JUST A GREAT GUY, AND GOOD PERSON

He was a very quiet man. Never boasted, never bragged, just sat quietly and maybe read his newspaper or smoked his pipe. His mind was always working, always thinking and very analytical. His quietness was his trademark. He was a no nonsense man with a very corny sense of humor. That wasn’t his only irony: he was also tough, for a man that was always thin. Another trademark was a pencil thin moustache he kept all his life, and I never ever saw him without it.

As I grew up in Brooklyn, he was a small part of my daily life. He was seen on occasions, a party, a holiday, an occasional weekend, maybe at night once in a great while. He was a devoted husband and father to a single child, and he was my uncle through marriage. His name was Frank, and he was Uncle Frank to me. He was one of the few mentors I had in my young life.

He fought in World War II, under George Patton, and regaled me in stories about his experiences in the war, as I sat at the kitchen table, trapped in my own imagination, living every step he recounted.

After the war, he went to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and once again told me stories about how during the McCarthy era: the government was on alert for communist spies, checking waste baskets, and the next day the individual was gone!

My earliest memory was of him going to night school, carrying books and doing homework, bettering himself for a higher-grade level in government work. Perhaps that alone impressed me the most. Whenever I saw him, that most of all stuck out in my mind.

So years later, as I worked my way through college, the fortunes of life being what they were, I was involved in a terrible car crash, that almost took my life. I had to give up my rented room near the college and recuperate from a compounded fracture to my leg. Once I was ready to return to school, I was not able to afford to live anywhere, so I was about to give up my dream, when Uncle Frank, and my Aunt Marie, stepped in and offered me their home, which was near the college. I stayed there for most of the end of my education, and got my degree.

When he passed on, I had the honor to deliver his eulogy, to tell the world about this wonderful, quiet man, a man with a huge heart and a generous spirit. I didn’t have to mention that fact that he adopted children, and when he lost his only biological son, how he continued on with the same dignity, that later in life helped me get through my own similar ordeal.

As we gathered around the mausoleum, a small circle of family and friends, the two soldiers who presented the colors for Corporal Frank Corace, U.S. Army played taps. With the sound of each note, it took me through each note in MY life, each note was impressed upon me, making me pause to recall how lucky I was to have had him in my life.

Thanks, Uncle Frank.