Dedication:
To my wife Marilyn who believed I have an important message for anyone who has a dream. Persistence.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Mom dies
Chapter 2: Jersey City Boy
Chapter 3: You’re in the Army now
Chapter 4: Fort Belvoir
Chapter 5: Walter Reed Army Hospital
Chapter 6: Home again
Chapter 7: You’re in the Navy now
Chapter 8: Hospital Corps School
Chapter 9: Oakland Naval Hospital
Chapter 10: Aloha Hawaii
Chapter 11: Back home again
Chapter 12: Camp Lejeune
Chapter 13: Time to get educated
Chapter 14: Saint Peter’s College
Chapter 15: Seton Hall College of Medicine and Dentistry
Chapter 16: Saints Vincent’s Hospital
Chapter 17: Medical rotation
Chapter 18: Pediatric rotation
Chapter 19: First Year Surgical Residency
Chapter 20: East Orange VA Hospital
Epilogue
Juvenile Delinquent to Surgeon
A Surgeon’s Memoir
By
Introduction
How did I go from a Juvenile Delinquent to a Surgeon? My memoir takes you through my early childhood, my mother’s illness and death, living with an alcoholic father, in desperation at fifteen joining the Army, spending four years in the navy, back to high school, through college, medical school, internship, surgical residency, and finally to my surgical board certification.
“He’s a doctor, has no worries, and is sitting on easy street, big car, big home, and big money. He had all the breaks. That’s what the public sees, and that’s what they want to see. I’m sick and tired of people telling me because I’m a doctor I had all the breaks. My story is not about having all the breaks; it’s about hard work, motivation, and a desire to “make something of myself.” This isn’t a how to story, but a how I did it story. It’s about a kid who came out of the street, while an orderly in the Army developed a passion for medicine, and wanted to become a surgeon. It’s easy to sit on one’s lazy ass, and say God dealt me a bad hand of cards, but it’s not easy to get up day after day and work towards a goal.
In the preface of Dr. Melvin Konner’s book, Becoming a Doctor, he asks a friend what he thinks about him writing about his medical school experience. His friend said, “If there is one thing I have learned in life, if there is one thing I would want to impress on my friends…it would be that there is nothing more important than our personal experience. There is no greater contribution we have to make—no measurement, no theory, no pretense of objectivity—that can compare in value, in uniqueness, in authenticity, to an account of how we have experienced the world. Such accounts, precisely because of their frank subjectivity, invariably produce the highest truths.”
What’s it like to take a journey to a dream? Walk with me and face the hurdles I had to jump going from JD to MD. It’s about a journey a young boy takes to fulfill his dream. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it will help you understand what it means for one who has taken the journey one-step at a time.
There are many life stories of doctors pulling themselves up by their booth straps, but in all the memories I reviewed they all had family support. A single don, dad, or both standing beside them encouraging and giving them moral support to go on to be successful. I didn’t have such support. Family members discouraged me by suggesting I buy a hot dog stand, and/or work for General Motors jobs that didn’t interest me.
After watching my mother die, I resolved some day and in some way, I would help sick people get well. Never in my wildest dream did I envision being a doctor or surgeon until I saw that first appendectomy at Walter Reed Army Hospital. That experience gave me purpose to my life. It gave me the motivation, persistence, and energy to become a surgeon.
This book focuses on my life as a Jersey City boy, and the events in between to the day I became a board certified surgeon.
I hope after a person reads my story, and knows someone needing inspiration to carry on his hard work toward a goal he passes this book on to him.
Because some of the material I present is sensitive, and some participants are still alive I’ve changed their names not to protect the innocent, or guilty, but to protect me. Since my memory concerning many life events and people is faulty, parts of my story are reconstructed memory.
Chapter 1
Mom dies
At thirteen, my life drastically changed. In March of 1943, my Mom developed a cough, fever, and right chest pain. She took Cherrycol for her cough, Bayer aspirin for her chest pain, and stayed in bed for two days. I never remembered Mom going to bed sick. Sitting by her bedside trying to make her feel better I asked, “How come you’re so sick Mom?”
“It’s only a cold,” Mom said. “I’ll be over it in a couple of days.” As the days past, her chest pain and cough got worse. I was getting worried Mom wasn’t getting better, so Dad finally insisted, “Let’s go see Doctor Livingston.” Doctor Elizabeth Livingston, our local general practitioner, gave Mom a stronger cough medicine, and treated her for pleurisy by having her apply a mustard plaster to her right chest. In spite of the treatment, her cough worsened, fever continued, she developed night sweats, and her chest pain intensified in spite of the mustard plaster. Because her condition didn’t improve, she was now in bed everyday. Doctor Livingston made a house call and had Mom get a chest x-ray at the Jersey City Medical Center. Three days after the X-ray was taken, we took Mom to the doctor’s office to get the results.
Mom sat on the treatment room table and Dad, Ronald, my brother, and I sat in chairs opposite her. Dr. Livingston, a tall black woman, in a white coat, entered the treatment room holding her chest X-rays. She slipped them into a viewer, turned on the light, and pointing to some smudges in the X-ray said to Mom, “Katherine you have pulmonary tuberculosis, and I’m going to admit you to Pollack Hospital.” Mom began to cry; so did I. What was happening to my Mom? Startled Dad jumped up and asked, “How long will she be in the hospital?”
“I don’t know, but the chest doctors at the hospital will be able to tell you more.” Then she called the admissions office at Pollack telling them Mom would be checking in that day. We rushed home packed up her pajamas and toiletries she would need, and took the Number 16 bus to the hospital.
