CANAL RAT ON THE DELAWARE

Delaware City is a little town that could have, but never did. But it's where I grew up. And I still love it.

It was originally settled as Newbold's Landing, surrounded by peach orchards, a small port on the Delaware River serving farmers in southern New Castle County. In 1829, it suddenly grew to prominence — and was renamed Delaware City — when it became the eastern terminus of the newly constructed Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, linking the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware River, and Baltimore to Philadelphia.

Delaware City's at the east end of the canal; Chesapeake City, at the west end. As a kid, I remember being shown an old map on the wall of our town hall that projected Delaware City to grow bigger than Philadelphia was at the time. But that was not to be.

By the turn of the century, many larger ships could no longer squeeze through the locks at Delaware City. So, on January 31, 1927, the locks on the old canal shut down and a new, wider, and straighter canal opened. It was rerouted to enter the Delaware River at sea level at Reedy Point, a mile to the south of Delaware City. Grand plans for the next Philadelphia collapsed. And Delaware City remained a small town with a big name.

Today, Delaware City's much the same as it was back then: a quaint, sleepy, forgotten, little one-traffic-light town on the banks of the Delaware River, nine miles south of historic New Castle. The running joke among locals is that Delaware City's population is 1,200. At low tide, that is. Only 900 at high tide.

It was in Delaware City that I spent the first eighteen years of my life. And — for a young white boy, at least — it was a magical place to grow up: an Ozzie and Harriet kind of town, where everybody knew everybody else, where neighbors and family looked out for one other, where nobody had much money but it didn't really matter, and where life centered around work, church, and school. I only realized later that not all of Delaware City's residents had it so good.

I might as well admit this, too: For those first eighteen years, I was not known as Bill Press, either. I was stuck with the family nickname: Chippy, or simply Chip. My family called me that, I was told, because I had the same legal name — William Henry Press — as my father and grandfather before me. (My full name, in fact, which I never use, is William Henry Press III.) So they needed some way to tell us apart. And, besides, I was just a "chip off the old block."

I suffered that nickname gladly until the first day of my eighth grade class at Salesianum High School, when Oblate Scholastic Mr. Robert Lawler called the roll. After declaiming, "William Press," he asked, "What do they call you, son? Bill?"

At that point, I'd never been called Bill in my life, but I was too scared to contradict him. "Yes," I nervously stammered. And, from that day on, I've been Bill Press — everywhere, that is, but in Delaware City.

The Press family, part of the Cook Cousins clan, made up a big part of Delaware City, even at high tide. The family patriarch, my grandfather, William H. "Pop" Press Sr., was born on December 2, 1888, in Salem, New Jersey. He joined the army in World War I and was assigned to Fort DuPont in Delaware City, directly across the Delaware River from Salem. There, like many of my uncles and family friends, all fellow Fort DuPont alumni, he met and married a local girl, and never left.

For us grandkids, the big question, then and now, was: Where did the Press family come from? It's a question we often asked Pop-Pop Press, without ever getting a straight answer. He insisted he was a direct descendant of the Cherokee. As proof, he'd unbutton his shirt, show us his bare smooth chest, and ask, "You never saw an American Indian with hair on his chest, did you?" Not exactly a DNA test, but some of our family still believe that tall tale. Even as a kid, I always thought it was bullshit. And I am now more than ever convinced it was.

My first sign came while working at my first job in politics, as administrative assistant to San Francisco supervisor Roger Boas. One day, I accompanied Roger to a luncheon at one of the city's big synagogues. Roger, a prominent member of San Francisco's Jewish community, sat at the head table, alongside the president of the congregation, whose name was, curiously enough — Sam Press. Meanwhile, I was seated at a table in the back of the room, where everyone was speaking Yiddish. At one point, the woman next to me turned and whispered, "You do understand what we're talking about, don't you?" When I admitted I didn't have a clue, she was stunned. "What? A name like Press and you don't speak Yiddish?"

More evidence poured in, years later, once I popped up on television, first on KABC-TV in Los Angeles, and later on CNN and MSNBC. I've heard from dozens of people from all over the country with the same last name, none of them directly related to our Press family. Yet every one with the same story: their ancestors were Russian Jews who emigrated to the United States from Latvia.

I was especially struck one night, attending a black-tie event at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles, when a friend asked if I knew Jim Press, then head of Toyota Motors for California (later head of Toyota for the entire country). When I said I'd never met him, my friend disappeared across the ballroom, only to reappear with the more famous Mr. Press in tow. Jim walked up, stuck out his hand, and gave me a big smile. The first two words out of his mouth were "Russian Jew!"

