Thanks, Uncle Frank and cousin Danny on this special day as we honor our veterans who risked everything.
Uncle Frank was the child of immigrant parents from Sicily, hard-working Italians that knew nothing other than hard work and prayer and underlining all that was family. Uncle Frank’s Italian immigrant parents raised 2 boys and 2 girls in Brooklyn, New York, and from that grew a wonderful family and highly intelligent people. They were warm and welcoming people and who like all Italians, loving everything in life.
Frank was a very quiet man. Never boasting, never bragging, just sitting quietly and maybe reading his newspaper or smoking his pipe when not caring for his Marietta. 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 was the irony: he was also tough, for a man that was always reserved. His trademark was a pencil-thin mustache he kept all his life, and I never saw him without it.
As I grew up in Brooklyn, Uncle Frank was a small part of my daily life, daily. 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. He was Uncle Frank to me, and one of the few mentors I had in my young life.
He fought in World War II under General George S. Patton, and regaled me in stories about his experiences in the war under a great general, as I sat at the kitchen table trapped in my 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 after hours, and the next day the suspected 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 for five months in a cast 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 Marietta, my mom’s youngest sister stepped up 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 the fact that he also adopted a child, and when he lost his only biological son, how he continued with the same dignity, that later in life helped me get through my similar ordeal.
Back in the day when higher education was a thing one did not necessarily attain if one was from an immigrant family, When I was a young child, Uncle Frank would go off to night school, leaving me with the first impressions of how important education is.
Uncle Frank missed out also. He was a numbers man by nature and utilized his skills by working for the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a clerk. When World War II began and Uncle Frank joined the army and fought under General George S. Patton, fate would intervene.
As the war progressed Uncle Frank was elevated to Corporal and fought his way through France under Patton’s leadership and by chance saved my Aunt Marietta’s cousin without even knowing it.
It seems my aunt and mom’s cousin Danny; my second cousin was fighting in the battle of the Bulge and was wounded and trapped behind German lines. Under siege, Danny’s unit was fighting for their lives and things were chaotic. As he and his unit happened to be patrolling when the Germans crashed through the Ardennes forest with their tanks, Danny found himself surrounded by the German attack and fighting for his life with overwhelming odds against him. Suddenly he was hit in his leg and never realized it until the shelling stopped. Lost amid the confusion he sought out to get back to the reeling American line. Crawling from behind enemy lines in rain and snow for many days with shrapnel in his leg he reached US troops under General Patton, Uncle Frank’s Patton. They were sent to relieve Danny’s group! By chance, my uncle found his cousin through marriage while Danny was waiting to be shipped to the States.
At the end of the war, Uncle Frank returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, married my aunt and decided to go to night school to better his grade in his government position, and slowly worked his way up the various grades.
As we gathered around the mausoleum, a small circle of family and friends, the two soldiers who presented the colors for Corporal Francis Corace, the Army men played taps. With the sound of each note, it took me through each note in MY life that impressed upon me, making me pause to recall how lucky I was to have had him in my life.
I guess being Italian-American and the son of Italian immigrants back in those days was tough. We as a race, with all we did do for this world, were still being questioned and not trusted by this great country. But we stood tall, brave, and true and served beyond question as all true Americans do.
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