Pollack Hospital, part of the Jersey City Medical Center, had large balconies specifically built so that TB patients could rest outside in the sun, and fresh air. In the early forties, there were no antibiotics to treat TB. The only treatments available then were rest, isolation from the general public, good nutrition, exposure to the sun, and fresh air. To our surprise, her hospital stay was longer than we expected. The longer she was in the hospital, the more I worried she wouldn’t be coming home. Confused, I didn’t understand why she was so sick. I asked dad, “Why is Mom so sick?”
“She has tuberculosis,” he shouted.
“How’d she get that?” I didn’t know what tuberculosis was, and the doctors didn’t explain Mon’s problem
“I don’t know,” Dad shouted again.
“When will she be coming home?” I said crying and hugging Dad around his waist.
“I don’t know, and the doctors don’t seem to know either. Instead of getting better, she’s getting worse,” Dad, said pushing me away. I never got an answer from him as to why she was so sick. Because of her long hospitalization, Dad was angry and began having difficulty caring for Ron and me. He had to do the cooking, wash our clothes, make sure we had our lunches for school, and all the tasks Mom did. He hated her being sick. One morning while preparing breakfast, he pounded on the kitchen table and screamed, “I wonder when the hell they’re going to let her out of the hospital.” Ron and I tried to help as best we could, but we also depended on Mom. My aunts Sally and Marge helped feed us by cooking, and sending us Sunday meals. Dad, Ronald, and I visited Mom on Sundays. We’d sit by her bedside wearing masks and making small talk. As sick, as she was Mom didn’t complain. “Don’t worry boys I’ll be home in a few weeks,” she’d say. Many Sundays I’d leave the hospital crying knowing she might be dying.
When she entered the hospital, she was a well-proportioned one hundred and twenty-five pound radiant woman. She had well-groomed brunette hair, one sparking blue eye, a tranquil brown one, and in good spirits during her first weeks in the hospital. “I’ll be out of here in no time,” she said with tears in her eyes. Week after week, I agonizingly watched her slowly waste away. I had turned thirteen in August, was losing my mother, and didn’t know what was going to happen to me. As the weeks turned into months, she became progressively short of breath, until at the end she was gasping for air even with being in an oxygen tent. In her final moments of life, with her cold bony hand in mine she whispered, “Junior I love you. You’re growing up and will be a man soon so make something of yourself.” Sobbing I whispered “I love you too Mom.” At that moment, I knew I was losing her. After nine months in Pollack Hospital, she finally slipped into a coma and died after Thanksgiving in November of 1943, gone at 33 years of age.
Her viewing was held at home. I don’t recall what happened during those three days, but it seemed all the mourners were having a party. My mother was gone, no more helping in the kitchen, no more Sunday dinners, no more hugs and kisses at bedtime. She wouldn’t be there to comfort me when I was scared and crying. I’d just lost the love of my life. What was going to happen to me? We buried her in Arlington Cemetery in Arlington, New Jersey.
When the hospital made Mom’s TB diagnosis, the Jersey City Health Department ordered Dad, Ron, and me to have TB testing and chest X-rays at the Pollock Hospital’s TB clinic. We had positive TB tests, but normal chest X-rays. The doctor at the clinic checked us every three months, but after a year, we seemed to be free of disease, so we stopped going to the clinic.
Looking back, and with my current knowledge of chest diseases I believe Mom had a terminal case of disseminated pulmonary tuberculosis, for which the doctors in the forties didn’t have a definitive treatment. All they could do was treat her cough, pain, and shortness of breath.
Tuberculosis is an infectious disease caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis, first identified by a German bacteriologist Robert Koch in 1882, and identified the microscopic nodular lesions (tubercles) in animal and human tissues. In the past, tuberculosis was diagnosed as consumption or phthisis because it wasted the lungs and other body tissues. In pulmonary tuberculosis, the bacteria are inhaled into the lungs where it starts the primary infection that may spread to other body tissues (lymph nodes, bones, etc.). During the early stages, the body’s natural immunity may heal the disease; however, it may smolder for months or years and fluctuate with the person’s resistance. Many people may be infected and show no signs or symptoms, but act as carries spreading the bacteria by coughing or sneezing. Symptoms of the active disease include fever, cough, night sweats, chest pain, wheezing, shortness of breath, and weight loss. As in Mom’s case, the chest X-ray revealed her disease.
The Italian doctor Forlanini found artificial pneumothorax (injecting air into the chest to collapse the lung) had a favorable impact on the outcome of the disease. If the tuberculosis tumor was small, surgeons performed a lobectomy (removing a lobe of the lung) hoping in some cases for a cure. When the lung fused to the chest wall from the infection, surgeons did a thoracoplasty; that is, removed the ribs over the cavity to collapse it and control the disease. My mother wasn’t a candidate for such surgery.
It’s ironic; the year after she died, 1944, Selman A. Waxman, a professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and his co-workers discovered Streptomycin, a practical and specific antibiotic for the treatment of tuberculosis. On November 20, 1944, physicians for the first time injected streptomycin into a critically ill TB patient. Its effect was immediately apparent. His visible signs of advanced disease regressed, bacteria disappeared from his sputum, and he made a full and rapid recovery. Streptomycin in combination with other drugs led the successful attack against the disease curing many TB patients.
I remember that on my way home from the cemetery, I resolved I would do something in my life to help sick people like Mom. Remembering her death takes me back to my childhood in Jersey City.
Chapter 2
Jersey City Boy
I can only recall a few unforgettable memories from my childhood. Family members and friends who could have given me information concerning them are now deceased.
You can take the boy out of the Jersey City, but you can’t take Jersey City out of the boy. That’s who I am. Born at the Margaret Hague Hospital in Jersey City on August 27, 1930, I was the first male child of John and Katherine Wrable. We lived at 85 Maple Street, between Whiten and Pine Streets in a neighborhood of Italians, Pollock’s, Irish, Czechs, and Niggers (that’s what we called blacks in those days). Named John after my father, but labeled Junior by my family until I graduated from medical school when they relabeled me “Doctor John.”
