This was also before he served in the army, started his career on Madison Avenue, got married, had two kids, earned his Bachelor, Masters, and Law degrees - all while working full time. He was a drummer. He and his friend, Paul Bassin, would rehearse on the roof of the apartment building in the Bronx where dad lived. There is no truth to the rumor the Third Avenue El called and asked them to keep the noise down.
Today it is easy to make videos but in the 1940s one had to go to a recording studio to "cut" a record. That's what dad and his friend Paul, a trombonist, did for several days in 1942 and 1943, a short time before Lou reported for basic training in the army.. This is "Margie"
Look at the date of this recording: November 28, 1942. That night, in Boston, 492 would die in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire. Dad once told me that his memory of the Cocoanut Grove fire was hearing that Buck Jones, his favorite Western Cowboy star, had died in the fire.
"Worst?" Well, Dad could be quite pointed in his criticism of others and, as we can see by his handwritten critique on the label, he was no less critical about his own work. (We don't know who Murray was... probably a Bronx friend.)
Dad wrote "Stinks" on the label of this recording. As anyone who knew him can attest, Lou rarely minced words.
Dad took his drum lessons in Manhattan, which meant he had to get on a subway and travel for about 45 minutes each way. That should tell us something about his dedication, a trait with which we were all familiar.
As my sister Nancy will attest, when we were kids dad was always posing us for pictures. Maybe he got that trait from Grandpa, who possibly set up this shot of dad playing drums. Or, just as likely, dad set this pose up himself.
Dad placed great emphasis on public presentation. He owned many books on public speaking, as well as "jokes for every occasion." Well, back in 1943 dad stepped in front of the microphone recorded this monologue. I can just see him playing it over and over again, critiquing his performance.
Dad enlisted and, after basic training, was sent into Europe in the summer of 1944, just a few weeks after D-Day. This is the famous telegram that Grandma and Grandpa received notifying them of dad's injury during a battle in France. Grandpa, not wanting to worry his wife, censored the word "seriously."
This is the famous telegram in our family. Grandma and Grandpa were notified them of dad's injury during a battle in France (see the story below).
Note how Grandpa, not wanting to worry his wife, censored the word "seriously."
As often as I asked, Dad never talked about his service in Europe during the Second World War. This despite frequent attempts by my sister and I to get him to talk about his war-time experience. Imagine kids actually begging their father to tell his war stories! But we never got them, only a shrug or something evasive like “well, I just did what a lot of us had to do” or, even more cryptically, “it was rough.”
A Vietnam veteran once said, to me, “the guys who talk the most about their time on the front lines usually turn out to be rear-echelon desk jockeys. If you’ve been “in the shit” the last thing you do is talk about it. You want to forget it.”
Dad was able to write about it, though, as he did for our hometown paper on the 60th anniversary of the end of the war. In the piece he describes how a 21 year-old kid from the Bronx ended up with the 94th Infantry Division in Lorient, France on September 19, 1944, firing rifle grenades at Nazi forces protecting a submarine base.
“After a few hours,” he wrote in Merrick Life in August of 2005, “our supply of grenades was running low and, during a lull, our sergeant asked for a volunteer to go back to the headquarters area for more grenades. For some reason I raised my hand, possibly thinking I might escape the incessant bombing for a few minutes. The sergeant yelled ‘Go’ and I began running to the supply depot when the shelling started again. I jumped into a foxhole… heard a shell explode, saw a very bright light and woke up the following day in a hospital.”
Dad was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his actions that day, but the medals sat in their original boxes in his desk drawer, unopened, for years. The closest he ever came to talking about the war was in 1998. We were in a car and passed a billboard advertising the recently released Tom Hanks movie Saving Private Ryan. My dad pointed in the direction of the billboard and asked “Have you seen it?”
“No, not yet,” I replied. “Have you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m told the battle scenes are very realistic.”
Then, my dad got quiet and a palpable silence filled the car. It was eerie. I waited for the answer but... he said nothing. I turned and saw the grimmest look I’d ever seen on his face. After a few moments, he finally spoke.
“Yes, they are.”
In those three words – or rather, the way in which he spoke them – my father told me more than he ever had about his war experience and why it changed him. And I understood how right my Vietnam-veteran friend had been.
Now, one last picture. It's my favorite of him.
He’s on the roof of his parent’s apartment in the Bronx playing his drums with beautiful, joyous abandon. He’s into the beat and the music: his head is tilted back and his eyes are closed in musical rapture. It’s always been my favorite picture of him, perhaps because I never ever saw that look on his face in person. I always assumed it was the war. With the article he wrote for my hometown paper and those three words in the car that day I was finally able to understand – as much as a fortunate son who never served, could – about what he endured.
America has November 11th, Veteran’s Day, to honor the men and women who served in the armed forces. We also have May 30th, Memorial Day, to remember those who gave their lives for our country. As many families do, we have another, very personal day for remembrance and thanks; September 19th, the day the world changed for a boy who never again would play drums on his Bronx rooftop with such abandon.
Copyright © 2024 David Kruh - All Rights Reserved.
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