilman but his brother-in-law Joe Burns poked him into running for a council seat in the borough.  Gerry exclaimed he didn’t have a lot of interest but he was up for the challenge, we all know what happened, and we know it happened for the next 32 years.

And so started the public life of Gerry McTamney, talk about bad times, the lower end of this borough, (we’re talking about Conshohocken of course) was a disgrace, when I think of lower Fayette Street in the early to mid-1970’s the word Beirut comes to mind, laugh if you want, but Beirut it was. Burned out buildings, vacant buildings on the verge of collapsing, boarded up buildings, homeless people and rats all in the lower end were just a few of the problems.

Conshohocken was a wealthy Steel Town for more than a century, but that steel was now being manufactured in Japan.  Fayette Street, at one time was home to more than 240 retail stores, but  were now gone, Conshohocken was a town with no tax base, that left us on the verge of bankruptcy, six inches from the State of Pennsylvania taking over the borough’s operations, and all this fell square on Gerry McTamney’s shoulders.  (Please don’t misunderstand any of this, we are very much aware that other councilman were involved in the entire process, other professionals were brought in to help identify the borough’s problems, and we are not excluding anyone else involved in the long hard road to urban redevelopment) but in McTamney’s case, he took it personal, he slept with it, he took it to work with him, and he brought it to the dinner table with him.   The town council was up against it, the residents were up against it, and anyone traveling through our town despised it.  Gerry met it head on, as Gerry would say, “you wanna fight, you might be bigger than me, and there might be more of you than me, but you better bring a lunch cause I’m gonna give you everything I got.”

And so it began, McTamney against the world for the betterment of Conshohocken, only they didn’t tell him right away that the town was broke, at times we couldn’t meet borough payroll, we couldn’t afford tires for the trash trucks, at times we couldn’t plow our streets, there was no money to pay the plow drivers,  we couldn’t afford to pay our cops, and that my friend was just the start, once Gerry understood all that, then he would get the bad news, whatever he was told , it was double.

There was a learning curve for Gerry, he was a man who came from the streets and lived by the motto “Kick ass and take names later.”  Only the whole kick ass thing when it comes to dealing with higher government never works, so Gerry had to learn to accept the minor victories, knowing that the war would be won years later.

So it started, 32 years of late night meetings for Gerry and the rest of council, it became their mission, elected borough officials would come and go, but Gerry was the one steady force that drove the redevelopment machine.  At times several members of Council would jump on a train to travel back and forth to Washington D. C. to beg, pound a desk top of some higher-up who had no intention of helping us, Gerry would meet you for a beer if he thought he could get a new stop sign out of ya, or some other form of improvement for the borough.

After Gerry’s first eleven years in office, progress had been made by 1980 after a decade of demolition we had nearly 25 acres of property leveled in the lower end, the borough would give it to you if you promised to build an office building and create some tax revenue, no takers.  I remember sitting at a council meeting and Gerry pounding the table following a discussion about the borough having no money one night, “if we could get one office building, one building built, it would solve a whole lot of problems,” The problem was the bridge, no one would risk building an office with a bridge that should have been condemned ten years earlier.

Dealing with politicians and Washington was one thing, dealing with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was this whole other thing.  Gerry soldiered on, spent a lot of late nights begging, pleading, and it wasn’t like Gerry to beg or plead with anyone, but for the sake of the borough, he always felt the community deserved better.  A new bridge spanning the Schuylkill River was fast-tracked, in 1985 we blew the old bridge up, and in 1987 we held a parade opening the new bridge.

Then came the office building’s Gerry had long hoped for.  Before anything could be built, or any federal monies loaned out for the construction of any office the borough built public housing on East Hector Street.  I can see it like it was yesterday, Gerry, and Mrs. Joseph Burns cutting the ribbon at the Hector Street Housing development, “You don’t know it yet” exclaimed McTamney, “but this is a great day in this borough’s history.”  I stood ten feet from him when he said it, I wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about, but more importantly he knew what he was talking about.  Gerry cut the ribbon with Mrs. Burns who was standing in for her late husband Joe Burns, Joe, a former councilman up until his death shared the same vision as Gerry, they both wanted to see this borough rise up out of the ashes, or in our case rise up from the demolition dust, and once again be a truly great borough and on the day of the ribbon cutting, although Joe wasn’t there to witness it, Gerry knew it was the beginning.

