That Time I Met Loretta Swit

It was summer 1979. I had always told myself and others (for reasons that even in dotage I really can't adequately explain since I had little desire for its inherent contentiousness) from the age of 14 that I was going to be a lawyer.  I had just then finished law school--although my heart was being tugged in a very different direction, concurrently to the idea of working in radio because of my introduction to the Fordham College Radio Station WFUV, and writing speculation scripts for the then many great comedy series on TV because I had been a cast member on the WFUV show Diploma City, written by my college friend, Lenspeaks. I had even compulsively written a few scripts which were produced on the show. I had already fallen in love with Los Angeles on my first visit in 1977. The year 1979 was my third visit and I planned, if somehow I could develop the chutzpah that was not a quality natural to me,  to move there. I would have to pass the Bar in New York, and then in California and get a job to do it, but in a rarity for me, I was optimistic I was capable of it. I had long since fallen out of love with New York in the Koch years, and needed a dramatic change. Los Angeles was in the late 70s and 80s a very different place from New York, even more then than it is now--having now become a crowded, often dirty city, like the New York of 1981 I ultimately ran from. 

Lenspeaks was my travel buddy. We were then writing partners hoping that one of the scripts we had to show our abilities (including for MASH, then long popular in the culture) would launch us out of the regular working world into a little writing cottage on one of the studio lots. He had already made the acquaintance of another Fordham alum, Thad Mumford, (see an earlier blog entry on him after his too early death in 2018), who, having read our stuff, was very encouraging. Thad offered to show us one of the studios we would have killed to work out of (well, I would have; well, ok, not literally; it was a fantasy that had some promise of reality), this one where MASH was made, Twentieth Century Fox on Pico Boulevard. Thad was a writer, and later a producer, along with his late writing partner, Dan Wilcox, on the show. It's been 46 years so I know the details of my memory are less vivid; but not the feeling of that day, one of two aspiring Hollywood writers getting a personal look at how the script sausage got made. As we were walking in not far from the front gate where the Hello Dolly! elevated train station still sat completely (Len says that a portion is still there but I can't see it as I pass by in my car these days) intact. Thad, Len and I approached a man eating a yogurt cup. I can't swear to it, but I have had the name stuck in my head from that day and time, and had not previously been that aware of him, and I have confirmed by Google that he was indeed on that lot at about that time, but it was Marshall Brickman, the writing partner of Woody Allen. Thad said some really nice things, the swell your head kind of things, about our bright futures in television. I can't give you exact sequence right now but I think one of the first things we did was to get a quick view of the writer's room, where Thad and his partner worked. The thing about studios I have always liked and the reason I know I would have felt at home on one of them (aside from having a great creative career for which I got paid), is that they feel like a college campus. Effectively, they are. And the little cottage in which Thad and Dan worked made me feel so comfortable. I imagined myself trilling away (this was pre-computers) on my typewriter in that great space, taking a break to enjoy the Commissary, which was our next (I think)  stop, for lunch. I swear I remember Walter Matthau at a nearby table, but since Len doesn't remember that (he saw other folks on another visit of his own) maybe it's my imagination, along with the fact that I think I had a Cobb salad, because at some point, there, or elsewhere, I quipped about a Lee J. Cobb salad. (I know, buud a bum). 

I am not sure how it happened but as we were walking to the set of the SWAMP, there she was, Loretta Swit, Hot Lips Houlihan herself, with a bit of an entourage that included a handsome man of about her age, that I somehow decided she was attached to in some way socially. I mention in passing that it has occurred to me it might have been her only husband, Dennis Holohan, whom himself was a lawyer trying his hand at acting, with whom I had acquaintance over the years in another arena entirely. However, I don't think she had met Mr. Holohan at that point in her life or career. He would later be on an episode of MASH himself, playing Margaret Houlihan's love interest. So, I can only say there was someone with her. We were briefly introduced. I remember her as prettier than she sometimes seemed on the screen, and breezier. She was in a good mood, and was ever too briefly introduced to us. I would have loved to chatter but everyone was moving toward the set. Along the way, we got a wave and hello from Harry Morgan, and somebody introduced us to David Ogden Stiers, but mispronounced his last name, which he corrected in the patrician manner one would expect of Major Winchester. 

We spent the next I can't say how long watching the cast film part of an episode called, "Mr. and Mrs. Who", with guest actor, James Keane (from the Paper Chase TV show). I was entranced by the complete design, the detailed design of the SWAMP and the medical bay. I am always amazed by the talent of the artists who create the scene for the actors to do their part, the part that is always most noticed, but not always the most spectacular, although I was a fan of the talent of all these actors. 

At a break, Len and I were able to say hello to fellow Fordham alum Alan Alda, Hawkeye himself. He looked exactly as he does on screen, then with a wash of black hair that fell onto his forehead and in the surgeon costume. When we told him we were also from Fordham, he asked what year we graduated, and upon our 1976! he said that we were babies compared to him a late 1950s grad. 

I can't remember how we disengaged from our visit there, but it has always been a happy memory. Alas a television writing career was not mine to be had, and Len went on to another partner. Still, it is not small source of pride and delight that I had two connections with a groundbreaking show, one, a friendship with the late Thad Mumford, (we watched the last episode with him and his late love Roz Doyle in 1982 at his lovely little house) and a passing visit to a pretty big bit of television history.

