PROLOGUE

D-Day
June 6, 2009

June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, but especially this year. I was born just a few days after D-Day, so I'm approaching my 65th birthday. I'm having flashbacks about all sorts of things lately, but the D-Day anniversary reminds me of how much that day impacted both my wife's family and my own. It also had a very direct effect on me personally.

My father-in-law, Bill Doyle, was in one of the first waves to hit Omaha Beach on that day in 1944. He was part of a demolitions unit charged with clearing the beach of those large, X-shaped iron obstacles you see in the movies. He was one of only eight survivors of his company. Reassigned after his unit was decimated, he went all the way to Berlin with Patton, but rarely talks about it. He'll turn 88 next month and has been stone deaf since he landed on that beach 65 years ago today.

On the day I was born just over a week later, my parents had planned to name me after my father, Joseph Patrick Cunneff. But on that day, my uncle Raymond and my uncle Vincent were both missing in action. Ray was a fighter pilot and had been shot down somewhere in France. Vince had been separated from his unit somewhere in the North African desert. So instead of 'Joseph Patrick', I was named 'Raymond Vincent'.

When they both turned up later, the family was furious (not really) with them. My Aunt Rose, so the story goes, supposedly said to them, "don't you realize we named this baby after you two?!" Nevertheless, it always seemed very appropriate somehow that I was born on Flag Day.

Bill Doyle went on to a long career as an athletic coach and referee in the San Fernando Valley in spite of his deafness. But his family always said that he was never the same man after he returned from the war.

My Uncle Vincent was actually a cousin, part of the Quinn branch of the family in Philadelphia. He too had lingering problems after the war that, they said, left him at the very least 'eccentric'. The story goes, he had wandered in the desert for many days and that the sun had fried his brain. Although he held jobs and owned property, he never married and lived with his mother, my Aunt Rose, until his death in the 1980's.

My uncle Raymond, my father's brother, went on to become a much-decorated Atlantic City, New Jersey police officer. He died in 1959 of what appeared to have been a massive heart attack. But autopsy revealed that a tiny piece of shrapnel that had been embedded in his shoulder since the day he was shot down had become dislodged and tore a hole through his heart.

As I said, June 6th is always a bit melancholy for me, especially this year.

Afterthoughts
June 10, 2009

As my birthday fast approaches, there are some things I ought to add.

My father never served in the military, although whether he wanted to I really can't say. He'd had polio as a child, what was then called 'infantile paralysis'. He wasn't expected to ever walk unassisted, but my grandmother and my Aunt Anna massaged his legs with oil almost hourly for months and somehow overcame most of the symptoms. He later played baseball, even boxed. But his feet were permanently deformed. As an adult, his shoe size was six triple-E.

I don't know much about my Uncle Vince's life after the war. My most vivid memories of Vince were when my family moved year-round to Ventnor, near Atlantic City, when I was sixteen. Vince lived in Philadelphia, some 90 miles away. He didn't drive, couldn't deal with the bus and would never take a cab, yet would somehow magically show up at our house, do odd jobs, then disappear as mysteriously as he'd arrived. He seemed utterly benign, didn't say much, but was obviously a bit odd (at least from my sixteen year-old perspective).

When I say my Uncle Ray was a much-decorated (and much-loved) police officer, it is an understatement. Ray was an Atlantic City boardwalk cop.He knew just every merchant, colorful character and hustler on his beat. He received numerous decorations for valor, for marksmanship, even took part in a rescue at sea. He was 43 when he died, in the bathroom shaving one morning. They said he was dead before he hit the floor. Over 2,000 people came to his wake.