JM: Growing up, Jane Breen’s favorite time of day… was bedtime… because that’s when her father, Nick, would sit on her bed… and tell stories.

 

Jane Breen (JB): One of my favorites was called The Phantom of the World’s Fair. And when I was requesting the story, I always said, “Tell the one about the world’s fair, dad!” 

 

MG: In this bedtime story, Jane’s dad was the main character… a kid from suburban Long Island who ran away from home…. and for 11 days… lived as a fugitive at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.

 

JB: As a kid, you’re just like, yeah, that sounds so fun. Like, what do you mean? You just lived at the world’s fair and ate funnel cake for 11 days? Like, that’s the coolest thing ever, you know?

 

JM: Now, to really appreciate why this story took such a hold on Jane’s imagination… you gotta know that a World’s Fair isn’t like a carnival or your local church bazaar. 

 

MG: No… you have to think of an elaborate theme park… like Disneyland… or Epcot Center… and then imagine an unsupervised 12-year-old running amok… 

 

JB: I remember him talking about how he would hide in, like, the halls of wax. And they would always be so close to getting him. He would always say, “Will we ever catch the phantom of the world’s fair?” Like, he was just so tickled pink with the fact that he just kept outsmarting them.  

 

So I spent my whole life into my early twenties, believing that my dad had either made this story up or whatever he had told me was deeply embellished. 

 

But years after he passed away his younger sister had given me a magazine from the time and there was a whole piece in there about exactly what I had been hearing for my entire childhood. [laughs] He absolutely lived it.

 

JM: This is the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. I’m Jasmyn Morris.

 

MG: And I’m Michael Garofalo. This season has been all about people who lived life on their own terms.… and in this, our final episode… we’ll hear the tale of Dominic Tucci… the kid who actually ran away to live on his own at the World’s Fair.

 

 JM: And we’ll find out what he was running away from in the first place…

 

JB: It’s hard to pick out pieces of my father’s childhood that he spoke about that were filled with joy, because I think that was really the only 11 days he ever really spent as a child. 

 

MG: It started one afternoon in May, 1964… Dominic Tucci, who went by Nick, still wearing his Catholic school uniform… finished his paper route, locked his bike up outside the railroad station… and without telling anyone where he was going… boarded a train heading to the World’s Fair stop in Queens…

 

Nick Breen (NB):  Summer was coming, it was a spring day. I was gonna go, there was nobody gonna stop me from going to the World’s Fair, not my mother, not the nuns, not the priests, nobody. I was going.

 

JM: That’s Nick in the 1990s… speaking on a grainy VHS tape made by two aspiring screenwriters…  and heads up Nick tends to use “colorful” language…

MG: Nick died in 2001. And this interview is the only known recording of him talking about his time at the fair. 

NB: I mean, I was running away, man. I was, you know? Once I got in there I knew I wasn’t going home. Oh I intended to see every fucking square inch of that place…

archival audio audio

People hardly know where to begin when they step into the world of the fair. It has something of everything. Something for everyone…

 

NB: At first I just walked down the promenade. I was overwhelmed by the architecture… the costumes…

 

archival audio

Around the world we’ve been in a matter of minutes…in the big industrial pavilions visitors can go back in time to dinosaur days and our beginnings…or into the heart of an atom…or on to the moon.

 

NB: I went to the Coca-Cola pavilion, the African pavilion. I went to a Japanese tea ceremony…

 

archival audio

It’s magical…  and that’s the only word…

 

JM: Here are some other things Nick would’ve seen… 

 

MG: A NASA space park … with scale models of real rockets… 

 

JM: Animatronic characters designed by Walt Disney himself… who also introduced a ride at the fair that you may have heard of… called “It’s A Small World.” 

 

MG: Even the VATICAN had an exhibit… featuring Michelangelo’s Pieta.

 

JM: And in the center of it all… a 12-story metallic globe that still stands today.

archival audio

“It’s the Unisphere – the world as it looks from 6,000 miles away, the largest model of the earth ever built. An achievement in architecture, it’s also the symbol and motto of the Fair itself: Peace Through Understanding.”

 

Tommy Tucci (TT): The idea that Nick survived in the World’s Fair never surprised me one bit. I might even go as far as to say that if anything surprised me, I’d be surprised that he got caught, you know, eventually.

