Walter G. Fitzgerald Remembered

A lot of people have asked me to make this public, so here it is. The words I said at my grandfather's funeral. Please enjoy, and maybe, light a candle for him. Not that he needs our prayers, there's no doubt in my mind which side of the fence he landed on, but still ... humor me.

Thank you all for coming here today to celebrate my grandfather, my hero, a great American, and my best friend.

I think this story starts† 'Once upon a time ...' because that is how every story begins, mine...yours...and Walter G. Fitzgerald's ñ my Papa.

Like everyone, he only got one 'once upon a time' and like most it wasn't in a quaint village, it was in the big city of Cambridge. It was during a war which brought with it a pandemic of influenza that killed millions across the country and around the globe. Amongst the victims was his mother, my great grandmother, a young nurse by the name of Mabel Allison Fitzgerald, a woman with the good sense to marry a Fitzgerald, but whose family had disowned her for marrying him because he was a widower. Her death left my papa motherless when he was only 18 months old. So it was pretty clear right from the start that the story of Walter Fitzgerald wasn't a fairy tale.

In my mind, I sometimes imagine Mabel Alisson teaching baby Walter his first words, how to eat, and how to stand up All skills which got good use over the years by all accounts of friends and famliy.†

The loss of his mother surely made for a hard start to life, but not an impossible one. He had a good father, who did his best to make the best life he could for Papa and his brother John. After a staying with their dad in boarding houses for a while, my great grandfather shipped his boys off to the farm in Norwell, for a better life.

For a few years he seemed to make some headway doing his best for those boys, but then he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. In one of the most wise and pragmatic selfless acts of love which I have ever heard, My Great Grand Father paid his life savings to the Farm and Trade school on Thompson's Island in Boston Harbor to give each of his sons a trade.

In my family in THIS family the parable of teaching a man to fish has DEFINITELY had an impact that is unimaginably deep and profound.

John Joseph Fitzgerald gave those boys more than just an education though. He found two remarkable people to help him. His young boys were looked after by their guardian, Frank Robinson, who loved those boys as his own, and Nana Clark, an old Scottish lady who arrived in the country while Abraham Lincoln was president, so any of you who knew my papa knew someone who knew someone that remembered Lincoln's presidency, which, I personally find insanely cool. Together they were just the thing that two young boys needed to ensure that they took full advantage of the education.

7 days before his passing in April of 1930, Frank Robinson took the boys down to the hospital for their last visit with their Dad. Frank knew it was their last visit. My Great Grandfather knew it too. The boys did not. He knew that these boys would soon be orphans. After a typical exchange of pleasantries, he paused for a moment, probably in pain, and definitely under heavy morphine medication, he laid upon them a mission a directive from their father which neither failed.

'Be good to each other. Love each other. Don't let anything ever come between you,' he told them this and then a week later he was gone.

While the boys toiled the school year away on Thompson's Island, and spent the summers with Frank Robinson and Nana Clark, the depression was in full swing. After graduating the farm and Trade school in 1934, at age 16, Frank Robinson told Papa, 'Go down to Arlingon Highschool and enroll, graduate next year.'

Papa would have none of that, 'It's time for me to get a job Frank, I need to stand on my own' he said.

He told me once, 'It's the one big mistake I made.'

If it was a mistake, it was one he was more than able to live with. He soon got a job delivering laundry in Boston, zipping all over town in a laundry truck, then a job as a painter, and not long after building store fronts.

1941 rolled around, and, almost 61 years ago to the day now, the world changed.
He found himself† building the USS Massachusetts. Eventually being promoted into a position of some authority estimating labor for each part of the job. It was a job that was vital to national security. He was not going to be drafted. He was being useful and helping our country fight the war.

But Walter wasn't that kind of guy. Walter G. Fitzgerald, the orphan from Cambridge Massachusetts thought about it all. And he thought, 'I need to stand up.'
He told me, 'Stephan, mothers were sending their sons to war. Many of them would never return. I had no one. John was all set, he had Anne. I thought, if I could just save one mother the horror of losing her boy, I'd be doing a good thing.'

So he signed up.

Oct 3, 1942, he shipped out. Christmas Day 1942 he went through the Panama Canal and on to war in the south pacific (a day he told me was probably the worst of his life, but looking out on the canal he promised himself he'd return in good times -- a promise, like all the others, that he kept.)

After several years running in behind the marines building piers, landing strips and bases; wielding a hammer and building amidst the destruction of war; in early 1945, while working† somewhere in the south pacific, he stood 15-20 feet up on the cab of a lory as another large piece of equipment moved a large turbine nearby, the several-ton turbine slipped and was swinging directly at him, he jumped and unquestionably good idea he survived, but not without breaking his leg badly.

