Polonaise

 This is Angelo Archiopoli. Angelo is a youthful 91 years old and lives not far from me. I’ve met Angelo a few times over the last several years but it was today that I had the chance to have more of an extended conversation with him and he shared with me the story of his service in World War II.

Angelo was drafted in 1942, at he tender age of 21. He was immediately shipped off for training in Rapid City, South Dakota, before being assigned to the 751st Squadron of the 457th Bomber Group, eventually being deployed to the European theater. Due to his skills and aptitude testing he was elevated to the rank of Lieutenant and quickly assigned as a navigator aboard a B-17 Bomber, or as they called it, “The Flying Fortress”.

Angelo navigated his B-17 on several dozen successful mission throughout the Spring and Summer of 1944, but it was their mission on September 28th, 1944 that he remembers the most vividly. Early that morning, 36 American planes set out on a bombing run to Magdeburg, Germany. Their target was a Krupps coffee factory that intel had shown was being used to manufacture tanks and anti-aircraft guns. Angelo’s plane was near the rear of the formation when they were engaged from behind by a group of 25 Nazi ME-109 and FW-190 warplanes. His plane took a debilitating 30mm shot to the rear and crashed into a field a few miles southwest of Magdeburg.

As the bomber came to it’s final resting place, Angelo looked around amongst the wreckage to find that six of his nine crew mates were dead on impact. The only other survivors were Sgt. Robert Christoferson and Sgt. Stan Hojnowski, one of whom had his right leg completely sheared off during the crash. They evacuated the wounded Sargeant from the plane and carried him across the field to hide out behind the cover of a nearby tree line. Within minutes they heard the shouting of German voices and turned to see a farmer and two teenage boys pointing shotguns at them. Shortly after, they were surrounded by Nazi soldiers.

Angelo spent the next seven months as a prisoner in a Nazi P.O.W. camp, sleeping on a flat wooden board, and living on a diet of tepid water, hot broth and stale bread. On rare occasion, when the Nazi’s put down one of their steed, the prisoners were afforded scraps of horse meat as a luxury. On the morning of Thursday May 3, 1945, Angelo and his fellow prisoners awoke at sunrise to find that all of the Nazi guards had abandoned the camp. They had left both their uniforms and their weapons behind. The prisoners gathered the weapons, secured the gates and the arsenal, and took control of the camp. It was few days later when a platoon of Allied forces arrived and informed them that the Hitler was dead, the Nazi’s had formally surrendered to the Western Allies in Berlin, and the war was over. He was soon flown back to the States and after several months of convalescing in a Military hospital, he was honorably discharged in 1946.

Gesturing at my Macbook, Angelo started asking me about the internet and admitted that he hadn’t a clue how it all worked. He asked me where the actual, physical “internet” is located, as in, “is there one big machine somewhere with all that information in it?”. I was explaining it to him as best I could when he stopped me to ask if I could “get music on that thing”. When I assured him that I could, he lamented about a favorite record that he once had, and somehow lost, long ago. I quickly brought up Youtube, and Angelo was enjoying Chopin’s Polonaise, and other old favorites, which he told me he hadn’t heard in about 40 years. Then we watched clips of some old Westerns featuring Buck Jones, who Angelo claims was far better at being a cowboy than John Wayne ever was. He seemed amazed by what we found online, he chuckled, he smiled, and he thanked me. It was the least I could do.

The next time you see an elderly gentleman wearing a hat, pin or some other sort of Veterans insignia, I’d suggest that you stop and thank them for their service. Often, you can never imagine just what kinds of tragedies and hardships these people have endured while fighting for this country. Better yet, do something nice for them or just engage them in some conversation. Sometimes, what may seem like the simplest things to you and I, might mean a great deal in their eyes.

A Toast To Mr. Zanick

When I was very young, my family rented out a room to a boarder. It seems that it was a more common thing to do back then, in the early 70’s, than it is now. Working, middle class families would often rent out a spare room for a weekly rate to help make ends meet. Indeed, we had a spare room, albeit a small one. It was in the upstairs part of the house, at the end of the hall, and situated somewhat off to itself from the rest of my family’s domain.

