The first twenty-seven minutes of Saving Private Ryan are some of the most intense cinema I’ve ever watched. Steven Spielberg’s 1998 World War II film ranks in my top ten. It won Spielberg the Academy Award for Best Director but with a logic that will never be explained until we all get to Heaven and find out the answers to other unfathomable questions like who killed Kennedy, where Jimmy Hoffa is buried and why Pope Innocent II formally decreed in 1139 that celibacy was the norm for priests in the Catholic Church, well, I’ll have to wait until then to find out how in the wide world of sports Shakespeare in Love won the Oscar for Best picture.
Shakespeare in Love? Seriously. Tell me the last time you saw that offered on TV. I think it’s a close race between The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather and Armageddon as to which movie has been on TV more than 10,000 times, but I have never seen Shakespeare in Love offered anywhere. Saving Private Ryan always make the tube for the national holidays, but it was on the other night, so, with Manhattan in hand I watched it till the very end when I teared up as the face of young private James Ryan morphs into the face of him fifty years later visiting the graves of those who died trying to bring him home.
The line of dialogue that always gets me is when the elderly Ryan, reflecting on what men have sacrificed for him, remembering the words of a dying Tom Hanks -“Earn this…earn it”– looks at his wife with tears falling from his eyes and says “Tell me I’ve led a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.”
And I thought about Angelo Gnazzo.
Angelo was one of my parishioners at St. Justin. He was a Saturday night regular who lived just up the street on Boggs. Ange always had a good word for me after mass. I’d see him at community services on Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day, wearing his vet’s hat with pins and other memento’s of his service. As long as he was able, Ange was a member of the Honor Guard of local Mt. Washington VFW Post 5111. Man, those guys are faithful in honoring veterans at funerals. If a particular week brought bad news, which was mentioned at church and prayers offered for the dead, the injured, the innocents, Angelo would come out and just shake his head and say something to the effect of “Father, what a world, what’s happening with people?”
Didn’t see him for a couple of Saturdays and mentioned it to some of the other regulars. One said he had been sick. So, I stopped up at his house and he was happy to see me. When I told him I had brought him Eucharist he, being an old school Catholic, said he hadn’t been to mass for a couple of weeks. I assured him he was in God’s good graces and after our prayer, we talked over a cup of coffee. Being an old-time Catholic also meant Ange served old-time coffee and while it wasn’t Sanka made with hot tap water, it came close.
By the way, it was such a visit to Angelo and other old timers that led me to start bringing my own coffee when I visited homes. While I’m not a coffee bean purist, I do have some standards. Coffee wise, I had the bad luck of being ordained in a time of American culture when Sanka was the only decaf on the market and what else do old timers drink? So I’d always ring a door bell or knock with one hand and the other held the best coffee travel mug I could get. I might be the only senior citizen I know who still can drink four cups of regular after 9:00 p.m. and then still fall asleep within four minutes after my head hits the pillow.
So, Ange and I are sitting in his kitchen talking away and I noticed some framed medals on his wall. I’ve been around long enough to know what some of them were and I asked “Angelo, is that the Bronze Star?”
He was going to let it drop after replying yes, but I pushed it.
With reluctance he told me he received it for his actions on Omaha Beach.
With the same stunning awareness that the Richard Dreyfuss character in Jaws had in his voice when he replies to Quint, the shark hunter, “You were on the Indianapolis?” I said to Angelo “You were on Omaha Beach?” And Ange just nodded his head. He made no further comments but I saw a hundred different emotions, mostly sad, in this old man’s face.
We talked of people, of the times, of parents and upbringing. We talked of a changing Church but how the Eucharist always remained the same for both of us.
He was back in church a week or two later and continued to be the nice old man he always was, talking and chatting with the regulars before heading home.
Even though it was just a movie, Saving Private Ryan still made me cry, and give thanks for people like Angelo who had every reason in the world to become one of the most bitter persons on the face of the earth for what he witnessed on the beach that June 6, 1944 day. No one would have begrudged him if his personal belief was there is no God. But he did not become those. He fell in love, raised kids and grandkids telling them to cherish the best life has to offer.
I had Angelo’s funeral in 2004. His will be one of the funeral cards I pull out next Sunday to remember, reflect and pray. It’s Easter, have to do it on that day, right?
Angelo, you were a good man. You led a good life. Rest in peace my friend.
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