My Dad is 84, and I consider myself blessed, and more than a little lucky, that he is still with us and enjoying life; I'm 57, so very few of my friends and relatives can say the same. But I remember them all, all the Dads of my youth; so many different personalities and styles, all of them patriotic Americans, most only a generation removed from the old country.
They all, to a man, believed in the greatness of America, taught us to work hard, taught us that there is no free lunch, taught us to have compassion for those less fortunate and to be generous with them, taught us to struggle for a better life, and told us that having achieved it, no man could take it from us.
Would that the men who now run this country been taught the same way.
My father enlisted in the Marine Corp the day he turned 18, in 1943, and after a year of stateside training was shipped overseas. There, on Guam and Iwo, he trained for amphibious landings. By that time, the United States Navy and Marine Corp had island-hopped almost all the way across the Pacific – almost. There was still one to go before the invasion of Japan, and that was Okinawa.PFC Frank Santarpia, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 29th Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division, 20 years old, went ashore with the first wave on the morning of April 1, 1945: Easter Sunday.
There’s no time or space here for the details, but suffice it to say that Okinawa, which was in such close proximity to the home islands of Japan that it was within the prefecture of the city of Tokyo, was the most heavily defended island of the entire war.
By the time the island was secure, 12,513 brave American men were dead. Mull that number over in your mind for a moment. Twelve thousand, five hundred and thirteen. In an action that took less than six weeks.
The wounded numbered 38,916, and my father was one of them; he was shot on May 16th, during the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill. He received a Purple Heart, spent three weeks in a makeshift island hospital, and was sent back to his platoon before the operation was completed.
And as brave as he was, as unbelievable as his story is, he was far from unique. He did his job alongside tens of thousands of other Marines and soldiers. In the same mold as any other American fighting for freedom, his actions represented the norm, not the exception – and every single detail about that battle had to be coaxed from him; he never talked about it voluntarily, and never thought it was anything special.
So here’s a salute to our fathers. May we celebrate the ones that are with us, and never forget those who are not. I remember you all: Al, Gerard, Sebastian and Ralph Santarpia, my father’s brothers; Ed Coyle, my father-in-law; Joe Graziano, Dan Rago, Frank Guigno, Russ Sabatino, Tony Muccio – the fathers of my friends, and all important, in their own way, in shaping my life.
I hope, dear readers, that you were as lucky as I - to have known such men.
We are what they made us.