I lived in a four story wooden house with a patch of grass for a front yard, a porch that sat four, and a big back yard. My father’s tool shed was in the back behind a large trestled grape vine.
Before World War II, like most families all the Wrable family lived in one house. Today, families are scattered all over the state, country and world. My Grandmother, Anna, and her daughters Helen, Sally, Margaret, Anna, and their brothers Steve and Mickey lived in the upper two floors. Mon, Dad, Ronald and I lived on the two lower floors. Because Ron and
I appeared close in age, had the same light blond hair, same height, and build many people mistakenly took us for twins.
My uncles and aunts lived in the house for a short time, after the older daughters got married Aunt Marge and grandma continued to occupy the upper floors. Aunt Marge dated Pat Matrachia a construction worker; I heard them talk of marriage, and moving to smaller house in the Greenville section of Jersey City close to her sister Sally. Grandma a Czech speaking 70 year-old fat woman with diabetes had severe arthritis and was having trouble walking up and down stairs. Another reason Aunt Marge wanted to move, the house wasn’t air conditioned, so in July and August the upper floors heated up like ovens.
In the summer, to get relief from the heat we ate out under the grapevine, and when allowed I played in my father’s cooler tool shed.
Mom made Ron and me play in the backyard most of the time because it was safer than playing on the busy cobblestone street in front of the house. Because my mother was a caring and loving person, I had peaceful preschool years. A soft-spoken brunet, she slaved to clean the house, pressed our clothes, and kept the Wrable boys well fed. I’d look into her eyes, and say, “Mom, how come you have one blue eye and one brown eye?”
“God made me that way,” she’d say. I heard people say she had witch’s eyes, but not my Mom they sparkled with beauty inside and out. Unlike most mothers in those days, she would let my brother and I help her in the kitchen. It was located in the basement at the back of the house, and had a door leading to five steps to a second door that opened to our backyard. In the kitchen, we had a small round table with four straight back wooden chairs, a bulky wooden icebox, and storage cabinets jutting out over a wood-burning stove. A coal-burning furnace for heating the house set in the back part of the kitchen. When the coal bin got low, Mon would send us kids with buckets to pick up coal off the Jersey Central railroad tacks two blocks from our house.
On Sundays, Ron and I would help Mom peel and cut the potatoes and carrots for our chicken fricassee dinner. She would yell to us, “Junior and Ronald stop nibbling on those carrots it’s going to spoil your supper.”
Our living room was in the front basement of the house, and below street level. Through the two-foot high windows, I could see the wheels of cars, trucks, and the horse drawn garbage wagons bouncing over the cobblestones. We had a red plaid couch with standing lamps at each end, two matching armchairs, a room size tan oval rug and a large wooden cabinet radio. At night, we’d listen to the radio, or Mom sat between Ron and me on the couch and read us Jack in the Bean Stalk and Mother Goose bedtime stories. Dad liked to listen to Edward R. Morrow’s news. Other nights we’d listen to the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarty, Fibber Magee and Molly, The Shadow, the Lone Ranger, or a quiz show.
Dad was a good-looking man, two years older then Mom, solid 5’ 8” build, blue eyed, with rusty brown hair, and quiet man except when it was punishment time. His voice was loud and clear. I didn’t know how far he went in school, but he was a hard working carpenter, painter, and wallpaper hanger. He did a great job papering our bedrooms. He worked at a shipyard in down town Jersey City painting barges, and for extra money played his saxophone in a five-piece band. I don’t know where he learned to play, but when he practiced it sounded good to me. His band played at weddings, dances, and a small nightclub in Bayonne. When the cruise ship Normandy docked in New York Harbor, his band played in the ship’s dance hall. The Normandy sank in New York Harbor in the 1940’s.
One night while returning home from an engagement, he was in an auto accident smashing his face against the windshield crushing his right lower lip. He never regained his ability to play his sax well. After that accident, he began drinking heavily.
On Saturdays for dinner, especially in the summer, we’d walk downtown (we didn’t have a car) to the Key Hole restaurant in the Italian section of town. Here Dad would order up hot mussels marinara and a large pizza. I loved to dunk the garlic bread in the marinara sauce. Ron and I fought for who got to dunk first. Mom split the bread equally, and made us dunk at the same time. I was three years older than Ron and was about to start school.
Mom walked me to the kindergarten class at All Saints Catholic School two blocks north of our house. During the first week, after a nun pushed me against my desk, I cursed at her, and she smashed me across my hands with a yardstick. Something I didn’t expect from a Nun. Angry and hurt I instantly ran home from the school, told Mom what had happened, and showed her my bruised hands. Crying and stomping my feet, I told her I didn’t want to go back to that school. She went to the school, talked to the nun, and when she returned home told me she had taken care of everything.
The following week All Saints transferred me to P.S. 22 a public school. It was on our street, and a three-block walk from our house. I got along better with this kindergarten teacher, the other children, and did well that first year. After that first year, my learning ability deteriorated. During each new grade, the lessons were getting harder and harder for me to understand, and my performance was becoming substandard. Although Mom tried to help me, I continued to do poorly. I had a problem concentrating, and was unduly restless. I stared out the classroom window at the kids playing in the park, fiddled with my ink well, and kicked Bobby Budd’s chair in front of me. In those days, there was no real counseling or testing services for children with learning disabilities; therefore, the teachers labeled me a disruptive child. Because I could not keep up with the normal academic work, the principal transferred me to a vocational class where I learned nothing, and the teachers were nasty. I believe I was a hyperactive child that went unrecognized by the teachers. I was always getting into trouble at school and with Ron at home.
