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Memorial Days
| Article
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20497 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
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5 / 1992 |
2,357 Words |
| Author
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John M. Del Vecchio
John M. Del Vecchio is the author of For the Sake of All
Living Things and The Thirteenth Valley. |
I remember Uncle Fe on Memorial Day 1952, or maybe it was '53, in the backyard at my folks' house. I was almost five. Or almost six. The big cherry tree had come down in a winter storm, opening the yard for the baseball game that Uncle Fe ran for all the kids--cousins and neighbors--and I think it was me, though maybe it was my brother Frank or cousin Carl, who foul-tipped the ball through the one stained glass window in my mother's house, and she came out and chased us all away. Several days later, Uncle Fe, who'd been a bombardier with the Nine-Oh-Nine B-17G Flying Fortresses, flying from England over Germany during World War II, Uncle Fe, who had promised Aunt Rosemary he'd return and who used to check out two flak suits before each mission, the extra one for his legs because the bombardier in a B-17G lay exposed, crunched into the bottom of the forward glass bubble, Uncle Fe came and rebuilt the stained glass window, which is still there today, though the backyard is a parking lot and the house contains offices--because Uncle Fe, the bombardier, could do anything.
On Memorial Days throughout the fifties, our extended family gathered at my folks' Main Street home to watch the big parade and enjoy hotdogs and hamburgers and pasta. And every year we cheered our local national champions, the Connecticut Yankees Drum and Bugle Corps of the Stratford VFW. This was a high-stepping, crack marching unit, looking sharp in their black and off-white uniforms, performing what we believed at the time were intricate maneuvers while blaring out Sousa or some other traditional music, right in front of our house. I seem to recall Bobby Ryder marched the year he returned from Korea. It was from Bobby that Frank and I bought our first paper route. My brother marched in some of those parades--as a Cub Scout, then as a Boy Scout. And I marched too, one year, and I remembered passing our house and Mom and Pop, aunts and uncles, cousins and neighbors all clapped and took snapshots and called out to me in that ragtag patrol with the Shea boys and the Sibleys--most of us future soldiers, sailors, or marines--so proud they were and so embarrassed was I.
In the sixties it was different. My oldest sister, and then my brother, went away to school. My second sister and I were now too old to march with the scouts and too sophisticated to show our enthusiasm, and the Connecticut Yankees weren't much of a drum and bugle corps anymore--at least not in our eyes. And then I, too, went away to school and my oldest sister was marching to Ban the Bomb and I only stayed in touch with my very best high school friends, one who was in the Navy, one who was filing for conscientious objector status, and Memorial days were passed studying for the last
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