Most Popular Choices
Share on Facebook 21 Printer Friendly Page More Sharing
Exclusive to OpEd News:
General News   

A tale of two towns

By       (Page 1 of 1 pages)   No comments
Message Terry Ballard
Become a Fan
  (1 fan)
Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly has often mentioned his boyhood years growing up in the middle class Long Island town of Levittown. The problem is that O'Reilly's mother, in an interview with the Washington Post said that Bill grew up in Westbury. The key piece of evidence for that is that she still lives in that same house, which is in Westbury.

There are variant stories to be found on Wikipedia and the Fox News Web site, as well as from O'Reilly himself who claims that the Post misquoted his mother. The three versions of reality boil down to this:

1. O'Reilly, as reported in the Fox News web page and the Post article grew up in Westbury, but in housing that was built by the Levitt company.

2. The house was in Levittown when they bought it, but the boundaries changed in 1963, and the location changed to Westbury. This is found in Wikipedia.

3. It was Levittown, and that's that. This comes from O'Reilly who bolsters this claim with a mortgage document from the purchase of the house that he published online.

To start getting the facts, we simply visited the East Meadow Public Library on Long Island and asked to see the 1958 Nassau County phone book. What we found can be seen at http://www.terryballard.org/billo2.jpg , which shows the elder O'Reilly was, in 1958, a resident of Westbury.

The information provided above contradicts the "deed" which O'Reilly published that supposedly proves that he lived in Levittown all along. This can be seen at: http://www.frankenlies.com/lies/levittown.htm. If you examine this document closely, you might notice some peculiarities. The address is (blank) Lane, followed by a comma. Then you drop down three lines into a new paragraph. At the beginning of this, there is a long blank space, another comma, and the name Levittown, New York. This is followed by language that says "hereby to be referred to as the mortgager." A street address is the mortgager? It appears that the long blank at the beginning of that line may be the lending institution that happened to be located in Levittown. The actual town location should have immediately followed "Lane." In reading through the right wing blogosphere, one can see this document treated as an absolute slam-dunk that O'Reilly grew up in Levittown.

One creative O'Reilly apologist on Wikipedia, writing under the category of "O'Reilly controversies" made the claim that O'Reilly grew up in Levittown, then in 1963 they changed the town borders to bring the towns in line with the new Zip Code system. As a result of that, O'Reilly's street was sucked into Westbury, where it remains to this day. Again, if this were true, the 1958 phone book would have listed his address as being in Levittown, which it did not. The Wikipedia author cites as evidence of this 1963 land grab one online map that shows Levittown in large letters and no reference to Westbury at all

This dramatic change in the population of Westbury would have been major news in a town whose boundaries were first set in the 1700's. However, author John Dwyer, writing in the Village of Westbury's web page at http://www.villageofwestbury.org/index.asp?type=b_loc&sec={25bd8f5e-47ee-4fef-928b-f47883bffc8e} writes:

"In the mid 1950's, Westbury virtually ran out of undeveloped land and with it came the end of the building boom. In 1940, Westbury listed its population at 4,525. By 1960, Westbury's population had grown to 14,757, according to the census data for that year."

He has no information about a boundary change that happened three years later.

Referring to the United States Census of 1970, Volume 1, Part A, Section 2, page 34-37, Levittown, rather than losing population between 1960 and 1970 gained about 150 souls, going from a population of 65,276 in 1960 to 65,440 in 1970. Westbury's population picked up about 500 during that same period, but not, apparently, at the expense of Levittown.

This has been a fascinating journey into the world of "truthiness." If you read everything about this subject written by people with a political agenda, it becomes very complicated. However, as a librarian it is my job to consult objective sources and find out the facts. The truth is what it is. Barring stunning new revelations, Bill O'Reilly grew up in a house in Westbury.
Rate It | View Ratings

Terry Ballard Social Media Pages: Facebook page url on login Profile not filled in       Twitter page url on login Profile not filled in       Linkedin page url on login Profile not filled in       Instagram page url on login Profile not filled in

Terry Ballard was a native of Phoenix, Arizona until he made a wrong turn in 1990 - he has been living on Long Island ever since. His chief regret in life is that he does not have the option to live on some other planet.
Go To Commenting
The views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.
Writers Guidelines

 
Contact AuthorContact Author Contact EditorContact Editor Author PageView Authors' Articles
Support OpEdNews

OpEdNews depends upon can't survive without your help.

If you value this article and the work of OpEdNews, please either Donate or Purchase a premium membership.

STAY IN THE KNOW
If you've enjoyed this, sign up for our daily or weekly newsletter to get lots of great progressive content.
Daily Weekly     OpEd News Newsletter
Name
Email
   (Opens new browser window)
 

Most Popular Articles by this Author:     (View All Most Popular Articles by this Author)

Ich Vergessen

A tale of two towns

What would Mark Twain say?

A dream press conference with John McCain

Checking Bush's numbers

March Madness: or the amazing disappearing story

To View Comments or Join the Conversation:

Tell A Friend