A Company of Heroes (15 page)

We never wanted to appear idle when Dad came home from work. Whenever we heard his big Continental pull into the carport, the back door open, and the sound of heavy footsteps approaching, we bolted from in front of the television and either disappeared or began tidying up whatever needed attention. Needless to say, we were all instilled with a very strong work ethic and today will admit that Daddy gets full credit.

On many occasions, for a special treat, he took all five of us children out of school midweek to join him on a business trip to New Orleans, where we stayed downtown at the St. Charles Hotel. Our loving nanny, MowMow, packed our individual bags (usually large paper bags issued for groceries back then) and smiled as we drove off, knowing she was about to have a couple of days reprieve from all of us. Once we arrived, Dad lined us up like soldiers and gave us precise instructions. On his way to work, he dropped us off at the penny arcade in the French Quarter, each with five dollars to play nickel and dime machines. Lunch was spent around the corner at Krystal for hamburgers. At a predetermined time, he told us to find a man dressed like him, in a nice suit, and ask, “Sir, would you direct us to the streetcar headed to the St. Charles Hotel?” That evening we all dressed up and Dad took us to a fancy restaurant in the city. We would be considered babies by today’s standards, but to Dad, five to eleven years of age was old enough to think and operate on our own. The one thing we all knew at the time and understood innately was to never get separated from each other in the city, and we never did.

Dad loved being a family man. At five o’clock his colleagues in the oil business knocked off work to go have drinks. But Dad wasn’t a drinker. He’d say, “Why in the hell would I want to go drink with your sorry asses when I’ve got the most beautiful wife and gorgeous family waiting for me at home?”

When he was home, he was home, although he was on the road an awful lot. Since Mama didn’t have any disciplinary control over us, sometimes our household could be compared to a monkey cage at a zoo. Many occasions when Dad returned home from work or from being out of town, whatever unpleasant events had occurred in his absence would work their way into that evening’s dinner conversation. Whether we were innocent or not, it was irrelevant in Dad’s eyes. Without any need for further investigation we were all deemed guilty and subject to punishment. He figured that even if he disciplined us when we didn’t deserve it, there were plenty of times we had escaped punishment when, in fact, we did deserve it.

Dad kept a complex relationship with money. On one hand, it didn’t mean anything to him. On the other, it was everything. As children and eventually teenagers, we had to pay money into what he called “The Kilowatt Box” if ever we were caught leaving a light on in our respective rooms. It didn’t matter if we were over at a friend’s house for a sleepover, or playing down the street, we would be summoned by him to return home to turn off the light. As teenagers, whoever was the last to come home in the evenings was responsible for turning off the front porch light. Dad was always the first to wake in the mornings, and if the porch light was still on when he stepped outside to retrieve his paper, he woke up whoever failed to do the job.

He would use money to manipulate and control our devotion. While we were off to college, he might mail a hundred dollar bill ripped in half with the enticement of coming home to get the other half. Or he might send a check but not sign it, promising to do so our next return home. We were often puzzled by these tactics as we gladly came home at every opportunity that availed itself.

Daddy had a tremendous sense of humor. Some of his practical jokes took months to develop. He wrote elaborate letters, sometimes as complete pranks. Once, he observed a prominent television reporter from New Orleans with her colleague out at lunch at his regular diner. The restaurant was all out of that day’s special, which happened to be the only thing the reporter wanted. So she and her colleague left the restaurant without paying for two cups of tea. Dad assumed a pseudonym and posed as the restaurant’s owner. He dashed off a lengthy, accusing letter, which said in part:

The reporter wrote back an equally lengthy reply, a line of which reads,

We have a letter written to Dad from the lieutenant governor of Mississippi, a good friend and former classmate from law school. We are unclear of the subject of the letter that Dad had first written that precipitated the reply, but the lieutenant governor jokingly wrote in part:

Many of Dad’s letters were written with a serious overtone. On the subject of “terror tactics now being used against the United States and our people,” he wrote to President Ronald Reagan shortly after the Iranian hostage crisis was resolved, suggesting the president deport all college students from hostile countries who were studying in the United States.

A newspaper picture showed a mother distressed by her son’s departure overseas for a stint in the military. The mother was “being comforted by a covey of ladies,” as Dad wrote to the editor, and continued:

Daddy spent his last years in Mississippi. He was apart from our mother then, but they were in close contact and weekly traveled back and forth between Mississippi and Louisiana to spend time together. One of our sisters, Tracy, lived in Pass Christian with her husband and two children where Dad resided. Dad just adored his grandkids and spent a lot of time with Tracy and her family. They communicated on a daily basis.

One morning Dad didn’t call Tracy, which was highly unusual. It was two days after his birthday. After ten a.m., the children’s nanny, Miss Lillian, tried phoning Dad and found his phone busy. Dad always took his phone off the hook at night and was an early riser, so this was unusual. Miss Lillian loaded the children into her vehicle and drove over to check on Daddy and found his newspaper still on his front door step. She opened the door, as she possessed a key to his condo, and Tracy’s five-year-old son, Charlie, raced into Dad’s bedroom and attempted to wake him. Dad had suffered a stroke during the night. An ambulance was called and he was rushed to the hospital. The family all got in cars and boarded planes to get home immediately.