Bridget Porter (BP): You get sick of hot dogs and hamburgers.

MG: That’s Bridget Porter and Tommy Tucci – Nick was their big brother. He was actually the oldest of TEN Tucci kids.

 

TT: He was my hero.

 

BP: We all kind of felt that way about him.

TT: We did. You know, his siblings…

BP: He just did what the hell he wanted to do.

JM: Tommy and Bridget came to StoryCorps in New York City with their mother, Lillian Breen Tucci. It was the first time they had spoken publicly about Nick’s adventure in 50 years.

BP: Mom, do you remember the day he ran away?

Lilian Breen Tucci (LBT): I do, because he was supposed to be delivering the New York News Day, and he took his bike, but he didn’t come home.

TT: Did the idea of him having gone to the World’s Fair…

LBT: Ever pass my mind? No.

BP: So what’d you think happened?

LBT: I didn’t know. I mean, he was the kind of a kid that would just take off.

Interviewer: I mean, as the story goes, according to the articles, you asked to go to the World’s fair, your parents says you were gonna go when the crowds died down.

NB: Yeah, the crowds were not going to die down, it’s fucking metropolitan New York. It was one big crowd. 

TT:  How did he survive?

LBT: Well, he survived by taking money out of the fountains. He would go in there at night and take the money out.

TT:  So he went into the wishing well?

LBT: Yeah.

NB: I just wade right in the fountains. Just rolled up my pants, walked around. Here’s a quarter here, a fifty-cent piece there, another quarter, dime…

LBT: …and he slept in different places. He slept in the Coca-Cola pavilion. He found places where he could bed down for the night. 

NB: The first night I slept under a bridge. And I realized that this was not gonna work. It was just too damn cold, man. One of the nicest nights I spent was at Hong Kong Harbor… it was just like being at sea, you just get rocked to sleep.

archival audio:

Given all the bedazzlement of the fair, plus a child’s naturally active curiosity, it’s no wonder that for all the watchful care, children now and then get lost. As a matter of fact, guards bring around 50 a day to the lost children play areas. 

 

LBT: My father went over there every single day looking for him. And I thought to myself, That’s a waste of time, Dad, because if Nick didn’t want to be found…

TT: He wasn’t going to be found.

LBT: He wasn’t going to be found by Grandpa. And then your father went over there with, you know, his friends who were cops. But I mean, there were so many people. Where do you look, you know?

NB: Nobody could find me for 11 days. The Pinkertons hunted down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, John Dillinger and God knows who else, couldn’t find me. The police department couldn’t find me. The FBI and whoever else was involved couldn’t find me.

 

Interviewer: Were you homesick or anything?

 

NB: No. [laughing]

 

Interviewer: You weren’t hungry or hurt or… 

 

NB: No, I was living just fine, man. If I had had a change of clothes, I could have stayed there another six months.

 

LBT: Eventually, some woman recognized his appearance, which was, by now, kind of scruffy. He was wearing the same clothes all the time.

TT: He told her his name was…

LBT: Tommy Murphy. But she connected him and she notified the police. 

NB: She just, she said, well, don’t you think your mother misses you? And I said, well, come on, she’s got seven kids. And then she said uh, “Well, you’ve got ten fingers, and if you lost one, wouldn’t you miss it?” You know, you put it that way. It struck me at that point. And then she started showing me the articles in the papers. And uh, you know, I realized the magnitude of what was going on.

LBT: When we picked him up at the fair, you know, he just really was a mess. But he was calm, cool, collected about the whole thing.

TT: It had to be, what, a couple of months later when we went to the World’s Fair.

LBT: I think somebody invited us, I forget who now.

TT: In other words, somebody’s treated the Tucci’s to the World’s Fair.

LBT: They liked the publicity of sponsoring this kid who had run away to the World’s Fair, so…

BP: Did he go?

LBT: Oh, sure. He was showing us around. 

All: [Laugh]

LBT: He was our guide to show us the most interesting places. You know, he knew it all by the back of his hand by that time.

JM: Nick’s story made national headlines… the New York Times ran stories… there was a long feature with photos in the Saturday Evening Post… where he got his nickname: The Phantom of the World’s Fair. 

