Pop
Big Al
As Pop would say, “Hey you are a day late and a dollar short” since this was supposed to appear yesterday on the day of fathers.
As my eldest son described Pop during his eulogy for his aunt, good ol’ Auntie T, my only sibling, Big Al’s daughter…
He was a mountain of a man.
He was comparing the two lives, my sister and my dad. And she was a person extraordinaire. She was my best friend and only confident. Pop was pleased beyond doubt how close ‘shorty’ and I were all our life together. Though she was six and a half years older, I ended up being six and a half inches taller, so she became the shortest of what was a tight nuclear family, headed with the grace and joy of God by our Dad.
Big Al made it to 1999, a series of the most incredible miracles kept him alive that long. Cats have nine lives. Pop was on his fourth or fifth cat. Four heart attacks (the last one got him, he made the Great Leap on October 30th, 1999) and a slew of other medical issues, he defied medical logic. His cardiologist could not believe he could walk into his office. His heart failure had deteriorated to the point of functioning at just over ten percent. But just that morning of his last visit he was out spraying and pruning a bit in his small apple orchard. He sold the apples at the end of our very long driveway – honor system. The local grocery store in a very small town carried his apples with delight.
No one ever knew the depth of his medical challenges emerging from his POW experiences except Patti (mom) and my sister and me. He just looked like a guy in robust happy health.
He was a war hero, a Defender of Bataan. Participated in the Death March and a POW for three and a half years, the very last thing for which he wanted to be noted.
He referred to his prison camp experience, including the infamous Camp O’Donnel, where four hundred of our soldiers died a day along with over a thousand Philippines, as being a ‘guest of the emperor.’
In 2021, a team of five of us transcribed a series of eighteen year hours of tape an interview, with a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force who was studying for her PhD with her focus on why some POWs survived while others didn’t, into a book. The interview was conducted in 1981.
Note: four out of ten service people who served in the Pacific Theater of WWII never made it back. In the European theater one out of a hundred didn’t. Pretty clear statement on our priorities as a government. My Pop’s and fellow POW’s had a saying…
“No Papa, No Momma, No Uncle Sam.”
The book was released on the eightieth anniversary of the defeat of the Defenders of Bataan in April of 1942. It is an amazing reflecting on his life growing up in the era of the Great Depression and a true eyewitness account of what really happened in our country, our government and the politics of the world with eerie predictions towards the end of the interview about what could happen in the world with countries like Russia and China.
It was the only time he spoke of the war, except for the funny tales of luminescent iguanas (which they ended up eating) racing through the deep dark of the tropical nights. The book is called Faithful: Because of Love a True Story of the Defenders of Bataan.
In his incredible life built around motivating others, always seeing the bright side, an eternal and almost divine optimist, he had a smile, a laugh and probably a joke for everyone he met. I inherited this gene or gift – it is a daily blast of good. It seemed like everyone liked him which might have been the case. Over eleven hundred people came to his funeral, from coast to coast and Germany, on three days’ notice.
He saw the good in others. Always.
He modeled his life with his beloved wife of fifty-two years, after his one and only true God, the Son. At his funeral, my mom’s only living relative, a first cousin - a Diocesan priest from Yakima, Washington, gave the eulogy. The two key points Fr. Bob said sticking with me to this day were, “He was my best friend.” He finished with, “I have never met a man more like Jesus.”
I am lucky despite my own life-threatening medical challenges, likely an offshoot of my Dad’s exposure to Hiroshima. He was in a POW camp twenty-five miles away when ‘the bomb ‘ went off. I inherited his joy of making people happy, being an eternal optimist, and following our Master in every way I can. Him first, others second, me third (distantly).
Pop, mom and my sister are in my dreams often, at least a couple of times a week. These are vivid color dreams and they are always great, the kind from which you did not want to wake. They always leave me with great joy, peace and comfort because I know where they really are…
Together
Home.
Clement