We were first told by the neurologist that Daddy had a good chance of pulling through, and our hopes were high that Daddy would quickly recover, but within hours of being admitted he suffered another stroke, this one massive. Daddy lasted three more days and died April 19, 1997, at age seventy-six.

His funeral wasn’t a sad affair in the least. Everybody told jokes and laughed, recalling pranks he had pulled, things he had said, stories that had taken on lives of their own. You couldn’t talk about Daddy without smiling. He had become a local legend.

Dad was cremated. His ashes were kept in an urn at our brother’s home until our dear mother passed away in 2009. We knew that Dad would be happy nowhere but with Mama, so his ashes were placed in her coffin, which now rests in our family plot.

What would we want people to remember about our father? His honor and integrity. Both of our parents, despite their faults, lived their lives this way. Once, they were talking about selling their home. Mama was at a social function when she saw a neighbor who was also a real estate agent. She mentioned that they would soon be selling and would call this realtor when they were ready to list. Nothing more was said or formalized. Soon after that a separate party approached our parents, and the house sold without ever hitting the market. After the deal was final, Dad made out a check to their neighbor the realtor. When Mama asked Daddy the reason for the check, he responded with, “Mama, you told him you’d list it with him.” Mama quickly understood and dispatched a check that day.

Dad is sometimes credited as being the vital link between Stephen Ambrose and the Band of Brothers, but this is perhaps over-told. They weren’t neighbors, as has been reported, but lived about fifteen minutes away from each other in Pass Christian, Mississippi.

In 1988 during the annual Easy Company reunion in New Orleans, Ambrose’s assistant at the University of New Orleans heard there was a group of WWII veterans in town. The assistant dropped by the hotel and asked if he could speak to the men. Many of them happily complied and sat for brief interviews. Many recommended he should speak with Gordon, since he lived just an hour away. (Dad was out of the hotel when all this took place). The assistant gave Dad’s contact information to Ambrose and from there a relationship ensued. Prior to Dad’s initial meeting with Ambrose for the book, he arranged for Lipton, Guth, and Dick Winters to join him for a collaborative interview.

Dad and Ambrose became fast friends, but Dad never sought to take advantage of the friendship and always respected Ambrose as an author and historian. They had lunch once in a while or met occasionally for coffee. When any of the men came to the coast to visit, Dad called Ambrose and his wife Moira, and they all got together for a seafood boil of whatever was in season. Dad was always grateful to Ambrose for choosing Company E as his subject out of all the outstanding military groups that served in WWII. Dad did not live to see
Band of Brothers
become a media phenomenon, but we’re confident he’s pleased and proud to see his brothers be revered and honored as all men who have fought for our freedom should be.

 

 

 

I was lucky, growing up, that my dad talked about the war. He didn’t shy away from his experiences. He described the war as something he was fortunate to live through. Because of that, life was a party, he always said, and he was going to have a good time. That was his philosophy, anyway.

He talked most about the war during the years I was in high school. I’m the oldest child in the family, and after work he sat at the dinner table and talked while my mom cooked dinner. He talked mostly about Bastogne. Everybody was so cold and thin, he said. It was bitter cold. He needed to wrap his feet with paper—anything a man could find to wrap around his feet or stuff into his shoes to try and stay warm. He talked about trees exploding from the constant shelling—tree bursts, he called them—and how scary that was: pieces of trees as sharp as arrows flew at you. He talked about digging foxholes with the men and sleeping in a hole in the ground. He talked about how the guys were special and about how they were his brothers.

Easy Company veteran Frank Perconte was a childhood friend of Dad’s, and he and his wife came over regularly after the war. They talked about a lot of things together, and almost always, somewhere during the conversation, the war would come up. I remember a few of those stories too, but I wish I had been a little bit older so I would have paid more attention to them. Isn’t that always the way it goes?

Anyway, this is what I know of my dad’s life.

My dad was born in Joliet, Illinois, on January 3, 1917, which made him one of the older Easy Company men. His family lived on Ottawa Street. His mother’s name was Artillia, but everybody called her Tillie. She had emigrated from Germany and we have relatives still over in Germany to this day. My grandfather was born in Sweden and immigrated to America. So my dad was a first generation American.

How did my dad get the nickname Hack? Actually, he had two nicknames. Hack was his first nickname growing up. I’m not sure how it came about because there were a number of people who also called him Henry back then. After the war, most people called him Hank.

Dad was the middle child. His parents were very strict. Dad grew up as a hard worker and loved sports. Golf was his favorite and he also loved baseball. They played pickup games in the neighborhood constantly.

Frank Perconte moved into the neighborhood when he was about ten, to the same street as my dad, and from then on they were best buddies and basically did everything together. That neighborhood was very tight. Families went on picnics with other neighborhood families and played sports with each other. Both Frank and Dad loved to play practical jokes. Dad seemed to have the lighter temperament. He loved to tease, he had a real charmer personality, and was very sociable and had a lot of friends. He valued education and always wanted to live life to the fullest and be the best at whatever he did.