RIP Loretta Swit and those who went before you from that time and place. 

Crimes and Misdemeanors by Constantine Gochis

After yet another lengthy hiatus, I am back to looking at Dad's stories and culling them for this and other efforts at letting the world see what otherwise would remain anonymous--his writing talent.  As I am the last in the immediate family line, there simply is no one to whom to leave anything of Dad's or of mine. My extended family is large, but my parents, for reasons of their own kept me separate from nearly all of them when I was growing up; of the few I did or do know, our contacts were limited over the years. There were efforts at recontact, but once we all hit adulthood, relationships just did not develop. No one to blame. Just the way it was. Still, I have always been interested in the posterity of others, family or otherwise, especially since I read the Alexander Masters book "A Life Discarded". The book tells the story and speculations about a series of diaries found in a trash bin in England, and about the person who wrote them. I am fascinated by the stories of others, and I guess the truth is, I hope somebody or many people will be fascinated by my father's and my stories (I have inherited the rather undisciplined desire to write). While I am a fervent believer in God, Providence and Eternity, and the Immortality of the Soul, I admit that I resist the idea of people being forgotten in this life, particularly after those who knew them are themselves forgotten. 

This story I somehow never read before. I have no idea if it is true. Was my father arrested as a sixteen year old for a failure to have a license to sell peanuts? Could be? His stories usually combined facts with fiction. And political lament. 

 CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

In the summer of 1934 I was arrested by two plain clothes detectives in front of the entrance to the Bronx Botanical Gardens.  There was no such thing as a Miranda right in those days. The charge was peddling peanuts without a license.

I was husteled, unceremoniously, to a holding area where there were corralled several dozen miscreants of a similar category--peddlars of all descriptions, from frankfurters to ice cream pops.

It was noon when I was deposited among this crop of criminals, most of whom were much advanced in age beyond my sixteen years.  I was received with parental like concern.  I learned my first lesson in dealing with the "Cossacks", the appellation then current among those downtrodden.  "Ya shdda said you was fifteen", I was advised. "They don't pick you up if y'are under sixteen."

We were being held for Night Court.  It was not until the sun was deep in retreat in the sky that the ominous vans arrived to transport us to the western "Chateau D'If", the Tombs, that forbidding tower of justice for the iniquitous.  We were herded into the black panelled vehicles for the ride "downtown."  

It appears there were no gradations of criminality of criminality at the Tombs. We were packed into already overcrowded cells, occupied to satiation by every category of felon, to await adjudication, to bgin at 10 p.m., traditionally.

Then, we were led before the 'bench' in groups of twelve. As instructed, we offered our Constitutionally endowed plea of "Guilty" in a chorus.  There were no dissenters. We were fined, "Two dollars or two days."

I chose the two days. Two dollars was a mighty sum in those days. Perhaps it would be best to end this narration, but honesty compels me. . . I was retured to the cell where the residual, unprocessed criminals were housed. I learned about "craps", the cubes that Julius Caesar is said to have thrown. I lost the two dollars I should have used for the fine in one roll. 

But these were days of promise. There was nothing to fear, as the sainted Franklin intone, "except fear itself.'  This had a sonorous ring, almost equal to the deposed President's offering, that engineer whose expertise could feed the starving revolutionaries of the Soviet Union, but was ineffective to stem the burgeoning bread lines he created, "Prosperity is just around the corner!" Neither phrase were the palliative equal to the "Chicken in every pot!" offered centuries ago by a Roman Caesar. But I guess it was better than Bread and Circuses. After all, this was America.

Last Cup of Tea at Una's Cottage

Una's little home on a corner lot in Los Angeles sold quickly. No doubt a developer will demolish it and put up one of those square monsters which rents for something between 3,500 and 6,000.00 a month or more.  I cringe, but all things pass and sometimes you can feel a harsh wind as it does, slamming the door of a beloved past.

Una's daughter, Joey, one of eight raised in that very house, had lived with Una in her last several years. Now that Una is gone and the house sold, and she was ready to leave Los Angeles to be closer to one of her own two daughters in another state, a couple of us wanted to take her out for a proper goodbye lunch. And, to be frank, to have one last look at the house in which many of us had gathered for parties, and brunch and spontaneous cups of tea on any random visit. I always feel a little guilty about this, as I said in a prior entry, because I can't imagine what it is for an already large family to have to share her, that all over the place there are people who had adopted Una as their surrogate mother. And just as the kids, at her funeral, pointed out that they vied for her attention growing up, I think it is likely true for some, ok, many of us, that we vied for her attention as well. And it was always special when we got it.

