(Author’s note: This article ran as an Opinion Piece in the Chicago Tribune on November 17th, 2022.)
She was a tall, thin, thirty-something who walked into the polling place at 6:50 p.m. on Election Day, 2022. I was standing by the door she entered, fulfilling my role as the Democratic Poll Watcher at Good Shephard Evangelical Lutheran Church in Palos Heights. She turned to me and asked with a completely deadpan face,” What are the odds that I can both register and vote in the next 10 minutes?”
I shrugged and directed her to the first of three tables set up for the three precincts assigned to this location. I noticed she held a handful of documents in one hand as she began to tell her story. The good people of the first precinct ran her driver’s license through a reader and directed her to the table of the precinct to which she belonged.
She started over with this new crew, this time producing a tax return, a utility bill, and some other documents I couldn’t see. Her plight, and the ticking clock, drew others from the poll workers’ team, all seemingly eager to get her registered in time to cast her vote before the clock struck 7 p.m. and the polls closed. They formed a small huddle around her as they worked away on her documents.
I found myself wondering why she had waited so long to do what most other voters had done weeks, months, and years before, namely register to vote. I wondered why she had waited until so late in the voting day to show up. Was she new in town? Working late? Had some sudden, very late catharsis occurred in her thought process? Had someone she cared about lit a fire under her? Had she just returned from out-of-town?
The level of activity in the polling place had picked up, not from voters, who were now mostly long gone, but from the anticipation of the volunteer poll workers who were eager to pack up and go home after a very long day. The sheer volume of tiny tasks required to end the voting day is amazing in its detail. Certain envelopes contain every conceivable result possible. Certain lists go to one office, other lists to different destinations. All the hardware and equipment needed to run the election need to be packed away in the large grey machines that will be picked up the next day. And the poll workers scurry to get it all done so they can finally end a twelve-to-fourteen-hour day.
I lost track of her until she again walked by my post, wearing an “I Voted” sticker on her jacket. She suddenly directed a beaming smile in my direction, as if to say, “Hey, this system really works.” I had to smile back at her air of confidence and gratitude for pulling off this last-minute feat of democratic privelidge. The Chief Election Judge closed and locked the doors right behind her, signally the end of the voting day.
And here’s the thing….those eager poll workers didn’t know how she was going to vote. They just wanted to make it possible for her. This little incident warmed my heart a bit. It quieted some of the rage I felt on January 6th, 2021, as rioters tore through our Capitol. It made me think that, yes, we are still a democracy.
So, for those who are still convinced that the 2020 election was stolen, here’s some free advice. Next election, volunteer to be an election judge, poll watcher, or some other role. Spend a day with your neighbors making this tedious miracle happen, and perhaps you will begin to appreciate how airtight is the voting system we enjoy in Illinois. If you are who you say you are, and your address is credible, you will get to cast your vote.
If enough believers in “The Big Lie” worked an election, we could move their misguided cause back to its last known address….on the fringes.
-Gen. Douglas MacArthur addressing a joint session of Congress upon his retirement.
(Author’s note: I wrote this story originally in 2016, and my memorable little encounter with the person featured in it seemed an already distant memory. Six years later, it seems even more distant, except in one important respect. The memories of the examples of leadership stay with you throughout your life; they shape your own behavior and actions as you try to emulate those qualities you came to admire in the superiors of your youth. God bless you General Mabry and Colonel Tkaczyk, and Lt. Col John Coruthers….I learned leadership from you.)
Fort McCoy sits in southwestern Wisconsin, roughly some forty miles east of La Crosse and the Mississippi River and nestled between the small towns of Tomah and Sparta. Today, and for the last dozen or so years, it has been the jumping off point for thousands of young soldiers on their way to Iraq or Afghanistan, although this activity has been greatly reduced. (After the U.S. quit Afghanistan, some 12,000 Afghans briefly lived there until moved to other locations.) Units would receive “acclimation” training prior to being inserted into the Mideast. When it was time to go, the presence of nearby Volk Field made it ideal for quickly deploying whole units without a big city airport scene, crying spouses, screaming children, and the press that would go with it.
It wasn’t always this way. For many years it was only Camp McCoy and the site of Annual Training, the two-week active duty obligation for National Guard units from around the Midwest. Many a vacationer can recall, and none too fondly, getting caught behind endless military convoys on their way to or from McCoy. “Summer Camp” as it was called by some, could be two weeks of fairly tiring training to keep a military unit in reasonable shape, or it could be a two-week beer blast, for the less motivated or well-led units. My unit, the 129th Infantry was squarely in the former category, thanks in no small measure to the dedication and “hands on” leadership of our commander, Lt. Col. Bernie Tkaczyk (pronounced Ta-check). He was a Korean War combat vet and he brought passion to his posting. Officers and noncoms (sergeants) who didn’t like to work or provide leadership tended to find other places to billet than under Bernie. (Col. Bernie Tkaczyk passed in 2018 and rests in the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Illinois, ironically in the same area we trained for years).
In July, 1979 I found myself in a remote corner of this post, with about 60 soldiers and noncoms reporting to me, as well as a virtual wooden wall of some 600 high explosive 81 mm rounds and about 300 illumination rounds to be disposed of in a short period of time. You disposed of them by dropping them, one at a time, down the barrel of an 81mm mortar gun tube and firing them at targets about 3,000 meters downrange, mostly old tank hulls, and, on occasion, the unlucky lost cow. (Note: No animals were harmed in the writing of this story).
That quantity of rounds might not sound too impressive, but when you factor in that each fire mission consumed only about 12 rounds and took about an hour (much less in real world firing, but we were training soldiers here and it took time), well, you can do the math. The illumination rounds were for lighting up targets for other weapons (tanks, recoilless rifles) at night, lest we get too rested in our labors.
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I got there via a curious route, as do many who enter the military life. In 1971 I was entering my last semester at DePaul University, was engaged to the love of my life, had been accepted for student teaching, and was poised to begin adult life. We couldn’t wait for school to end and our lives to really begin.
There was, however, the little matter of the military draft and the specter of Vietnam, which hung over most young men’s heads like a cloud. By 1971, it was obvious to everyone that we were losing, or at least not willing to win anymore. Very few people wanted to go to Vietnam in 1971. (Author’s note: Looking back over the years, it is tragic to witness how many minds and bodies that war claimed, some many years after their return)
Up until then, the deal was simple: go to college and get a student deferment, which meant you couldn’t be drafted until after you graduated and, hey, it might be over by then. Don’t go to college and you would likely be drafted within a year of high school. But that year, in an effort to level the playing field, the government ended the student deferment and instituted a lottery. I drew number 161, not immediate draft bait, but not safe either. I decided I would join the Air Force, probably having heard too many of my mother’s stories of her first husband and my brother’s father, Lt. Gilbert J. Finn, a B-29 bombardier killed over Japan near the war’s end.
After a series of written tests, eye tests, physical tests, and tests of my patience, I was informed that I would be accepted into the navigator program for B-52 bombers. I was told, and subsequently told Maureen, that our first four years of marriage were going to be in the military. She didn’t return my engagement ring, so that became the plan. When it came time to sign on the dotted line, the contract read six years, not four. I informed the officer of the obvious error, and he informed me that the government was going to invest a lot of money in my training so that I could guide a big airplane full of bombs to the right place and drop them on people we didn’t like, and that I should sign the contract. The meeting did not end well.
So, I found an Army Reserve unit on the Southeast side, did my basic and advanced training in scenic Fort Polk, Louisiana, and returned home. About a year later, my commander asked me if I wanted to become an officer, as a few slots had opened up in the Illinois Guard OCS program. I guess I was flattered to be asked, but that soon wore off as I discovered what a rigorous program it was. We started with about 90 candidates and graduated less than 50. I was one.
