Dick has written this book basically in his own words and all events and stories contained herein are factual and actually happened. He has been involved in so many situations that is almost unbelievable. He has exposed and dealt with so many well known people in politics, government, movies, royalties and top level executives in various areas of major business operations. He has traveled extensively throughout the world and has encountered many fascinating events and experiences. As he was reminiscing and writing this book, he couldn't believe that he has done and accomplished all these things. We are very confident that, when you read this book, you will find it one of the most exciting and signifcantly interesting reading you will experience. For the most part, all the events and stories in the book happened and were not planned.
Just About - But Not Quite
By Dick CavenaughAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Dick Cavenaugh
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4567-5260-6Chapter One
The Beginning
On March 29th 1933, the world opened its doors to me to become a part of it. When I was born, my parents apparently didn't know what to call me so they initially set me up as "Baby Boy Cavenaugh" on my birth certificate. I guess they finally concluded that they had to give me a proper name so they hung me with the name Richard Patrick. Somewhere along the line, somebody thought that Dickie Pat would be a good nickname and they even named their motor boat in Flambeau, Wisconsin the Dickie Pat. When I was 2 or 3, I had a severe case of appendicitis and they removed my appendix. Later on I was told that they gave me a 1 in 10 change of surviving. I sure fooled them.
Our family history was quite a bit of a mish-mash of wives, homes and children. My grandfather RA, was married three times and had 5 sons. Ralph, Faye and Walter were the first three and they were all married three times and to the best of my knowledge departed this world by the time they reached 50 or thereabouts. My father, who we referred to as Pops, tied the knot six times and his younger brother, Bob, did it nine times. The alimony lawyers sure had a lot of field days. The family generally was not very close as I can recall. Pops' fifth wife was a year older than me and everyone thought she was married to me.
My mother was Pops' second wife and she died when I was seven-years- old. Unfortunately, I was the one that found her in her bed on a Sunday morning, but I didn't realize that she had passed on. RA's third wife, who we called Nannie Suie, set it up and told me that she had gone on a trip and wouldn't be back for a month or two. Needless to say, I did figure it out a short time later. Nannie Suie hated my guts because one time at a party, I told her she had a nose like a parrot. Pops had a daughter from his first wife and she was my half-sister named Joyce.
My grandfather, RA, started two mutual insurance companies in the health and accident fields and was extremely successful in making money. He had an estate in Pasadena, California; Palm Beach, Florida next to the Kennedy compound; a house in Atlantic City; and an apartment in Chicago next to the Wrigley family who owned the gum company and the Chicago Cubs. He managed to become the second largest stockholder in the Chicago Cubs for many years and I got to spend a lot of time at Wrigley Field watching the games in those days from a box just above the Cubs' dugout. I even got to watch the 1945 World Series against Detroit and a gentlemen who was a crooner in the Bing Crosby era, Dennis Morgan, sat next to me. When RA died, he left an estate of a couple million and Nanie Suie managed to evaporate it in a few years by socializing and taking the Santa Fe Super Chief back and forth to Pasadena at least once a month or more. When she passed on there was wasn't much left except the ownership in the Cubs and that was mortgaged to the First National Bank of Chicago, who took it over.
Unfortunately, the insurance companies were set up as mutual companies so that no one really owned them, but in those days the people that ran them had a license to in essence steal as they could write off virtually all their expenses through the companies. The companies developed an Just About - But Not Quite 3 excellent reputation and became well known for taking good care of their policy holders. The dumb thing is, that had they been set up as a private corporation, they could have become larger than Prudential and other insurance companies and the family could have had a significant future financially. When I first became involved with the companies, everyone that had been there for some time thought that RA walked on water. As I gradually came to realize, he had a very large ego and was very status conscious. When RA passed on, Pops and brother Bob took over running the two companies, one each.
In the late forties, I worked in the mail room of the companies prior to joining the Air Force and after I got out, I worked in the Claims Department for awhile, but I saw that there was little if any future there in a mutual company. Needless to say, the companies ceased to exist many years ago.
On Sunday, December 7th, 1941, I was sitting on my bed reading Captain Midnight, which was a comic book, when I heard on the radio that the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor. In the forties during WW II, I went to grammar school at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Chicago. I was somewhat of an entrepreneur at a young age and published a weekly local newsletter from my bedroom closet. I also had a lemonade stand in the summer months. Additionally, I worked across the street at Doc Silverbergs Drug Store when I was 11 and 12 making milkshakes and other things at the soda fountain, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. I also worked the drug counter and peddled cigarettes. They were hard to come by in those war days along with candy and I developed quite a following. The chauffeur for the Kellogg family came in once a week and tipped me $5.00 to sell him a carton of Ramsey Cigarettes. I also did deliveries for the store.
While going to grammar school, the Patterson brothers and I formed a baseball team that we called the Wellington Wildcats. If we lost the game, we won the fight or vice a versa. We lived on the 17th floor at 3000 Sheridan Road and because of the family interest in the Cubs during the baseball season and when the Cubs were in town, several of the players would come up and party at the apartment. Unfortunately I was too young to fully appreciate it at the time. During the season, several of the players lived across the street in the Wellington Arms apartment hotel, which was where the drug store was located.
Also, my Uncle Bob was into show dogs, particularly Great Danes. When they got to old for shows, he gave them to me. You can just imagine what it was like to have a Great Dane living with you on the 17th floor of an apartment building in Chicago. I lost count on how many times I had to clean the elevators after they made a deposit. One particular one was my favorite and her name was Hilly. She was with us for a couple of years until she was poisoned. There was a vacant lot about a half block away that everyone took their dogs to. A crabby, old woman owned a boarding house next to the lot and she did not like a big dog doing its thing in the lot, even though she didn't own it. One day she put out poisoned chicken bones and Hilly unfortunately got them. She made no bones about the fact that she put them out so I decided it was time to educate her. I got a bucket full of rocks and broke every window in her house. She called the cops and two detectives responded and they happened to be drinking buddies of Pops and told her that if she didn't back off, they would take her to jail for poisoning the dog. That ended that.
When I graduated Mt. Carmel, I elected to go to Marmion Military Academy in Aurora for my freshmen year. It was an uneventful year and nothing really exciting took place. During the following summer, Pops, along with Tim Mulcahy, the office manager for the insurance companies virtually kidnapped me and took me to Santa Monica, California to live with the West Coast representative for the insurance companies, Turner Wilson. The reason we went there was that Pops was in the process of getting an expensive divorce from his fourth wife, Louise. I entered the sophomore class at Santa Monica Public High School for a year. While I was there, I got heavily involved in...
