The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. ~ Douglas MacArthur
The other day at work, as part of the ice breaker for a meeting, we were asked if there were any vets we would be remembering on Veterans Day. My answer was easy to come by, four of my great uncles and both of my grandfathers fought in World War II. One of them, my great uncle Tony, was killed in the Pacific Theater, The simple story I told was about Normandy on D-Day. My paternal grandfather had been missed by the draft, so at 32, with four children at home, he was drafted late. His first action would be D-Day. If you’ve seen the movie Saving Private Ryan, the scene where Tom Hanks and company is exactly what he did that day. Hit the beach, make it to the cliffs, climb them, lob grenades into the German positions. He made it it through all of that somehow.
Later after the assault was finished the First Army came to shore with the tanks. My paternal grandfather was given the duty of directing traffic at an intersection. My maternal grandfather came ashore on those tanks and through that intersection. So some twenty years before they would ever meet as my parents dated and married, my two grandfathers passed within 10 feet of each other in France.
My paternal grandfather a couple of weeks later would be hit by shrapnel from a grenade and be captured by the Germans spending almost two years in a German POW camp, including escaping once, one of the craziest stories I’ve ever been told. My maternal grandfather who had been with the First Army since day one of America’s entry into the war, all the way across Northern Africa, including being wounded when a mortar barrel exploded during the battle of Kasserine Pass, the first time the Americans faced General Rommel and were overrun by the German tank core.
I was incredibly close to both of my grandfathers, oddly, one very early in my life, one later in life. My maternal grandfather died in 1969 when I was 5 years-old, and we were nearly inseparable up until his death. My paternal grandfather died as the new millennium dawned and in his later years he and I spent hours and hours talking in his little apartment in Waterveliet.
My Maternal Grandfather – Leonard (Buster) Cordato
My maternal grandmother, my granny, was fond of saying that the way she knew I was the joy of my grandfather’s life was that while he had four children, he never changed a diaper until I was born. We were together a lot, as a toddler I would watch him work in his workshop, he was a sign artist. After work we would drink beer together, the photo on the left above. He would have a mug of beer and I would do shots of milk. He taught me to chug it down, slam the shot glass on the table and yell, “more beer POW!”
To everyone else he was Buster, to me he was POW. When I was an infant he would make a fist and like a comic book hero, would say pow as he pretended to punch me, much to my amusement. So when I was first able to speak I called him POW and that became his name. I remember sitting at that table with him, I remember him in his workshop, I remember following him around the house. I have no memory of his death, or his funeral. I asked my granny once if I was even there and her answer to me was that I was and that I had been inconsolable for days. Something else I didn’t remember would hit me like a brick about 15 years ago.
When my paternal grandfather died, I took some tapes I had made of him talking with me and digitized them and gave them to my family for Christmas. My aunt recently told me it was the best gift I’d ever given. I learned something by doing that, when people die we have lots of photos and stories. So we remember what people look like, what they did. But we have no reminders of how they sounded, how they spoke, how they laughed. That was what hit everyone, hearing Grandpa Kane’s laugh again.
This is a disappearing problem, people my age and younger are all over cellphone videos and websites so we’ll have that, but for folks in my parent’s generation we don’t have that. So my friends, take your phone and video or audio record them talking about anything, no matter how mundane. Ask them to relate a recipe they know, or the story of your birth, trust me, you’ll treasure that recording once they are gone.
When my great Aunt Gwen passed away about 15 years ago, I asked my granny to look for audio tapes at the house. Gwen’s husband, my great uncle “hillbilly” Joe and POW had gone to basic training together at Fort Knox in Kentucky. They became fast friends and they met two hillbilly sisters in rural Ohio on the Kentucky border, then they married them. In the 60’s, while my uncle was stationed in Vietnam, POW started sending him audio letters by reel to reel recorder. He also corresponded with my uncle Joe this way. When I asked, my granny send she didn’t find any, then one day in the mail I got a priority mail box filled with tapes.
I had no way to listen to them, so I sent them out blind to be digitized having no idea what I’d get back. It was a fascinating mix of tapes. Some live comedy club recordings, a recording of a very early Bill Cosby comedy record. A letter from my great uncle Walter, a man I’d never met who had lived in Texas. And then absolute gold, some audio letters from my POW. For the first time in 40 years I was hearing his voice and I broke into tears. The first time I played them for my mother and my granny they cried as well. While listening to one of the recordings I suddenly hear him say, “Michael, get over here and say hi to hillbilly Joe.” Then a few seconds later, my three year-old voice appears on the tape, it was unbelievable and has become one of my cherished possessions. That’s how I’m remembering him this Veterans Day.
My Paternal Grandfather – Thomas Kane
I got very close to my Grandpa Kane later in his life. Whenever I would come home for college I would go to visit him in his apartment. He lived near my aunt’s convent, (she’s now mother superior), and did their landscaping work and spent a great amount of time with them. My aunt’s order is still full nun garb so we refer to them as the penguins. My grandfather had been a hard man in his younger years, he worked as a steam pipe fitter in NYC and after two years as a POW came home with a heavy dose of PTSD.
When he got older, his 70’s and 80’s, he in many ways softened up, but was a hard core Irishman to the end. The way I always remember him I’ll share below, I wrote and read the eulogy at his funeral, and I think it really sums him up.
A Eulogy to amuse the penguins 2006
People don’t want the truth
particularly not when death is at hand
they don’t want to know a life
can’t stand to see the warts
they want disneyanna
where at the end of the day we gather
and have a parade down main street America
My grandfather was a man
a hard man
a cold man
but he mellowed with age
hard jagged lines on his face
fading soft with his laughter
eyes lit as he talked about back in the day
He died in 2000 and I was asked to do the eulogy
wanting to speak his life warts and all
but my sister ratted me out
ratted me out to my aunt the nun
I suffered through the speeches
sister, aunt, father oh my
to my shame I acquiesced
But I was on the hook my friends
had to stand up in front
relatives, family, friends, nuns
So I chose to pick a slice
grab a day in the life
and this is the one I chose
My grandfather loved tomatoes and roses
and in the neighborhood was a challenged boy
a boy of 32 with a dad in his 50’s
the boy had trampled grandpa’s plants and he was pissed
he had the opportunity to see the boy’s father
never given to silence, he spoke
of course grandpa spoke with his fists
like an 87 yr old warrior from the WWF
he came off the top step with a right cross
Grandpa went to scrappin in the street
he lost, hitting his head on the curb
I found my way to the hospital the next day
and asked him what happened
he said that guy had a roll of nickels in his hand
yeah grandpa, he was waitin for you
then he grew stone faced and paused
looking at me seriously, he said
I hit that guy in the gut with everything I had
and he didn’t go down, I might be getting old
and I laughed at the coolest thing I’ve ever heard
that day,
my 87 year old grandfather
just started to consider that he might be getting old.
People in the church smiled,
but the penguins rolled in the aisles,
because they knew him best
The Ministry of Happiness 