The house is pink, inside and out. Una loved pink, and if you visited, you loved pink also. I closed my eyes and imagined where things used to be as I walked on the wood floors that now echoed the sound of my footsteps. To the right of the door, a baby grand piano, overflowing with photographs of children, grandchildren, nieces, friends of long standing. In my memory, the piano wasn't played much, and every time I saw it, I told myself that one day I'd go back to lessons and retrieve the skill I had begun to have as a child. To the left a hand made tapestry of Una and the names of each of her children. A large side table filled with alcohol that only came out at the St. Patrick Day parties. And next to it, a grandfather clock that bespoke days gone by, a time of gentility and family. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. On an opposite wall, near the entrance to the dining room, a tapestry church chair, with high back, that Una's Monsignor Uncle had given to her years before. I had never really noticed the lovely fireplace at the long end of the room, complemented by two French doors. At the main one opaque wall a couch, pink of course, with country scene paintings above it. And a large cocktail type table in front, also full of things that reminded of friends and family, little gifts, or vases of flowers. Then you'd move into the heart of the house as I reckoned it, the dining room, the place of weekly Sunday dinners, and the repository for chili and roast beef and turkey and ham with the trimmings for frequest party buffets, and of course, for the spontaneous cup of tea when you visited. Every time you visited, pretty much without fail on the delicate Aynsley bone china, a Pembroke reproduction of an 18th century design, feature flowers and a perched hummingbird. I mentioned last time I wrote that it was lese majeste to place a carton of milk on the table. Always the milk or half and half had to be in a proper comparable china dispenser. Another rule, we all knew, bar none, was that no cup went without a saucer. Mugs just weren't done. On sunny days, everyone went outside to the patio, surrounded by high hedges and offering a fair amount of grassy ground for a house in Los Angeles. I hear the cross mixed voices and the laughter of people that have long passed. And now, so too is the house. One day I will pass the monstrosity that replaces it (I do hold out hope otherwise, but it is a remote one), and it will be as if it never were there---except my memory will know, and the photos I took to preserve the visual as best as I could. In one of the back rooms, my companion and I noticed a box with the remnants of the china, some big plates and saucers for the tea cups. There were no tea cups. I really wanted to ask to take one or two of those plates as a memento, but I was afraid to ask. Happily, my companion did, and we both took with us evidence of a lovely, warm memory. 

As we left, on the way to Hugo's for lunch, I noticed that some of the multiple rosebushes at the front of the house (and there were many at the back), were gone. I did ask about that because if the china was one of the material items that evoked Una, so were the rosebushes that gave the most splendid blossoms. Since Joey wasn't leaving until a few days later, I wanted to see if I could come back and take a small one for my little terrace. And it would be another chance to say a goodbye to Joey before her adventure to a new chapter of her life. 

So on April 1, I came by, and was given entry by one of Una's sons who happened to be removing rose bushes in the back, I assume to be planted at his house or the homes of one of the other adult children who live in the area. Joey was doing some last minute errands and I sat outside on the patio, as I had done many times before and could not imagine I would not again after today. Joey returned and asked, "Do you want a cup of tea?" I could barely restrain a tear as I can barely restrain as I write this. Una's very words. The usual china was gone now completely, and what Joey had were mismatched pieces I didn't recognize. There was no milk but Joey had a liquid vanilla extract with Bourbon, which we used as a substitute. And was quite tasty. We reminisced on the patio where endless numbers of people had gathered over the 70 years that Una owned that house. I had been one of them. It's a fact I will cherish. 

The last cup of tea at Una's. I was honored. 

And I got a small rosebush. I am not sure if the transfer will allow it to survive, and I've never had much of a green thumb, but today I notice a bud. And it makes me very happy. 

The cottage itself, home for 70 years and the site of much joy.

The path to the front door

The back patio

Joey

The dishes of wonderful memory 

Many of us helped wash dishes after a gathering here~

This chandelier hung above the dining table

Una (Devlin Lynch): A Remembrance

 How many times have you heard an elderly person say, "Everyone I knew and loved has died!" 

As the years pass, that phrase has begun to resonate with me.  I realize that I have been losing people I care about since I was quite young, since the day my mother died at age 48, when I was 20. As likely do we all, I had the illusion that things which had been so seemingly settled for years, and the people that populated my days, would always be there. And then they weren't. And as I get older the losses increase as they inevitably must. What was it that Edna St. Vincent Millay (I think) said:  I know. I understand. But I am not resigned. 

One of the most reliable of the people in my life was Una Lynch. The idea that she wouldn't be there as long as I was, was one I pushed aside. I already knew her for nearly 40 years. She was tough. Stalwart. Bounded back always. 

I would say that she was the "mother of us all", all being the community of St. Victor Parish in West Hollywood. I tend, as I am guessing many of her friends did and will continue to do so, to consider her in a most proprietary way as a mother substitute-- just for me. 

Una was the niece of one of the early long running pastors of St. Victor's, Monsignor John Devlin.  I don't have all the details, but she left Ireland in about 1949, when she would have been just 23 years old and came to the United States. Whether she intended to stay I do not know, but she did, and became an institution at St. Victor's and in the lives of those who met her there (and elsewhere). 

