As Alzheimers stealthily ravaged my dad’s mind, Sergeant George Nicholas Mamary’s WW II experiences, permanently etched in his mind, stubbornly resisted erasure. For decades, dad regaled captivated audiences with stories of the war.
Although plagued by my own faulty memory and remembering little detail of his adventures, I still clearly recall how deeply impacted he had been by his experiences. I loved how animated and entertaining he’d become recounting his tales. I truly wish I had the foresight to record him and his stories, the poems he memorized, his jokes, and more then anything, singing all his favorite songs.
Brave and dedicated, dad joined the Army in 1942 and was sent overseas early 1943. According to a news clipping Lt. George Mamary “was within seven minutes of being first to set foot on the continent of Europe” during the invasion of Italy. He was awarded a Bronze Star in November 1943 for his heroic performance as a forward artillery observer in Italy. Despite his observation post, the frequent target of direct shelling he refused to quit, he maintained his position and directed accurate artillery fire on the enemy.
Dad returned from the war and commenced living life wearing rose colored glasses and an optimistic smile. Kind, funny and forgiving, he never had anything negative to say about anyone, even the manipulative and nefarious. He made everyone laugh. He never looked down on, or judged anyone, and would always greet everyone with genuine pleasantness. It was astonishing.
It’s not much of a stretch to recognize the ties between dad’s penchant for avoiding conflict at all costs and neatly suppressed and forgotten, yet inevitable, war related post traumatic stress. Conspicuously missing from dad’s dramatic and heroic stores were any account of blood, death, and despair. Mom always said that dad was only truly “alive” during the war. We all knew that the experience clearly defined his life.
In a society that defines success by one’s financial portfolio my gentle and generous dad was a testament to the fallacy of that definition. He lived a simple life. Nothing made him happier then a hotdog right off the grill. He valued and nurtured customer relations in the family’s sleepwear business his father and uncle built from the ground up. He loved shmoozing and charming his buyers, and struggled with the tedium of paperwork. As his cherished buyers began outsourcing and manufacturing Mamary nightgown knockoffs overseas he watched helplessly as the family business shrunk and ultimately shuttered leaving nothing to show after years of dedication.
Old fashioned and resistant to change, it simply was not in his DNA to read the tea leaves predicting the enormous, inevitable shift in the global manufacturing paradigm. Still, dad never complained. If he was suffering, or disappointed, you’d never know it. I didn’t understand. When angry, confused and indignant anytime someone had “done me wrong” I could bitch and moan for days. Dad’s advice was always simply to tell me to “smile”.
Unlike others with dementia, as his life shrunk to a wheelchair and ultimately a hospital bed, he remained sweet and uncomplaining. Until the bitter end, he continued to entertain us with his war stories, the inherent, unspoken pain and suffering remaining conspicuously absent. The one difference was that, before the story’s finale, he’d pause, hesitant, and loop back and begin at the beginning, over and over again.
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