Pitarresi: Remembering the vets

 

My father’s name was Murphy Pitarresi. My uncle’s name was Tom Schiro.

 

My father was an athlete, and was a well-known football player at Niagara University before and after World War II. He coached for many years, first at NU and then in the Niagara Falls school system. He gave my brothers and me, and sisters, for that matter, our love of sports.

 

Uncle Tom was not an athlete, but he loved hunting and fishing. An extremely patient man, he put up with my cousin and my brother and me on many fishing trips. It was largely because of him and my grandfather that we learned to love the outdoors.

 

I mention them today not because they gave us those gifts, but because they both were combat veterans of World War II. My father was in the Army Air Corps and served in England, France and Germany. My uncle earned all kinds of medals and was wounded at the Battle of the Bulge.

 

As is typical of vets, they rarely spoke of their war experiences, and if they did it almost always was at the urging of others. I think they saw too many things they didn’t want to remember, or maybe they remembered them too easily. These people and so many like them went through all sorts of hells that most of us can never really appreciate.

 

Both my father and my uncle have been gone for a decade or so. I’m never going to forget them, and I don’t want anyone to forget them and the hundreds of thousands of other Americans who have served in our armed forces, in combat and behind the lines, in all sorts of roles, and dozens of foreign lands.

 

So, on this Veterans Day, take a minute to remember