Whenever Ron and I would fight or needed punishment, to avoid a spanking Ron would run upstairs to our bedroom and hide under the bed. Dad would try to pull him out from under the bed, but he hung on to the bed slates like a monkey to a tree branch and Dad couldn’t grab him. Finally, he’d give up, and came back downstairs spanking me on my butt with the razor strap. Ron almost never felt the strap.
Throughout my vocational course, I spent half a day in a classroom, and half a day in the various wood and metal workshops. My classroom teacher was a sizeable woman, with small beady eyes, high cheekbones, round nose, thin lipped, a thunderous voice, and she didn’t spare the yardstick. Her presence scared all of us, and when she said to do something, you did it.
The classroom was a large square room with four large windows over looking Lafayette Park, and a three-paneled blackboard behind the teacher’s desk. The teacher sat a large brown desk in front of the room, and the students sat at large tables facing her. The large tables were flat, no draws, or inkwells. The teacher tried relentlessly to teach my class writing, reading, and arithmetic, but most of us were too stupid to learn. Treating me as a problem child, she gave me minimal homework.
Mister Rolnick, our shop teacher, a bald short mild mannered man in his forties, was a good teacher, but demanded little from his students. I guess he felt we were too stupid, and treated us that way. In woodworking shop, I used the lathe, band saw, plane, and various other carpentry tools making flower stands, bookracks and other knick-knacks. Simple projects to keep simpleminded kids busy, and show we could accomplish something. When Mr. Rolnick left the workshop on an errand, all the students became boisterous. They began throwing loose wood scraps from the workbenches at each other, and others were wrestling on the floor in the sawdust. One kid stood watch at the shop door and yelled, “Chicky” (he’s returning to the shop) when Mr. Rolnick was in the hallway returning to the shop. By the time he returned, all the students stood quietly, and clean at their workbenches.
The vocational classes gave me lots of time for sports. I ran track and played on the baseball team. On the track team, I ran the 50 and 100-yard dash, and from what I remember, I ran some fast races. At the baseball games, there was more fighting than playing baseball.
When I was seven, I remember listening to radio about the fatal crash of the zeppelin Hindenburg, in Lakehurst, N.J. The reporter Herbert Morrison broadcasting the event broke down and cried at the horror of the crash. The following Saturday afternoon Ron and I saw the crash on the Path News reel at the Tivoli Theater. I could see why he cried.
At eight years old, to earn some spending money I began shining shoes. Dad thought it was okay, and helped me build a shoeshine box to carry my polishes, brushes, and buffing cloths.
I shined shoes in the saloons at the Jersey City intersection called the five corners. Here five streets intersected making it one of the busiest and dangerous intersections in the city. On four of the corners, there were saloons, and on the fifth an ice cream parlor. Because the saloons were always crowded on Saturday night, this was a good place to shine shoes. I shined many a pair of men’s shoes for a nickel. The saloons in those days didn’t permit women at the bar. Over the months of shining shoes, I developed some regular customers especially on Saturday night when the men were stepping out with their dates. They wanted their shoes nice and shiny.
One evening on my way home, a black kid stopped me, pulled out a knife, pointed it at me, and said, “Give me all your money or I’ll cut you.” Scared he would knife me; I gave him all my money. My parents wanted me to stop shining shoes, but I didn’t. Because of that encounter and without my parent’s knowledge I bought a knife from a kid around the corner. Three weeks later, I was returning home from the junction when the same black kid stopped me. He pulled out his knife, pointed it at me and said,” Give me all your money or I’ll cut you.” Unlike our first encounter, I pulled out my knife, and said, “Take it if you can.” That was the last time I had problem with him, and for my protection I continued to carry the knife.
On Halloween night October 1938, we were sitting around the radio listening to the Charlie McCarthy Show when Mary Kranyak, our next-door neighbor, banged on our front door shouting, “The Martians are invading our country.”
“Who said the Martians are invading our country,” Mom asked opening the front door and trying to calm down our hysterical neighbor.
“That radio show,” she said shivering in the doorway dressed in her nightgown and robe.
“What radio show?” Mom said pulling her in from the cold into our living room.
“Mike and I just heard it on the Mercury Theater. We were listening to the music when an announcer broke in and said, “We interrupt this program to bring this urgent message, the Martians have invaded Grover’s Mill and are advancing across New Jersey towards to New York City.” Mom led Mary over to our radio and changed the station to the Mercury Theater. We just heard a band playing. “Wait,” Mary said. “Let’s see if the announcer breaks in again.” We continued listening when suddenly a reporter broke in saying, “According to reliable government sources the Army is unable to stop the Martian invasion. Please continue to listen for more information at our next broadcast.”
“That doesn’t sound right,” Mom said. “Let’s switch back to the Charlie McCarthy Show, and hear what they have to say.” She turned back to the McCarthy station, and we listened through the whole show without a program interruption. Mary had now calmed down, was on her way out the front door saying, “But they said the Martians are invading Jersey.” We listened to the Nine O’clock News and heard nothing of a Martian invasion, so we went to bed.
The next day, the newspapers reported how Orson Wells dramatic presentation of H.G. Wells story, The War of the Worlds on The Mercury Theater panicked thousands if not millions of people into believing the Martian’s were invading the our country.
At nine years old, for Easter, my parents give Ronald and me a baby duck. My brother’s duck got sick, and died. Mine lived. I prepared a box in dad’s tool shed where it could stay in bad whether. For one year, I nurtured that white duck, and became fond and close to it. When in the back yard playing, it would be at my side watching my every move.