The one-year OCS Program, as rigorous as it was, was also the most exciting military experience I had encountered. Helicopters, radios, weapons that went boom, C-rations and all that. It was the infantry, and I was young. After a year back in the reserve unit, I applied for a transfer to the Guard, and was assigned to “ A” company of the 129th, in Elgin, Illinois. The Major who assigned me told me I was to be a mortar platoon leader. I told him I had never even seen a mortar and he looked at me as one might look upon an addled child. He suggested I get up to speed.
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It was a hot, humid summer day, and my crews were hard at it, sending fire mission after fire mission volleying out into the impact zone. Far behind us, larger guns were firing their ordnance into the same zone, and you could hear the big shells whooshing overhead on their way deeper into the “impact area”. It took a little getting used to.
It was about noon and getting hotter still. I told my platoon sergeant to pass the word on the sound powered phones to stand down and secure the guns, find some shade, and get some lunch. The troops didn’t need to be told twice.
A few minutes later the sound of a jeep engine could be heard coming our way. “”Visitor,” I thought, “maybe brass”. Within a short time, the jeep rounded a turn, and we could see it was a solitary soldier at the wheel, fatigues, soft cap, and no helmet, or field gear, or weapon. I knew it couldn’t be anyone important, so I returned to some form I had been filling out.
The jeep pulled up a few yards from me and the driver got out. He has an old man, short, very spare in build, wire glasses, and he smiled as he saw me. He had the two stars of a Major General on his collar.
Now there is one immutable law of the military….generals do not travel without a small circus in their wake. In that circus will be vehicles, aides, and an attractive female solider as a personal assistant and a few “strap hangers”, probably your own staff officers tagging along to mitigate what you, as an idiot lieutenant, might say or do to embarrass the unit.
His nametag read “Mabry” and he extended his hand but pulled it back momentarily to return my salute that I launched as, half in shock, I took in his rank. My platoon sergeant, having learned long ago that nothing good happens around generals, began to slink around the side of the field tent we were using to run operations. “You in charge, Lieutenant”? the General asked in a southern drawl. I told him I was, and asked him if there was anything I could help him with. I wondered if he was lost.
“Tell me what you’re doing here today”, he said in a sincere way, not like the cross-examination fashion to which I had become accustomed from previous visits by various ranking officers. I explained that this was a three-day live fire exercise.
He told me that he had been a solider since the beginning of World War II, had served a lot of years, and that he planned to retire from the service in few weeks. He wanted to spend his last few days around soldiers, and he asked me if I would mind if he talked to my soldiers by himself. Inasmuch as young lieutenants don’t disappoint Major Generals, I pointed out the line of gun crews, now consuming their C-rations and sweltering in the heat. He walked toward the first crew who, predictably, jumped to their feet as they saw the stars. He waved them off and told them to sit back down and joined them. I could see he was asking questions and appeared to be actually listening. Rare quality in a General. After a few such visits to the crews, he accepted a C-ration can from one of the men, took out his G.I. issue P38 can opener (soldiers usually wore their little can opener around their necks with their dogtags) and enjoyed some warm Del Monte peaches. You could see the men becoming impressed with his easy style. Ever more amazing.
He came back to his jeep, shook my hand, and complimented me on doing a good job and for having such fine troops under my command. He got in, smiled a sort of sad smile, put the jeep in gear and drove off into the dust. I wished him well, and cranked off my best OCS salute.
About forty minutes later the circus did appear, this time in the form of three jeeps carrying my battalion commander and most of the senior staff officers. They pulled up, jumped out and began grilling me about the General’s visit. It would seem that the good General had side-stepped convention and not made them aware of his presence. Had he done so, he couldn’t manage to do these sorts of informal visits.
Mostly, they wanted to know if I had said or done anything wrong, non-military, or just plain dumb. I told them it was mostly a non-event, although I was still impressed that he travelled alone. They informed me that he was not just anyone, but a recipient of the Medal of Honor. He never mentioned that to me or anyone else, I would later learn, during our visit.
Now in civilian life, he would be a hero maybe on the Memorial Day or the Fourth of July parade, but in the army, living Medal of Honor winners are big medicine. You get to be a certified hero 24/7. More incredible, they told me that he won it as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Hurtgen Forest during World War II. High ranking officers are mostly not in the thick of any kind of fight, so this guy must have been something very rare indeed. Al Gore had not invented the Internet in 1979, so I had to wait until I got home to look him up. You can find him easily today on Wikipedia. His full name was George Lafayette Mabry, Jr and he hailed from Sumter, South Carolina. Read his citation for The Medal and you’ll be impressed. Among other feats cited, he cleared an enemy minefield by walking through it and marking the mines. No, thank you. This was not someone you would want to piss off. (He passed in 1990 and is buried at Holy Cross Episcopal Church cemetery in Stateburg, South Carolina.)
I think back on that unusual day from time to time, on what McCoy was then, and what it is now. I think about the melancholy General Mabry closing out his long career, and just wishing to be with young soldiers once again in his twilight. And of all the young men and now women, the children of 9/11 who passed through McCoy on their way to their wars, and on their way to dangers most of us can’t even imagine. For guys like me, McCoy was a two-week exercise that kept it real, but then you went back home. For the General, it was a long goodbye after so many years of service. For those kids on their way to the Mideast, it was the first step on a journey into the unknown.
Here’s to all those who went willingly or unwillingly to their war, a war either just or unjust, but they went. Patriots, all. And a few heroes thrown in as well.
It was in the late 1970’s and we were married about seven or eight years, when the parish priest asked my wife Maureen and I if we could help out with his weekend “Pre-Cana” conference. Would we, he asked, be the “Married Couple?”
Pre-Cana (as in the marriage feast in Cana where Jesus can’t disappoint his mom, and so turns urns of water into wine for the guests) was a program run by most parishes in Chicago as a prerequisite for a Catholic church wedding. The idea was to get the couple past the focus on the wedding day and honeymoon, and think about life together, beginning about the time you unpacked from the honeymoon and ending, well, hopefully, in that “death do us part” clause.
Pre-Cana programs lasted two days and consisted of a number of sessions in which couples would interact together on a question or issue, or consider a question separately and then report their feelings to their partner.
An example of a couple tackling a question together might be “How long do we want to wait to start a family? Do we even want a family?” An exercise to be started individually (boys in one room, girls in another), and then dealt with together might read like “List three things that you would like to see your partner change or eliminate from their character.”
Some of those little tasks could lead to a frank discussion between the soon-to-be partners. Some of them started disagreements. Sometimes there were tears. A few times, a partner would storm out.
Peppered into the program were films, talks from the priest, and little presentations by “experts” like us. The priest who recruited us explained that engaged couples tended to listen better to folks a few years older than themselves, than they did their parents. We were considered older, but still “cool.”
We were both teachers when we started out, and we knew just how fast kids could tune you out. If you began spouting platitudes and advice, “cool” young couple or not, they would switch you off within the first five minutes.
So, we decided to have a little fun and present ourselves as “Bill and Betty Happiness, the Perfect Married Couple.”
Our audience consisted of about eight couples who ran the gamut of most engaged couples in the 70’s. There were the Lovebirds, hands welded to each other’s, eyes continually locked. There were the Indifferents, both pretty sure they had all the answers, and letting you know with every gesture and glance that you were probably wasting their time. There were the Bickersons, getting a jump on disagreeing with each other in public prior to a lifetime together; also, the Parent-Child couple, the female usually playing Mom to Junior’s willingness to follow orders and avoid the burdens of conscious thought. And there were a few people so comfortably in love with each other that it was warmed your heart and brought a smile to your face.
We came onstage holding hands, sitting on stools next to each other and proceeded with our over-the-top rules for a long and happy marriage. The rules were a blend of our own experiences, some sincere beliefs, and some just good old-fashioned tips.
I can’t remember all of what we tried to sell them on that long-ago day, but here are few of the best ones……….
