Buying some postcards as a youth of turn-of-the-20th-Century City Island helped spark Tom Casey’s love of the borough’s history.
He eventually collected 6,000 post cards of the borough.
It also eventually turned the now 61-year-old retired U.S. Treasury agent into one of the borough’s top historical experts.
Casey’s historical prowess led him to start giving lectures on Freedomland U.S.A, the Baychester amusement park where his mother worked from 1960 to when it closed in 1964, with the site later becoming the sprawling Co-op City.
“At a lot of my talks, people I’ve met have told me that they met their future bride or husband at Freedomland,” he said.
His most recent favorite talk has been on a failed monorail project from the 1910s in Pelham Bay Park and on City Island.
He’s lectured at the Bronx County Historical Society, Bartow-Pell Mansion & Museum, The Kingsbridge Historical Society, The Westchester Genealogical Society, New York Public Library, City Island Historical Society and at local public schools.
The Riverdale resident has been a trustee of the landmarked Huntington Free Library in Pelham Bay since 2008, and its president since 2012. He is also the secretary of the Kingsbridge Historical Society.
In a true Bronx romance, Tom married Sharon Mahoney in 1979 after numerous dates at the Loew’s Paradise theater and Jahn’s ice cream parlor on Fordham Road.
While with the Treasury Department, Casey was assigned to protect Presidents Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford; Vice President Al Gore; and First Lady Hillary Clinton and numerous foreign dignitaries.
He attended St. Anslem’s Grammar School in Melrose, and John Philip Sousa in Baychester, Cardinal Hayes High School, and Pace University.
Casey is also an author of books on the borough’s history, including: “Northwest Bronx” by Tom Casey and Bill Twomey and “Bronx Views” by Tom Casey and Gary Hermalyn.
Patrick Rocchio can be reach via e-mail at procchio@cnglocal.com or by phone at (718) 742-3393
