Island profiles: Governor Hugh L. Carey

Governor Hugh Carey died on Sunday, August 7 at his Shelter Island home surrounded by his family at the age of 92. 

Family will receive friends on Tuesday and Wednesday, August 9 and 10,  from 2 to 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 to 9:00 p.m. at Frank E. Campbell funeral home, 1076 Madison Avenue at 81st Street in New York.

The governor will lie in state on Thursday from 8 to 9:15 a.m. at The Cathedral of St. Patrick, Lady Chapel, 5th Ave at 51st Street in New York. A Mass of Christian burial will follow 10 a.m. at the main altar.

There will be a blessing on Thursday afternoon at Our Lady of the Isle Roman Catholic Church on Shelter Island, with interment to follow at Our Lady of the Isle Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to Our  Lady of the Isle or The Paul R. Carey Foundation, 20 Corporate Woods Blvd., Albany NY 12211.

This profile of the governor appeared in the June 29, 2006 edition of the Shelter Island Reporter:

If it takes a hundred years to become a local, former Governor Hugh Carey, now in his late eighties, is halfway there. It was 50 years ago that he and his wife, Helen, and their then only four children first stepped off the ferry onto Shelter Island.

Governor Carey’s love and concern for this Island run deep. Should his commitment ever be in doubt, it might be noted that three generations of Careys are buried in the Catholic cemetery here — his wife, Helen, three of his sons and an infant grandchild, dead of SIDS. For any Irishman, that says it all.

“The family had been summering in Breezy Point, in Queens,” he remembered recently. “We just had four children then and we started to stay later and later at the beach, trying to avoid the traffic jams. But there were always traffic jams. Everyone would be hot and tired and the kids all had sand in their bathing suits. I thought,” and he laughed, “unless I do something — this marriage won’t last.”

The “something” was to answer an ad in a newspaper he just happened to read, the Brooklyn Tablet. It was for a house in a place he’d never heard of, Shelter Island, but the price was right. It was advertised for $200 for the whole month of July, which they thought was amazingly cheap. And so they drove out, found the house, liked it well enough but were mystified when the owner explained pleasantly that they couldn’t use the kitchen in the mornings until after she would be through — about eight o’clock, she thought.

HOOKED ON ISLAND

Finally, all became clear — it wasn’t the house that was for rent but a room. “But by then, we were hooked,” he said. “The kids were in love with the ferry and the whole idea of being away for a month was great and we loved everything we saw around the Island.”

Not wanting to leave at all, no less empty-handed, they drove around and found a real estate office — Griffing and Collins on Route 114. “Mrs. Collins was terrific,” he remembered. “It was really late in the season and she didn’t think she had anything.” Disappointed, they roamed around the Island, liking it even more, went back to her later in the day and by then she had actually found them a house. That was the beginning of their years of renting but, after a while, as their family grew larger and larger, there were fewer and fewer houses big enough for them and fewer and fewer landlords willing to rent to a couple with so many children. And so it was time to buy.

They chose one of the oldest houses on the Island, known as “Hawthorne Cottage” in Westmoreland Farms. It had first been owned by a Brander (as in the parkway) and later by James Roe, the Queens County Democratic leader. “We still have his table,” Governor Carey said, pointing out the 20-foot-long picnic-type table that graces their screened porch overlooking West Neck Bay. “That’s where he used to sit, right at the head of that table, that’s where all the patronage in Queens was handed out.” As the Carey family grew, they kept adding on. “We built around the view,” he said, and clearly he still appreciates it.

The governor continues to live in the same house in Westmoreland although the family later acquired Jeanne Garr’s Shorewood residence for family members to use. “Some of the family live there and some here,” the governor said. With 14 children, 11 of whom are still living, married, with 23 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the house in Westmoreland needed a little extra room. And Shorewood provided it.(The family has a six-lot subdivision plan for the Shorewood property that has been conditionally approved.)

BOOTS AND SPURS

Growing up in Brooklyn, young Hugh Carey joined the military in the 1930s, after high school. “I wanted to ride a horse,” he said, “and have boots and spurs and a soldier’s suit. And the only way to get them was to join the National Guard and so I did. My mother said, ‘Don’t even think of getting serious about it. You’re going to college!’” And he did. But World War II happened and the Guard was called up. He was sent to Fort Devon in Massachusetts, then was part of the regular army and managed to become a corporal with a motorcycle before he was pulled out of line and sent to Officer’s Candidate School. He graduated as a second lieutenant but was discharged several years later “as a bird colonel.” He spent the war in Europe in the 104th Infantry Division, which holds the record for the longest number of days in continuing combat — 280 of them — and has the Bronze Star and the Croix de Guerre to show for it.