“You’re not that fascinating”
You’re young, you’re in love , but you don’t need to be in each other’s faces 24/7. Give each other some space. It gives your mutual love some fresh air and time to grow. Spend time on our own with others.
“Go to be bed mad.”
Somebody probably told you never to go to bed mad. They were wrong. Go to bed before you say those ugly things you don’t really mean. Things will look different in the morning when the anger cools.
“It’s your home, not his mother’s. Or her mother’s.”
Build your own nest your way.
“Money.”
Unless you are wealthy, and most people are not, don’t let money define your relationship. Agree on what you should spend your money on and don’t make a major purchase on your own.
“Kids”
Don’t let mom and dad order up some kids. Start your family when you are ready.
“Don’t ever run down our spouse in front of others. Ever.”
“You’re not the smartest person in the room.”
Ask your partner what she or he thinks.
Actually, our little act was well received by our young audience. We got some chuckles and a few laughs. Even the Bickserons stop sniping at each other. And, who knows, maybe they even listened.
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If you have been lucky enough to have your love by your side for fifty years, you are among the luckiest people in the world, as Barbara Streisand sung. To have your marriage grow as both of you become different people many times over is no small feat. To fall in love again and again with those different versions of you and your partner as they appear is rare indeed.
To move from being just you yourself to being one-half of a couple, through parenthood, careers, setbacks, losses, successes, illness, the happy magic of grandparenting, and more is, at the end of the day what marriage is. It begins with love and passion and grows into the deepest friendship most of us will ever know.
Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet was all the rage in the 1970’s; he could have been describing marriage when he wrote:
“And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”
I have so many happy memories from my childhood, memories that even after more than a few decades can still bring about an easy smile, or even an outright grin.
Memories of Christmas mornings with my brothers and sisters, trying with all our collective might not to descend upon a mountain of gifts in the living room, before the first light of day showed itself.
Memories of the last day of the schoolyear, with freedom beckoning, and endless summer days of baseball in the alley. Swimming in “batches” at Columbus Park, and getting to sleep on the back porch of the two-flat, the most coveted of berths in an age before air conditioning.
But there is one memory that come most easily and most often. The memory is seated in the annual family vacation, for many years in Sister Lakes, Michigan. Over the years my family rented cottages from two other families, who were also friends of my parents. In earlier years it was the Hayes Family on Little Crooked Lake. The cottage we rented had a name: Myrtle’s Place. In later years, and the more memorable years for me, we rented from the Clancy family on Round Lake, in a little group of family-owned cottages called Clancy’s Camp Geraldine.
A family with eight children leaving home for two, and sometimes three weeks, is quite an undertaking. The entire week before departure was filled with preparations including housecleaning, shopping, packing, prepping the fishing gear, tuning up the old Chevy; and then finally, on a magic Saturday morning, starting out.
In those days, the one-hundred-and-ten-mile trip took about five hours, given the partially built Interstate system, and stopping for breakfast at Ritter’s Restaurant in Stevensville. My boredom with the highway travel was like most kids’ travel boredom. “Are we there yet?” has been passed from one generation of kids to another. I am guessing that some bored Roman kid in the back of a chariot asked the same question.
My travel boredom suddenly dissipated, and my excitement began to kick in when we finally reached the exit for Napier Avenue, 12 miles out from Sister Lakes. It elevated once again when we passed The Pearl Grange, eight miles out. Then another jump at Spinks Corner, six miles out. I could barely contain myself as we crossed Pipestone Road, three miles out.
It was coming. The last landmark of mounting excitement was the Sister Lake Laundromat, about a mile from the crest of the last hill. And as the old Chevy lumbered up to the top of that last hill, you held your breath as the vista as last appeared below you.
The lake in all its sunlit glory burst into view, framed by an ageless red barn on one side and migrant workers toiling on the strawberry crop on the other. You could make out a little ice cream and bait shop on the shore called Dill’s Landing. And your young heart began to sing, because this was the beginning of vacation, that wonderful time of swimming and fishing and hiking and fireworks and that most precious gift to little boys: freedom.
To be honest, years later, when it was my turn to drive the car as a husband and father, I had to try to conceal the same youthful glee when we crested that same hill. I wondered whether those young faces in the back seat felt like I did, both when I was their age, and in the moment.
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Since St. Patrick’s Day, our lives have been defined, and limited, by Covid-19. We are isolated, lonely, often bored, seeking new ways to fill our days. Some of us are out of work, some of us are hungry, and some of us are broke, and in need of help.
We survived the spring, began to struggle free in the summer to enjoy tented restaurants, virtual baseball on television, and smaller family get togethers. But in the absence of any clear and competent national leadership, the message was garbled. Travelling through Door County Wisconsin in July, my wife and I dined in some great restaurants with tight safety protocols in place. We felt safe. A few days later, in Sheboygan County, we found ourselves in the Wild West. Mask-less serving staff chatting you up a few inches form your face, crowded bars, groups of twenty at large tables. We left early for Chicago.
About half the country, much of it rural or politically oriented, turned its collective back on the scientists. Wearing a mask marked the team you played for, and probably tagged you as a regular viewer of FOX or CNN/MSNBC. A motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, bare-faced Trump rallies, ultra-right-wing marches, and countless weddings, parties, defiant restaurant owners, and small-town mayors all called it a hoax. Throw in a few state governors in denial and the gun was loaded, cocked, and ready to fire.
Now the gun has fired, is firing still. We got pretty much what Dr. Fauci and company told us we would get. We will likely see 500,000 dead by April 1st, 2021. Almost unthinkable.
Even the most delusional of governors are now back-peddling, trying to put the genie back in the bottle; but the genie has escaped and is doing her worst, and still the deniers persist. Recently, Frank Bruni, a New York Times writer, echoed the words of a front-line nurse in South Dakota, perhaps the epicenter of delusional pandemic behavior. In describing her most adamantly delusional COVID-19 patients, she said, “They shout at us that they don’t have COVID and berate us for wearing our PPE because it’s a hoax. Only when we intubate them, do they stop shouting.” Powerful stuff.
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In these last few weeks, I sense a slight movement upward, and perhaps toward the crest of a different kind of hill. The void in national leadership will soon end and adults are already filing into the room. Several promising vaccines are here, with more coming. The deniers will continue to deny, and surely many will resist the chance to get inoculated. But most of us will jump at it.
The crest of this new hill beckons and when we complete the first round of vaccinations, it will feel like the Napier Avenue exit, twelve miles out. And when the other vaccines come online, it will feel like The Pearl Grange, eight miles out. And when the schools reopen, it will feel like Spinks Corner was reached, six miles out. Travel plans will feel a lot like reaching Pipestone Road, and when the pandemic drops off the front page, we will have almost crested the hill, right near the laundromat.
And what is on the other side? What great prize awaits us?
In a word, touch. What we long for more than anything is to touch again. The touch of a simple hug or handshake. The touch of a kiss. The touch of being in a crowded room, a restaurant, a theatre, a concert. The touch of a crowded ballpark, the touch of family gatherings.
We will regain the touch of human interactions in actual meetings in a room, absent the lack of tone of Zoom meetings and email strings.
We will revel in chatting with folks at an adjacent restaurant table, mask-less and carefree. And we will tip more easily and more generously, remembering how these workers took the brunt of the pandemic.
We will trade baseball talk with total strangers at a ball game, as we pass their beers down to them from the beer vendor in the aisle, and then pass their money back to the vendor. A remarkable exercise in trust.
Our kids will feel the touch of social warmth and comfort and happiness of a well taught classroom. That is, once they get over having again to get up early for school.
We will be less aloof in crowded elevators, unafraid to make eye contact, or trade light commentary, simply happy to be in a crowded elevator.
