Tag: Gil

Gil, or Joe

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

This eulogy was written last year, shortly after my brother passed on July 16th, 2021.

Over these last few months, there were a lot of things I wanted to say to my brother, but his injuries and the progression of his illness made communication pretty difficult. As some of you may know, I try to do a bit of writing, so I thought perhaps I might put in a letter some of those things I wanted him to hear. With your permission, I would like to share that letter with all of you today. It starts like this……….

“Dear Joe,”

You know it still seems funny to be calling you Joe, considering I and all the other residents of 5347 Monroe Street called you “Gil” for twenty or so years. But you deserve the right to tweak you name and be addressed as you like. After all,  our  mother hung some pretty interesting nicknames on most of the children, and she didn’t ask for any permission. Names like Minnie, Binky, Pood, Soona and Tassi. So, Joe it is.   

I have a lot of good memories of you, Joe, but one that always makes me smile is those young years making plastic models in the converted coalbin in the basement . We made models of airplanes, jets , tanks, ships, cars, you name it. You were a better model maker than me. You had a stubborn streak that focused your attention on even the smallest detail. And you possessed patience, something I did not have a lot of. 

Among your better jobs was a model of the submarine U-505, familiar to all Chicagoans because the real one sits in a museum on the South Side. As it happened, we were studying WW II in 8th grade, with each student expected to do a small presentation. I needed your U-505 model for my turn and pleaded with you to let me borrow it. I ended up going to a higher court, our mother, and you reluctantly handed over the model. I placed it in a shoebox, surrounded it with tissue, and taped the box shut, awaiting my moment in the sun the next day.

When that moment arrived, I stood in front of my classmates, removed the top, carefully reached through the tissue, and extracted…., a porcelain statue of a ballerina, which you placed the night before. Yeah, you got me on that one, Joe.

But kids grow up, and I remember the day you left us to enlist in the Army. You were 18, looked a bit nervous, but determined to  enter this different world. When you came home a few months later, in uniform, you seemed much more confident, assured, and older.  And you had orders for some place called Viet Nam. We did not know much about Viet Nam in 1964, but our mother knew a war when she saw one.

A few weeks later, while in the Oakland Staging area in California, you were called out of a formation and handed new orders, this time for South Korea, where you served 18 months.

It was some 35 years later, at a family gathering, that our mother casually mentioned that it was she who had those orders changed. It  seems she had written Sen. Everett Dirksen, a powerful Illinois politician and she appealed under something called ‘The Sole Surviving Son” act. Due to your fathers’ death in WW II, you were exempt from serving in combat. We were dumbfounded to be sure, but I think she may have saved your life.

Like everyone, the path of your life could be altered by luck, both good and not so good luck. Surely, your luckiest day was that day you met Jeannine. Your love for each other over the years was evident to everyone who met you. Yours was a marriage that a friend of our once said was “a marriage one could envy.”  And to be sure, Jeannine’s caring for you throughout this long illness has been the definition of devotion.

Less lucky was the Parkinson’s diagnosis, but throughout the last 25 years, you met it with courage, a bit of that stubbornness, and even some humor. You staved it off as long as you could through swimming, exercise classes, and even boxing. And Jeannie was by your side.

You were a good husband, a good son, a good father figure, a good soldier, and a good friend to many. And though our last names were different, you were always our brother. God bless you, Joe.             

A Mother’s Quiet Act of Love

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

In 1963, my brother Gil was standing in formation at the Oakland Staging Area in California. This was the final stop on the way to Vietnam for countless thousands of young soldiers, and he assumed that his orders would take him there, along with all of those standing in the formation. He was eighteen, an enlisted Army volunteer, and had been trained in communications at Fort Gordon, Georgia after doing “basic” in Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was probably going to be assigned as a radio operator (RTO) in an infantry unit, which meant that he would be target number two, after the officer or sergeant leading the unit in the field.

Gil was really my half-brother, as his father, Gil, Sr., had been killed over Japan in June of 1945. My mother remarried in 1948 to my father, a young widower and single parent and father to my half-sister, Maureen. Six more children, including me, followed.

Gil, like his dad, was slightly built and about 5’6” with curly blondish hair. He kept his father’s last name, Finn, in part to honor his dad’s memory and sacrifice, but also because of the V.A.’s ever-changing rules and because my mother knew he would receive an insurance inheritance from the V.A. upon turning twenty one. A name change complicated that reward. The words “half-brother” or “half-sister” were never used in our house, anyway.

—-

Gil heard his name called out and took a step forward. Whoever called it out handed him new orders. He would be going to Korea, not Vietnam. He didn’t know why, and the Army isn’t given to long explanations, so off he went, returning a year and half later with some exotic stereo stuff and some cool silk suits and some great stories. But returning alive, unlike some 50,000 others.

A few years before my mother died, we were sitting at a party in my sister Rita’s back yard, when the talk somehow drifted to Vietnam. Someone talked about the “tunnel rats”, the slightly built G.I.’s who weaseled down Viet Cong tunnels to flush out the enemy. My mother, nursing her “highball”, (never more than two!) casually mentioned that that was why she had kept her son out of Vietnam. A bit cynically, I suppose, I asked her how she managed that.

She had read an article in Life Magazine on “tunnel rats” and figured her slightly-built son Gil would end up as one. She told us how she had researched the “sole surviving son” act, the same one that is the premise for the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, and that she had written her senator, who I believe was the legendary Everett Dirksen at the time. On the premise that Gil’s father had been killed in World War II, Gil was a sole surviving son, and therefore exempt from combat. The Senator had enough juice with the Army, and Gil got his orders changed.

We were astounded, and Gil most especially, who never knew why his name was called that day. She had kept this amazing story from all of us for some thirty five years before casually sharing it with us. A mother can show her love in countless ways, but I have never forgotten this quiet, determined act of love, nor the strength if took to actually pull it off; and then to be content for so many years to keep it to herself.

Happy Mother’ Day, Rita Wogan.