From Amelia Occhi:
My Marine

As the fall days are quickly coming to New England for yet another year we think of colored leaves and pumpkin patches and apple pie, but my thoughts are of going to school for first grade. It takes me back to my first recognition of a holiday. One that would become a very special one to me. Veterans Day, 1951. I came home asking my mother what it was, after our teacher circled it on the calendar and posted a cutout picture of a solider holding the US flag on the bulletin board. What was a Veteran? As she related the meaning of Veteran, I had a hard time formulating what it really meant. She mentioned Marines, men returning from fighting a war. I thought about the book on the table in the living room with in large letters on the cover of World War II. I knew the pictures in the book by heart, the dead bodies of people and mothers holding lifeless babies in their arms and with faces of sadness, horror and tears. That was all I could make of what she told me at the time.

Somewhere in that month of my life another memory was imbedded in my consciousness, but veiled with mystery and dream like qualities. It’s a timeline where events jump ahead and backwards on the line. One such event is my first remembrances of my oldest brother. It was on one Saturday my family and I were at theater in New Britain and my brother and other young men on the stage with men spouting lots of speeches and much fanfare. A live band played and bright lights lite the stages and all the young faces shone brightly. I came to understand they were Marines, soldiers. Years later I was to see pictures clipped from a newspaper, yellowed with age, of the induction ceremonies for May 1950 Marine, Army and Navy volunteers. The pictures were confirmations of my visions and proved the event not to be a dream.

My thoughts go back to those years of not knowing my brother. In the days to come I would hear my mother and father talk about Sonny. Was he safe? When would he come home? Would he decide to never come back to CT but live in California? An anger father shouting that he didn’t want to go to the dance, how could he have a good time worrying about his son, how could my mother dance and enjoy herself during these days of worry and not knowing how her son was. I was too little to remember him at home; I was only 4 when he left for the Marines. I knew Sonny had sent letters to us, gave my mother a pillow that she had on our chair in the living room of bright red fabric with US Marines embroider on it and trimmed with gold fringe around the edges. Yes, and the records in our house that I played over and over again, till I memorized every word, like, “Tell it to the Marines”, The Marine, Army and Airforce Hymns, and of course “Make Love to Me”, they were his. He sent me a real grass skirt, halter-top with pictures of Hawaiian girls on it and a ukulele. I knew Sonny was my brother. I knew my other brother “ T” (Theodore/Ted) because I would wake up early in the morning and run upstairs to jump in bed with him where he would try to keep me from talking so he could get a few more minutes of sleep. Sonny and T had their bedrooms upstairs. Sonny's dresser and bed were there, as well as his Yankee team pictures on the wall, pictures of Joe DiMaggio, and captions like World Series Champions over the pictures. Model planes hung from the ceiling and others were set on a small shelf. There were playing cards tucked under the clothes in his dresser with scantly clothed "pin up girls" pictures on them and a few other items belonging to the "teens" of the time but he never was there to sleep. I would sit on the bed and somehow felt connected as if I knew him. I can close my eyes and see their rooms as if they were still intact today. A bed a dresser and a few scant belongings, a reflection of simpler times.

As memories fade and revive themselves, a most special Christmas comes to my mind. It was Christmas Eve and late at night. Someone opened the cellar door, walked up the stairs leading to the kitchen. They stopped on the top stairs. My mother, father sat in the kitchen, I laid awake in my bed. Mom blurred out “who could be coming over at this hour on Christmas Eve”, not expecting anyone. As Dad walked to the door he muttered “Could it be” and opened the door. I instantly knew that it wasn’t St. Nick, the vibrations from my family and close family ties were and are strong, we knew who it was. As I describe this scene to this day tears and emotion well up inside of me, with more excitement and thrill than in any movie I have every experienced. Not one movie that Hollywood could conjure up has captured the feelings that are stored in me representing that moment. There he was larger than life, so handsome in his uniform, so tall, that was my brother, the Marine, my Marine. The image I recall was of him filling the whole opening of the door, touching the top of the door jam. Flinging down on the kitchen floor his heavy olive-green duffle bag. Not a traveler’s weary eye did we see but bright shine in his face and strong lasting embraces, of someone with great energy. I knew and felt happiness beyond words that transcended from my mother, father and brother. The rest of that evening vanishes into the night for me as the memory of a child would. Sonny was home for his first leave from Korea. There are no adequate words created by man to describe his homecoming and the transformation of his and our lives that resulted from events he witnesses and time he spent apart from us and as we as a family spent apart from him. With that visit home we all went to see a movie in New Britain . This handsome man dressed in uniform, took my hand and walked with me, my mother had a tear and not till years later did I find out exactly why.

The years passed and Sonny came home to stay. He was a man now and informed us all that he wanted to be called Ed, he wasn’t Sonny any more. Now I was going to get to know my brother! He was 15 when I was born. He scolded my mother and father after getting the news that he was going to be a brother again. “Why do you want to bring a screaming baby into the house”. A few months after I was born, he told Mom, she's not so bad, she doesn't cry that much at all". But he didn’t want to have too much to do with the baby. That’s why our mother shed a tear on our trip to the at that Christmas time movie, when he took my hand to walk with me. Now, I was six and he was going to be twenty-one. My peaceful world just ended. He just loved to see me squirm, he would tease and tease till I was in tears, I don't know what he would say but I would cry and mother would chase the twenty year old around the kitchen, out the door and out the back steps hollering and sometimes swinging a broom. I guess he teased me latter to make up for that crying baby. He was home and I had a normal brother like everyone else. Little did I know then how blessed I was. Soon after Ted was home from the Marines as well and I was soon to learn, Ed was an avid hunter as were the rest of the men in our family. Knowing that fact make me understand, the sharp shooting medals on his uniform.

I grew up and had a family same as my brother did. Now my brother and I finally had lots of things in common and the age gap disappeared. I hung around watching my brother work in the family’s shop for many years to come; we did most of our chatting then while he worked. I brought my children to the "workshop" and they chatted with Uncle Ed. He coined my son Jim "Oscar the grouch" after the TV character and that turned out to be a common thread. Since that “grouch” was said to be the same for both Uncle and Nephew along with a mechanical aptitude they both have. Ed and T (Ted) joined a bunch of guys that have embraced musket shooting and re-enactment of Civil War Soldiers, of course we tagged along to see them shoot for 57 years. Ed says "they shoot by Braille" now, but don’t be fooled the two are still sharp shooters and medal winners. To have him 74 years, I was so blessed. My brother was always there if I need him, always a rock of stability and protective of me and our whole family. Someone once commented that Ed carried the weight of the world on his shoulders as a young man, maybe that's what happens when you are the oldest and you volunteer to go to war for your country. I think of all the things I learned from my brother and if I wrote a list, it could be possibly be the longest list in the world. He was my smart, caring, strong and one part of the other half (that what my two brothers are called by many how know them). He is my Marine and will always be one to me.

Ti Amo mi fratelo, Amelia

Original written Nov. 2001, updated June 2020 by Amelia Occhi
Foot note: Many Italian family first born sons are nicknamed Sonn