We will take in the joy of a family gathering, perhaps less eager to make a point, or exercise on old complaint. Happily content to be together to mark a birthday, a graduation, or a holiday. We will not have to hide our private worries about where or who you might have been too close to in the week before.
We will rediscover the simple joys of entertaining and showing off our homes at their best. We will put out the folding chairs, the fold-up tables, the extra dishes and flatware, and the serving platters that have sat too idle for too long.
Our medical professionals will begin to relax, knowing they met the challenge. They will slowly leave behind the triage nightmare and they can return to the much more rewarding business of restoring health.
We will see ambulances go by, and silently thank those paramedics who served throughout this time.
We will sit in Millennium Park and many other parks, and take in a concert, grateful for shared summer nights and the joy of music.
We will smile at each other as we walk our streets and pathways, silently acknowledging the simple privilege of not having to move to the other side of the road as we pass.
And those of us who are church-goers will gladly extend a hand in peace to those around us.
We are not at the crest of the hill yet, not by any means. But we are slowly moving up that hill. We will soon begin to feel our hearts glow again, slowly at first, and then increasing, as we pass the landmarks of isolation and move toward the joys of touch. It will be a Happy New Year.
I have been a dad for so long now, I sometimes forget that I was once a son. That’s seems like a long time ago, and it was, but the memories of being my father’s son are a bit complicated, because in a very real sense I and my siblings had two versions of the same father.
Tom Wogan, my Dad, and my namesake was born in 1917, the second of two boys. His father would die in May of 1918, just prior to the Spanish Flu pandemic. He died of tuberculosis, as did many Irish immigrants. My dad never really had a father of his own, and I think in a way it made him stronger, but also gave him no model on which to build his own notion of fatherhood. He was first a and foremost a Chicago Fireman, but he had delivered ice, driven cabs, 18-wheeler trucks, and near the end of his life funeral hearses. He worked two jobs almost his entire life to care for his family.
I remember him in many ways from back then………….
I think my earliest memory of my dad was in Lake Delevan, Wisconsin when I was about four years old. We rented a cottage called “The Lazy Daze” and our little family (then probably 6 or 7 in number, including the parents) was on one of our annual vacations at a lake. My parents came in from a party and they were laughing and happy and they brought in red helium balloons which fascinated me. He chucked me on the cheek as I lay in my bunk bed and handed me one of the balloons. The string was still in my hand the next morning, but the balloon had expired and was hanging below my bunk.
I see him tip-toeing around the second-floor window ledges of our two flat, changing out the storm windows with the grace, but certainly not the build, of a ballerina, while the neighbors watched in horrified anticipation that he would fall. He never did.
I see him on the golf course in his white t-shirt and black slacks (shorts were for sissies, I was told), taking a swing at a golf ball. He would stride up to it, with his short, square frame, plant his feet, take no practice swing, and then suddenly attack the ball like it owed him money. Sometimes a great shot, sometime not so much, but he loved the game, and he liked having me along for nine holes. And I have been trying to get him out of my own backswing for many, many years.
Though short, he was tough. Once I witnessed a verbal argument between my Dad and a fellow I considered to be a war hero, as he had served in the 82nd Airborne in the war. The guy was clearly intimidated and, though nothing came of the argument, I was confused. My Uncle Jimmy straightened me out. “Your Dad is a tough guy, Tommy,” he told me. It was like a revelation.
My Dad had no fuse. He could be angered quickly and was not averse to throwing a punch. I think my younger brother Bill, who we lost in 1979, had the same mercurial makeup. I know I don’t. And yet he made friends easily and could be quite outgoing. Over a two-week vacation in Wisconsin, he started a lifelong friendship with a local bar owner named Gus Oberg. His many friends were lifelong companions from his youth and playing baseball.
He could be loving in his own way. When I was seven or eight, I screwed up and lied about it. We were vacationing on Lake Michigan and the lake was well below the bluff on which the cottage lay. He asked me to run up and bring down a tackle box, which I did, but I left the tailgate window up and open on the 1955 Chevy wagon. A thunderstorm came up and the back of the car got soaked.
He asked me if I did it and I denied it, knowing full well that it could only be me, as everyone else was down at the beach. For two days I denied it and he would not budge. I was grounded in the cottage. Even my mom started to lobby for my case, but he was adamant. Finally, I tearfully broke down and confessed. He took my by the shoulders and said, “OK, I just wanted you to tell the truth. Now go play’”. In all these years, I have never forgotten that lesson of tough love.
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In the summer of 1960, Dad had a cerebral accident, or stroke, one scary morning in Sister Lakes. We kids were scattered to other families for a few weeks before he was brought home. I next saw him in a wheelchair when he returned from the hospital. He looked smaller, tired, and a bit confused. I was afraid to go near him because he did not look like the robust, outgoing Dad I knew from just weeks before. And I was ten.
He was the same Dad, but different. He still worked full time, but he was more vulnerable, more emotional, at times, less able to control his anger. But in this altered persona was a Dad who learned to accept little acts of kindness, to let some of us do the heavy lifting now and then. He could also be sentimental. When the 1967 snowstorm hit Chicago, my brothers and I dug out the alley to allow him to get his car into the garage. He was so proud of us he teared up, something you would have not seen before the stroke.
And then there was the infamous incident in which my mother’s typewritten manuscript caught a gust of wind while on our way to Michigan. It was her story of her first marriage to 1Lt. Gilbert Finn, killed in 1945 over Japan. For reasons I never understood, other than his temper issues, he wouldn’t stop the car, claiming it was unsafe. My mother was distraught, seeing hours of work on her trusty Underwood typewriter suddenly gone. My sister Maureen sent her young husband Pat on an unsuccessful recovery mission of some 50 miles roundtrip, but the manuscript had scattered to the winds.
(Authors’ note: Mom rewrote her story in a very moving letter to her late husband on what would have been his 75th birthday. Syndicated columnist Bob Greene ran it in place of his own column one day and it appeared in most major newspapers.)
Once we drove to the south side to see Dad’s cousins, the Becks. Leaving the Dan Ryan at 99th Street, an older, somewhat frail gentlemen behind us misjudged his stopping distance and bumped our car. Dad blew up, and started out the driver’s side door, murder in his eye. My mother nudged me, then at age 17, to stop him, which I did, but barely.
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The medical world can do so much more for stroke victims today than they could in 1960. By 1968, the stroke caught up with Dad, and one July night, he fell in the living room, gone within a few minutes.
By far the more enduring image of my dad comes from those later years. I see him with his coal black hair, his olive skin, looking more Italian than Irish. I see him at the bar in Wallace’s Tavern at Adams and Laramie in his dark trousers, white t-shirt, smoking his Salem cigarette, and drinking his cold Budweiser. He is shooting the breeze with one of the other regulars, while being served by Ding Dong, the bartender. (See my article on “Joints” to learn more about” Ding Dong.”)
I see him relaxing on the bench outside the cottage at Sister Lakes or hanging on the street level patio with the other “Camp Geraldine” guests, firemen and policemen all. I see him at his firehouse, polishing the chaplain’s “buggy” as the car was called. I see him surprising my mom and all the guests of the “Fireman’s Club” by coming out of the bedroom costumed as “Reginald Van Gleason,” a Jackie Gleeson character of that time.
Both versions of Dad had this in common: He loved his wife, loved and was very proud of his family, was a courageous firefighter, a tireless provider, and a good man. Was he perfect? No, but then who perfects fatherhood? Certainly not me.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
Some Dads stories……………………
He was stationed at a firehouse at Pulaski and Wilcox, known as “95’s House.” Workmen were replacing the windows along the side of the firehouse and, as it happened, the new windows were longer than the opening for the old ones. The workmen were chipping out bricks at the base of the old windowframe, when a passerby asked his firefighter buddy, Jim McInerny, why they were doing that. Jim, a consummate wise-guy fireman, replied, within earshot of my Dad,” So Wogan can see out.” My Dad was not pleased.