My introduction was circa 1986, when I decided that my reversion to the Catholic Faith and to regular attendance at Church was firm enough to become an active part of the parish. I met Una at one of my first immersions into some group, and there was Una. With a reserved, but definite warmth, she invited me to have a "cup of tea" with her at the local IHOP just down the road off Holloway Drive, where the Church is situated. I don't recall what we spoke about, no doubt she inquired as to my history somewhat, and I don't remember if I actually had tea, being an inveterate coffee drinker on my father's side. (My mother, a first generation Irish American woman, was the tea drinker in our family, always from a large Russell Wright mug, which I still have). But not long thereafter, I was invited to the Sunday dinners at her little cottage on Orlando Street (in my podcast I said that it was West Hollywood; she would be scandalized for she was very insistent that it was the border, and in Los Angeles). It was there I became acquainted with about five of her 8 children. I was a little embarrassed at being Una's friend. Not because Una wasn't spectacular, and kind, but because it seemed rather odd that, though I was the age of most of her kids or in the vicinity, I wasn't one of their friends, but the friend of a woman my late mother's age. I thought they might think me a bit what? frumpy? Nerdy? Yeah, in those days such things still worried me. But I was mesmerized by the liveliness of these dinners, and that all sorts of people, friends of the kids, other friends of Una's, many from St. Victor, were also invited on a regular basis. I understood later on that Una's mother had been an unusual working mother, in Ireland, where Una was born (County Cork), and it sounded as if people coming and going socially was not a huge part of Una's young life. Una took the opposite approach. She opened her home to all her friends and her friends' friends.  "Come over and have a cup of tea!" was a refrain. A comfort to hear always. 

Her children grew up in that not so little house, of, let's see, five? bedrooms, but still crowded when it came to 8 kids. And she was, in the 1960s, a single mother. Although I assume that she had the support and help of her uncle should she need it, Una raisde them all alone. Finances were tight she always said, but she was proud of the fact that she managed to assure all of them had an education. Like many a mother she would joke that "none of them is in jail" or some such mini-prideful comment. In fact, among the vocations are lawyer, journalist and entertainment producers in the mix, and fathers, and wives and children and grandchidren. The line of Una Lynch is guaranteed for many a year going forward. 

She was a bookkeeper for some Hollywood folk. She was for a time the Principal of the Saint Victor grammar school though she herself, I believe, had never gone to college. She was for years secretary to the parish priests. She was deeply involved in charity, especially St. Anne's for pregnant women. For years, she ran the parish rummage sale which never failed to raise a tidy sum to keep the Church lights on as it were. 

The most important saint in her lexicon was St. Philomena, a Greek princess/martyr, of whom little is known, but is credited with many a miracle. 

Her faith was, in my opinion, heroic in the ordinary way of a Teresa of the Little Flower. It was also pure, uncomplicated. She simply seemed to understand that God's gaze was always upon her, and she quietly and respectfuly loved Him in return. 

Una managed to help out in the Church office until just around the time Covid hit in 2020. After that, she tended to keep to home, but after all she was going on 94 by that time. Her daughter, Joey, made sure Una got outside with a little table for the teapot and the china, so Una could watch the world go by. Una still encouraged visitors to come have a cup of tea. Even as she became unable to walk, and her hearing became worse and worse, she encouraged people to surround her and bask in her kindness and strength. On August 28, 2024, a small group of friends gathered in the dining room that was comfortingly the same as it had been when I attended my first dinner there in the 1980, to celebrate her 98th birthday with her favorite Princess Cake made of Marzipan. I only came to like Marzipan because of Una. It was lovely with that cup of tea. I think many of us knew that this would be the last birthday we would share with her, but it was as life giving as any gatheriing, especially her yearly St. Patrick's ones, she ever had had. 

Una died on December 3, 2024 in her own home, where she had raised her children and welcomed her friends. She died with love and prayer surrounding her. 

One of her friends, a lovely Northern Irish lad named Donal, said, and we all know it is no cliche regarding her, that "we shall not see her like again."  He said it in the original Gaelic. 

Each person I have lost in these last years, that many of us have lost, Fran, Bill, my father, Noreen, Erica, Bill, Barbara and I realize, those that I lost when I was younger, my mother, my aunts and uncles, my cousin Barbara, and more, have closed a chapter that I can't, that none of us can turn the page back to---and it reminds us with the joy of having had them, there is the loss-- a loss that was not intended when we were created. Having them, having Una, was a glimpse of Paradise. 

The Mind Boggling Experience of One Los Angelean Amid Wind and Fire

As I write, it is January 16, 2025, one week, two days after the beginning of the conflagrations known now variously as the Palisades Fire, Eaton Canyon Fire, Hurst Fire, Sunset Fire and more.

It is a quintessential California, Los Angeles day, the kind that enticed me on a first visit now nearly 48 years ago. I came in the summer then, so it's a little cooler today, but as then there is that crystalline blue sky and crisp colors of the God Made hills and the man made buildings, and the ability, to enjoy the mostly always temperate weather. I was on my terrace as the sun went down. My hummingbirds seemed unaffected by the trauma many humans and animals have experienced over the last week and two days. I felt even greater warmth for their comforting presence. They were dive bombing each other as usual for that last sip of nectar before the sun sends them into their nightly sleeps in the trees. Happily our trees, though many blown to kingdom come during the wind that fueled flames all around us, were still intact. Tonight, it looked like those of us in West Hollywood were safe enough. Elsewhere the two biggest fires I mentioned, Palisades and Eaton, were still not fully contained, and the destruction they have already wrought has left some of the most beautiful topography and homes in war like desolation. Too many families have lost their loved ones as embers, then flames overtook them. Those who survived lost the artifacts of their years' long memories, more important to most than the valuables left behind that other disgusting human beings have begun to pillage. 