It was Thanksgiving Day; the table was set with candied yams, green beans, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and a large bowel of fresh fruit. Grandma stood in the dining room doorway holding a platter with a large roasted bird; it wasn’t a turkey, it was my duck. Without my knowledge, she chopped off its head, and cooked it for Thanksgiving dinner. When I realized it was my duck, I couldn’t eat it. However, the rest of the family did. The loss of my pet duck was so great, from that day until now I haven’t wanted a pet of any kind.
On December 7, 1941, Mom and Dad sat on the couch, Ronald and I lay on the rug in front of the radio listening to the Edward R. Morrow’s newscast when suddenly he interrupted the news saying, “the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.” I looked up at my parents saying, “What does that mean the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?”
“We don’t know let’s hear what Mr. Morrow is going to report.”
“The sneak attack began at 7:50 AM Sunday morning by Japanese bombers, fighters and torpedo planes bombing ships on Battleship Row at the Pearl Harbor naval base, and bombing airplanes on the ground at the Wheeler and Hickam naval air stations.” Mr. Morrow continued, “Destroyed during the attack were the battleships Arizona and Okalahoma. Because it was Sunday morning, most of the antiaircraft guns were not staffed leaving the ships vulnerable. Many military personnel were on weekend shore leave and hundreds of sailors were still asleep in their bunks during the attack.”
The following day, December 8, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president of the United States, addressed the Congress and the American people in which he called December 7, “a date which will live in infamy.” I again asked my parents, “What was happening to the country?”
“I think that means we’re at war junior,” Mom said filling up with tears.
“Mom, why are you crying?” I asked while getting up to hug her.
“It means dad may have to join the Army and leave us.”
“Let’s wait to see what the nine o’clock news reports,” Dad said. That evening we heard US Congress had declared war on Japan bringing the United States into World War II. We all worried that dad would have to go into the Army. To our relief dad got an exemption from the draft because he had two children and the barges he worked on were vital to the war effort. Many of the seventeen year olds boys from our neighborhood joined the Army and Navy the following week.
Because Pat, Aunt Marge’s boy friend, was about to be drafted, they were married and moved to Greenville next to her sister Sally. My seventy-year-old diabetic grandma on insulin lived with Marge who cared for all her needs. She was now bedridden because of worsening arthritis. Suddenly, she developed abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting that lasted several days. Finally, she refused to eat, and became confused. Aunt Marge had her taken by ambulance to the Jersey City Medical Center E.R. for an evaluation. Dad and I didn’t know she was sick or in the hospital for two days because we didn’t have a telephone. When we finally got to the hospital, the surgeons had operated on her and found a ruptured appendix with generalized peritonitis. Because of her severe peritonitis, the doctors couldn’t control her diabetes. She failed quickly, and died a week after her surgery. Because of her sudden and unexpected death, at her wake the family intensely grieved.
After Mom’s death, I continued to attend Ferris High School near the Italian neighborhood in downtown Jersey City. Psychologically, I was in no condition to go on with school. Because of Mom’s death, Dad became depressed and found himself more in the clutches of alcohol, and wasn’t handling our family situation very well. I was out of school more then in, and hung out with a gang called the Commandos. While with the gang, I started drinking beer, and smoking.
After Aunt Marge moved to the Greenville, the family sold the Maple Street house. Dad had trouble caring for Ronald and me, so he sent Ronald to live with Aunt Marge.
Dad and I moved into a run down third floor cold water flat at the corner of Ash Street and Pacific Ave, and across the street for the Jersey City Boys’ Club. I did all the cooking, shopping, and cleaning. Most of the time, dad was too drunk to help with chores around the house. He lost his dry dock job, and worked at odd jobs when he needed money for booze, food, and rent. He’d say, “I’m working my ass off trying to keep a roof over our heads.” As for food and money, they were at the end of the list. To get spending money I shined shoes, did odd jobs, ran errands, and carried groceries. I guess because of his loneliness, many nights he’d have some local whore or homosexual up in his bedroom. I slept in the next room, and heard everything that went on. When he was unhappy, he took it out on me, and fiercely beat me. I felt he was angry about Mom dying and being stuck with me. Many nights I lay in my bed fearing for what was going happen to me next.
Because Ron was living with Aunt Marge, he didn’t have to put up with Dad. I told my aunt what was going on, but she didn’t believe me saying, “My brother wouldn’t do things like that.” To avoid my father, I stayed out of the apartment as much as possible, and mostly hung out with the Commandos. Many nights I didn’t go home, but stayed with Marty Novak, a close friend, at his home.
The only other place for me to hang out was the local Boys’ Club on Ash Street, but all that was happening there were the white kids fighting the black kids after the basketball games. The club had a swimming pool, but it was always dirty. The kids were always fighting over it or the ping-pong, and pool tables. Meanwhile, the guidance counselors were either drinking or not around. Our big thing for our gang, “The Commandos,” on Saturday night was to go, and beat up on a black. Weekdays, I hung out with the older boys next to a saloon on the corner of Whiten Street, and Johnston Ave. With them, I’d wait for a produce truck on its way to New York City produce market to stop at the red light. Then I’d leap on the back of a truck, and steal watermelons, oranges, apples, and other fruits. I began to realize if I continued the stealing drinking, and senseless activity I would be messing up my life, something Mom wouldn’t want me to do, but I was too stupid to make a change.
For two years, I floundered around, confused, and struggling to find a better life. By the time I turned fifteen, the cops arrested me three times. Twice they arrested me for being in a stolen car and once for assisting in a burglary. Because I was fourteen, they didn’t book or fingerprint me. However, after my arrest, they would smack me around, and say, “Let that be a lesson to you kid. Crime doesn’t pay.” When my father picked me up, he would repeat smacking me around. My godfather, Uncle Mike, a Jersey City cop warned me, “One more arrest kid, and I’ll make sure you’re locked up in the Bayonne parental home.” The Bayonne parental home had the reputation of being a hellhole for rebellious teenage boys. Looking back, I didn’t do everything bad; I learned to dance well.