The Leg healed up and inch shorter, and eventually caused him horrible back pain. But he was not one to make a big thing of it. Nor did he make much of another gift from the war: an infection that led to all his hair falling out. Between these two nasty little problems, he was honorably discharged from the navy.

Though in the long run the suffering from backpain would be debilitating, the more immediate problem was the way his hair fell out in clumps. The problem with his hair made this quiet man, even a little more shy.

After returning to Boston, and moving in with his brother, he got a job, and saved some money and bought a house in Somerville. After a year or so, his friend Leo's wife Kaye told him she had just the girl for him. Kaye told the girl, 'Don't say anything about his hair, he's very sensitive about it, and he's a good man.'

In a historic and uncharacteristic move, my grandmother must have been sensitive and said nothing about his hair problem, because within a year they were married.

It seems a little thing. But I have to wonder how a man orphaned by the age of 12, who had seen a depression and a war found the courage and the optimism to try to build a family. Or maybe it's just a sign of the woman he found. Sometimes a man needs a friend like that to help him stand up and be brave.

It wasn't long after that, 1952, that they moved from Somerville to Woburn, with two children. Now Papa had a great job at an up and coming photography company, 'Polaroid' and, being the man he was, when ever anything needed doing, he would stand up, and make sure it happened. Within short order any important construction project in that huge company needed Walter Fitzgerald.

And, being the man that he was, he wasn't going to forget his friends and family. His brother and his sister-in-law and eventually his nephew all ended up with him there.

Meanwhile, at home, where his real focus was, Papa took his boy and taught him his trade. Perhaps it was an echo of the wisdom of his own father, or maybe it was his way to connect with this gregarious beautiful young man. I can't answer that question because he couldn't answer it when I asked him.

And he took that little girl of his and he treated her like a princess. He loved her with his whole heart. It is unquestionable that those two kids and his wife were the absolute center of his universe. Together he and Phyllis found this church and made it their own.

They Embraced the city of Woburn and made it their home.

The years passed, his children grew, their children's friends came to love him and admire him, cherish the lessons he taught them. His nieces and nephews came to adore him as a friend, confidant, and mentor. He was a model citizen, involved in the community through many outreach groups like the Y, the Masons, the Legion and 4H. He was the model husband. He was the model father.

The years passed, as they are wont to do, and soon his story enveloped me.
December 3, 1970 -- just 32 years ago I met him. I don't really remember it much, but apparently I didn't care for him very much because I crapped all over him. Being the gentle soul he was he forgave the early indignities and we came to be friendly. I'm told that it was my quick love of the Bruins and Red Sox that put me over the hump, but I suspect it was the fact that I loved his goofy jokes.

All these years later it's hard to say exactly why, but it was, as Bogie said, 'The start of a beautiful friendship.'

And now, I will be stingy. I have millions upon millions of wonderful memories of my grandfather and these last 32 years I was so honored and privileged to share with him. I have so many stories about the things we did and the places we went; I could keep you here all day all month even.† But I don't think this is the time for all my stories, instead

I'll share just these few thoughts ....

Looking back on the MANY GREAT GIFTS papa gave me, the greatest of all of these is this: While he thought he was just teaching a boy to be a man, he was also teaching a man how to love a child. Today I have a son and a daughter, and I love them so much my heart aches to look at them. I love them, and NOW I understand how he loved me.

And the second greatest gift is a lesson he taught me when I was about 6, but I'll be honest with you, I didn't realize it and understand it until just after he died.

There I was, about 6 years old, and Papa and I were fishing off the dock up at the lake. We were laughing about silly things as we often did †fish not biting and Nana complaining about something-or-other and some how, I managed to fall off the dock into the shallow water there.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, 'NAAAANNNAAAAAAA!!!!! HELP!!!! PAPPAAAAAAA HELP!!!!!!'

And he looked down at me and he smiled. He had that twinkle in his eye, and he started to laugh, 'Stephan, Stand up.'

And today, FINALLY, I really understand.

Now it is time for us all to stand up. It is time for all of us to set aside this pain. Remember Walter Fitzgerald. Remember his life. Remember the joy of knowing him and being his friend. Talk about him with the reverence, the love, and the fondness that we all share for him and don't stop talking about him and remembering him.

Today, our challenge, the one he laid before us with that amazing charm and that unbelievably warm twinkle in his eye,† is to live as well and as good a life as Walter Gordan Fitzgerald. Our challenge today is to remember what my grandfather knew so very very well, that the waters of this life are so very shallow. And if you don't want My Papa looking down at you from Heaven and laughing at you like he laughed at me that cold day all those years ago, it's time for you to Stand Up.