Tim Conway on His Parents' Background

Tim Conway: My father was Irish, he was an orphan in Ireland and he came over here when he was 15 years old on his own, and he came over as a whip. A whip is the guy when you’re doing the fox hunting who has a whip, cuz the Irish are pretty smart. Whip, huh, call them whip. And he keeps the hounds in order. So when my dad came over here he thought there would be quite a calling for whips in this country, but I dunno if you’ve looked out in your backyard but there’s not a lot of whips going by so he got into taking care of horses over here, training polo ponies and later met my mother who came over here when she was 18. And she came by herself, both of them came by themselves, it’s unbelievable. My mother, the sea was so rough in the wintertime they had to dock out the middle of the Atlantic and they were out there for three days just rocking, so it was quite a pleasant trip, and she swore never to go on another boat as long as she lived, which was quite some time. And they met and lo and behold they had me.