Home >  Local News

Sunday, May 25, 2003

By Joe Smydo, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Sickly since he was exposed to poison gas during World War I, Luigi Petruzzi died in Philadelphia Naval Hospital in 1932, leaving four children to a pregnant wife who spoke virtually no English.

Bill Reynolds, 85, chaplain of the Allegheny and St. Mary's Cemetery Association, has been placing flags on veterans' graves at Allegheny Cemetery for the past 45 years. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette) RELATED COVERAGE Memorial Day Calendar: War in Iraq puts sober face on day of honor Many communities lay claim to having first Memorial Day MEMORIAL DAY CLOSINGS In observance of Memorial Day tomorrow, all city, county, state and federal government offices and courts, banks and liquor stores will be closed. There will be no regular mail delivery, but Express Mail will be delivered. The Port Authority will operate on its holiday schedule, which is the same as the Sunday schedule. Garbage collection in the city of Pittsburgh will be delayed one day all week.

Wars, Mary Cook well knows, don't claim all of their victims on the battlefield. It's been 71 years since Petruzzi died, but Cook's tears flowed anew yesterday while visiting her father's grave at Allegheny Cemetery in Lawrenceville.

"You know, we did without a lot," she said, recalling how her family scraped by with welfare, the Red Cross and the help of her live-in grandmother.

Cook and her husband, Norman, of Lawrenceville, were among many visiting veterans' graves in anticipation of Memorial Day tomorrow. Some pulled weeds and planted flowers or flags. Others just stood there, remembering as much as they could.

For Cook, who was 8 when her father died, the memories are few and dim. She recalled a boy pulling up on a bicycle with the telegram saying her father had died.

"He must have been a very good man," Norman Cook said of the father-in-law he never met.

Sadly, Vietnam veteran Thomas Ivanoff of McKees Rocks didn't have the chance to swap war stories with his dad.

Michael R. Ivanoff "served in French North Africa. Also served in Sicily under [Gen. George] Patton," Tom Ivanoff said.

Thomas Ivanoff said he was 15 when his father died in an auto accident. On a cold, late winter day in 1965, Michael Ivanoff was buried below a wall in a sloping section of Allegheny Cemetery.

At the time, it was a new section that had seen few burials. During Thomas Ivanoff's visit there yesterday with his wife, Mary, flags waved over dozens of World War II veterans' graves, a reminder of how his father's generation is slipping away.

Bill Reynolds said he hopes somebody puts a flag on his grave one day. That seems only fair.

"I've been putting flags on cemetery graves for 45 years," said Reynolds, 85, of Bloomfield, a Navy veteran of World War II.

In preparation for Memorial Day, he has been out daily for two weeks, sometimes for six hours at a stretch.

"I'm a gung-ho veteran, you know?" said Reynolds, a familiar sight at Allegheny Cemetery, St. Mary Cemetery, Lawrenceville, and other burial sites throughout Allegheny County.

Reynolds is proud of his service in the European and Pacific theaters. But it isn't easy to get him talking about his experiences.

"I don't want to go over that again," he said.

More than one veteran has taken his stories to the grave.

Perhaps it's understandable in the case of Lawrence J. Burns Jr., who during World War II prepared bodies for shipment back from the Philippines.

After the war, he closed the book on that part of his life, refusing to discuss his Army service with his wife and rarely sharing details with his daughters or anyone else.

"It just sort of didn't happen," Theresa Burns said, standing with her sister, Kathleen Burns, both of Ross, at their father's grave at St. Mary Cemetery.

"He really didn't get involved in any of the veterans' things," Theresa said. "But he felt it very much."

Burns died in 1995, leaving his daughters happy memories of a man who worked in the accounting field and loved to read the newspaper and follow sports.

"He was just dad," Kathleen said.

Then there were men so shaped by their military service that they talked constantly about it with family members, with ex-comrades, with anybody who would listen.

After losing his vision, Thomas F. Knight continued attending World War I reunions, said his daughter, Pat Arndt of Swissvale, who recalled dropping him off and taking him home.

She and her brother, Tom Knight of Verona, in St. Mary Cemetery yesterday tending their father's grave and those of other family members, laughed often while remembering their dad. They've heard his stories so often they've become adept at repeating them, raising his spirit in the process.

One night, the pair said, their dad and some of his engineering company comrades broke into a deserted French chateau and raided what they thought was the wine cellar. But it was dark, the bottles dusty and the labels French. Having "worked all night to steal the stuff," Tom Knight said, they opened the bottles and put their plans for a party on hold.

Mineral water.