A friend of mine, Andrew McCarthy, also a transplant from New York many years ago, said it best. At once what we are experiencing in this County and City is Paradise and Apocalypse. Even for those of us that were not touched or lightly touched by the experience, there is an almost ungraspable incongruity. Over here, things are as always, driving on the local streets, Santa Monica Boulevard, Fountain, even Sunset, which runs from the ocean to downtown. Much of it is closed in the west. Most is still open on the east side of things where ordinary commerce continues. Over there, there are ashes. There is also a ripping away of the veneer of safety we in America have tended to enjoy--until a disaster strikes and reminds us that our lives are on loan from God, and if you don't believe in God, from the Cosmos.  And if you don't believe in any order at all, from Chaos.

My experience of the fires began on Tuesday last, when I was driving to Santa Monica to visit with an elderly friend who was in rehabilitation from a broken hip. It was about 1 p.m. and I noticed on the horizon a black and white cloud that I assumed was some kind of structure fire.  Once I got to the facility, though, with everyone, from staff to patients watching the TV in the lanai, I first became aware of the Palisades fire. By the time I left at nearly five p.m., the whole sky was blackened. The fire explained why the power was out in the rehab facility, given the closeness of the Palisades to the it. But at that point, there was no indication that there would need to be evacuation, and, strangely and happily enough, though the facility remained in the warning area throughout, there was never the need for its evacuation. The fire remained north of it, though other parts of Santa Monica were threatened. My home is less than 12 miles from Santa Monica, but I was still surprised by the intensity of the traffic as I wended my way home. I assumed they were seeking to get out of the area and well we all needed to do so.  It took an hour and a half for me to make it home, trying all sorts of short cuts in which I ended up blocked. When I looked back through my side view mirror, I saw this:

If there truly is any such disposition, we are "used" to fires and earthquakes in California. There are endless numbers of homeless living in the hills and brush who have tent households and tempt the pagan gods of fire with their cooking, people throw cigarette butts out of their car windows, and broken glass that litters the ground can focus the sun to an ignition of the brush that environmentalists discourage being removed. (I believe the climate changes. It always has. The dinosaurs and other extinct species could testify to it, if they were here now--long before humans had the hubris to think they can dispose the climate to be more cordial).  And wind? Well the Santa Ana's begin in around September and go on through May so, January would not be an unexpected time for a burst that would fan flames. The word was, however, that these winds would be unlike any other, and sure enough they were. On Wednesday, the view from my little West Hollywood terrace (so calm today) was thus:

Malibu and the Palisades were already being consumed. And, like everyone, I was hoping and praying that people and places would be spared. On a glorious sun day, there is nothing like coming out of the tunnel from the 10 to the Pacific Coast Highway and seeing the sparkle ocean and the lines of houses along the beach, and hanging at some of the restaurants that abut the beach. But now, it seemed little was being spared. And there seemed to be surprise by our leaders that it could get so bad, even though there had been advance reports of the wind, and long knowledge of the nature of firestarting, accidental and wilful. Oh, yes, we have those creatures who just like to burn things, called arsonists. 

I watched the live news concerned for others but not particularly concerned for myself or my immediate neighbors. And then they reported there was a new fire, in the hills, less than a mile from me, the Hollywood Hills, Runyon Canyon, and it was sweeping down toward Hollywood Boulevard. That friend who described LA as Paradise and Apocalypse was ordered to be evacuated. The area from there to Sunset, which I abut on my block, was a mandatory one. I was on warning, but it was only one block from mandatory. My HOA folks were walking the roof because embers could easily flee the hills and rest on our building. I would be leaving, though some of my neighbors chose not to do so. I would take my friend to a safe place with my friend Len, relatively safe in the Westwood area, and return to be with my cousin, not too far away, such that she too had a go bag, just in case. I hustled my startled cat into a bag and waited as Andrew walked to me because the traffic had already jammed in his area, and mine was on its way to gridlock.

Two things mitigated that fire such that it was out by the next day. The winds quieted briefly, and the Lake Hollywood Reservoir was nearby for the large air drops from helicopters. I learned about the app Watch Duty and read every update, and listened to KNX 1070 through the night in which I hardly slept. I was lucky as too many people were not.  But for the first time in my life, I had a small sense of what a refugee experiences taking the few belonging they can and escaping the potentiality of destruction--hopefully escaping the potentiality of destruction. 

Days of danger and darkness. They are not necessarily gone. But today, a peace and quiet, at least in this small pocket of Los Angeles. 

I could imagine that it never happened. But it has. A pretty good close up of hell. 

He's Not One of Us by Constantine Gochis

It is the worst of times.  The Police Department is under severe scrutiny by a special investigating committee and the press.  I am the official Recruiting Officer of our Army Reserve Unit.  The Old Man, Colonel Frank DiGirolamo directs me as follows:

"No more cops!"

This makes me sad since I already approve an application by Bill Houlihan the week before the news breaks in the New York Post about the troubles.  Bill is a sergeant in the Police Department.

"Why do you not get the Old Man to sign the application last week?" says Big Jim Corcoran.