MG: But after that initial media splash… nothing. The story was forgotten. The newspaper reports back then all portrayed Nick’s time at the fair as a lark… but that Saturday Evening Post article… it ended with this quote from Nick: “They’re going to clobber me.”  

Interviewer: So did you talk to reporters at your house again, or? 

 

NB: I wasn’t allowed to. I was sworn to secrecy as far as what the events leading up to the, uh, fair and the aftermath. I was sworn to secrecy. Really what they were hiding was the embarrassment of my life at home. They shunned the publicity completely. When Walt Disney made an offer to make a film and wanted me to play a role in it. When Johnny Carson wanted me to be on his show. Robert Moses wanted me to give him a tour of the fair. They shunned all of that stuff. 

 

Interviewer: So why do you think your dad didn’t go for it?

 

NB: Because he was afraid of being exposed as…

 

Interviewer: As an abusive father?

 

NB: As an abusive father.

 

JM: Stay with us…

 

<BREAK>

 

JM: Welcome back, before we continue… you should know… the rest of this episode includes scenes of abuse.

MG: The patriarch of Nick’s family was a bricklayer named Benito Tucci.

TT: Dad was just the authoritarian, and that’s all he saw his role as. He didn’t see himself as father who teaches, as father who sets example. His job was strictly to make the law, enforce the law: judge, jury, and executioner.  

JM: Benito was actually Nick’s stepfather. His biological dad left when Nick was 2 years old. He was the only Tucci kid who wasn’t Benito’s.

 

MG: And for as long as Nick could remember… Benito had physically abused him… often brutally. 

 

NB: That guy tried to staple my finger literally. He got me down on the ground, took one of my hands, put it over his leg, and proceeded to try to staple the son of a bitch. And, of course, I was struggling the whole time. And uh, I get up and took off and he was chasing me around. We’re going around and around, and then finally about the fourth time around, my mother was standing at the front door with it open, and she said, “Run Nick. Run.” And I just ran.  

 

Interviewer: That’s your first time running away then? 

 

NB: Yeah. 

 

JB: I was actually pretty well aware of the abuse my whole life. 

 

JM: That’s Jane… Nick’s daughter.

 

JB: He didn’t really sugarcoat that stuff for me. I remember one time we were sitting together on the couch watching a movie or something, and I said to him, ”Dad, I can’t even hear you breathing and I’m right next to you.” And he said to me, ”When I was little, I learned how to breathe very quietly because I used to have to hide. And if they could hear me breathe, they would find me.” So, I mean, yeah, I knew about it. 

 

MG: By the time he was 12… Nick had taken all he could … and the World’s Fair provided an out.

TT: I would imagine that dad was furious more than worried. 

 

BP: That’s why I’m surprised he even went to look for him that day. 

 

TT: Well, he went to look for him because he probably couldn’t wait to get his hands on him.

 

BP: Plus the police are involved now. 

 

LBT: He had to answer a lot of questions about: Where would he go? Why would he do this? 

 

TT: Was there any problems at home? 

 

LBT: And it would be his fault that he, you know, would physically attack your brother that way. 

 

BP: And then they would probably take us all out of there. 

 

LBT: And that’s what they would have done. 

 

BP: But that’s a whole other conversation for another day. 

 

TT: That’s a lost opportunity, sweetheart. That was too long ago. 

 

NB: Benito and my war I knew would continue; I was very stoic about that. I had had my vacation, I was refreshed. I had my R and R, I was ready to go back into combat. And I knew that Benito would be somewhat humbled by the whole experience, which he was. I had really outdone him that time. I understood instinctually that, you know, he couldn’t touch me then. I was pristine. 

 

NB: What was he going to do, beat me all the way home? There was police, and there was reporters, and he didn’t have much to say. 

 

BP: So much attention was brought to him running away at that point, do you feel like it changed the family at all?

 

LBT: Not drastically. 

 

TT: I think it might have changed his life in the family. 

 

BP: What do you mean by that? 

 

TT: Well, it wasn’t long before, off he went, uh, to Berkshire Farm, right? 

 

LBT: It was a school for children with problems, some of them serious problems, and, you know, like in Nick’s case, he couldn’t stay home.

 

TT: How did that make you feel?

 

LBT: It made me feel that Nick was finally going to get a break, quite frankly. You know, I knew that that was the end of that, and he never actually did come home to live. 

