John Joseph Walsh
John Bartimoccia, John Walsh, Patty Jones and Bronis Fitzpatrick in 1969 in Mahopac, New York.
I never realized it when I was a child or young woman, but John Joseph Walsh, my Uncle John, must have been an extraordinary man. I knew he was wonderful, I just never added up all the things that made him that way.
I knew that Uncle John served in the Merchant Marine during World War II. Once he went with us when we toured a naval ship and when we were in the engine room he told me that it was always noisy and dark down there. I have often thought about him working deep in the bowels of the ship, the engines roaring and wondered if they were so loud that he couldn't hear the guns and explosions from the war outside. I bet they weren't. He didn't tell me, though, that his ship was sunk twice on a run to Russia during the war. I learned that from my Dad just recently when I put a list of the veterans in our family tree up on my web site.
I never thought about the fact that my grandmother and my Uncle Mike lived with Uncle John and Aunt Ned either. I didn't know that my Dad went to live with them while my grandmother was still living with her husband in New Orleans. I didn't know until I was a teen-ager that my cousin Pat Bartimoccia was not Uncle John's natural daughter -- didn't know it until one of her half-sisters, a girl the age of Pat's own daughter, came to stay a couple of weeks with Aunt Ned and Uncle John in Mississippi one summer when all of the grandkids were there. But it really is extraordinary when you think about it.
John Walsh married Inez Reid (I guess she was Inez Harvey after she was divorced, but I'm not sure) sometime after World War II ended and raised her daughter, Pat, as his own. They moved to Mahopac, New York, and Uncle John went to work for a railroad, Penn Central, I think. Then in the early fifties, he took in his wife's teen-age nephew because life at home had become unbearable. Not long after my Dad joined the Marines, John and Inez Walsh took in his mother and his half-brother. Except for a few years when they lived with us, my grandmother lived with her sister and her brother-in-law for the rest of her life. How many men do you know who'd do take in their sister-in-law and her children?
I knew that Uncle John was a wonderful grandfather. When we were little he'd sit for hours while my cousin Camille, my sister Roberta and I (or any combination thereof) styled his hair. That was one of our favorite games. When I was a teenager, I noticed that it was a game my little sister, Brenda, liked to play as well and he was still sitting patiently for it.
He took me to New York City on the train, twice. Once he took me by myself and once my sister, Roberta, went along. We went to the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, the Central Park Zoo and the United Nations. He bought me hot dogs and Italian ices. We talked all day -- I wish I could remember what we said.
When I was thirteen he came down to Virginia from New York on the train to take me back to spend the summer with them. It was the first summer I spent with them, but it was not the last. I spent my summers with them, either in Mahopac or Mississippi, after that.
When I was a teen-ager Uncle John would get catalogs from Radio Shack and HeathKit with all kinds of electronics gizmos in them and he and I would look through the catalogs together. I was just developing an interest in such things. I never gave in to it until computers came along, but Uncle John and I spent a lot of quality time together looking through those catalogs.
He let me drive his car, against the advice of my parents. Aunt Ned told him that if I wrecked it, he couldn't say anything about it. I ran the rear-end into a tree. He never said a word about it to me. In fact, I never remember seeing him angry. He was a kind and gentle man, the sweetest man I ever knew.
Uncle John died in 1978. I had seen him not long before when we went home on leave. I found out he was ill just before I left for Korea, he had a brain tumor. The first letter I got from my mother after I arrived in Korea told me he was dead. I still miss him today.
Written by Patricia Anne Dumond, 14 November 1999, Hinesville, Georgia.