How could it be otherwise? I have since, hit or miss, traced Pop-Pop's family back to the 1830s, all in the Salem or Pennsville, New Jersey, area. In immigration records, I've also discovered several Presses arriving in the Philadelphia area from Latvia in the early nineteenth century, long before Ellis Island. So I'm convinced there's a connection, even though not yet firmly established. Interestingly, even in Latvia in the 1800s, the name was already Press — although, much earlier, it must have been shortened from a longer family name.

So I have long considered myself the Catholic descendant of a Russian Jew — a prospect that did not go down well with Grandmom Press, a loyal Catholic of German descent, who made sure all of her grandchildren were baptized and raised Catholic and went to Mass every Sunday. On one visit from California, I told her I'd heard from a lot of people around the country named Press and, after doing a little research on my own, concluded that Pop-Pop's family were originally Russian Jews. "No!" she snapped. "Pop-Pop weren't no Jew!" I thought afterward that maybe Grandmom Press's attitude toward Jewish people said a lot about why Pop-Pop hid his lineage. At any rate, I never met a (self-admitted) Jew the entire time I grew up in Delaware City. Of course, I never met a Native American, either.

For Grandmom, that was the end of the story. But not for me. In 1998, after mentioning on CNN that I believed my ancestors had immigrated here from Latvia, I was invited to a reception at the Capitol for Her Excellency Vaira Vike-Freiberga, president of Latvia, on her state visit to the United States. When I was presented to her, she greeted me as "America's most famous Latvian American" — this was well before current NBA Latvian sensation Kristaps Porzingis — and invited me to Riga for an official ceremony honoring my success in the New World. I begged off, telling her I wanted to verify and confirm my Latvian roots before publicly celebrating them. And the search continues.

Back in Delaware City, Pop-Pop was a big fish in a small pond. He owned and operated a gas station on Fifth Street, the main road into town from Highway 13. For years, my grandmother Marie operated a small grocery store on one corner of Pop-Pop's gas station property.

Pop-Pop was also a commercial crabber and fisherman. For several summers, he ran three party boats — the Wave, the Aunt Kass, and the Happy Days — out of Indian River Inlet, just north of Bethany Beach, in southern Delaware. During my entire childhood, he also served as Delaware City's mayor.

To my grandfather I owe my first taste of politics. I remember riding with him one day in his green pickup when he was flagged down by a resident complaining about a pothole in front of his house. At that time, most of Delaware City's streets were still unpaved. Pop-Pop listened politely and promised he'd take care of it promptly. I was probably only eight or nine at the time, but I never forgot the respect and attention Pop-Pop received as mayor and the power he was able to exercise. Simply by giving the word, he could fill a pothole — more than the United States Congress can get down in an entire year!

And that's where it began, my lifelong connection with politics. As we will see, it grew under my association with Peter Behr, Jerry Brown, Eugene McCarthy, Bill Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and others, but my love for politics started right there, over my grandfather and a pothole, and it continues to this day. I still consider politics "the noblest profession." To me, it's about much more than winning elections or fixing potholes. It's about how we shape and define our democracy, a challenge every citizen should be engaged in at some level. It's about how we fulfill our civic duty. It's about how we build a better America. I've been involved in politics for over six decades. I've seen some of the best of it and some of the worst of it — notably on November 8, 2016, when Donald Trump of all people was elected president of these United States. But I'm still a believer in the political process and the ability of the American people to make the right decisions, over time, and most of the time.

The apple didn't fall far from the tree. Growing up, my father, William H. "Billy" Press Jr., worked in the family gas station. Then, after returning from serving with occupation forces in Japan at the end of World War II, he built and operated his own gas station — Press' Esso Servicenter — on a piece of land his father gave him, across the street from his own former business. Later, Dad also took his turn as Delaware City's mayor.

And he worked his ass off. To this day, I've never seen anyone work a more demanding schedule. Dad opened up his gas station at 8:00 a.m. every morning except Sunday, when he opened at 10:00, following 8:00 Mass. He went home, two blocks away, every day for lunch, then back to work. He joined us for dinner at 4:30 or 5:00, before going back to man the pumps until closing time of 9:00 p.m. The only break he had was on Wednesday evenings after 6:00, when his assistant, Francis Walker, would take over and our family would celebrate his one free evening by climbing into the car for an outing to nearby Saint Georges or Augustine Beach. My mother and father never took a vacation until I was fourteen or fifteen, old enough to oversee the garage myself for a couple of days.

One important gas station rubric: Because we operated a small business in a small town and couldn't afford to alienate anyone, we never talked politics or religion. Never. Nowhere. Neither at work, nor at home. Which, you must admit, is most ironic. I left Delaware City to spend the rest of my life immersed — first, in religion; then, in politics — and built my career talking about religion and politics on national radio and television. I even wrote a book about it: How the Republicans Stole Religion. Maybe I've been making up for lost time.

