We stood outside the entryway of the funeral parlor, a few of us smoking, everyone talking.
A car pulled up front. The driver got out, opened the trunk, and extracted an aluminum walker. Then he opened the back door, extending his hand to help his passenger to his feet.
And that’s when we all got quiet. Partly from surprise. Partly from admiration.
What it felt like most, though, on a cool October evening in Tinley Park, was reverence. For we all recognized Vito Contino, or “Uncle Vic,” the last man in our extended family who was a member of what journalist Tom Brokaw called “The Greatest Generation.” A World War II veteran had come to pay his respects at the wake of my mother, Gertrude McGrath.
Although Vic’s son Bob, a retired Chicago police captain, hovered nearby, Uncle Vic (when his mother registered him for first grade, school authorities changed his name to Victor, claiming there was no American equivalent for Vito) insisted on making his own way through the crowd. He still has plenty of hair at age 88, still holds his head high, his broad chest forward.
Most recognizable was his beaming smile, familiar since I was a kid. And here was that smile again.
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Following an exchange of pleasantries and condolences, he leaned in close: “I need to tell you something later, before I go,” he said.
Vic is more of an honorary uncle. Decades ago he met and married my father’s cousin, Laverne. So he was one of the multitude of adults at birthdays, baptisms, weddings, and so on, on my father’s side of the family, from which only Vic and Laverne survive.
The McGraths and Continos had all grown up in the same neighborhood on 54th and South Wells Street in the 1940s. When war broke out, my father Charlie was drafted and served as an Army anti-aircraft officer in the Panama Canal Zone.
Uncle Vic wouldn’t turn 18 until 1944, when he volunteered for the Navy, aspiring to emulate his grandfather, Vito, his namesake, and a soldier in the Italian army.
Following basic training, Uncle Vic was assigned to the USS Hopi, an armed ocean tug that would earn four battle stars for WWII service. He always said how lucky he was to be a Navy man, and how he loved the camaraderie, noting that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for a fellow serviceman.
Once he even jumped ship with another sailor to help him find his brother, whose infantry unit was fighting nearby.
While their ship was docked in Livorno, a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, the two risked disciplinary action and enemy fire as they made their way north to the German/Allied battle line. There they found a Red Cross worker who, remarkably, was able to arrange a reunion with the mud-caked brothers.
Having lived through subsequent U.S. wars, Vic maintains there was a different mindset in ’44, when virtually everyone was involved, including those back home, like housewives who saved their cooking grease for munitions.
With all Americans pulling together, you wanted passionately to be part of it. Which is why he swears he would not hesitate to do it all over again.
While the Hopi was patrolling in the Mediterranean, its captain heard talk of Uncle Vic’s culinary skills, and he was enlisted as Hopi’s head baker, specializing in making cinnamon buns. He’d have 10 dozen baking in ovens, their aroma likely doing more for morale than a visit from entertainers like Bob Hope and Betty Grable.
Vic was the smart one, my father used to say.
That’s because after the war, my father began a lifelong career as a salesman, hustling for a living until he was 65 years old.
Whereas Vic, my father told us, did 29 years and out with the Chicago Police Department, retiring as a lieutenant of the Roseland tactical unit before moving to Florida, all before my dad even applied for his Social Security.
When you’re among the bereaved, a wake is interminable, and then suddenly the place is empty. But Vic was waiting in a chair in the lounge, and I sat down beside him.
“I have a story about two men,” said Vic. “They changed the course of my life, and I’ll always be thankful. One I knew, and one I didn’t.
“The first was Ray McGrath, your grandpa.”
He told me my Grandpa Ray and his wife Grandma May used to come across the street and sit on the front steps with his folks after supper. I visualized the scene he described in the old neighborhood, when houses had no interior “climate control,” and folks visited with one another on big front porches, listening to stories, smoking cigarettes, dipping mugs into buckets of beer.
“One night, your grandpa tells me that the Chicago police were hiring vets. I was interested, so he picked up an application since he drove a truck for RV Cartage downtown. And after I filled it out, he dropped it off at police headquarters for me. The rest is history.
“The other fellow I did not know. He was the Navy clerk who filed my discharge in ’46,” said Uncle Vic. “He made a mistake on my birth date, making me 21 instead of my real age of 20. That made me eligible to join the (police) department.
“So it’s those two men I’m thankful for. And I had to tell you.”
Old Uncle Vic: Grateful for the chance to serve in the Navy. Grateful for the chance to serve as one of Chicago’s finest.
I thought about the wars since then, from Korea and Vietnam, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The protests, the politics, the epidemic of post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And then I thought about Uncle Vic and my father and the hundreds of thousands of men enduring separation and hardship, countless war deaths, atrocities, accidents from friendly fire, and military decisions sometimes leading to failure and needless fatalities.
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I thought of how members of this Greatest Generation reacted to serving their country, and, in Uncle Vic’s case, serving and protecting Chicagoans all his life, without a whimper. Without protests. Without complaints. Without regrets.
How they served their country, and then their community, and all they want to say is thanks.
David McGrath is emeritus professor of English, College of DuPage, and author of “The Territory.”