Our tenant was one Mr. Walter Zanick. I only knew his name from the very rare occasions when I’d see a letter addressed to him. It would be delivered with our mail, and my mother would lay it on the floor outside the door to his room. He’d leave every morning, six days a week at about 6:00 am, before any of us were awake. Occasionally, if I couldn’t sleep, I’d hear him coming in late at night. After midnight at the earliest, sometimes later, in the wee hours of the night. I remember seeing Mr. Zanick only a handful times over the years, usually on a Sunday morning, when he’d leave the house later than normal, and say a simple “Hello” if I happened to be playing outside as he left. Other than that, it was almost as if he didn’t exist; I rarely ever saw him or heard him. I simply knew that he was the gentleman that lived in the room at the end of the hall.

One Saturday afternoon, when I was nine years old, I recall my parents getting the spare key to Mr. Zanick’s room (a skeleton key, at that) and unlocking his door. I asked why they were going into Mr. Zanick’s room. They had gotten a phone call informing them that he had passed away the day before. When the door to the mysterious room at the end of the hall swung open, I remember how strikingly different it seemed compared to all the other rooms in the house. Ours was the type of house that was “lived in” with knick knacks all about, books and records (yes, vinyl records), and always plenty of toys in the kids room. In stark contrast was this room I’d never seen the inside of before, which couldn’t have been bigger than about 10’x6’. There was a neatly made single bed against the wall, and a modest sized dresser against the opposing wall, with barely a few feet of space between the two. Next to the headboard of the bed, under the sole window in the room, was a small nightstand. There was a watch, a pair of glasses, and some cufflinks on the dresser. A sole book laid atop the night stand, and behind that was a single, plain wooden picture frame with a color 8x10 photo. It all seemed so empty, and cold, and lifeless. My parents removed about a half dozen suits from the small closet, and packed them into a box, along with a number of shirts and slacks from the dresser, some still wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, as was customary from the local Chinese laundry back in those days.

Apparently Mr. Zanick had no family, no relatives and no next of kin, so there it was; all that remained of this mysterious gentleman’s life was packed up neatly into a box or two and were donated to St. John’s Lutheran Church for their next rummage sale. All except for the photograph that was in that single picture frame on his nightstand. I had asked my parents if we could keep that, and they said sure. The photo was of Mr. Zanick celebrating New Years Eve at what could have been any of the local bars in South Brooklyn at the time. Party hats, (mostly) smiling faces and a hearty toast were displayed all along the bar. I don’t know if they were truly his friends, just acquaintances, or simply a random gathering of other neighborhood folks who had nowhere else to go on New Years Eve. I suppose that will always remain a mystery, much like Mr. Zanick himself. Even though it’s become creased and faded over the decades, I still have the photograph to this day. It makes me wonder how painful it must be to grow old without any family, or any real friends, or anyone to celebrate those special occasions with. Then again, behind those raised glasses on that particular New Years Eve, those were indeed smiling faces. Cheers, Mr. Zanick.

The Most Beautiful Suicide

“The Most Beautiful Suicide”

23 year old Evelyn McHale, of Long Island, became engaged in early 1947. On April 30th, she took the train to Easton, PA to spend her fiance’s birthday with him at his college dorm. They planned to be married that June. She boarded a 7:00 AM train back to New York the following morning but never did make it home.

Upon her arrival in New York City, she checked into the Governor Clinton Hotel on 31st Street, where she composed a note, and tucked it into her purse. From there, she went to the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building. Just before 10:30 am, on May 1, she calmly, and neatly, folder her coat, placing it against the guard railing alongside her purse and her makeup bag. She then flung herself off the building, falling more than 1,000 feet and landing squarely on the roof of a 1947 Cadillac parked on the street below.

The note that Evelyn left in her purse read: “I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”

Ironically, for someone who wanted to throw herself into obscurity, never to be remembered, a nearby photographer captured this image within minutes of her demise, and by the following week it appeared as a full page print in Life Magazine. The image of her lifeless body lying gracefully, and peacefully, atop the wreckage, immortalized forever.

Sometimes you can simply never get what is that you want in life, even in death.