Dancing fascinated me, I don’t know why, so I spent Saturday nights at either the Bergen
Ave. CYO in Jersey City, or 24th Street Polish Hall, in Bayonne. Saturday night dancing kept me off the streets, and away from my dad. On Saturday night, he’d get drunk and go crazy, so I stayed away.
To look sharp dancing I dressed up in my only suit. My Glen Plaid suit had a long jacket, long key chain, and peg pants. The Jitterbugers called it the Zoot suit. Slow dancing and jitterbugging I learned at the CYO. We called the slow dance BC (body contact) dancing, and the monitors had their hands full trying to separate the BC dancers. At first, I didn’t know how to approach a girl for a dance, but Marty Novak knew how. Marty, a five-foot eight skinny, curly red headed teen, who was a great dancer, and knew all the answers. “When you want to dance, just ask,” he said pointing to the girls across the dance floor.
“What if the girl says, no?”
“If the first girl says no, just go on to the next one; eventually, one of them is bound to say yes,” he said pushing me on the dance floor towards the girls. It Worked. I’d ask, and got a dance. The Polka and other Polish folk dances I learned at the Polish Hall in Bayonne. However, dancing wasn’t changing my life with dad and gang activity.
In my mixed-up teen life, I had a gut feeling inside me saying, “You need a change.” One hot July Sunday afternoon while drinking a beer on Marty’s stoop, I said, “Marty, I’m afraid if I continue with the life I’m living, I’m going wind up in jail or dead.”
“I feel the same way.” Marty said. “I can’t get a job, my mother is mad at me for being in a gang, my father calls me a fucken bum, and is ready to kick my ass out of the house.”
“I just want to get away from my drunken old man,” I confessed. “I’m tired of listening to my stupid aunts and uncles, and most of all I’m tired of not living a normal life.”
“Chester Polanski from Whiton Street, joined the Army after he graduated from Lincoln High School because he felt the same as we do,” Marty said. “He just finished basic training, is home, and when I talked to him he said he liked the Army.”
August 27, 1945, I turned fifteen and didn’t return to school. My dad was drinking more and working less, and the feeling of escaping my situation kept getting stronger. During that summer and fall of ‘45, I began seeing less and less of my aunts, uncles, and brother. Ron stayed out of trouble because of my Aunt Marge, was back in school, doing poorly, and wound up in vocational classes. Looking back he never was an intelligent kid. He was a go a long and get along kid because he didn’t know any better.
One Saturday afternoon while shooting pool at the Boy’s Club with Marty he said “You remember how skinny Chester was; well he’s gained weight, and looks great in uniform. We should join the Army.”
“Are you crazy? I’m only fifteen years old I can’t join the Army. You have to be seventeen,” I said sticking my cue in Marty’s side. Marty had turned seventeen and said, “My parents are ready to sign the induction papers, and get rid of me. Change your birth certificate.”
“Do you think that would work?”
“Change it and see what happens.” I got a copy of my birth certificate from the hall of records, with Clorox bleach, I erased the last two numbers on it to make it read August 27, 1928 instead of 1930, and it worked. The sergeant at the recruiting station didn’t detect the change, or he didn’t because he wanted a new recruit. Without asking me why I wanted to join the Army, my abusive drunken father happily scribbled his signature on the induction papers saying, “Have fun.” That made me think would the Army life give me the relief I was looking for.
Chapter 3
You’re in the Army now
My Army life began January 25, 1946, at 9 AM in the main Post Office in downtown Jersey City where the recruiting sergeant swore Marty and me into the Army. Suddenly, staring at the recruiting sergeant I felt an empty feeling in my gut. Gone would be the days of drinking beer with the boys on the corner, and shooting pool at the Boys’ Club. Gone would be the nights my drunken father would beat me. Now all alone and frightened, I was trembling when I got on the bus to Fort Hancock.
Established by the Army in the late 19th century, Fort Hancock is located at the northern end of Sandy Hook, designed to defend the entrance to Lower New York Harbor.
Here the Army quartermaster issued me my uniforms, and a large khakis duffel bag to store my gear. The assignment officer bedded me down in an old cold barracks in an upper bunk with a lumpy mattress. That night I tossed and turned missing my own bed, and hearing my drunken Dad.
After breakfast the second day, in another cold barracks, I stood in line in khaki shorts freezing waiting for my physical. A medic took my blood pressure and pulse, a doctor listened to my heart and lungs, next a doctor stuck his finger in my groin, had me cough feeling for a hernia, and finally a nurse gave me shots (tetanus and typhoid?).
The third day, I sat in another cold classroom taking an aptitude test. For the next two days, I marched around more cold classrooms where sergeants indoctrinated me in the Army’s ways, regulations, standing orders, and disciplinary actions. All these regulations, orders, and disciplinary actions left my teenage mind bewildered, and I asked myself, “Is all this discipline and regulations what I left home for?”
Marty and I asked the assignment officer if it would be possible for us to serve together at the same Army base. In the Army, you can ask, but you don’t necessarily get what you ask for. By train, they shipped me to Fort Belvoir, Virginia to start my basic training, and Marty was shipped to somewhere in the California. We lost track of each other, and the last I heard he was in California working as a cook, but not in the Army.
Chapter 4
Fort Belvoir
Fort Belvoir is in Fairfax County, Virginia, is the home of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and is where I would spend eight-weeks experiencing the rigors of Army basic training. I was lucky to get a lower bunk with a not so lumpy mattress. The barracks was warm, and clean. With Marty in California, I was now feeling more anxiety and isolation. Sitting on my bunk, I could see the same anxiety and isolation reflected on the other recruits faces. Cradling my head in my hands, I said to myself, “You’re in the Army now.”