 

JB: When the world’s fair-thing ended, they sent him to a boys home. He was there for a couple years, and then he had the opportunity to get out and go back home, but he didn’t want to because of the abuse at home. And so he self-sabotaged his release so that they would keep him at the boy’s home until he was old enough to become an emancipated minor. He got an apartment in New York for a little while, and eventually, he ended up in Colorado.

 

MG: Nick started a new life in Denver. He dropped the name Tucci – Benito’s name – and took his mother’s maiden name. He started going by Nick Breen. 

 

JM: And he became a father himself.     

 

JB: Growing up, I would get in trouble. He would send me to my room or to time-out to think for a little while. And then he would always just come and sit down and have a conversation with me. He used to always say, ”Janie, you’ve got to remember, your heart has no head and your head has no heart. So when you’re making decisions, you have to learn how to make them work together.” That was definitely the most sage piece of advice he probably ever gave me. 

 

MG: Even though he had moved across the country… Nick was still very much involved in his siblings’ lives… and he wasn’t the only one to have a difficult relationship with Benito…  

  

BP: A lot of the family went to Colorado to just put some distance between my dad and them. The joke was that my father followed. I don’t know how many years later, but… I remember it took a long time, but Nick finally invited him to dinner. 

LBT: He wasn’t one to hold grudges. I think he finally kind of felt sorry for your father because your father had alienated himself from practically everybody. 

 

NB: He was a person with a lot of pride but, uh, being overwhelmed by his own responsibilities, because there’s a price to be paid with having total control. He was responsible for everything that happened, and a lot of what happened was beyond his control.

 

LBT: I think my best memory is the time that I finally went out to visit him in Colorado after your father and I separated, that was one of my first destinations. And we stayed up all night talking because he was just so delighted to have me there. You know, as a kid, he was one of many and I had a lot of responsibility and he was so unpredictable. Fortunately, I mean, I spent a lot of time with him, you know, while he was still alive out there. He used to come over for dinner every Tuesday and bring Janie, you know, things like that.

 

JB: We talk about generational trauma, but we don’t really get to talk so much about generational strength, you know, and that’s kind of like the gift he gave me. He broke a cycle of abuse that could have just kept going and going and going. And he just kind of took the wheel and he said, I’m not going to let this hijack my life. I reaped the rewards because he was able to be so much better in spite of it.

 

JB: When my father died, I was only 12 years old. He died just about a month before he turned 50. The autopsy came back, they said he had died of an enlarged heart, which I know, is like medically, just means he had a heart attack, but it just felt so poignant. He just had such a big heart and it was just like, it was too big for this world.

I now have two children of my own, one almost three-year-old and one almost eight. And one of the things I lament is that he’ll never meet them, but he’s just still ever so present in our lives.

I had a really, really kick-ass dad for 12 years, you know. I might have only got him for a little while, but 12 years of a great dad is way better than 40 years of a shit dad. He took something awful and he made it beautiful. So I’m grateful for it.

MG: Jane Breen in Denver, Colorado… remembering her dad… Nick Breen… JM: We also heard from Nick’s younger siblings Bridget Porter and Tommy Tucci… their mother, Lilian Breen Tucci, died not long after their interview.

MG: The recording of Nick that we heard throughout this episode… was generously shared with us by Fred Vicarel… who wrote a screenplay inspired by NIck’s story… called Dominic’s Oyster.

JM: Here’s our final question of the season: What’s a family legend you thought was too good to be true? 

Let us know by leaving a voicemail at 702-706-TALK. 

MG: The number again is 702-706-TALK. Or you can email us… at podcast AT storycorps DOT org.

 

archival audio audio:

And as each day and each visit ends, the memories and the 

moments will linger on to be treasured and to be cherished for a lifetime. 

 

JM: This episode was produced by MIchael Garofalo and Jud Esty-Kendall. Max Jungreis is our producer. Our Technical Director is Jarrett Floyd. 

 

MG: Amy Drozdowska is our Executive Producer… and our fact checker is Katie Scott. The art for this season was created by Liz McCarty.

 

JM: Special thanks to StoryCorps facilitators John White and Zanna McKay. 

 

MG: I’m Michael Garofalo. 

 

JM: And I’m Jasmyn Morris. Thanks for listening…