After the war, he gained his law degree at St. John’s University in Queens, where he had also attended college. “I was lucky after the service,” he said. Already interested in politics — Truman was his hero, because, he said, “of his service in World War II, and I felt close to him, the sense of him as a man with humble beginnings” — Governor Carey was glad when he was asked by the state Democratic party to lead a group whose purpose was to get young veterans active and involved in politics and using their rights under the GI Bill.

FATEFUL LUNCHEON

“I was Colonel Carey and I was asked to speak at a luncheon at the Biltmore and to introduce Eleanor Roosevelt and, of course, I was glad to. A young woman I’d always admired was there, her name was Helen Owen, but I knew she was married. A friend asked me if I’d like to meet her and I said I would have liked to have met her before she got married, that it was too late to ‘meet her’ now.” And that’s how he learned that her husband, serving in the Navy, had been killed and she was now a widow. That was in September, 1946. He made his move then. They were married the following February and went on to lead a long married life. An only child, she became the mother of 14 and a wife who was clearly adored.

The years that followed were marked for the couple by great achievement and unparalleled success and stabbed with the pain of tragedy and loss. Perhaps because of the many pregnancies, Helen was treated with the drug DES (diethylbestrol), which was prescribed for millions of women in the 1960s in the misconception that it promoted healthier pregnancies and decreased the chances of miscarriage or premature labor. But it was another “thalidomide.” It didn’t cause birth defects but was so lethal, so highly carcinogenic that Web sites still exist today for the granddaughters of women who took the drug — the effects can be proved to exist over several generations. And Mrs. Carey took it repeatedly.

Then in the summer of 1969, two of their sons, Peter, 18, and Hugh Jr., 17, and another young woman, a 16-year-old Island girl whose family still lives here, died in a car crash on Brander Parkway. “It was very tough on her,” Governor Carey said, “really tough. But she had 12 other children to take care of, she really had no choice, she had to carry on. And she did.” But in the following year, whether the increased stress of dealing with her sons’ deaths played a part, there’s no way of knowing, but the DES caught up with Helen Carey. She fought the cancer as best she could, took all the treatments, and then, blessedly had a period of real remission. Her husband had promised her that when she was well enough “the whole family would go away together for a real vacation.”

“And we did,” he remembered. “We went to Ireland over the Thanksgiving weekend and longer. Of course, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, but we didn’t care. She asked me then to please leave Congress and I said I would.” And to leave politics? “I said I’d only run for jobs that came with a house — the house will have to come with it.”

NEVER LOST AN ELECTION

He began his run for the governorship that following February but Helen died in March. So she never knew that he made it to Albany, not only once but twice. “The campaign and winning and moving to Albany really engaged the children,” he said, “and that was good for them, it was really good therapy.” And she never knew that her son Paul, the only member of the family to follow in his father’s footsteps, a member of Bill Clinton’s advisory group and the youngest person ever elected to the Securities and Exchange Commission, would also fall victim to cancer. He died in 2001 “but he fought that disease tooth and nail,” the governor said. “He carried on for seven years.” And, as Islanders know, his death is honored by the Paul R. Carey Memorial Golf Tournament, a benefit for St. Gabriel’s held the day after Father’s Day.

Governor Carey’s start in politics had been delayed by family life. It was not until John Kennedy began his run for the White House that he became fully engaged. He was very much taken with Kennedy. When the presidential candidate was in Carey’s home Brooklyn district, the local Republican congressman made a comment that Brooklyn would go for Nixon by a margin of two to one. Governor Carey remembered being really “irritated.” He went to his local party members and asked why no one was running against this congressman and was told he was “unbeatable. But,” they went on, “why don’t you run against him? We can’t give you any help and we can’t give you any money, you’ll have to make it on your own. But go for it.”

And he did, with a Christmas postcard showing a photo of his wife and then 10 children as his hand-out campaign literature, he beat Francis E. Dorn in the biggest upset in state politics. Dorn ran against him again in 1962 and Carey won again.