My mother, Isabelle, was also very much part of the family business. She grew up on a farm just outside Delaware City and used to accompany her father, delivering milk door to door, before going to school every morning. She and Dad were married on April 6, 1939. I came along two days short of a year later. In addition to raising us three kids, preparing all meals, and managing the house, Mom also handled the books for the gas station, paid the bills, and sent out monthly statements to regular customers, who were allowed to buy on credit. This, of course, was long before credit cards.

Mom and Dad started out married life in a small apartment on Hamilton Street, where I spent the first couple of years. For $1,100, they then bought a house at 105 Washington Street, big enough to hold two more children: my brother David, born in 1944; and my sister Margie, who came along in 1949. For me, those were very formative years. Next-door neighbor Harry James taught me to swim in the Delaware River at our town beach, the Y, at the foot of Washington Street. His father-in-law, retired river captain Jack "Pee-Pop" Tugend, taught me to fish and introduced me to his favorite fishing spots out the old railroad tracks in the marshes north of town.

Pee-Pop was also a yellow-dog Democrat. He schooled me on the difference between Republicans, who only cared about wealthy people like Delaware's ruling Du Pont family, and Democrats, who stood up for working-class families like those of us who lived in Delaware City. I sat with him for hours in his living room, watching broadcasts of the 1952 Democratic convention — and I cried when Adlai Stevenson conceded the election to Dwight Eisenhower by quoting Abraham Lincoln: "It hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too proud to cry."

We were far from rich, but we never knew we were poor. Mom once told me that Dad never made more than $10,000 a year at the gas station. But we were better off than many of our cousins. And, besides, we had everything we needed. Indeed, the highlight of our days on Washington Street was our first television set, a twelve-inch black-and-white Philco. We were the first family in town to have a TV in our own home, and our living room became, in effect, the local movie theater, with friends and neighbors crowding in on Saturday afternoons to watch cowboy-and-Indian movies.

In 1951, we moved "uptown," four blocks away, to 301 Clinton Street and a big, three-bedroom Victorian, for which my father paid $10,000. In our new home, television remained a big part of our family life. We never missed Dragnet with Jack Webb, The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason, Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle, Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, The Red Skelton Show, or Amos and Andy. Before going out on Saturday nights, my mother and father would dance in our living room to the bubbly sounds of Lawrence Welk.

Years later, when I was working at KABC-TV in Los Angeles, I was thrilled to run into Lawrence Welk one day, walking to his car in the ABC parking lot. I stopped and thanked him for all the happiness and good music he'd brought to my parents for so many years.

While living in Los Angeles, I also got to know Milton Berle through his wife, Ruth, who was active in Democratic politics. Milton, who loved talking politics, kind of adopted me. He once took me to a Friars Club luncheon to meet his fellow comedians. On July 4, 1988, he appeared on my radio show to plug his book B.S. I Love You. I still have my copy, inscribed: "To my good friend, Bill. A future Prez!" And when I ran for California insurance commissioner, Milton agreed to provide the evening's entertainment — for no fee — at my fund-raising dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. "I was so offended, walking into the hotel tonight," Milton began. "There were two men on the street corner, speaking Farsi. I couldn't help myself. I went up to them and said, 'Don't you realize where you are? This is the United States of America. Speak Spanish!'"

COUSINS CLUB

Mark Twain once said, "I spent $25 researching my family tree — and then spent $50 trying to cover it up." Not me. I'm proud of my family.

We were all part of the extended Cook Cousins clan, the biggest family in Delaware City, which numbered about a hundred people. My great-uncle John and great-aunt Peggy Cook had three children: Patsy, John, and Michael. John Cook had three sisters: Marie, Katherine, and Zita. Marie Cook, my grandmother, married Pop-Pop Press. They had five kids: John, Sis, Billy (my father), Georgina, and Harry. And they in turn produced fourteen cousins: Uncle Johnny and Aunt Toots Press, parents of Ruthie and Vicky (killed in Vietnam); Aunt Virginia, or Sis, and Uncle Wally Stephens, parents of Bobbie and Billy (my best friend, who died in July 2011); Aunt Georgina, or Georgie, and Uncle Leon, parents of Bootsie and Marie; and Uncle Harry and Aunt Louise Press, with their sons, Gene and Bobby.

My mother and father were the most prolific, with five kids: me, David, Margie, Mary Anne, and Joseph. In a sense, we were three families in one. Until I went away to college, we were only three kids. I was the oldest, born in April 1940. David came along four years later, March 1944, followed by Margie in October 1949. But our tight little family suddenly expanded in 1959, when Mom gave birth to Mary Anne. Two years later, my parents decided she needed a playmate, so Joseph came along. Now we were two distinct families in one.