"I am busy writing the ratings of some of the officers," I reply.  "The CO makes me Rating Officer.  What's more he makes me Reviewing Officer.  He likes the way I write."

"Maybe it's because this new guy comes from the "old sod", says the big guy.  He arches an eyebrow and tables his beef.  Perhaps he remembers that his rating is coming due soon. I hope this is not so.  Big Jim and I belt a few short ones many a time in Shorty McKeever's bistro. 

Besides I marry an Irish lass even though her Jersey City relatives consider that I am rather dark complected for full membership in the family.

I learn not to cast stone, a quality that is very handy in today's cosmopolitan world.

Bill Houlihan is a talker.  In fact, he borders on the verbose. Never do I hear a New York accent as legitimate as his.  There is nothing he can say in two or three words that he doesn't use twenty or thirty. He lays a volume or two on me of trials and tribulations that will make the Book Club if he writes it.

He just loses a spot in the Seventy-Seventh Division, the famous New York unit that helps take Okinawa. This gives him a plus in my book. I serve nine months in this division during the war.  In fact, I am fortunate to escape into Officer Candidate School from the Seventy-Seventy which a few months later is shipped to the Pacific Theatre. At the time I do not wish to go there at all.  Frankly, I do not wish to go to the European alternative either, but it's one or the other.  Now that I think of it, I wonder why they refer to these places as "theatres"?  There's nothing entertaining about them.

To resume. Bill anticipates his sixth child.  His house in Long Island contains his wife and the five other children.  He dearly misses the green that peeks out from the envelope we receive, quarterly, a government check.

I determine to con the Old man into reversing his order. To be frank, there is no great con required.  Frank DiGirolamo reverses his ukase when I hand him the rejection papers for signature. I add, "Sir, I am remiss if I do not inform you that this guy is well connected in Washington, and a Bronze Star winner in the last go."

"What should we do," says the rattled CO.

"Leave the matter to me," I suggest.

"Ok," he says, "just this one more time."

Bill is received enthusiastically by the other men, except perhaps for the Executive Officer, Salvador Di Pena, who chides me. "He's not one of us," he says.

I am not flattered by the inclusivenss of this statement. One thing for sure, I do not wish to be "one of him".

Bill becomes as adept as any in pursuing the emoluments offered by the Government.  He takes a whole series of extension courses in Military Government, now called Civil Affairs. Whenever an extension course is offered on an active status, he takes it.  In the period of the Korean War, he takes half a dozen of these "double dippings" with a championship flair. His salary as a Sergeant of Police continues while he is on Active Duty. He is also piling up retirement points at double the rate of the average member.

His grades vary from excellent to superior. He is often called upon to share this expertise as our lecturer, a dreaded event in the unit.  Bill drones on without commas or periods for the hour. He does not even give the traditional ten minute break, which some commanders give, even in combat. There is much unhappiness when he is scheduled.

"I learn to sleep with my eyes open," says Captain McCloud.

He does not lose his composure when he is chastised with barbs.

In one session, he poses the time worn question about policy during a military occupation: "It is three o'clock in the morning," he says. "You are wakened by the sound of a horse drawn cart rolling over the cobblestones, below. There is a curfew on.  You are the Commander. What is your action?"

"I nudge my secretary," says Captain Berkowitz.  There is a full minute of laughter. Bill is unperturbed. 

I get to know Bill very well.  We invite him to join our group for our traditional seances at a local pub. Big Jim, Captain McCloud, even Big John find him to be a regular guy. It becomes very clear that Bill is very tight with a buck.  This is something I learn over the year that he is a member of our unit.  One of my unofficial duties is the arrangement of our semi-annual festivities.  These are not optional.  The CO insists that all officers attend. Worse, they are encouraged to bring the wife or girlfriend.  We have not yet arrived at the "significant other" stage in military festivities.

The ladies love these parties.  I love them also, so I make arrangements in such places as the St. Moritz on the thirty-third floor, overlooking Central Park.  Sometimes, on an off nithgt, a club like the Latin Quarter, or the Alameda Club, when a little Latin Spice is called for.

Getting these guys to loosen up with the wherewithal is a painful process.  When the officers open their wallets, a swarm of moths escape, such is the infrequency with which they loosen the zippers.  

Bill is even more difficult.  I get him to subscribe, but he never brings the wife. Naturally, this intractibility perturbs the Old Man, and especial the boy-girl, boy-girl arrangements of the tables for eight.

"I marry a Japanese lady in Tokoyo," explains Houlihan.  She is very shy and uncomfortable with Americans."

It is a tale he uses over and over again.  In the twenty years I know him, I never see his wife.  Nor does anyone else. 

Of course, in my official capacities, I get to see his 201 file, and other documents.

Also, he forgets that when I interview him for admission into the group, he mentions his wife's name, Katie O'Brien, a moniker not usually found in Japan.

The Executive Officer, Salvador Di Pena, is very wroth with Bill.  He is even more disturbed that I do not find sufficient fault with him.  He takes every opportunity to create dissension with anyone who will listen.

"I catch Houlihan looking through your 201 file," he tells me one day. "How can you trust a guy like that?"

