Thomas Augustine Daly

T A Daly, as he is usually known, was born into an Irish Catholic family in Philadelphia. His parents John Anthony Daly and Anne Victoria Duckett Daly had opened the first Catholic Bookshop in that city.
He attended a Catholic boarding school until reaching the age of 14. At this time he transferred to Villanova College. He attended but did not graduate from, Fordham University. Jokingly claiming his majors had been baseball and smoking. He started working life in a grocery store but soon went on to become a reporter and then a editorialist with the Philadelphia Record. His journalist style was much more informal than the norm in those days
He went on to become manager of the Catholic Standard and Times , also writing a clippings column in which he continued his humorous verses. He became a member of the American Press Humorists and began giving speeches and recitations, often using the accents he had observed and assimilated from his youth and his days in the grocery store. He went on to become a lecturer and after dinner speaker, touring America and the UK giving his talks.
His newspaper contributions as editor and columnist as well as his books gained him a strong reputation and the University drop out was awarded several honorary degrees.
As times changed and the media became more wary of ethnic caricatures Daly has become less popular and his work is rarely published.
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