There was the man who sat on the same side of the church with me at St Mary's Star of the Sea. He was about 80 years old a couple of years ago when he passed. But I knew him for about three or four years before he left us. He was an old school Italian from Carroll Gardens and had been around forever. He had worked on the docks and knew my uncles and had the typical life of an Italian guy from Carroll Gardens. He went to Catholic school and went in the service and came home and got married and had a couple of kids. Worked as a longshoreman till the work dried up and went on the guarrantie where he would badge in and get his minial check that the union deal got him. He occasionaly picked up the collection when a regular usher was absent. After Mass he did what all the neighborhood guys did. He walked past the hipster dofous assholes eating brunch at Prime Meats and the other yuppie joints to go to "Good Food" to pick up the makings of Sunday dinner. We would always say hello and occasionally I would reach for something on the top shelf for him because he was pretty short. I knew a lot about him. Or at least I thought I did. But he had a secret. Or at least something he never talked about. He had been on the Arizonia on December 7, 1941.
Most everyone in church didn't know that because he never talked about it. But after he passed Father Chris spoke about him at Mass. He said he had often talked to him and told him he was a hero. He deined it and said that the men who died that day, his buddies were the real heros. He had enlisted when he was 16 with phony papers and was serving on the deck that fateful day and was one of the lucky ones. He managed to escape with his life and served out the war in the Pacific. He never bragged. He never pushed his views on anyone. He never made a big deal about it. He was a simple guy. A patriot. A man who saw a job and did it to the best of his ablitiy. He served.
But to me he was a hero. Just like guys like RogerJ and AllenS and all the rest of the men who are in the front lines today protecting us while we type away on our ipads at Starbucks and argue and whine what some dopey professor has to say when all that shit don't matter.
I went to Mass this morning to remember him and lit a cancle in his honor. There were several other people there as well. We remember him as a quiet man. But as a hero.
God bless all those men who lost their lives on that fateful day and all the men who lost their lives since then defending our precious Union. May God hold them in his heart and may perpetual light shine upon them.
We can never do enought to honor their sacrifice.