My day began with reveille at 5:30 am, a blasting bugle blew a wake up call with the barracks sergeant shouting, “Drop your cocks and grab your socks.” I showered, dressed in my fatigues, made my bunk, and fell out for roll call in front of the barracks.
After roll call, I double-timed (ran) to the mess hall for chow (breakfast). Army chow was nutritional, but not very tasty. One regular breakfast meal was SOS (Shit on a shingle) chipped creamed beef on toast. After breakfast, we had daily marching and calisthenics.
Following calisthenics, I marched to the Firing range, where I learned to fire the M-1 and carbine rifles, throw hand grenades, shot shoulder grenades, and fire the 45-caliber pistol. I fired my rifles in the prone, sitting, and standing positions. One morning a dog strayed onto the range, and it became an instant target. Before the sergeant could yell, “Cease Fire” everyone had taken a shot at the dog.
Other mornings I attended “how to” classes on how to survive off the land, and if I got lost how to use the compass. There were classes on what to do if the enemy captured me, and the role of the Red Cross when captured. The Army showed movies about V.D. the use of the pro-kit, and condoms. The movies showed what horrible illnesses I could develop if I contracted gonorrhea and/or syphilis.
Early one rainy morning, I had my shot at crawling on my belly on the cold, muddy, obstacle course with real bullets whizzing inches over my head. That scared the shit out of me.
The duty I hated most was K.P. (Kitchen Patrol). K.P. started at 4:30 in morning, and ended about 7:30 the evening when I finished cleaning up the mess hall. That’s a long day. Luckily, all the recruits had their turn at it, so I only had the pleasure twice.
To increase our endurance there were five-mile marches, one twenty mile march, and to introduce us to war a three-day bivouac. On the five and twenty mile marches, I carried a full field pack that included uniforms, toiletries, water canteen, tent, grenades, and the M-1 rifle. All that geared weighed sixty pounds.
The twenty-mile march was the last week in February, the weather was cool, but the warm sun kept me comfortable for most of the march. Carrying a sixty-pound field pack on my back for twenty miles made me feel like a mule carrying four-hundred pounds of rocks. The troops in good physical condition made the march without difficulty. However, I felt sorry for the two fat recruits who struggled, became weak, and fell by the roadside. Jeeps picked them up, and returned them to our camp. Our next ordeal was the three-day bivouac.
The Army trucked us to the bivouac area at Fort AP Hill a forested area thirty-five miles south of Fort Belvoir. Here I disembarked, and marched to my respective campsite, and prepared for combat. At my campsite, I set up a pup tent (small tent), dug a foxhole, and tried to make myself as comfortable as possible. A temporary mess hall and command post were setup close to the encampment. Living in the woods in a small tent wasn’t the greatest living arrangement for a city boy like me. The only other time I camped out was with the Boy Scouts when I was in grammar school, and I didn’t like that either.
At the temporary mess hall, for chow they served K and C rations. The C rations were canned food heated in a large garbage cans filled with hot water. When I asked for my favorite C ration (franks and beans), the mess boy dug it out with large tongs, and dropped it in my helmet. K rations contained dry crackers, bread, or cakes, and a package of three cigarettes.
In preparation for the war games, the platoon was broken up into the white and blue armies. The purpose of the war games was to get us ready for real war. The white army was to capture or eliminate the blue army, and the Blue army was to do the same to the white army. I was in the Blue army. Because we were at war, and it might give away our position when it got dark I couldn’t start a fire. Therefore, I hit the very uncomfortable cold sack (the ground) early.
At midnight, on the second night, suddenly all hell broke loose; there were booming artillery firing, blinding flares in the night sky, and all kinds of weapons firing. Panic stricken, I jumped out of my pup tent into my foxhole, and started shooting at everything and anything. Although many weapons were fired, no one got hurt because we all were shooting blank ammunition. Thank God. If we were shooting real ammunition, in our panic we would have killed each other.
Officers acted as referees marking the dead, wounded, and captured soldiers. Until this day, the outcome of the battle between the Blue and White armies is still a mystery to me. Following the war games, they trucked us back to Fort Belvoir and to our more comfortable barracks. I hadn’t shower for three days, all my personal hygiene, shaving, washing, etc., were done out of my helmet. When I returned to camp, I stunk like a skunk. The following week, I completed basic training. Graduation was a full dress ceremony marching on the parade grounds, with the Commanding Officer and his subordinates reviewing the troops.
Those eight weeks gave me my first experience with real discipline. The Sergeants told me when I could eat, when I could sleep, and when I could have free time. They were in complete control. I had to keep my bunk spotless, my clothes orderly in my footlocker, my uniforms clean and ironed, and maintain myself as professional soldier.
Because I hated shooting guns, and dreaded the day the Army would transfer me to a duty station where I would have to use guns again. I desperately started looking for a non-combatant duty station.
As luck would have it, just before my reassignment, Walter Reed Army Hospital posted a notice on the main bulletin board looking for volunteers to become hospital orderlies. The one thing you don't do in the Army is to volunteer for anything; well I did, and to this day, I have never regretted that decision.
One week before leaving for Walter Reed, Randy Young, a hick recruit form Georgia, I was vaguely friendly with, ask to barrow five-dollars. “My mother is wiring me one hundred dollars, and I’ll get it back to you before I’m transferred,” he said convincingly. For me five-dollars was a lot of money, but I lent it to him expecting him to return it when he got his money. The following day the Army transferred Randy the hick and my five-bucks to a base in Texas. I wondered how many other recruits he suckered into lending him five-bucks. Lesson number one, when in the Army don’t lend money to anyone.
