We went to NJ Thursday, coming back Sunday. Friday was a funeral in Whiting NJ for Ann Kranick who passed earlier this month at the age of 105. She was the aunt of my boyfriend’s former wife Cyndi, great aunt to their two girls and great great aunt to their grandchildren. She was universally known as “Auntie Ann”.
As the pastor’s eulogy noted, with reference to Tom Brokaw’s book, she was one of millions of ordinary Americans doing ordinary jobs who took a break to join the armed forces, save the world from Nazism and Fascism, and ended WW2. They then returned to their ordinary jobs and lived out the balance of their lives.
She entered service in the WAAC and then transitioned to the WACs. She served early, prior to D-Day, in Algiers and other parts of North Africa, and in Naples when the invasion of Italy was progressing. In the crossing from Africa to Italy, all the WACs made it, but the trunks containing their clothes and belonging somehow sank. Gen George C. Marshall had them all make up lists of what was lost. He was furious that the Army wouldn’t reimburse the WACs and paid for it all out of his own pocket – which consumed more than a few pay periods.
Ann returned to Newark and Irvington NJ, and went back to work. She never married but tended to her mother while working at the Port Authority in NYC, rising to be the trusted executive assistant of the PA’s first executive director Austin Tobin. Later, she retired and moved to Ocean County.
When the service date was announced, my BF’s Army JAG son-in-law had a thought, checked with the funeral home and placed a call. So Fort Dix (about 5 miles away) sent two soldiers in dress blues for a proper interment. Taps, followed by the folding of the flag and its presentation to Cyndi with the gratitude of a grateful nation. The services ended thusly.
RIP Auntie Ann
I would normally stop here but this story – like many in life – has a coda.
There was this guy about my age, but clearly a “Nam” Vet up by the hearse talking familiarly with the driver and another funeral home staffer. Biker boots, denims, khaki army shirt with name tag and ribbons. Moustache and long silver hair hanging will past his shoulders. Baseball cap said: Lacey Twp (1-2 towns over) VFW.
He had not been at the funeral home service.
So I asked another staffer who he was. The answer floored me.
For as long as the staffer had been working (about a dozen years) this guy has been showing up for military funerals…..for any funeral from any home. All he brings with him is a black pumpkin sized 1980s cassette playing boom box powered by batteries, with one cassette, with one tune. If, for any reason, an honor guard is not coming or has a misfunction, in goes the cassette and he pushes the Play button. On his watch, a warrior does not enter the ground without Taps. No one knows where he lives…he just shows up. And he’s had to push that button many times, way too many.
I shook his hand as a grateful citizen.