Genius Devout and a Writer, meet Ray!
David Raymond York, known as Ray, was born the second son of Genevieve Daly and Frank B York, Sr. Ray and Durry York and her uncle him personally. He was a very extra special person. He became a Jesuit priest and taught most of his career at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, NJ. He was very devout and took his vow of poverty serious. If anyone gave him new shoes, next time they would see him he would have the ones with the holes in the soles back on and if you asked he said he gave them to someone else who needed them more than himself.
Durry’s mother Helen, Ray’s sister-in-law, always said it was a shame she did not know him before he became ill as he was brilliant. Durry does, though, recall as a very young child her dad, Frank, Ray and a few other Jesuits sitting around the kitchen table discussing politics and using some choice language when my Dad kicked Ray under the table to say “SSHHH Durry’s listening”. Durry imagined her eyes were probably like saucers hearing the priests swear!
March 4, 2008, 12:57 am
Filed under: Past Family member
Filed under: Past Family member
David Raymond York, known as Ray, was born the second son of Genevieve Daly and Frank B York, Sr. Ray and Durry York and her uncle him personally. He was a very extra special person. He became a Jesuit priest and taught most of his career at St. Peter’s Prep in Jersey City, NJ. He was very devout and took his vow of poverty serious. If anyone gave him new shoes, next time they would see him he would have the ones with the holes in the soles back on and if you asked he said he gave them to someone else who needed them more than himself.A Latin and Greek scholar, he wrote plays and books. Most likely a genius, Ray, with so many that are so bright, burnt out at the end of his life. He had a breakdown due to his constant working and only sleeping a few hours a day; once he recovered he made up for lost time.
He had a fabulous sense of humor and a strong sense of his Irish background. One book he wrote, “The Truth of Life is Love”, deals with marriage, sexual intimacy and the Lord! When his fellow Jesuits asked him where he got his knowledge he told them, “I keep a wife in the closet, her name is Rosemary!”. He was working on a third book before he passed and told Durry he was waiting for the next Pope as the current one would not like this one.
Durry’s mother Helen, Ray’s sister-in-law, always said it was a shame she did not know him before he became ill as he was brilliant. Durry does, though, recall as a very young child her dad, Frank, Ray and a few other Jesuits sitting around the kitchen table discussing politics and using some choice language when my Dad kicked Ray under the table to say “SSHHH Durry’s listening”. Durry imagined her eyes were probably like saucers hearing the priests swear!Ray’s second book “Pentecost Comes to Central Park” devotes his first chapter to his family and childhood. A good bit being about baseball and the Dodgers. Durry loves the following quote from the leaflet:
The best way to read his works, Father York has advised, is with an onion sandwich and a beer if you are celibate; with your red-haired or blue-eyed spouse in one arm and the book in the other if you are married. Best of all to read this book on some Central Park bench in your own city where, looking out from time to time across the greenwood, you will see Reality turn to face you, and see things you have never seen before.
He included some family history in this book, and some of it is a little off from what Durry has found but below are some pertinent excerpts regarding the Dalys. It starts with him speaking of his parents Frank B York and Genevieve Daly:
They had met one summer during vacation in Elizabethtown, New York, whe he was standing on the scales weighing himself and she caming walking around the corner of the porch and he looked up and said, “Oh”. Literally what was being weighed in the balance that day was myself with my two brothers. This is the mystery of life, and when one ponders it, the more mysterious becomes the depth of God who loves the whole thing into unity, drawing the man and woman into one, through the participated energy of His own gigantic love….
In describing his mother:
The name of my mother was Genevieve – a name of feminine glory, and really the very name that Adam called Eve in the beginning, because “Genevieve” means the mother of living. Mother was the daughter of clan Daly whose ancestral home was Castle Daly in Westmeath, Ireland. Michael T. “Grandpa” Daly had left the castle in 1845 as a four-year-old and established residence at 188 Lexington Avenue, a three-story brick affair that today is the shantiest facade on the one time happy boulevard of little Old New York. At the time of mother’s wedding in 1909, Michael T. Daly was Commissioner of Public Works, and you will find his name etched in stone on old armories and such things as the Williamsburg Bridge that marries Brooklyn and New York.
Durry think he is incorrect in that it appears the Dalys came over in 1850 and Michael was between 9 and 10. Michael’s obituary agrees with the 1850 date as well as some passenger lists which seem to find the family of Rose Daly and her four children Ellen Michael David and Rose on the St. George arriving Nov 1 1850.
Pentecost Comes to Central Park was published in 1969. Durry has visited the old neighborhood and there is now a furniture story where 188 Lexington once stood. I looked at some of the homes on the side streets to get an idea of what it may have been like.
Ray’s books are probably still available. Durry got a copy of Pentecost via alibris.com – cheap too.
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Genevieve Daly found love on Summer Vacation
Genevieve Marie Daly was born Feb 1 1883, what appears to be the fifth child of Michael Thomas Daly (1841-1913) and Catherine Walsh (1853-1942).
The Michael Daly family resided at 188 Lexington Ave Manhattan at the time of her birth. Genevieve was only one of three children of Michael’s that reached the age of 21.
She attended Sacred Heart Academy in Torresdale Pa only a few miles from when Durry York now resides. Durry York has written to the sisters and the sent back information that she was a very satisfactory student.
She married Frank Bernard York on the 21 Apr 1909. Frank was from a prominent family in Brooklyn Democratic politics and Michael Daly was prominent in NYC Democractic politics and Tammany Hall. They met while each family was summer vacationing. Frank was a partner in the law firm of York & York with his father. The Yorks were lawyers for the Brooklyn Dodgers and for a short time Frank B York was president of the Brooklyn Dodgers (1930-32).
Courtesy of Durry York on her grandmother Genevieve Daly
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