During basic training, I stayed to myself, and only made superficial friendships. I didn’t think it wise to become too friendly with anyone because at the end of eight weeks the Army would be transferring me to a different base. I felt once I was stationed at a more permanent base then I would start making friends. Looking back for most of my Army career, I stayed a loner. The Army didn’t permit home leave during basic training, so going to the movies, and playing pool in the Rec. Room was the extent of my off duty activities. At the end of basic training, the Army granted me a two-week leave. Instead of taking the leave, I stayed on the base until my transfer to Walter Reed.
Chapter 5
Walter Reed Army Hospital
Two weeks after graduation, the Army bused me and all the other volunteers to Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.
The Army named the hospital after Walter Reed a renowned U.S. Army pathologist and bacteriologist. Through his experiments in Cuba during the building of the Panama Canal, he discovered the mosquito bite transmitted yellow fever and not fomites (articles such as bedding and clothing that may harbor harmful pathogens).
Passing through the hospital’s gates, I could sense this was a first class Army base. Elevated ten steps above the sidewalk stood four two story red brick barracks, with white windows and doors, and surrounded by a well-manicured lawn with appropriately placed evergreens. I entered the barracks through its side entrance. Inside the barracks, on each side of a long twelve-foot high-ceiled room, stood double bunks three foot apart between windows. At the head of the bunks, stood empty cloths lockers, and at the foot empty open footlockers. From the entrance, I made a mad dash and got a lower bunk. This mattress was thicker, smoother, and softer. I stowed my gear neatly in both lockers, and sat down on the bunk to relish my new quarters.
At noon Sergeant Longo, the barracks non-com, marched us two blocks down a tree-lined street to the mess hall. The mess hall was in a large open airy spotless room, with clean rectangular tables in orderly rows that could sit 8-10 people. The mess boys served the food cafeteria style, so I had a food choice superior to the food served during basic training. No more, “Shit on the shingle.”
Once settled in, I looked at the training schedule posted on the bulletin board. The first weeks included classes in learning basic patient care. Making beds, bedpan and urinal use, positioning patients, giving bed baths, back rubs, changing dressings, prepping (shaving and washing the operative site) patients for surgery, and transporting patients.
My first “hands on” patient care and further training began on Ward-8 an officer’s general surgical ward. I watched patients being admitted, discharged, getting blood drawn for laboratory work, doctors examining them, changing dressings, removing sutures, preparing them for surgery, and patients going and coming from the operating room. In the beginning, all this unfamiliar activity overwhelmed me. It made me have second thoughts on my decision to become an orderly.
Patients had surgery for hernias, gall bladder stones, enlarged prostates, and fractures. Diabetics had amputations for gangrene, and others had surgery for lung, breast, and colon cancers.
I began by bathing post-operative bed ridden patients, made their beds, gave them back rubs, and helped them with bedpans, ducks (urinals), and did whatever they needed to make them comfortable.
At first, bathing and prepping patients made me feel uncomfortable because I had never touched anyone so intimately. However, because touching them helped them recover from their surgery I became less uncomfortable. In three weeks, with the help of the nurses and other orderlies I settled into the ward’s routine.
Ward-8 was on the same floor as the Recovery Room, main operating rooms and General Pershing’s residence. The first room on the left near Ward-8’s entrance was the Recovery room. It contained oxygen, suction machines, blood pressure equipment, and was setup to observe fresh post-operative patients. Here nurses monitored their blood pressures, pulses, temperature, and frequently checked their operative site dressings. This new concept was to send all the patients recovering from anesthesia, and surgery to one place before returning them to their regular rooms. The Recovery Room objective was to closely monitor patients, and to pickup postoperative complications early. This Recovery Room was the first of its kind in the country.
Between the OR doors and the ward’s entrance doors, and across from the elevators was General Pershing’s residence. President Eisenhower occupied this same residence when he had his intestinal surgery. Pershing was a famous World War I general and an American hero. In April of 1917, after the United States had declared war on Germany he commanded the American Expeditionary Forces, sent to Europe to fight the Germans. He was nicknamed “Black Jack.” because early in his career he commanded a regiment of black soldiers. On several occasions when his personal aide was on leave, I served as his aide, and found him to be a remarkable teller of war stories.
It was a satisfying experience caring for surgical patients, helping doctors change dressing, removing sutures, and on occasion letting me redress a wound. At the same time, the more I saw patients having surgery, the more I wanted to see and know what was going on beyond those swinging operating room doors.
One morning, during rounds, while Major White was changing dressings and removing sutures, I asked him, “Major, would it be possible for me to see an operation?” He liked the title Major instead of doctor, a tall, thin, gray haired man, a ten-year Army general surgeon, and the surgeon in charge of Ward 8.
“Yes,” he said much to my surprise. “I’m on surgical call this weekend, and if a patient comes in that needs surgery I’ll page you for the O.R. If nothing comes in, I’ll set you up to see an operation on the regular schedule.” I couldn’t contain my exhilaration knowing I would be seeing an operation. How would I react to seeing someone cut? I saw the incisions after an operation, and wondered how the patient was reacting during the operation. Scores of questions about the OR raced through my head.
As luck would have it, Sunday afternoon a patient with acute appendicitis showed up in the Emergency Room. On his way to the O.R. Major White paged me to report to the O.R. ASAP. When I got the page, I choked up, and my heart skipped a beat. Eager to get to the O.R., I jumped into my fatigues, and sprinted from the barracks to the hospital as fast as my legs could carry me. Bursting through the O.R. doors, a nurse dressed in greens grabbed my arm saying, “Stop soldier, where the hell are you going in such a hurry?”