I tell him that I do not care who looks at the file. I remind him that I see HIM pouring over these files.  I do not say "bent over the files", as he is too short to bend over anything but the lowest drawer.

Salvador works in civilian life in the subway system. His job is to ride the rails and look for problems.  His routine for job performance is usual Civil Service.  He calls into Headquarters from a telephone within the subway system itself. He then presumably rides the trains as a trouble shooter. Wrong. He makes the office call, then retires to an office where he assists his mother in running an export business with Ecuador.

Big Jim, whose business is investigating Police applicants for the Academy wises me up.

"I meet him in McKeevers Bar and Grill.  He does not buy a drink, but he eats all the pretzels on the bar. He is happy, so I ask him if he picks a winner at Hialeah or something."

"Jim," he says, "you guys always call me cheap.  No more," he adds joyfully, "mother died."

"You mean he now owns the export business?" I ask.

"What's more," Bill continues, "he has a doll on the side.  I see a large bouquet sitting on an adjoining stool. I read the card sticking out of the wrapper.  I says as follows: 'Dear Carlotta,' and ends, 'con amore, Salvadore.' His wife's name is not Carlotta."

Big Jim's information is always reliable.  The very next day, Big John collars me and says, "Do you hear about the Exec.?"

"Hear what?" I say cautiously. 

"Marrone," which is the way he pronounces the irreverent expletive, 'Madonna'. 

"I see the little guy with a real doll on his arm. They are going into the Copacabana, which takes more than a few bob." 

Big John is proud that his parents come from Genoa, where the proper Italian is spoken.  On the other hand, he does not do too well with English any more than Italian, though he holds a Fordham University diploma.  His most recent gaffe is when he describes an inflammation he has acquired, as a "Prostrate condition."

Our unit is in deep prepatory operations for the coming Summer Camp Exercises.  Houlihan is very anxious to be included in the advance party contingent.  Always astute, Bill covets the three extra days pay that accrues to members of this party.  His police pay will continue concurrently, as he is a patriotic citizen.

Salvador Di Pena traditionally preempts the leadership of this group.  He usually includes those officers whom he feels look kindly on him. It is not likely he will choose Houlihan.

As a matter of fact, I go with him last year, which is a big mistake.  He asks me again this year, but I tell him my boss does not sit still for the extra three days absence.

I wonder how come the Old Man even allows him to go in the first place.  Last summer, instead of making the arrangements for quarters, and chow, and most important, the payroll, he spends most of the three days in an upper barracks sleeping on a pile of mattresses. He is caught by the camp Commandant, who hears snoring as he is inspecting the premises.

The Commandant sends a written report to our CO and makes very ungenerous remarks about our unit, and the Army Reserve program. He is a West Pointer. I know this from the very prominent ring he wears.

Private DiMaggio head the pool on who the chosen will be. Only one guy in the unit picks Houlihan. He cleans up. The tariff is a deuce, and over a hunderd guys buy a ticket.  I do not bet, as I have insider information, though I am sorely tempted, since I never win in a long time. It is five years since I win with a thirteen run pool, when I pick the St. Louis Cardinals over the Giants thirteen to zip.

I find out also that Private DiMaggio is honest.  He does not enter the proceedings. It is he who tells me the story.

If I do not mention it before, DiMaggio is a chauffeur, in addition to being a cop.  He drives the Police Commissioner officially, and frequently on special occasions.

"I drop him off at the Paradise Club," says DiMag, "The Commish has a real looker for a wife.  There is no parking in the area, but the management maks special provisions for the Boss. I park right in front and watch the guys and dolls parade into the Club."

"Get to the point," I say impatiently.  He adds, "I see the Exec, Salvador. He squires what I consider a real winner.  He goes in and is followed nor more than a minute by Big John and Eulalie. You remember, she's the Old Man's daughter.  He almost has a stroke the first time he catches them together."

I wonder about two things.  Where Big John gets the bread to afford the Paradise Club, and what kind of spell does Salvador's broad cast over him to loosen up enough bucks for such a joint.  Also I would like to be a fly on the table when these two couples encounter each other.

"They sit together," says Private DiMaggio. "I hear about it from the bus boy who is my wife's nephew. He says he thinks Big John's eyes will pop out of his head when he gloms the Exec's lady. He smiles so wide it looks like he has sixty-four teeth. Eulalie is greatly displeased with his conduct.

"Do you tell the story to anyone else?" I ask.

"One other person," say DiMaggio. "Bill Houlihan. He slips me a double sawbuck, which I take since I lose money on several enterprises as a bookie. He says there is another twenty if you run another pool as follows: 'Big John makes it with Salvador's girl within the three days he is away on the Advance Party. Pick a day."

The Exec's name does not appear on the special order. Houlihan is named as commander and Big John as his deputy. It if the first time in years that Salvator misses going on the Advance Party. 

"I have many duties here with executive matters.  Besides, Big John can use the experience," Di Pena tells us at a staff meeting. "The Old Man cannot spare me for the three extra days."

Half Century In Memoriam: Rosetta Gochis, My Mother

I had planned to be more attentive to the anniversary of my mother's death on November 25, 1974, fifty full years since the day at Bronx Lebanon Hospital I was quickly ushered out of her room to the realization that she had just passed. But this past week, I managed to get the first real flu I have had in many a year, and so an entire week got away from me while I tried to escape from the misery of stuffed head, stuffed nose, nausea, and wild nighttime coughing instead of reflection and prayer over the enigma that she was, and will always be to me.