He played football at Saint Philip High School at Jackson and Kedzie and once told me the story of how the coach told him to “take care” of his opposite number on the gridiron. So on the next play, as the ball was snapped, he stood up and punched the hapless player in the nose. He was ejected from the game, but was convinced he did what his coach asked.
He had a burn scar on his left thigh, roughly the size of a dinner plate. I thought he got it from a fire when I was little, but my mother told me the story of what really happened. My Dad and his only sibling, Uncle Bill, once hung around with a kid they called “Terrible Tommy Finn.” He was terrible indeed, pouring gasoline on my Dad’s pants, and causing the burn, tricking Uncle Bill into looking into an open fuel cannister and then tossing a match in afterward, burning Bills face. His finale involved accidently killing some poor guy on a hunting trip by firing a shotgun as the victim slept on a couch.
Cars were important to him and when I earned my driver’s license, we had a lot of fights. I once asked a girl to a dance and we had a three-day running battle over my borrowing the 1963 Pontiac Catalina. My mom finally got him to relent, but the next day when he discovered a pack of Marlboro cigarettes on the front seat (mine), he came upstairs like Christ into the temple and my mom had to calm him down again. This from Mr. two-packs a day of Salems.
He had a sense of the layout of Chicago that would rival Google Maps. In the days when he drove the Fire Department Chaplain, Monsignor William Gorman, they would be on their way to a fire. The good Monsignor, who had no sense of direction, telling him where to turn. And Dad was not able to correct the obvious errors. Invariably, they would be lost, and Monsignor would say “Well, Tom, we made a mistake. “
In his last years, while driving funeral livery, which understandably is day-to-day work, he was always happy to get “a trip” as he referred to a funeral assignment. The calls usually came in around dinnertime and he had given a private phone line to his network of funeral directors. We quickly named it the “deadline.” Unfortunately, my sister Rita also gave the number to her friends. One evening, as the phone rang and he jumped from the table, happy to have work for the next day, the caller asked for Rita. Everyone ran for cover.
The glass suddenly shattered outward in the big window of the General Post Office, known to the locals as the GPO. Armed men, many wearing the yellow armband of Irish Volunteers, others in various military uniforms, had used their rifle butts to announce their arrival. It was the first warlike sound made, the first of many, in what would become known throughout the world as the Easter Rising. Shortly thereafter, a uniformed man by the name of Padraig Pearse came out to read a Proclamation to the confused and somewhat rattled crowds of passersby. He announced the birth of a new nation, the Republic of Ireland, free of the tyranny of Great Britain and determined to chart its own course among the other nations of the world. Later that day, they would use captured wireless equipment in the GPO to send out what would become the very first radio broadcast the world had ever heard: their Proclamation in Morse Code. It was Monday, April 24, 1916. Easter Monday.
Great Britain, already immersed in the Great War, and with a large standing army, acted swiftly to put down the rebellion. It poured thousands of troops across the Irish Sea and into Dublin, supported by artillery which was trained on the buildings and streets of central Dublin. Their gunboats navigated part of the River Liffey and blew apart other fortified positions of the Irish rebels. By April 29th, Dublin mostly in ruins, it was over, and the rebels surrendered.
The Rising might well have ended there, except for the arrogance of the local British Commander, Gen. John Maxwell, who chose to hold trials and execute fifteen of the leaders, one by one, over a period of several weeks. Each volley of shots echoed louder and louder in the souls of the Irish people, and by mid-May, the Rising had matured into the full anger of the Irish Rebellion, with fighting raging across the soon-to-be nation. ——————– We were just about recovered from the flight from O’Hare to Dublin, having napped and showered. Our mother was in a hospital in Muncie, Indiana, scheduled for a routine gall bladder procedure earlier that day and, once we are all together in our room, my sisters urged me to call and see if we could talk to her. I had arranged to call my Muncie based sister-in-law and my brother, who I guessed were bedside around then, and my sister-in-law answered on the first ring. The tremble in her voice hinted my worst fears.
Our mother was gone. My wife saw the shock on my face as I absorbed the tearful words from the other side of the ocean. As I stammered what I heard to the others gathering in our room, the gaiety of a joyful family reunion spiraled down into a chaos of disbelief, bewilderment, a hundred questions. The next few days were a blur of last minute travel arrangements, tearful phone calls and a coming home to be all together. It was Monday, April 21st, 2003. Easter Monday. ——————- Those two Easter Mondays, separated by some 87 years, somehow mark both the close proximity and the great distances between Ireland and America. They stand out in my mind as signposts in the timeline of my life and the lives of my ancestors. One marked the reasons my Irish family emigrated to America and the other marks the passing of a person so significant in our family’s return to Ireland.
There are millions of American families who can trace their origins to Ireland. Between 1846 and 1950, more than 6 million emigrated. Among them were three of my four grandparents, and the parents of my remaining grandmother, Theresa Oates. It didn’t take them long to establish themselves, get the jobs, start families, buy homes, and build neighborhoods.
People don’t emigrate from countries where life is good. When there is money in your pocket, food on the table, and opportunities to better yourself, people stay put. Take any one of them away and they will head for the door. The tyranny of British rule, the inability of an Irishman to own land within his own country, the failure of crops, particularly the sustaining potato, and a general sense of futility drove millions to the ports of Queenstown (now Cobh), Dublin, Belfast, and Liverpool.
They didn’t so much move as they were pushed to their new destination and new hope 4,000 mile to the west, in the United States. Most of them never thought they would return and most didn’t. Their voyage was long and difficult. I can remember asking my Grandmother Wogan several times if she would ever go back to Ireland, even pointing to the planes flying over our home in Chicago. In her mind, those planes didn’t go to Ireland. —————
But where most Irish-American families look on Ireland as their distant origin or maybe just a nice place to visit, my family went in a different direction. In 1977, my sister Mary Ann and her husband Jim Heneghan made the decision to move their small family from a bungalow on New England Street in northwest Chicago back to Jim’s home in the Partry Mountains. His village was Tourmakedy in County Mayo, a dozen or so miles from Westport or Castlebar. They had several reasons for considering such a move, but chief among them was the health of Jim’s parents who were ageing and beginning to fail in health; most of his siblings were here in Chicago.
Most of my siblings were in some process of starting their own families, as was I, so I recall we took the news of the move with some surprise, thinking it temporary at best. I recall helping to load a large shipping box that was dropped by a crane truck in their back yard. We loaded the box with their furnishings and tied it all down for travel by ship. Then they packed their bags, scooped up their young son JJ and headed to the airport. At the last minute, Jim received news on his U.S. citizenship, which meant he would have to follow Mary Ann about a week later. So my sister took the step into this unknown new life with just herself and her son.
She had been to Ireland once before, following her high school graduation, when she vacationed there with her cousin, so the culture was not entirely new to her. What she found upon arrival in this fairly remote part of Ireland, was a badly neglected house and farm, and two people very much in need of assistance. She set about the business of turning things around. Tapping into her bottomless supply of humor and wit, she dubbed her new location “Shangri-La” from the movie about a magical, mythical kingdom.
And so she settled into her new life, adding three more children to her family, and was joined a year or so later by another sister, Terese. “Tassi” as named by our nickname-addicted mother, initially worked in a nearby shirt factory, and in time met Eddie, her future husband, and started her own family of six. Their two homes are about a mile apart from each other.
The Ireland of the late 1970’s would be very different from the Ireland today. When my brother Bill was killed in a car accident in 1979, we had to break the tragic news to my sisters at the local pub which had the only phone available. They knew that a call from America to the pub was bad news. Mary Ann, nicknamed “Minnie” by our mother, could not leave her young family and was herself expecting. Tassi, still single at that point, came home for the funeral. I remember at the time feeling that my sisters lived in a very distant land.