During the fifteen years of construction that followed Gerry was the guiding light for this borough.  With every contractor that paraded through Borough Hall with a plan, (and there were lots of them) Gerry’s interest was always with the borough, what’s in it for the borough? How does this help the residents was always the question on his mind.  Very few people alive today realize what a long and painstaking effort it was by very few borough officials.

I often wondered, when Gerry left council behind a few years back, if he ever rode through downtown Conshy, looked up and actually said to himself, “ya know, I worked hard and this is the result.”  If it was me I know I would have been saying it all the time, but not Gerry.  Years ago I remember when I was just stepping into the world of politics, attending meetings and hanging out with a good group of democrats back in the 1980’s I said to Gerry one time, “it must be tough running the town,” he laughed and said,  ”I don’t run the town, Bea Brandt runs this town,” referring to the borough’s lone secretary.  Years later when anyone talked about hiring another person for the borough’s offices Gerry would laugh and say,  “for God’s sake man, we ran this town with one secretary and one housing authority person, what the hell do we need all these people for.”

One night not too long ago, we were out celebrating something, perhaps an election night or something of that nature, I don’t really remember, but I went over to Gerry and said, “Gerry, I gotta tell ya, you did a hell of a job guiding this borough to where we are today, thanks for all your efforts.”  He looked up from his glass and said “what the hell you thanking me for.” “Well for all your efforts and guidance throughout the redevelopment process.”  Gerry shrugged and said, “It wasn’t me, the guiding force behind this whole redevelopment thing was Jerry Nugent, he is, and was the mastermind, all I did was follow his lead.”

As I stood beneath the pine tree at the cemetery waiting for Gerry to arrive I thought about all this stuff, conversations, and it hit me, “he wouldn’t even let me thank him for his 32 years of service, that sucker wouldn’t even take credit for his accomplishments.”  Then I saw all the red lights flashing, followed by a parade of cars pulling into the cemetery.  With all this in my vision what am I thinking, I laughed nearly out loud and thought if Gerry could somehow be standing beside me he would say something like, “now what the hell are those fire trucks doing here, all they’re doing is burning gas and wasting money, hell they could have sent me over in a cab.”

The parade of cars circled their way around the cemetery and I thought what is this man’s legacy, the word legacy is a funny word, a lot of people throw that word around, “I don’t want my legacy to be this, or that,” or “I want my legacy to show bla, bla.”  Well here’s what I think, I don’t think Gerry ever gave a damn about his legacy, I think Gerry was an honest man, something hard to find in politics, I think Gerry was a good man, I watched him go one on one with residents for many years trying to help them with their problems.  I think everything he ever did, every motion he ever made at a council meeting, any building plan he ever approved was for the good of this community.  In the universe that we live in its “God followed by Country.”  In Gerry’s universe it was always “Conshohocken followed by family.”

Gerry McTamney goes down in Conshohocken history as one of the key players who did the impossible by redefining the borough we live in.  To all the young people who live in this great borough and now-a-days brag that they live in Conshohocken they can all thank Gerry McTamney.  (The old saying was at one time that, anyone who lived on Sixth Avenue and above would say they lived in Whitemarsh avoiding the stigma that the word Conshohocken brought with it.)

The parade of cars had reached their destination, family gathered, members of the Marines, VFW Post 1074, a bag-pipe, a bugle, a preacher, a color guard, and Gerry with a flag draped over his coffin.

Somehow it all seemed a little funny to me, even in death Gerry was still a marine, to his daughters he was, and always will be a father, to many residents he was the President of Town Council running the meetings, to developers he was the guy pounding the desk top telling them to get it right, no shortcuts.  Even in his final years he was the guy standing up at council meetings voicing his opinion and offering his guidance.

He never did it for the love of publicity, money or a hand shake, no, that my friend is love, the kind of love that shows up once in everyone’s lifetime, a love we’re not likely to see again in an individual in our lifetime.

The service was over, everyone had departed the cemetery as the snow eased up, all that was left was a casket with flowers covering the top of it, Gerry was home, back in West Conshohocken.  I took a minute to admire the beauty of it all, these beautiful colored fresh flowers on top of the casket amid the snow covered cemetery, the breeze was picking up, it was time to go, there’s nothing easy about saying goodbye, Gerry was a friend of mine.

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