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CREATION OF PITTSBURGH WWII VETERANS MEMORIAL
STILL
UNCERTAIN -- Bureaucracy and smaller local
veteran groups
may mean local WWII memorial won't be built in
soldiers' lifetimes.
Clarence "Code" Gomberg, 84.
Story here...
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06309/735781-85.stm
Story below:
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Creation of local memorial still uncertain
Bureaucracy, smaller local veteran groups may
mean local WWII memorial won't be built in soldiers' lifetimes
By Caitlin Cleary
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Two days before Christmas 1945, Frank Capozzi returned home from the
war.
After a year of combat in the Pacific, "jungle rot" had crept over the
mysteriously yellowed skin of his hands and arms, and he experienced a
brief episode of paralysis. Mr. Capozzi could never sleep well after
that, especially during storms; a clap of thunder or flash of lightning
would startle him throughout the night, said his daughter, Donna
Linnelli, of Highland Park.
But the quiet, bookish accountant settled back into life in Pittsburgh
and fathered four girls.
"Growing up, I never heard my dad say a word about World War II," said
Mrs. Linnelli. "You could talk to him about anything, he was so
knowledgeable and so bright, but that was one thing he'd never discuss."
It was only decades later, when his 11-year old grandson begged him to
tell some of his war stories, that Mr. Capozzi finally opened up. As
time went on, he became more comfortable talking about his service, and
he wondered whether younger generations had forgotten about the
conflict. He would always ask his grandson, "Do they have much written
about the war in your history books?"
Mr. Capozzi read voraciously on the subject of WWII, and when he heard
about the National WWII memorial being built in Washington, D.C., he
wanted desperately to visit it. He planned the trip for months,
researching the symbols and structures of the memorial, which he
considered long overdue.
He arrived in D.C. on a Friday night of pouring rain in June 2004,
shortly after the memorial's dedication; his family drove by it on the
way to their hotel. The next morning, as he was getting ready to visit
the memorial by daylight, Mr. Capozzi slipped in the bathroom and broke
his hip. He died a week later in George Washington University Hospital,
never having seen the memorial. Before he passed away, he left his
medals to his grandson.
Mr. Capozzi's body was flown back to Pittsburgh, where he received a
military funeral. In lieu of flowers, family and friends donated
thousands of dollars in his memory to the World War II Veterans of
Allegheny County Memorial Fund, which was just getting its fund-raising
effort off the ground.
The proposed memorial, which was to be built on a sloping bowl of
parkland on the North Shore between the Clemente and Andy Warhol
bridges, would honor Allegheny County's WWII veterans, including the
more than 4,200 who died, and those civilians and corporations
supporting the war effort at home.
Designers envisioned two plazas connected by a tree-lined walkway, and
panels of translucent glass, engraved with the names of those who
served, offering unobstructed views of the river. Veterans envisioned an
educational site that would tell the stories of those who served and
reflect their values of patriotism, duty and honor.
But months after City Council approved the site and issued a license for
the memorial to be built there, complaints surfaced from other
stakeholders along the North Shore, who requested it be moved elsewhere.
With no finalized location, fund raising for the World War II memorial
slowed to pledges and promises and a trickle of small private donations.
Its original completion date of Veterans Day 2005 came and went, and now
another one is around the corner.
Recently, board members of the memorial fund did meet with city
officials about a possible new site, on the Great Lawn near Heinz Field.
It is an even better site, they say, but to get things moving again,
they need fresh sketches, approval from City Council and a final vetting
from several North Shore stakeholders.
In the meantime, the region's large population of World War II veterans,
estimated at more than 40,000, succumbs to age and illness. Their death
notices are prominent on obituary pages every day.
"It's frustrating; we wish it would have been done a long time ago,"
said Dave Farley, a Vietnam veteran and the executive director of the
memorial fund.
"They're dying off at a huge rate, and we wish we could get this thing
done already because we'd like for them to be around to enjoy it."
Mrs. Linelli awaited news of the memorial's progress, but heard nothing,
and grew concerned. More than 68 people had made donations in memory of
Frank Capozzi. She looked forward to attending a dedication ceremony
with her mother, certain that her father would have been pleased to be a
part of it all.
"The whole World War II experience had an emotional impact that none of
us can really imagine," she said. "There's so much you don't know, and
it's not written down in the history books."
That history lives, and dies, with people like Frank Capozzi.