It was later that summer that we pooled our funds to buy our mother a plane ticket to stay a few months with her daughters. We didn’t know it then, but that trip would in great measure define the remaining 25 years of her life. Mom spent at least two to three months each year in Ireland, growing strong bonds with her children and grandchildren in both nations. She came to prefer the spring, the time of “lambing” when the baby lambs were born. She enjoyed the backbreaking work of pulling the sod from the bog, then critical for winter fuel. She brought with her bags and bags of delicacies not then available in Ireland, like Hershey’s Kisses and, most especially, Duncan Hines cake mixes. She was gregarious by nature, so she made friends all through the area in and around my sisters’ homes. She embraced her life in Ireland every bit as much as she embraced her life in Chicago.
And over the years, Chicago and County Mayo go closer and closer to each other. By the time my wife and I could manage to travel, Ireland was much closer and much more within financial reach. Consider that very first ticket we bought my mom in 1979. That $600 would have felt like $2,300 today, according to economic scales. And yet today you can fly there for roughly the same $600, some 40 years later.
———– Without that long ago Easter Rising in 1916, no one today would consider making Ireland their new home. The country that emerged from “The Rising” on Easter Monday was a long time coming, but by the 1960’s could claim its own destiny, its own economy, and the tides of emigration slowly began to recede. And from 1979 until 2002, our mother’s annual trek to Ireland prompted us to renew the family ties with our own travel and we did so more than eight or ten times until her passing on Easter Monday, 2003. The distance between Ireland and America shrank from several weeks at sea to 7 or 8 hours in the air. ————–
Last June, I stood in front of the General Post Office in Dublin with my wife, my children and their spouses, and our five grandsons. The GPO is now both a functioning post office as well as a museum to the cost of Ireland’s freedom. My mind was filled with thoughts, memories, and emotions.
I thought of those fifteen martyrs to their cause. I thought of my sister Minnie’s late father-in-law, James Heneghan, Sr., an Irish rebel who fought in County Mayo. I recalled my sister describing how she and the women of the village prepared his body for the funeral at his death years later. I thought how different that experience must have been for her, growing up in Chicago. I thought of my mother’s many visits that slowly closed the distance between the two countries. I thought of the sacrifices and hardship that went into forming an Ireland where Americans would return and make their lives and raise their families. Mostly, I felt a quiet pride and a sense of being blessed in being there with our little band of twelve.
My grandsons took their first “crossing” in stride, not at all impressed by the miracle of flight, but very much into the history of this new city. A few days later, when we reached my sisters’ farms, they dove out of the cars and ran headlong into the fields to see the lambs and bullocks up close. In that moment the distance between the two countries seemed to disappear altogether.
I guess I will always be a little haunted by Easter Mondays, but it’s a good thing to be a little haunted at times.
There is a classic Mel Brooks scene in the History of the World movie where Brooks plays Moses coming down from the mountain. He went to a lot of trouble to capture the “Charlton Heston” Moses look, right down to the lighting, the garb, the mountain backdrop, and the long flowing beard. And he is holding three tablets instead of two. As he appears to the Chosen People, he announces to all that “The Lord, the Lord Jehovah, has given onto you these Fifteen” (and, of course, drops one of the tablets which breaks into a hundred pieces, and with his classic timing says)…”these Ten Commandments!” Great stuff!
The original Ten Commandments covers a lot of ground for mere mortals like us, and they formed a good deal of what ultimately became our civil laws. In case you forgot them from Sunday school or religion class, here they are again:
I am the Lord thy God! Thou shalt have no other Gods but me!
Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain!
Thou shalt keep the Sabbath Day holy!
Thou shalt honor thy father and mother!
Thou shalt not kill!
Thou shalt not commit adultery!
Thou shalt not steal!
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor!
Do not let thyself lust after thy neighbor’s wife!
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, nor his farm, nor his cattle, nor anything that is his!
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With the first three, God made sure of his own interests: One God to a customer, no false images, don’t talk bad about Me, and give Me my one day a week. Old Jehovah must have been feeling a bit insecure that day.
He gave a nod to Mom and Dad with the fourth one, although He Himself never had parents. Guess he felt a little guilty about rousting Adam and Eve from paradise.
And the last six are don’ts: don’t murder anyone, don’t screw around, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t go lusting after your neighbor’s hot little wife, and don’t covet thy neighbor’s bigger home, farm, cows, BMW, or anything else he owns and you don’t.
But the Brooks movie got me thinking. What would those missing five commandments have been? The first ten already touch on all the biggies, the stuff you might go to jail for, cause a divorce, get you shot, or maybe promise you a one-way ticket to Gehenna after your death. Did he really cover all the ground?
So rather than leave you wondering, here are my choices for those missing Five Commandments, but I offer them for your consideration in three flavors: The Heavies, The Regulars and The Lights. After all, I’m no Jehovah, and besides, he covered all the really hard stuff with his first ten.
The Heavies:
If thou should become a leader, remember that the best leaders are servants to those they lead.
Thou shall try to find someone in this world to love more than yourself. You’ll like it.
Do some good for someone, or a lot of someones, if you can.
Tolerate.
Though shalt not hold a grudge forever.
The Regulars:
Thou shalt utter more sentences that end in question marks than in exclamation points.
Thou shalt remember that thou is in charge of just thy life, not mine.
Thou shalt simply own thy possessions, rather than the other way around.
Thou shalt be generous and then keepeth thy mouth shut about how generous thou art.
Thou shalt remember that having a lot of money is nice, but it’s not a virtue.
The Lights:
Thou shalt remember that thou cannot put an old head on young shoulders. (Compliments to Deacon Bob Ryan on this one.)
Thou shalt not suck the air out of the room at a party.
Thou shalt not be afraid to over-tip thy server.
Thou shalt not worry about those things thou can’t fix.
Thou shalt not lose faith in thy team, no matter how bad they sucketh this year.
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So here is my open invitation to all of you…………….what would thou like to add to any or all of these lists? Feel free to reply to Comments!
The little 8 inch square red brick stone at my feet had etched into it the words:
“2nd Deputy Fire Marshal Paul H. Conners
October 8th, 1954”
The red brick stone was one of a few hundred in a seldom visited memorial to fallen Chicago firefighters and paramedics just south of McCormick Place, and really only accessible by bike or footpath along the lakefront. The stones are loosely arranged by date and the more recent names I remembered from newspaper accounts or in a few cases because I actually knew them once. Or they were part of my neighborhood or perhaps because members of my family had attended a benefit for their families.
But this stone touched something in my memory. A story my mother told me because my father, himself a firefighter, almost never told fire stories. At least not to his children. And he had been at some of the more famous blazes in Chicago history: the LaSalle Hotel fire, which claimed 61 lives, the Our Lady of Angels fire, which claimed 95 lives (92 of them children), and the Mickleberry Plant fire the same year he died, which claimed 4 firemen and injured scores more. That doesn’t even begin to include the countless fires that had no names, only addresses and memories that disturbed their sleep.
Actually, he did confide one to me, but it was more of an observation than a story. He had been driving the Chaplain, Msgr. William Gorman to a big apartment fire. The good monsignor, not a line officer, had no problems issuing orders to fireman on the scene, apparently, and he told my dad to check around the back of the building for signs of fire. The back of the four story building was a solid brick wall and my dad said he started down the alley, seeing no signs. He told me he had a bad feeling about it, a premonition perhaps, and he stopped and turned to quickly exit the alley on a dead run. The entire wall collapsed, a single brick near enough to knock his helmet off, smashing the bronze eagle that adorned the old leather helmets. I have that helmet, sans eagle, today.
