Tag: parents

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.

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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.

Reginald Van Gleason, III and The Fireman’s Club

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

If you are of tender years, you probably never heard of the late, great Jackie Gleason, known in the bygone black and white television years of the 1950’s and 1960’s as “The Great One”. He first became a star in a weekly TV variety show called “The Cavalcade of Stars” which later became “The Jackie Gleason Show.” In the show, he created a sketch which quickly evolved into the weekly comedy series known as “The Honeymooners”, where he played the bus driver/husband Ralph Kramden, along with his wife, Alice, played by Audrey Meadows. They lived in a tiny, dingy apartment in New York, where you only saw their kitchen and sometimes the fire escape as the set. Their downstairs neighbors were the dimwitted loveable sewer worker Ed Norton, played by master comedian Art Carney, and his wife Trixie, played by Joyce Randolph. The plots were usually built around Ralph’s endless efforts to strike it rich and Alice’s efforts to keep his feet on the ground. Ralph would occasionally shake his fist at Alice and say, “To the Moon, Alice, to the Moon!” Alice wasn’t fazed.

Jackie, with his rotund frame and round Irish face also created other characters etched into the memories of my generation, among them Joe the Bartender, The Poor Soul, and Reginald Van Gleason, III. For the purposes of this story, you might want to catch a bit of the Reginald character at the link below: (He appears about two minutes into the skit.)

https://youtu.be/i4VUCZRasLs?list=RDi4VUCZRasLs

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My father was a Chicago Fireman from 1944 until his death in 1968. He and his fellow firemen on the west side saw a lot. While with Truck 66, my dad was at the LaSalle Hotel fire in 1946, which claimed 61 lives. We have newspaper pictures of him making rescues on a ladder. In 1958, he and the crews of Engine 95 and Truck 26 responded to the Our Lady of Angels fire, which took 92 children and three nuns. Those were big events, but most of their fires and accidents had no names and claimed victims in more modest numbers, yet they dealt with deaths and injuries on a regular basis. I don’t imagine that men go through those kinds of experiences without developing some sort of bond, and that is what happened at “95’s House” at Crawford (now Pulaski) and Wilcox. The fireman there enjoyed each other’s company and they developed a tight bond of friendship, so they formed a “club” for socializing with their wives. “Club” would rotate the meetings from home to home every few months, or so.  They went on meeting even after transfers, injuries, retirements and deaths, and, I believe, it ended in the early 1970’s. The memorable cast of characters I can see today as if they were standing next to me.

Rick and Darlene were an outgoing, fun loving couple, Rick with his slicked back hair and always with a ready laugh. I thought he was a hero because once a year, at the Fire Department Thrill Show, staged at the old Soldier Field in sweltering mid-August, Rick would dive from the top of a makeshift four story building, set afire for the crowd; he would land with a “wump” in a safety net held by the firemen on the ground and everyone cheered. Attendance at the Thrill Show was mandatory for the Wogan children.

Jim and Peg were my favorites, largely because of Jim’s wise guy voice and wisecracking ways. Jim was the Lion from Wizard of Oz, minus the fur and the tail. Jim and my Dad were especially close. Jim, whom my Dad called “Junior”, and my Dad, whom Jim called “Shorty” were at each other as only close friends can be. One famous story went that a passerby at the firehouse inquired why city workmen were knocking out bricks below the spaces where the firehouse windows had been. Apparently the new windows were lengthier than the old. Jim replied, “So Wogan can see out.” The story continued that my Dad chased him all over the firehouse.

Frank and Mary were a little older than the others, and had two children. Their daughter, Mary Eileen, had been born with a medical condition that took her life at about seventeen years. She was a friend of my sister Maureen, and I remember her being so upset when she passed. Frank had fallen from a fire truck some years before and had been pensioned off, but remained part of the Club. Nice people.

Eddie and Millie were the life of the party. Eddie was their Lieutenant in the firehouse, and even though he commanded their respect, he was one of the boys. Millie also did hairdressing for a number of the club ladies. They always brought a bottle of whiskey to the party of mostly beer drinkers.

Sam and Kitty rounded out the crew. Kitty had a smiling Irish face and Sam was a big, loveable Jewish guy. His faith mattered not at all to this mostly Catholic crowd; once inside a burning building your particular religious beliefs were less important than your tolerance for heat and smoke, your ability to open a roof, or your willingness to put it on the line for your fellow firefighters. Sam, I guess, was all those things.

It was my parents’ turn to host the party in October of that year and my mother, no doubt in conjunction with the other wives, decided on a costume party for Halloween. When she told my father of the plan, he flat out refused. He would do everything else: get the keg of beer, the booze, food, whatever, but he was not getting into some sissy costume, even for one night. His words, not mine.

And that was that. I don’t recall my mother and father fighting very much, and I think they retreated to the bedroom if they really had to have words in a house filled with eight children, but I do recall my mother being really ticked on this one. More than once she dropped 500 pound hints that she was disappointed, that he was being a party pooper, no fun, etc. He wouldn’t budge.

The night of the party, the kids were allowed to stick around long enough to see the guests, before being banished to my grandmother’s flat below ours in the two flat building we called home. The keg of beer was on the porch, carefully and lovingly tapped by my father, and the guests began to arrive. Rick and Darlene arrived as devils, bright red horns and pitchforks. Sam and Kitty came as convicts, black horizontal stripes and all. Frank and Mary came as hobos, the old Halloween standby choice. Jim and Peg were Roy Rodgers and Dale Evans, complete with lassos. Eddie and Millie came as a priest and nun, dating against the rules of the Vatican. My Mom was dressed as Shirley Temple, bow in her hair curled especially for the occasion. And my Dad was in a plain white shirt.