I write with a sadness compounded by the fact that one of my few friends who knew my mother well, who in many ways was more like the daughter my mother would have liked to have had, with whom I would have loved to share this day of remembrance, has unfriended and blocked me (along with at least one other friend) because of my expression of my political beliefs. So, in a way, I write of two variations of an experience of death. Much of life is indeed defined by loss and how we handle it. 

I mention my friend, (and she remains my friend, whatever she considers me to be after all these years, since we were about 12), because the last picture I have of my mother, fuzzy and imperfect, 

was taken at the wedding of my friend's sister. It was October, 1974. For most of the years I experienced my mother, she was not particularly interested in gatherings outside her immediate family. She had a distinctly anti-social streak, as far as I could ascertain, along with huge expectations of the world and those in her immediate orbit, in which mostly, it seemed, we all failed. She had dreams that did not include living in a one bedroom apartment in the Mt. Eden Section of the Bronx, and even an improved location near Riverdale. She had married at 18, for reasons that were not clear to any of us, including my father, who often said, after she died, that he had committed a sin in marrying her. She wanted him to provide a Manhattan life on a Bronx salary. He did very well by her and by me, but he never did get her the place with a doorman. My mother was a dreamer, so much so, that I believe she invented a whole other life--though even that is not entirely certain, that it was an invention--full of people with only first names, allegedly in the modelling industry, name Robert (pronounced "Robaire"), Lisa (pronounced "Leeza"), and Evelyn (pronounced "EVE-lyn") with whom she worked as a hand model in some undisclosed location in Manhattan. It was my therapist, of many years ago, who reminded me that I once described her as a "cold volcano" during one of our sessions. The family refrain regarding my mother was "That's just Rosetta". My father and I walked on eggshells. And then she got sick. Very sick, in June 1973. She had not been to any doctor since I was born nearly 20 years before. But it was hard even for her to ignore a rock hard place in torso, and the fact that she was turning yellow from the jaundice that meant it had spread. Metastatic. The first time I think I ever heard the word. Metastatic breast cancer. She was terminal. My father and I never agreed on what were our next instructions, but I know for a fact that for the remaining 14 months of her life, a gift, given the prognosis, no one ever mentioned the word "cancer" to her or to anyone regarding her. The view of doctors "in those days" was that the patient would not fight hard for survival if she knew for certain it was cancer. Of course, as the several articles I found after her death about miracle cures for cancer demonstrated, she knew. 

But something in her changed. The parapets, the walls, the moat that had surrounded her and separated us from her, fell or disappeared. Although religion did not feature in the change (looking back I wish it had, but then even I wasn't practicing anything, well into what would become an over a decade lapse), she did seem to appreciate life in general and her life in a way I had never seen. My father went into overprotection mode. Angry overprotection mode. He and I clashed. My mother had become. . . .well, mother-like, in the emotional sense. But we really couldn't talk about it. She visited relatives that she had ignored for years. She met with my aunt downtown at Schrafts. Despite the treatments and the side effects, which for her in the early days of chemotherapy, were fairly minimal (as such things can be reckoned in a horrible situation), she seemed, well, happy. The picture above was an example of the changed woman--she was enjoying herself, sick as she was, she was enjoying herself. I never sensed before that she enjoyed herself much. It was nice to see. But not to be commented upon, certainly not to her. 

I remember picking out that wig with her, somewhere on Fordham Road. It really did seem like her own hair--although it was the first time in years, in all my knowing her, that I had seen her in other than other than a tight, torturous bun. As a young woman, there were many shots of her with long flowing brown black hair. But not in my childhood or teen years. And then once she got sick, she did indeed, "let her hair down". 

That friend who has blocked me came over to the house and the two of them bonded over fun furs, these little fake fur jackets my mother had bought, the two of them going through the closet and trying them on. My mother was a giddy teenager with my friend. By this time, my relationship with her had become complicated. I couldn't relax with her the way I wanted. But I was glad to see her free in a way that maybe she had never known. And so, even if my friend never unblocks me, as it were, I won't forget that little moment of joy that she gave to my mother, which I couldn't. 

A month later, my mother calmly told my father she needed to go to the hospital. She applied her makeup and they went to the hospital. I left from the college radio station, WFUV, to take the bus to meet them at the hospital. Assigned to her room she got into bed and fell into a coma on November 15, 1974, never recovering consciousness, and dying on Monday, the 25th. Thanksgiving was Thursday, November 28 and it was necessary to hasten the wake and funeral. The wake was on Tuesday. Burial was on Wednesday. 

Today is Monday, the 25th.  Thanksgiving will be the 28th as it was all those years ago. I haven't had the heart for Thanksgiving, the holiday, since then. Maybe, particularly this year, that is true, though happily I will spend it with friends. 

I arranged for a perpetual enrollment (via the Seraphic Mass Association) for my mother, who I hope, I believe, has finally found the happiness life did not afford her in the hands of a loving God. 

Rest in Peace, innocent, sad irish girl, dead at 48.