A Blast From the Past

 To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere, without moving anything but your heart. - Phyllis Grissim-Theroux
 

I never met my father-in-law. My husband, Ed, who is named after his father, met him, but he doesn’t remember him. Edmund Palko Sr. died at the age of 27 when my husband was only 11 even month’s old and his older sister was not even three.
 

We knew some things about his father. He was tall at 6’2” and a good athlete, playing football for Derry High School and appearing in the high school all-star game. He served in the Korean War and met my late mother-in-law at a skating rink after the war, and they married. Also, after the war he was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which at that time they attributed to a “nervous stomach” from the war. He got seriously sick in April of 1956 and was hospitalized. Peritonitis set in and eventually killed him over the Easter holiday.
 

We have his letterman jacket, the Bible he carried into war, and the flag that draped his coffin. We know from my husband’s cousin, Rosemarie, who was born on his birthday, that he promised that when she turned 21, he would buy Rosemarie her first drink—something he never lived to fulfill.
 

We know about my father-in-law, but we don’t know him. That is until recently.
 

At the annual Palko family reunion this summer, another of my husband’s cousins was cleaning out some of his late mother’s effects and came across some things from my father-in-law that his mom, my husband’s Aunt Emma, had kept. She was one of my father-in-law’s seven older siblings.
 

Among the things was his first-grade report card, and we discovered that he was quite chatty and got unsatisfactory marks for comportment. But the real treasure was the one letter that was given to us dated February 5, 1951, written while he was in basic training in Fort Knox, Kentucky, and considering becoming a paratrooper.
 

Hi Em,
 

I thought I’d say something about the paratroopers. In the first place whoever gave you the idea that it’s dangerous or anything like that? . . . About mom and pop worrying. I don’t see why. I can take care of myself very well and they know it. So, you can tell mom to stop worrying.
 

Your Brother, Edmund
 

We have a few photos of him, but this was before the proliferation of home movies and iPhone videos, so we don’t know how he moved, what his mannerisms were, or how his voice sounded. But this one letter gave us a welcomed glimpse into his personality revealed by his own words, and it was given to us 73 years after he wrote it.
 

And it made me think about how sad it is that no one writes letters anymore. A lot of the things we know from previous wars came to us through letters. Although we have numerous photos and videos today with iPhones, those photos and videos seem to evaporate quickly and exist outside of the material world. A letter is something concrete. It can be kept in a drawer or scrapbook and be taken out and read over and over. You can see the personality in the penmanship and hear the words on the page in your mind and heart, and if it wasn’t for this one missive, my father-in-law would have remained a flat character to us.
But now with this gift of this letter, we have a small glimmer of his personality, what he was thinking, his sarcasm, and how he expressed himself. And as the saying goes - priceless.

This originally appeared in the November issue of Northern Connection magazine.

A Foul Story

 

It was the summer of 1981, and my boyfriend at the time, who is now my husband, had a college friend from Philadelphia come to town for the Pirates-Phillies game. We had great seats for the night game at Three Rivers, about 20 rows back on the first base side. I was a big baseball fan back then and knew I had to pay attention as we could easily get hit with a line drive foul ball. Sitting in the row in front of us, were several nuns from the convent at St. Benedict Academy, where I had attended high school. I had none of them as teachers, so they didn’t know me. I just recognized their faces.

Garry Maddox of the Phillies came up to bat and fouled off a high fly ball in our direction. I had already stated that if a foul came our way, I was going to duck as I had no chance of snagging a ball with all the tall men sitting around me.

When Maddox’s ball sailed our way, everyone in our section jumped out of their seats to try to catch it while I ducked and covered like I was awaiting a nuclear blast. I heard the thud of the ball hitting something and spring somewhere as people clamored and shouted, “Where did it go?” Fans scrambled around the stands searching for the coveted foul ball.

As I stared at the floor, hands over head, the ball rolled under the nun’s seat in front of me. My first thought was from that little angel, I should let the nuns get it. Then that little devil on my other shoulder said, “the Lord helps those who helps themselves,” and I reached down and scooped up the foul ball. I stood up with the ball in hand like I was the Statue of Liberty holding her torch and said rather sheepishly, “I got it!”

People around me cheered for me, patted me on the back, and men in the stands that I didn’t even know wanted to shake my hand, treating me like I was some kind of hero, like I’d snagged a blistering line drive instead of picking up a ball that had rolled to me.

I was glad I got the ball, but it was from a Philly, so I wasn’t as thrilled as if I’d caught one off a Pirate bat. I stashed the ball in my cedar chest, and over the last 40 some years, I’d take it out every now and then and show it to my kids to impress them that their mom “caught” a foul ball. I’d tell them that it was from Garry Maddox, known as the Secretary of Defense for the Phillies, and on cue my husband would chime in with, “You know what they said about Garry Maddox, ‘Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other one-third by Garry Maddox.’”

 

This past Memorial Day I learned something else about Garry Maddox. The American Thinker had an article written by Will O’Toole, who talked about MLB players who served in Vietnam. Unlike World War II, where most eligible young men, including many MLB players, served their country, the Vietnam War was not like that. Most MLB players didn’t serve their country—but Garry Maddox did. One of nine children, he enlisted at 19 and served in Vietnam until his father suffered several heart attacks and Maddox applied for a hardship discharge to help support his family. He then pursued his MLB career.

I was treated like a hero for picking up a fly foul ball, but until this year, neither I nor my husband knew that Maddox was a Vietnam veteran who selflessly served his country and who should have received more recognition for his heroic sacrifice.

However, you can be sure of one thing and that is the next time I pull out that foul ball and tell the story of how I got it, I’m going to tell people that it was off the bat of Garry Maddox, a great baseball player and an even greater hero.

 

This article originally appeared in the July issue of Northern Connection magazine.