This story, however, did not involve my dad, but his close friend Thomas ”Scotty” McNaughton. I met Scotty once a month, along with my brothers, when my dad drove us down to the old Fire Department Drill School, which stood where the Jane Byrne Interchange now stands. Scotty had been injured in a fire years before and had been given the duty of night watchman at the Drill School until he could take his pension. Scotty was also a barber on the side, and I suspect a better firefighter than a barber. He never asked you what kind of haircut you wanted because he only knew one kind. We sported chopped hairdos for quite a few years, but with eight kids, you cut your expenses where you can.
The old man would sing out something that sounded like ”Oat, Laddie” to let Scottie knew we were there. He was always glad to see us and he talked the whole time to my dad while he butchered our hair. I guess he appreciated the break in the watchman monotony.
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The death of a high ranking fire official would be front page news today. The newspaper account of Chief Conners’ death, however, ran deep in the paper, on page 37 of the Tribune on October 9th, 1954. A single column with a photo, it ran next to ads for Elgin watches and some classified ads. He died heroically, at age 60, after being on the job for 36 years at a fire he didn’t even need to be at. He had heard the calls over the radio and directed his driver to take him there.
The fire on October 8th was at the Streamline Cafeteria, 3648 Roosevelt. The restaurant was closed in observance of a Jewish holiday, so the fire had hours to build inside unnoticed. On the fourth floor, Chief Conners felt the floor giving way. He yelled at the three nearby firemen to get away. One of them, Scotty McNaughton, then 37, of Engine 95 (also my dad’s engine, but not his day to work) told the reporters that “Conners yelled get out quick and then he disappeared.” Three fireman, including Scotty, clutched hoses and were later pulled to safety, though injured. They found the Chief’s body after three pumpers drained the water from the basement some four hours later. That was Scotty’s last day as a working fireman due to his injuries. According to my mother, Scotty followed the pipes in the basement to get to safety, something he had learned in the coal mines of Scotland.
The last time I saw Scotty was many years later when he was retired and working at Brookfield Zoo. He was carrying buckets of water for the elephants that day and I don’t think he knew me.
—————-
We stood, feeling awkward and a bit uncomfortable, in the Council Chambers of City Hall, as my son in law, Kevin Durkin, and another fireman/paramedic were given citations for bravery. They were returning from an ambulance run one night and saw an apartment building on fire. Bailing out of their rig, they banged on doors to awaken and alert the occupants, all of whom escaped. I believe a policeman on the scene wrote it up and they were decorated for saving so many lives.
We are not used to being in the public glare and standing in and among people you see on television can be disconcerting. We endured, however, had our pictures taken with Kevin, who considered the whole event needless and way over the top, the mayor, some alderman types and Fire Department brass. It was, looking back, a proud family moment. I couldn’t help but think of the family link of fire service going back all of those years.
————–
As I left the memorial on the lakefront, two thoughts occurred to me. The first was the sheer number of stones engraved with the names of the fallen; more than a hundred. The second was the number of blank stones still waiting to be etched. Each one will someday mark the loss of a man or woman sworn to protect us and I pray that those stones will be etched as slowly as possible. But I know someday they will all be filled and they will need to add more stones after that.
They take risks every day and do their jobs and, like my father or Scotty or Kevin, mostly keep the scary stuff to themselves, but they know the danger is out there. There is honor in all honest work, but somehow those little red stones speak to an honor of a higher order.
The bright silver B-29 Superfortress was named “Dina Might” and featured on its fuselage a buxom girl in a swimsuit, sitting on a lit explosive. It shook and roared as it powered down the Tinian runway, its four big Wright R-3350 engines surging, as the biggest bomber in the world lifted off on its way to attack the Empire of Japan. In its bomb bay it carried more than a 14,000-pound bomb load, a destructive payload unthinkable even a few years before that. This day’s target would be the Aichi aircraft plant at Eitoku , near the city of Nagoya on Japan’s largest island of Honshu. Fourteen other sites were on the list as alternates. It was June 26, 1945 and the end of the war was less than 45 days away.
(Justfour miles away on the Island of Saipan, a young Army PFC from the 77th Division, recovering from his wounds incurred in the Okinawa campaign, was indulging in his favorite new pastime. PFC Marty Hawkins was from Chicago, and had also fought on Guam and Leyte, where he helped to take those islands from the Japanese Army. Now that his shrapnel wounds were healing, and lacking any military duties as a patient, he and a few buddies would find a shady spot, maybe grab a Coke, and watch the giant planes take off and land over on Tinian. The two islands were part of the Marianas Chain and the seasonal, dry sunny weather made for a tropical paradise. That was one of the reasons for building both the airstrips and the hospitals.)
“Dina Might” was lead bomber on this mission and was soon joined by 64 other Super Fortresses as it flew toward its target. Its captain was a young West Point graduate (and eventually a three star General) who had grown impatient with the bombing skills of his previous bombardier, and who had used his “West Point status” to get a new lead bombardier. Lead bombardiers were important: when they dropped their ordnance, everyone else followed. Success or failure of the whole mission hinged on this one man’s skills.
In the nose of the big plane was the new lead bombardier, 1st Lt Gilbert J. Finn, on his second mission with this crew. His previous 23 missions over Japan were with another crew, that one flying in a plane called “Big Boots” and captained by a big man, its namesake, Captain Art Tomes. Gil was a young husband and father, though he had yet to see his infant son. He had been flattered when the Group Commander recommended him for the lead bomber position, but was reluctant to leave his crew. He and Art talked it over and, largely because Gil had some ambitions to stay in the air service after the war, he moved to the new job.
—————–
Nose Art for “Dina Might”
As the Japanese coastline loomed the Flight Engineer was digging out the flak suits to distribute to the crew. All hell broke loose as the big plane crossed the coast. A Japanese fighter burst from a cloud, setting two of the four engines on fire with its cannon fire. Riding in the exposed Perspex nose, Lt. Finn was killed instantly on its first pass. Captain and crew struggled to gain control as other enemy fighters saw smoke and oil pouring from the plane and closed in for a kill. The crew got four fighters before the plane’s luck ran out and the electrical power was lost.
At 9,000 feet it was time for the ten survivors to bail out. The left gunner, crew chief, and other officers went from the bomb bay. The tail gunner made it through his hatch, pulled his ripcord and watched as his chute failed to open. He began to pull it out with his hands, only to find it riddled with bullets. It opened, but he hit the water with a tremendous impact, and somehow survived. The radar operator and the right gunner went from the rear escape hatch: their chutes were spotted and later reported by the others, but neither was ever seen again.
One other officer, a Major Carr, along for the ride to get his flight pay, moved Gil’s body, beyond help, to an area where he might be aided. He was last seen sitting on his parachute near Gil’s body. He never jumped. Thirty seconds after the crew got out, the big plane exploded. Within a few hours, submarines on picket duty had them safely on board. (Author’s note: This account was from a letter written by 1st LT Burton Coit, Flight Engineer on that doomed flight.)
Two months and two atomic bombs later, the war ended. Art Tomes and his remaining crew, PFC Marty Hawkins, and millions of other GI’s, airmen, marines, and sailors found their ways back home. Back to Chicago for Marty, where I would later become his son-in-law and friend; back to Minnesota and a career in commercial aviation for Art. They knew they were lucky to have made it, and they carried the fierce pride of having done their job, and done it well.
They were finished with their war, but the war wasn’t quite finished with them. Most spent years trying to make some sense out of it, to get answers that would never come, to wait for the nightmares to fade. Many tried to reconnect with the families of the lost to express their sorrow, and perhaps seek at least temporary release from the curious guilt one feels to have survived when the man next to you did not.
Gil’s widow, Rita Finn, shattered by the loss of her husband, went back to work as the crack secretary she was. Like so many other young war widows, she found love again after a few years. She married a young fireman named Tom, himself a widower with a child, and both forged a new life out of the ashes of the old. Her infant son, Gil, Jr., and Tom’s young daughter Maureen would become the start of a new family.
