A Charmed Life (Joan)

Until the night he died peacefully in his sleep, my father believed he led a charmed existence. Born in a rural mountain village in southern Italy at the start of World War I, his father soon became a POW, held in N. Africa for the next two years. With the war finally over, Italy was in shambles; by the time he was 7 he and his mother left Italy for America to join his father now a shoe worker in Massachusetts. From his diary written some seventy years later, he describes his first day of school, walking from the cold water flat in the brickyard: NO English, straw hat, short pants - a caricature certain to be mocked. By the end of his high school years he was class president, basketball captain and a star in debate. Driven to learn, his parents thought him crazy to stay up late studying and working to excel. Though Harvard accepted him, it was not to be. There was no way with a piece work seamstress and a shoe maker for parents, even with his own $1/day job at the butcher shop and the radio ads he did with his resonant voice long since devoid of any accent. Fortunately, Boston College still catered to the area's large immigrant population and allowed payment in arrears, so off he went and was forever grateful.

        When World War II intervened, smart enough for flight school, he learned he was colorblind, and instead became an on the ground radio man with a heavy bomb group in England. He rarely discussed the war, but was forever changed, an Anglophile for life, full of respect for the hardships they all endured. Motivated by what he had seen, he strove for diplomacy and via the GI bill studied the law at night and later represented veterans rights.
                      
          Always passionate and a thinker, he wrote letters to presidents and popes, even medical researchers who graciously wrote back commending his wisdom, offering their blessing and considering his ideas. Married to the love of his life for 47 years, living in a house they built together, he labored as a staff attorney to send his 4 children to the college of their choice. He was proud I followed him to BC where Eagles soared.
                      
          He was full of advice and admonitions. We had rules, curfews and he worried about each of us (though admittedly I probably gave him the most to worry about). He cautioned us not to be self righteous, to recognize the frailty as well as the power of the human condition. He insisted that we know when to ask for help: a little inconvenience was never worth a trade off leading to true trouble, even if it meant he would have to get out of bed to be at our side. He signed on wholeheartedly to the Jesuit credo of being men and women for others and encouraged us to do the same. He believed in being happy...it was our job on earth, to make the world a better place and enjoy doing it. As part of the  "greatest generation" he was about service and duty and providing for others. Forget Superman, he was my first hero.

          In later years he wrote plays, books and poems where the true depth of his feelings burst through. He would sit at his desk for hours, occasionally with pipe in hand, committing his thoughts and fears for the world to paper. I loved watching and soaking in the aroma of his thinking. As the ravages of dementia took over, it was painful to lose him in pieces, though his faith in God and love of his family never wavered.
 

          People tell me I am too optimistic, too positive, too Pollyanna-ish. I wonder how I could be any different. You see, I was touched by a charmed life.  (Joan)