And Julius Timko. He was drafted into WWII and served as an anti-tank
gun crewman in Algeria and French Morocco. In 1943, Mr. Timko was
captured in Tunisia by Rommel's Afrika Korps, and held captive for 26
months, most of them spent at a labor camp in Germany.
But he always told his stepdaughter, Judith Kroll, of Jefferson Hills,
that he was grateful to have been captured; those troops taken prisoner
by Rommel were soon replaced by a division that was sent back to Europe
and slaughtered on an Italian beach. Being a POW had allowed him to
escape that fate.
Ms. Kroll's father, Joseph Kroll, also a WWII veteran, died when she was
10 years old. A rifleman and mess sergeant who fought at the Battle of
the Bulge, he never spoke to his family about his wartime experiences.
"It haunts me sometimes, you know, not being able to know my dad's
story," said Ms. Kroll. So before her stepfather, "Tim," died in 2003 of
colon cancer, she preserved his war stories with videotaped interviews.
Since his death, several donations have been made in Mr. Timko's name to
the Allegheny County World War II Veterans Memorial Fund.
"I just thought it was such a shame that all these guys are fading away
and are being forgotten," said Ms. Kroll, who has toured many WWII
battlefields and cemeteries in Europe. "They always talk about how
people in France hate us, but their entire country is full of memorials
to American soldiers, and our own country doesn't have that many."
She described her stepfather as a sharp and funny man. In North Africa,
he had been thrown out of a truck when it hit a sand dune on the way to
the front lines; after that experience, he never drove or owned a car
again.
Before his camp was liberated by National Guard troops out of Minnesota,
he and the other POWs subsisted on 300 grams of bread a day, made mostly
of sawdust, and later, as the tide of the war turned against the
Germans, on flour and water. He developed boils from malnutrition, said
Ms. Kroll, which the camp's doctor cut out with a rusty razor. He waited
to die, writing his name, address and serial number in his Red Cross
Bible, which he kept in his pocket.
Later, he would return home to Mount Oliver, raise a family, work jobs
in mills and meat-packing plants, and later, cut grass for the city's
parks department. He remained obsessed with food, said Ms. Kroll, with
where his next meal was going to come from. Mr. Timko was a member of
VFW Post 694.
He didn't want to die in a Veterans Affairs hospital, she said, but
that's exactly what happened. For his funeral, there was nobody
available to conduct a military service, said Ms. Kroll, so she hired
two kids from Carrick High to play "Taps."
She feels there is not enough respect paid to WWII veterans, and
anxiously awaits the Allegheny County memorial.
"They were drafted and they did the right thing," she said. "They
weren't thinking of saving the world, they were saving each other."
Mr. Farley, executive director of the memorial fund, acknowledged that
the Allegheny County WWII memorial was overdue, but pointed out that it
took 10 years to complete the Vietnam Veterans memorial in Washington,
D.C., and more than nine years to finish the national Korean War
memorial.
He is positive that with approval of the new site, private donors will
feel more comfortable participating in the effort. Pamphlets have
already blanketed local VFW and American Legion posts, and volunteers
have approached theater owners about distributing information at
screenings of the new Clint Eastwood WWII film, "Flags of Our Fathers."
So far, more than $200,000 has been raised from local governments,
foundations, veterans groups and individuals. One advantage of the new
site on the Great Lawn is that it doesn't require grading or other site
work, and will cut the projected cost of the memorial from $3 million to
around $2 million, said Mr. Farley.
"It's certainly well within our ability to raise," he said.
Clarence "Code" Gomberg, of the Jewish War Veterans and chair of the
site-selection committee, has been involved with the Allegheny County
World War II Veterans Memorial project since its inception in 2001. Mr.
Gomberg, 84, of Stanton Heights, spent 15 months in WWII Europe, landing
six days after D-Day.
Mr. Gomberg said the memorial remains "an uphill battle," because of the
bureaucratic pro- cesses the site must go through for final approval,
and the dwindling membership of local veterans groups. Veterans come to
the meetings, he said, their hands shaking, and tell board members,
"We'd better hurry up."
But Mr. Gomberg said that with this new site, several veterans who quit
the project in frustration years ago are encouraged and are beginning to
come back.
(Caitlin Cleary can be reached at
ccleary@post-gazette.com
or 412-263-2533. )
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Larry Scott