After a little bit of drinking and joking, the party moved, as parties do, into several smaller parties, the wives chatting away in the living room, and the men standing guard at the tabernacle of the keg on the porch. No one noticed my Dad’s absence when my mother announced that it was time to judge the Best Costume. The men reluctantly abandoned the keg and trooped into the living room. My siblings and I had stolen back to the alcove off the living room to catch this part. My mother looked a little annoyed as she looked around for my Dad; one of the guests offered that maybe they should wait for Tom to get back from wherever he was.

Just then, the bedroom door flung open and my father strode into the living room, wearing a preposterous tall black top hat, black cape, black bow tie, white gloves, a glued-on floppy black mustache and a cigarette dangling from his lips. In his hand was a black cane, which he twirled over his shoulder as he announced “”Goooood evening!” in his best Reginald Van Gleason III imitation. The illusion was perfect.

My Dad, having much the same physical frame as Jackie Gleason, brought down the house. My mother was at once totally surprised and caught somewhere between her lingering annoyance with my Dad and an awakening delight that he had played her as well as he had. She threw her arms around him and kissed him, while the Fireman’s Club cheered and awarded him the cheap plastic dime store trophy for Best Costume.

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I was amazed at what I saw. My Dad actually had a sense of humor! Hell, he was a prankster of the first order! He must have had this thing planned for days! And my Mom and my Dad had a relationship with each other!

It’s hard for kids to see past the veil of parenthood, but I was allowed this one little glimpse. My parents were real honest-to-god people, even though I, like most kids, usually saw them as providers, disciplinarians, and the enforcers who dictated the rules of the house. I never imagined them as two people in love with other, as capable of having a little fun with each other as my Dad did that night with his costumed surprise. It was a revelation to see my Mom acting not a lot like my Mom, but more like a girl.

I suppose it’s always this way for kids and their parents, but it’s nice when life peels back the curtain a little and lets you see that moms and dads have the same multiple dimensions in their lives as the rest of us. Good one, Dad.

Close to Death…a reflection on losses

Posted on by tom.wogan@comcast.net

We were in Dublin, Ireland, having just awakened from a jet-lagged midday nap. This was a family trip, planned for months by my wife and me for my brother and his wife, a friend who had lost her husband, and one of my four sisters. Another sister remained behind in Chicago, and the other two lived north of Galway, but had taken the train over to Dublin to meet us and spend a few days in the city before all of us headed west to their homes and the real heart of our vacation.

It was the Monday after Easter, a bank holiday in Ireland, and nothing but pubs and taxies were operating. When my Ireland sisters arrived, we were just about recovered from the flight, 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 fear and that feeling of stepping off a ledge from a great height rushed toward me.

My mother was gone. My wife saw the shock on my face as I absorbed the tearful words of my sister-in-law from the other side of the ocean. As I stammered what I heard to the others gathering in our room, my sister’s legs went out from under her. My wife did what she was born to do, and which she does better than anyone, which was to give comfort to those around her. The gaiety of a joyful family reunion spun 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 April, 2004.

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I was eighteen, and was sleeping in the back bedroom of the two-flat we lived in on the west side of Chicago. I was between colleges and was working as an entry-level guy in the newspaper printing plant below the Chicago Tribune. I had been thrown from the languid pace of the college freshman into the world of hardworking, middle aged, tough men and there had been no orientation session. The work paid exceptionally well, but the hours were brutal and the environment somewhere between downright unhealthy and medieval. Up until that point in my life, it had been the hardest I had ever worked. The army would up the ante later, but I didn’t know that then.

Somewhere around 3 a.m. my mother woke me, clearly panicked. I woke my older brother, and together we ran into the living room, where my father lay on the floor on his back. He was wearing his usual nighttime summer wear, boxers and a white t-shirt. His eyes were fixed toward the ceiling, not focused, as if he were looking far beyond the plaster layer that was eight feet above him. A look of almost amused surprise was on his face.

I was working on pure adrenalin, scared, but not paralyzed. My brother had been in the army and had learned something of first aid and perhaps emergencies. He knelt down next to our dad and began mouth to mouth resuscitation. My mother had found a bottle of whisky (old Irish remedy, I guess) and poured a small glass of it into his open mouth. It ran out the corners of his mouth and onto his chest and then to the floor.

I straddled his chest and had my hands on his heart, which was beating wildly, as if it wanted to get out of his body. I felt it literally banging inside his chest for however long I can’t remember, and then a hesitation, two weaker beats, then nothing. A few moments later he gave up what I later learned was the “death rattle”, a sort of final rush of mottled air in the lungs, tinged by the smell of the whiskey. His big frame seemed to partially collapse under me. My father was gone. It was July, 1968.

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I have reflected on these two experiences of loss many times over since then, and especially my proximity to the two events. In the case of my mother, death reached out over 3,600 miles to touch me with its electric shock. In my fathers’ case, death had to reach only a few inches from his face. Same shock. Yet many years later, my personal proximity matters not at all, except as good stories.

I have shared an abbreviated version of these two stories only a few times, and usually only with those grieving for the loss of someone close and that grief aggravated by their not having been there to share the goodbye moment. I have shared the stories in hopes of easing that part of the pain for them. Did it help? I don’t know. I talk a lot and maybe it seemed like just so much more talk to them. Or maybe talk wasn’t what was needed at that time.

I only know that as time works its magic, when I ponder how blessed I was to have those two people in my life and as my parents, it’s the thousand little memories, the good stories, the little lessons and kindnesses they left in their wake that grow in importance and meaning. Where I was when the gift of their lives went away from where I was at that moment drifts into insignificance. Goodbye will always be goodbye, but the smiles remain. And the gratitude.