—————-
Gilbert J. Finn, Jr., the infant son now 55 years old, picked up the phone to hear Art Tomes’ voice. Art had been trying for years to locate Gil’s mother, Rita Finn (now Wogan), but was having no luck. In those “pre-internet” days, simply remarrying and changing your name could create a pretty big dead end for anyone trying to find you, particularly in a city the size of Chicago. Art had found Gil’s name, spelled exactly as his fathers’, in an Aurora, Illinois phone directory and gave it a try. And so a few weeks later, I found myself driving my mother and Gil to a house in Merrillville, Indiana, owned by Art’s daughter.
It was an uneasy ride for my mother and, I think, for Gil. We were about to reconnect with one of the last living persons his father had known, a man who had flown 23 missions with his dad. What would we learn, what would we say? How to begin?
As I pulled into the driveway, the big man, now old and a bit stooped but looking every inch the command pilot he once was, came out to greet us. He looked at me a bit confused. My brother and I look nothing alike; Gil has his father’s slight build and my genetic award was my father’s square one. He must have been wondering how Gil’s son could look so different than he expected. Once he saw Gil emerge from the other side of car, he smiled and went to him, draping him in a huge bear hug. I could see the tears forming at the ends of his closed eyes and I wondered if he was making good on a 55 year-old promise to hug Gil’s child if the worst happened. Then he saw my mother, whom he had met those many years ago when the crews trained together across Florida, Nebraska and Texas as they moved toward combat. They knew each other immediately, and both reached out their hands to each other. They didn’t say anything for a few moments, but both of their eyes were glistening. The silent flood of emotions was almost palpable.
They talked at the kitchen table for hours, Gil and I mostly listening. There were details and subtext to the story that we had never heard. Names of crewmen, the nature of that final mission, did this person survive, where does he live now? And then both Art and my mother did something extraordinary. They each produced a letter and gave it to each other. My mother’s letter was from Art, expressing his sorrow and relating the circumstances of that final deadly flight, as he knew them, and what the wartime censors would allow. It was written in 1945 in his classic cursive style. The letter Art produced was from my mother, dated a few weeks later, thanking him for letting her know the circumstances of Gil’s death. I could see the familiar feminine cursive style of her writing and the fragile paper and envelope. Both letters had the word “free” where a stamp should have been. The postal service didn’t charge for letters to servicemen during the war.
We began to wrap things up when Art made one final comment that still haunted him and in a way maybe haunted all of us. His gaze shifted to some unknown point in the distance and he said” I’ll never understand how a fine young man like Gil lost his life so many years ago, and I got to live out the rest of mine.”
—————–
Handwritten letters are rare now, at least as a common means of communicating. If I see one in my mail, I tend to open it first, I am that curious. We exist in a transient trivial world of texts, emails, Twitter feeds, and Facebook postings. Our written communications seldom outlive a single day.
The careful crafting of sentences and paragraphs and the framing of a message has fallen into disuse, as has the Palmer Method of cursive writing. Keyboarding, not handwriting is taught today in schools. But I still marvel at the enduring power of those two letters, the emotional commitment it must have taken to write them, and how, once written, they attained great value, something to be kept throughout the years.
Those letters that were exchanged that day somehow closed the circle surrounding this tragedy. More than 50 years they had both kept those letters, and neither could have foreseen a day such as this. Somehow, when they made their way back to their original authors, it was as if we could finally lay 1LT Gilbert J. Finn to rest. During the ride home I don’t think anyone said a word; we were each in a private, personal place. A place of remembrance, a place of solemn pride, maybe, at last, a place of peace.
“People tell me all the time how great these rules are and how they are gonna be hugely popular and just amazing”
-Source: Anonymous
I’ve had it with this election. And with Brexit, for that matter. 65 million people in that country just found out that almost all of the things they voted for will never happen. Jeez, Brits, we thought you were smarter than that.
The loonies are taking over and it appears that sanity and reason have taken a back seat. It’s all noise 24/7 now and most of it not very kind. For example, take that half lit jerk with a room temperature IQ at the end of the bar shooting off his mouth. He hasn’t picked up a newspaper (real or digital) in twenty years, he gets all of his news from Fox or some conservative radio demagogue, and he gets the same vote as me! I’m tired of having my well researched, well thought out and absolutely correct viewpoints and votes negated by some Algonquin Roundtable of knuckleheads. (Go Google that one, kids.)
Not anymore. I have a new voting system, one that respects your right to vote as guaranteed by the Constitution, but also adds or subtracts the weight of your vote based on your ability or willingness to reason things out and to tolerate divergent views. I’ll also factor in your general kindness or lack thereof toward people who don’t look like you or speak your language, and your sense of what’s right, or at least what should be right.
And whether or not I like you. As Spike Lee said, “Do the Right Thing”.
Rule #1: Everyone starts with 100 votes.
Rule # 2: I and I alone reserve the right to subtract your voting power based on any of the following:
If you get all your news from the same source every day, lose 50 votes.
If you don’t ask questions of anyone, ever, lose 75 votes.
If you repeat things newscasters say as if they were gospel, lose 50 votes.
If you deduct the tax from your dining bill before calculating your server’s tip, lose 60 votes.
If you believe Rush Limbaugh has ever told the truth, lose 99 votes.
If you think John Wayne was the world’s greatest actor, lose 75 votes.
If you are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty and don’t see the problem with that, lose 99 votes.
If you are a “merge weasel” while driving, lose 25 votes.
If you’re really good at it, you may regain those 25 votes.
If you are absolutely opposed to Affordable HealthCare and have no idea why, lose 75 votes.
If you have ever actually answered your cell phone in a theatre while the performance is underway, lose 75 votes.
If you still believe in trickle-down economics and make less than $100,000 per year, lose 50 votes.
If you drink wines like Barefoot or “Two Buck Chuck”, lose 50 votes
If you really think a wall across our southern border makes any sense, lose 99 votes.
If I find you offensive, lose 99 votes.
If you’re still not comfortable with a president who happens to be black, lose 75 votes.
If you’re wearing your hair as a comb-over, lose 65 votes.
If you are still trying to find a reason for voting for the “presumptive Republican nominee”, lose 75 votes.
If you are still working from a flip phone, lose 60 votes.
If you claim to hate Hillary, but can’t tell me why, lose 75 votes.
If you are still texting while driving, lose 0 votes. You won’t be here to vote in November, anyway.
If you want to arm all Americans to make us safer, lose 99 votes.
If you can’t parallel park a car, lose 20 votes.
If you lived through 2007 and still think we need less government oversight of business, lose 99 votes.
If I can’t picture you doing a belly laugh, lose 99 votes.
If you believe labor unions are the root of all evil, lose 99 votes.
If you have more than two body piercings, lose 50 votes.
If you have more than three tattoos, lose 50 votes
If you have both of the above, you may regain a single vote. Fair is fair.
If you haven’t read a book in the last twelve months, lose 50 votes.
If you believe people who are homosexual need to be cured, lose 99 votes.
If you really got into “Duck Dynasty”, lose 75 votes.
If you believe global warming is a hoax, lose 99 votes.
If you believe Saddam Hussein masterminded 9/11, lose 75 votes.
If I find you dull and unimaginative, lose 99 votes.
If your heart longs for the glory days of Ronald Reagan, lose 50 votes.
If you work for the TSA and scream at people, lose 30 votes. Your job sucks, but you don’t need to scream.
If you watch more than one reality show regularly, lose 25 votes.
If you own more than one gun, live in a safe neighborhood, and are not in law enforcement, into skeet or trap shooting, or hunting, lose 50 votes.
If you don’t care for my blog, lose 10 votes.
If you try to rewrite my blog for me, lose 99 votes.
God that felt good! Now share this with at least five people and you will receive lots of money in the mail within 30 days. From a guy in Nairobi, I think.
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