As the story goes, my mother was at work in a Chicago office building when the call came. It was short, her sister’s voice serious and the message simple: Get home immediately. She didn’t ask questions.
When you’re 16 years old, your country’s at war and a call like that comes in, you get home. David Del Camp , a Portland resident, is a retired merchant mariner and a published author. The year was 1944, and the Army chaplain had been to the Rossi home to inform Mrs.
Rossi, my beloved grandmother, that her only son had been killed in action. By all accounts, my grandmother skipped the crying and went directly to the screaming. His name was Bernard Frank Rossi, and he was 23 years old.
He died 13 years before I was even born, but there was never a moment when memories of him were far removed from the conversations of my grandparents, my mother or her two sisters. As a kid, I remember having questions about “Ben,” about what kind of person he was, and what kind of uncle he’d have been to the six nephews and five nieces he would have lived to know. In spite of my curiosity, there’s still so much that remained a mystery.
Did my grandparents, Italian immigrants, cry tears of joy when their only son was born? How could they have ever known their only son would die, one of 416,800 other brave Americans whose lives were claimed during World War II? Was there anything that could have ever prepared them for that visit from that Army chaplain? I’m certain I know the ans.
