The Gang Of Four (Now Just One)

February 5, 2004

When I moved to the Beneva Park Club, July 2000, I was assigned to a dining room table where three other men sat, Hugh C., Fred D., and Bob B.

Late last year in my 2003 Musings, I wrote about Bob B., who chose to die with dignity by neither eating nor drinking.

Hugh C. died January 22 this year. As you read his obituary, you can understand that his was a remarkable life.

He didn’t say very much about the years in the Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. He was one of 25% who survived that ordeal. He did say once that rat wasn’t so bad fried in a little palm oil. When he was liberated by the British Army, he said, that the surviving prisoners were given permission to beat up their Japanese guards. But, he commented, none of us wanted any of that.

He always called me “Padre” and quizzed me about the sermon when I went to church. Actually he would ask, “What was the text?” I attempted to recall the gist of the sermon and frequently he would agree with what my minister said.

Hugh had a remarkable memory. He knew by heart and could recite countless poems. I believe he memorized everything Kipling wrote; he could recite all the great speeches in the Shakespeare canon. He knew the words to most of the popular songs of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

He loved humor. By copying my e-mail, I shared with him many of the jokes and satire I received, most of it from my son John.

Hugh had a strong feeling for the hungry, homeless, and sick people of the world. He could never understand how we could spend so much on armaments and so little, relatively, for the needy children and adults of this country and world. I feel the same way.

Hugh chose to die by not eating. When he had to come to the table in a wheel chair and needed help to open paper packets of sugar and to lift the lids of creamers, he said, just a few weeks ago, “I don’t want to live this way; and I won’t.” His mind was clear up to the last. When I visited him in his room, he asked, “Padre, I don’t remember your first name.” I told him.

Fred D. was the fourth member at our table. Fred was moved to a nursing home recently and died there. He was ninety-nine years old. He would have been one hundred years old [on] October 2, 2004.

Three times a day at meals our conversations included a wide range of topics (Hugh never came to breakfast). We discussed politics, current events, international and national issues, religion, sex, poetry, song, food service, Beneva Park policies, personal reminiscences, humor. Hugh, Bob, and I were Democrats and criticized the Bush administration including the Iraq war. We were convinced that his whole approach to leading our nation was outrageous.

Fred D. was not impressed by any political party. He thought our whole cultural, political and economic system was dominated by greed. He believed that the wealth of the country should be spread around. He said more than once that nobody should have more than five hundred thousand dollars.

Fred never married. He was one of 10 children born in Greenport, Long Island. His father was a blacksmith who labored hard to provide for his large family. Frequently Fred said, “I never wanted to go through that.” He also said often enough that his mother did not believe in a Hell in the after life. To her, Fred said Hell was life on earth.

Fred used prostitutes for his “sexual release” as he termed it. On his numerous travels he told us in a new city he always went to the library first and then to the brothel. One prostitute somewhere in north Africa he particularly liked because she was the sole support of an ailing husband. To Fred that was most commendable.

He was astonishingly informed and well-read considering he never went to high school. He loved to play with the language, particularly when a word had several meanings.

He had other different notions. For example, he thought banana skins were food that should be eaten, not thrown away (However, he always peeled his banana at breakfast). At a time when the forest fires were raging in the West, he opined that forest fires would not happen or be much less destructive if the unemployed persons were hired to clear all the dead wood and underbrush in the forests. He thought this debris could be carted out and used for fuel in certain stoves and furnaces, thus reducing our need for fossil fuels. He also believed that a family could be sustained on three acres of ground if they planted, fertilized, tilled and harvested wisely. He said that he had had that experience when he had a house and three acres on the East Coast of Florida.

Fred joined the U. S. Marine Corp in the early twenties. After that hitch, he became a hobo. He had many stories of the hobo life. He informed us that guards were less likely to kick hobos off freight trains if the train was heading for some place that needed low-wage labor. He worked crops in California, forestry in Alaska and temporary jobs in Texas and other places.

Fred had no religious affiliation or convictions he ever said. He did say that he had had to listen to countless sermons; in Christian missions when he was a hobo and needed a meal. He listened to some of our table talk about religion. Bob B. was an atheist, insistently so. Hugh was the son of Methodist missionaries, and I, of course, a Unitarian Universalist. So there was considerable talk about beliefs, doctrines, rituals; [they were] frequently quizzing me about Unitarian Universalist belief.

A few months ago, the Gideon Society was giving to every resident here copies of their abbreviated version of the King James Version of the Bible. A copy was left for me in my room when I was not there.

But Fred was in his room when the Gideon representative came. Fred told us that he said to the Gideon man, “I don’t want it; I don’t bother with that stuff; I’m a Unitarian.”

When World War II loomed, Fred enlisted in the U. S. Navy. He served on a battleship and also a sub-chaser.

In between his hobo days and two hitches in the military, he had worked as a tinsmith and became very competent in the metal working trade. He said the engineers liked him because he could read blueprints. After the war he went to school for further metalwork training. When he finished that training, he was offered a job as an instructor. He chose instead to go to Guam where the U.S. was fortifying that island as part of the Cold War.

He apparently did very well, particularly in training unskilled workers from the Philippines. He respected them, saying how hard they worked and how well they responded to orders and instructions.

He had saved enough money for two trips around the world. Prior to all the trouble in the first war against Iraq, Fred said with a twinkle in he eye that he had been in Baghdad. Then after an appropriate pause, said the airplane had landed there to fix a tire. “We didn’t leave the airport.”

So I miss Bob, Hugh and Fred. I am not sure many others do because some of the off-color jokes and raucous laughter we shared may have been overheard by staid ladies at nearby tables.

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.”
(Polonius, HAMLET)