It was a cold January day in 1953. The class was let out for lunch at Our Lady Of Lourdes School in Brooklyn New York, as two friends named Joe went to their respective homes for lunch. We talked as two little grade school children would, and split off.
Joseph Crispino was a gifted storyteller and a good kid. He was also very proud that his Dad was in the army, away in some gosh awful land called Korea. He told of the souvenirs his dad had left him from the army, where he had been stationed, and hoping to see his dad soon.
Mom knew Joseph, she used to call him “A storyteller”, but he always won your heart with his gift. He was an ordinary looking kid, a bit round, no movie star looks, but a lot of appeals. We could play for hours, in an abandoned lot on Somers Street around the corner from my Grandmother’s house on Fulton Street.
When I had finished lunch, it was getting late, and Joseph was supposed to call on me then we would continue onto school for the afternoon session. I waited, and Mom finally told me to go call on him. Off I went down Hull Street, crossed Rockaway Avenue to the other side of Hull Street.
I reached Joseph’s apartment and climbed his stoop, entered his vestibule and rang his doorbell from the bank of mailboxes. His floor was the second one, and the door swung open.
“Joe, are you coming to school? It’s getting late!
I could hear sobbing, a great deal from within Joseph’s apartment. Joseph stepped out, standing on the landing, looking down at me, tears streaming down his face, dressed in a long army coat, too big for him.
“I can’t,” he sobbed. “My Dad was killed in combat.” was all he said, as he turned and went back into his apartment, quietly closing the door behind him. It was the last time I ever saw Joseph.
His Dad had made the ultimate sacrifice, in the line of duty for his country, your country, and mine. His blood lies deep within the Korean soil, fighting for the freedom of South Korea, a Korea where they now dislike us until they are invaded again. His blood deposited in the defense of his buddies, as they all fought for survival in those bitter cold winters of -20 degrees Fahrenheit. His blood is a barrier for all of us here in the US, as he gave it to safeguard our freedoms and help defeat communism.
Because Joey grew up without his Dad, never sharing a ballgame or an ice cream soda, a laugh or even a good meal, we are now free to blame everything on this country that goes wrong in the world. We are free to criticize the brave men and women who are giving their lives and time on this earth, away from their families, to protect us from terrorism.
We are now free to abuse these country patriots, selling out those that serve in the Coast Guard without pay, FBI and Federal agencies that have made us so strong as a country, knowing we are as secure as possible in this sick aggressive world, we are free to desert our friends who for years aligned themselves with us. We now need to punish ourselves because we need self-inflated egos from our leaders and callous disregard for those that seek to share in the great dream, the great experiment that can only be played out here in this country.
Go get the one-sided websites that give you a biased report to support your point of view. Take comfort in your cohorts who wish to forget what America is all about, and most of all, deny this country the brainpower we have since the first immigrants that became doctors, scientists, engineers, and tradesmen that led to our ingenuity. Fools we are.
Recently someone tried to prove himself right against a statement I posted by sending me a website he found, his source of ‘truth’ that I will not even entertain as fact. Finding the facts is shedding of other’s facts, and this holds true for all of us. We all need to realize everything is colored by bias, prejudice and unfortunately hatred. We need to question quietly within our hearts what is morally right. We see people who don’t speak our language and so we decide they don’t belong here, they take up our jobs and are questionable in their motives. Children become pawns in a sick attempt to stop the flow of immigration, separated from their parents. How cruel! My grandparents were part of the “invasion” legal or not, that paid a price being treated as inferior and not worthy to look up to but to be spoken down to.
We suddenly need a wall where we never did before. The advancement of technology, the years of experience in dealing with illegal immigration is now terminated for some wasteful spending being proposed. I’m against illegal immigration, and I’m against the waste of Taxpayers money. We DO need to protect our borders and that was what we were doing. Why are we ‘fixing’ what isn’t broke and has been working the best it ever was, the number of illegal entries falling to the lowest it ever has been?
I’m sick of our leaders lying to us and doing it so bold-faced. I see the constant revolving door of aids, trusted people from industry and the military abandoning a man who says he is a deal maker, the best there is. Every day a crisis is borne of an incompetent so-called ‘President’.
Here is something that might interest you. Nazi Germany, and Soviet Russia is both countries that ruled with only one party. We go out every Election Day hoping to elect our own single party of choice. It is how it started in Germany and Russia. It almost happened here and is the result of our troubles for the last two years!
God bless America. God bless Joseph Crispino.
