Did My Father Know Any of This?

Note: For the complete list of posts, go HERE.

With both of his parents listed as inmates in the 1940 Census, where was my Dad (he was 15, my Uncle Vinnie was 12)? 

They show up living at 58 St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan. This is still in the East Village, between 1st and 2nd Avenue -- between 7th and 9th Streets -- on what is essentially 8th Street, on the south side. They are living with my grandmother’s sister Theresa and her husband Frank Ruggieri and their four kids. 

In the same building? Leonard Mancini -- haha, no relation that I can tell -- married to Elizabeth’s other sister Adrianna and their four kids. And also Dominick’s (remember, Elizabeth’s older brother) daughter Francis, married to an Alfred Sinapi and their six kids.

The list of missing relatives is beginning to resemble a village.

But I seem to be running out of Ancestry.com rocks under which to look (or in Ancestry terms, running out of family tree “leaves” to check out). 

And it occurs to me -- I wonder if there is any information in my father’s enlistment papers for the Navy during WW2 that might shed light on this story?

Just when I think too much time has passed, and I will need to start over, the package arrives, return address “National Personnel Records Center.”

I requested my father’s military records for two reasons. 

First, because I know he served roughly from 1944 to 1946, and other than the quick glimpse of him in the 1940 census, living with him Aunt and Uncle, I really know virtually nothing about him from 1940 until he met my mom (1952) and married her (in 1953).

Secondly, I wonder whether the enlistment papers will reveal something about some questions that have bothered us all since this quest began. Some questions that sound like something out of the Watergate files -- What did my Dad know? Was there any point at which he knew that his parents were alive -- but institutionalized? 

My brother and I have assumed that perhaps he was told as a child back in the early 1930s by the relatives that his parents were dead -- somewhere around the time they must have been institutionalized. The main reason for this assumption is that it stretches our boundaries to think that he might have known as an adult that his parents were actually alive, and that he chose to walk away. 

Or maybe more accurately that he felt forced out of self-protection to walk away. And if that was actually the case, what on earth must he have experienced as a young child to force him into this sort of self-protection?

I sense as I open this half-inch thick envelope that we’ll learn something, whether we really want to or not.

There are a host of sheets -- and many duplicates -- roughly in reverse chronological order.

The Notice of Separation from the U.S. Naval Service notes that he enlisted on April 4, 1944, and was honorably discharged as a Yeoman 2nd Class on May 23, 1946. He completed a two week “Armed Guard School” course in Norfolk. 

His total payment upon discharge was $50.91. Even though I understand fifty bucks then isn’t fifty bucks today, it still seems a pretty small sum. He has both the “foreign” and “sea service” boxes checked, aboard the USS Simpson. This is one piece of the story that we’ve known for a long time -- the Simpson was a four-stack destroyer left over from World War One, and I believe largely served submarine duty on the eastern coast of the US and down into Central America.

He earned a “Victory Medal” (I wonder whatever became of that?), which apparently was somewhat of a World War Two equivalent of those “participation” awards they give in kids sports. Wikipedia says:

The bronze medal is 1 ​4⁄8 inches in width. The obverse is a figure of Liberation standing full length with head turned to dexter looking to the dawn of a new day, right foot resting on a war god’s helmet with the hilt of a broken sword in the right hand and the broken blade in the left hand, the inscription WORLD WAR II placed immediately below the center. On the reverse are inscriptions for the Four Freedoms: FREEDOM FROM FEAR AND WANT and FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND RELIGION separated by a palm branch, all within a circle composed of the words UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 1941 1945.

He also apparently received the “American Theater Medal,” another participation award.

I kid about the “participation awards” thing; it would be cool to have these. I wonder what happened to them.

At the bottom of the form is his signature. He always signed his full name -- Joseph John Mancini -- and it’s a bit goose-bumpish to see his signature at age 21, looking exactly the same as it did all his life.

On a bunch of insurance forms, his brother Vincent and Aunt Elizabeth deFabritus are listed as beneficiaries.

Going back a few months, there is a note that he failed, with a score of 9 out of 20, a “night vision test with radium plaque adaptometer.” This apparently disqualified him from night lookout duties.

And after many, many additional copies of this vision test, and much documentation of my Dad’s progression from Seaman to Seaman Second class to Yeoman Second Class, I come to the enlistment papers. A few facts pop up.

He had never been 1) arrested or in the custody of the police; 2) in reform school, jail, or penitentiary, or convicted of any crime; or 3) on probation.

That a boy. Straight arrow.

5 foot, 11 inches and 168 pounds. A set of numbers I personally wish heredity would convey to me.

Legal guardian, Elizabeth DeFabritus.

Work experience: 1) Clerk, 5 ½ years, part-time; 2) Delivery boy, 2 years, part-time; and 3) newsboy, 1 year, part-time.

High School diploma from Central Commercial High School, which opened in 1925, closed in 1975, and was located at 214 East 42nd Street. He could type 30 words per minute to boot.

Under leisure time activities, he lists collecting stamps and coins, beginning when he was nine.

He was not illiterate.

And just when I think this entire exercise is a bit of fun, but not terribly informing, there it is.

Nearest relative...Elizabeth Mancini...MOTHER.

So he knew she was alive at age 18. Wow. 

Out the window go all of those ideas that he just didn’t know she was alive. But he did.

No mention of Frank, which is curious. I wonder what they told him about his father.

And I wonder what dreadful experience could lead him to so rope off and compartmentalize his life that he never mentioned a mother.

But there’s another line. An address for Elizabeth.

Buffalo State Hospital, Buffalo, NY.

BUFFALO?

WTF.