Item Information
Title
Growing up in New York City
Subject
public health, water
Description
Reflections from Dr. Okun on growing up in NYC
Transcription
“I grew up in Brooklyn in a middle class family, although I grew up in the Depression, and our family was very, very poor. My father was an engineer. . . When I was a kid, I must have been about twelve years old, he was a resident engineer. . . on one of the major water projects in the world, the tunnel that brings water from the mountains of the Catskills, and in this case it was in Delaware [village in upstate New York]. It brings water to New York City. This was a tunnel that was about 600 feet down in the ground, and it came under the city. It was big enough to drive a train through. It must have been about 20 feet in diameter.
He took me down there in a big cage, and I could see the workmen lining the tunnel. It had a rail car that we could get on and ride under Brooklyn . . .That got me a little bit interested in that kind of work, bringing water to New York, to the people in the city and that sort of thing.”
He took me down there in a big cage, and I could see the workmen lining the tunnel. It had a rail car that we could get on and ride under Brooklyn . . .That got me a little bit interested in that kind of work, bringing water to New York, to the people in the city and that sort of thing.”