Minds Remember Big Events Forever

Discussion in 'Other Reminiscences' started by Frank Sanoica, Oct 22, 2017.

  1. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    First, I must say, I seek NO sympathy here for what I am about to say. It is being written to simply show how a few big "events" occurring during each of our lifetimes, tend to be ingrained forever, whether they were happily or sadly recalled.

    Today is Sunday, October 22, 2017. Today, it occurred to me to be truly coincidental that October 22, 1967, one of those dates unforgettable and recalled every year, fell on a Sunday also, 50 years ago!

    50 years ago today, my new, young wife of two years, at 20, lost both her parents through a violent and senseless act committed by her father. I was 25.

    The aftermath proved devastating both mentally and physically, for us and her sister, then 10, and brother, 16. In a "nutball", as my Hoosier wife says (2nd. wife), after realizing the kids needed new "parents" and no relatives of their family existed, we became their Legal Guardians. Within weeks, the boy, Rick, was violently ill with emotion-induced Ulcerative Colitis; we hospitalized him on Nov. 28, his 17th birthday. He was released after nearly succumbing on Mar. 31, the following Spring, 4 months in Cook County Hospital, after which he began a slow process of returning to fairly good health.

    Meanwhile, Uncle Same had during the Summer, around my 25th. birthday, reclassified my draft status to 1-A, and scheduled the Armed Forces Physical Examination for late in the year. Viet Nam was raging. I appeared before the Local Board, explaining that I had become Guardian of two minors. I was immediately reclassified and removed from the commitment to serve. Thus, the possibility I might have been killed in 'Nam was removed by my father-in-law's act of insanity.

    Finally, the boy, Rick, having had ups and downs with the Colitis for 8 years, died 2 days after we had him hospitalized, on Nov. 28, 1975, his 25th. birthday!

    A forever-life changing event not erasable from the mind. I do not dwell on it, never have, but every Oct. 22, well, it surfaces. My 'ex and I were divorced in 1976.
    Frank
     
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  2. Bill Boggs

    Bill Boggs Supreme Member
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    Well, @Frank Sanoica, You said you don't want sympathy and l believe you wiithout reservation, but listen up, man, I'm going to pour all over you all the sympathy I can muster up. That's some tough luck, laid on heavy. That's more than anyone should be asked to bear. It looks to me like you've given more of yourself and more of your share on more than one occasion. It's time for a break and if I were running the Great Master Plan, I'd lay a couple on you and add twenty- years to your life span and we'd cancel October 22nd but only if you wanted. I can't do that but you have my respect and my empathy. Fortunately, I have no dates, good or bad, that stand out.
     
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  3. Chrissy Cross

    Chrissy Cross Supreme Member
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    I never have the right words to say and have trouble expressing them but I'm sure you know I care @Frank Sanoica.
     
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  4. Jeff Tracy

    Jeff Tracy Veteran Member
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    Thank you for sharing this Frank ... good things often grow out of the shit life dumps on us ... that doesn't justify the evil that was done but it sure is a comfort ...
    Sometimes we feel like a thread that is being pulled, twisted, knotted and stained. We don't know why 'till we rise above it and see the glorious tapestry that
    we are surely a part of ...
     
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  5. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Bill Boggs @Chrissy Cross
    Well, thank you both. I've wondered all my life, what it must have been like for a 20-year old young woman. I've wondered if it were me, whether I could have handled it. Will wonder always, if I said and did the right things in her time of need. Learned quickly, having still been pretty naïve, that the Police Captain who ORDERED her to give them a statement only hours later, did so to line his pockets.....her statement appeared in the next morning's paper, almost word for word. How she suffered through that statement ordeal I cannot describe. If I knew then what I know now, I would have told that cop to F-off.

    Not sure why I'm carrying this further, the bitterness, I guess, prevails forever. She asked that the caskets be kept closed. Gossipy old ladies who had read the newspaper came wandering in to the funeral home, too "see". I heard one say, "the caskets are closed. Let's go". Friends of her family who had known them for many years, from the War days back in Europe (my wife was born in Germany of Polish parents who had been dragged off out of their home to work labor for Hitler's troops) in 1947; they emigrated here in 1963, when she was 16. Those old "friends" of her parents chastised my wife for having the caskets closed. I was sickened by such disloyalty, as they claimed that was what her mother "would have wanted". The daughter of one of those friends was her "best lady" at our wedding, two years earlier.

    Going further with this is pointless. That the deaths of two persons could carry such an incredible, convoluted aftermath for years to come, I could not have predicted, then. Maybe an orphanage would have been a better answer for the kids, but not for us, we had thought that through in the weeks following, but such an option sounded barbaric. We had left the Chicago area forever in 1972, 5 years after the deaths, moving to Las Vegas, where I took over an ARCO Service Station, Sue, my wife, easily found a job at the hair salon at the Stardust Hotel (German-trained hair stylists were highly regarded, some things worked in our favor). Diane, her sister, lived with us, attending high school there. Rick, her brother, worked for me in the service station, which I left before a year there, Rick, then 23, remaining on with the new Dealer. March, 1973 was another turning point, I left the station with no job prospects present, and we decided to build a house! The bank issued us a mortgage loan, me being unemployed! Only in Vegas. Meanwhile, I started classes full-time at Univ. of Nevada, hoping to finish the final half of my degree requirements in Engineering.

    Some of you know the rest of the story; hopefully, you've luckily forgotten much of it. My lifetime has enveloped and embraced good deeds, and mis-deeds, I make no apologies, but will issue challenge to anyone who can claim to have been "around the block" more times than I. Maybe 'round the bend is more appropriate. Frank
     
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  6. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    My usual interest in "oldies", always playing across my mind much of the time, produced this evening a line in a hit song which I have been unable to document as to performer or title:

    "It's so easy to remember,

    But so hard to forget".

    Wish I could hum the tune for you, as I can hear it playing..........Frank
     
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  7. Jeff Tracy

    Jeff Tracy Veteran Member
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    Greetings from Aeioungland.
    [​IMG]
     
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