Having run as a Democrat, he went on to serve seven terms. He served on the House Ways and Means Committee and led the effort to pass the first Federal Aid to Education program. He went on to run for governor, was elected by a landslide in 1974, becoming the first Democratic governor in 20 years, succeeding Nelson Rockefeller. He was re-elected in 1978 over East Ender Perry Duryea of Montauk and is best remembered for his successful handling of New York City’s economic crisis in the late ‘70s, when he managed to bring labor and business interests together to help save the city. As governor, he was responsible for building the Javits Convention Center, Battery Park City, the South Street Seaport and, here on Shelter Island, successfully navigating the sale and financing of the Mashomack property to the Nature Conservancy. The New York Times, after the resolution of the fiscal crisis, hailed him in an editorial as “a governor for all seasons.”

He signed the Willowbrook Consent Decree which ended the warehousing of the mentally retarded, prevented conservative legislators from reinstating the death penalty and from taking away the state’s liberal abortion laws. In all of his seven runs for congress, two runs for the governorship of New York and two primary contests, he never lost an election.

CARRYING THE ISLAND

But, running for governor, “I really, really wanted to carry Shelter Island,” he said.

Laughing, he went on, “On Election Day, I stood outside the polls and thanked people for coming. I stayed there from morning ‘til night, smiling, smiling, smiling. I had soup for lunch at the Legion Hall, still smiling — I thought if I keep this up, they’ll have to vote for me.”

And they did. He carried Republican Shelter Island by 50 votes and “that was an enormous victory.” During the ‘76 and ‘80 primaries, when he was considered a possible candidate for president, there were many jokes circulating around the Island about the effects his election to the White House would have here — a bridge, a heliport, the Secret Service. He knew about those jokes and gave the issue some thought. “I thought if I ever became president, I’d close the house here, rent it, and come back after my term was over. I’d invite all the Islanders to come to Camp David.”

His current political views? “This administration needs a different understanding,” he thought, and its movers and shakers would have been better at what they do if they had served in the armed forces. “They wouldn’t put so many in harm’s way so easily, without any attitude of making peace. Any and all means to get a solution should be sought and, if all fails, it should be fought in the shortest time and at the shortest cost. I was in San Francisco when Truman approved the U.N. and now’s the time for the U.N. to revive itself, to join with the European nations, seek a cease fire with the insurgency and any other nation.”

He thinks the ‘08 Republican ticket will be McCain and Giuliani and that their opponent will be Hillary Clinton, for whom he has great respect. Replying to the charge that many women, for whatever reason, dislike her, his answer was “that for every one of them, there’ll be some man that admires her.”

Asked his views on Island life nowadays and the changes going on, he said, “We’re all eager to keep our style of life, it’s unique, but any lifestyle changes, there’s no status quo. But Bridge Street is still Bridge Street, Shelter Island is still Shelter Island. As long as the fire department gives a chicken barbecue — maybe it’s more crowded but the corn and the chicken is even better — that’s the Island at its best. We’d never miss one. Those first responders? They’re valiant people. And now that Mashomack is part of the Conservancy, that’s a real help in keeping our way of life. We love the Mashomack Dinner Dance, that’s another big event we wouldn’t miss. Over the years, we’ve invited many dignitaries here — Bobby Kennedy’s visit caused quite a stir — but left no scars. The morning after, Shelter Island went back to being Shelter Island.”

FAVORS 4-POSTER

He did, however, express deep concern over the issue of the deer, the ticks and the 4-poster deer feeder that kills ticks and what he sees as the lack of an adequate response on the part of town government.

“I’m a lawyer,” he said. “I’m not a negligence lawyer but I know something about class-action suits. And I want to warn the governing board of Shelter Island that when an infectious disease is involved, they must take real steps. If enough people are infected, if the psychosis of fear continues, there will be lasting consequences. When you see a serious health issue, something has to be done. One of these days, a class action suit is going to come this way, and I don’t see how the town could defend itself. Have they exercised due caution? Have they taken appropriate action? You can’t just say ‘We’ll look into it’ — I wouldn’t want to have to defend that case.” He supports the use of the 4-poster, which so far the Town Board has not embraced and neither has the state DEC, making New York the only state that does not allow its use.

“It’s been proven effective,” he said, “and has no effect on the life of the deer,” Governor Carey said. “The town government must do what’s right for human health, what’s right for the children of the Island. You can’t have politics involved when the real issue is one of health — the health of the Island’s children is paramount.”