Who Is This ‘Mr. Morgan’ Babe Keeps Mentioning in His Letters?

February 18, 2012 Leave a Comment

Mount Kisco Elementary, which was a K-12 school including Mount Kisco High until 1956.

In at least four or five of Babe’s letters recently, he’s made reference to “Mr. Morgan,” in the context of letters Babe had expected to receive from Mr. Morgan, but which had not yet arrived.

I had a vague memory of my father mentioning Mr. Morgan while I was growing up, in the context of a teacher from Mount Kisco High School, where my father had graduated and Babe had graduated at least a decade before.

When I emailed my father, he replied:

Mr. (Kenneth) Morgan was Dr. Morgan when I was in high school. I’m sure it would be the same man. He was a unique person. He was the advisor for Hi-Y; I was president one year. He was our math teacher. He used to write on the blackboard while still facing the class, if you can picture that. He spent hours outside of class helping us prepare for tests and Regents Exams. I was at his house several times for help. He really took an interest in the kids.

He was sometimes forgetful. He once drove his car to the train station and went to New York. When he returned, he took a taxi home and saw his car was missing and reported it stolen to the police. He was a great guy and great teacher and everybody loved him. I can believe that he corresponded with ex-students in the army.

I haven’t been able to learn much about him online. My father said he was a fairly elderly man when he knew Dr. Morgan, so he’s likely long-since died. I found one reference on a site that says, simply, “Dr. K. B. Morgan, Mount Kisco High School, Mount Kisco, New York, has been appointed Assistant Professor at Pace College (now Pace University, in Westchester County, N.Y.).”

I also talked to Pat (Schmelter) Rosafort, who works with the Mount Kisco Historical Society. We spoke on the phone on Feb. 7 and she recalled Babe and the news of his death, but not many details beyond that. She did remember a lot about Mr. Morgan; she had been a student at Mount Kisco High a few years before my father.

He was a special teacher, one we wish we had more of today. It wasn’t uncommon for one to walk by his home and see seven or eight kids backed around his dining room table getting extra help. He was a wonderful math teacher. I struggled a little with geometry and got extra help from him. When I got 97 on my Regents, he thought he had won the Super Bowl.

Mount Kisco High, by the way, graduated its last class in 1956 and consolidated with the Bedford School District (my mother graduated after my father; she may have been in the second class at the consolidated Fox Lane High School). The old Mount Kisco High building is now Mount Kisco Elementary School.

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What Was the ‘Good Old Music from the U.S.A.’ in October 1943?

February 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

In the last of Babe’s letters I transcribed, he told his parents, “Right now, I am listening to the news, which will be followed directly by some good old music from the U.S.A. Last night, I fell asleep right in the middle of the Bob Hope program.”

It got me wondering: What was the “good old music” from the United States. As it turned out, it’s not exactly my taste. The No. 1 hit the week Babe wrote that letter was “Pistol Packin’ Mama” by Al Dexter. I’ve never heard of the song or the artist until now. If you ask me, the song was pretty forgettable. But it turned into a hit later for Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, too, apparently. Read more of this post

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And Now, Why This Blog is Called ‘Well, Happy and Safe’

February 13, 2012 Leave a Comment

Is it off-putting to read a blog called “Well, Happy and Safe,” knowing that it’s about the wartime letters of an army infantryman who dies four days before the end of the war?

If it were, I wouldn’t be surprised, but for me, it couldn’t have had any other name. The last letter I transcribed on this blog, dated Oct. 5, 1943, began with these words: “I am still well, happy and safe and I hope you all are the same.”

From this 45th letter on, nearly ever letter he writes will begin with those words. I am well, happy and safe. He has landed in Italy. He is in the infantry. He is now in combat as a radio operator for an anti-tank company. He is well, happy and safe.

He’s been working up to this with variations on the same theme.

“I’m feeling fine and fit and I hope you all are the same,” he wrote at the open to his Aug. 22, 1943, letter.

“I’m feeling fine and dandy and I hope you all are the same,” he wrote, opening his letter of July 27, 1943.

“I don’t know how to start this letter except to tell you I am feeling fine and hope you are the same,” he said, opening a letter in June.

“My training here is drawing to a close and I’m still feeling fine. I hope you all are feeling good too,” he told his brother Bob in a letter on May 26.

I wonder if it’s a technique that he uses, just to get his pen on the paper and start writing something. Does he dash off that first line just to get the juices flowing, hoping that something else will follow?

Or is he really just that upbeat about his situation? Does he love being in the army so much that he really does feel well, happy and safe?

Is he just trying to set his parents’ minds at ease? Babe wrote that letter four days before his 19th birthday. Relax, Mom and Pop. I’m thousands of miles away on foreign soil wearing a uniform and carrying a firearm. You haven’t seen me in eight months, since I shipped out for basic training. Yes, I’m still only a teenager.

But I’m well, happy and safe.

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More About Luca George Conte, A Connection to Babe

February 5, 2012 Leave a Comment

Jane and Luca Conte. Note the Fifth Army patch on his left shoulder, above his stripes; Babe had the same patch, which I have in my collection.

I’ve already made several references to Luca Conte, who served in the U.S. army at around the same time as Babe. The first reference was in this post, in which we confirmed that he and Babe left the United States out of Newport News, Va. The second was in the actual letter Babe wrote in which he refers to seeing “Lugi” Conte “on the boat coming over.” The Conte family was friends of my grandmother’s in Mount Kisco.

I remain puzzled about why Babe’s letter refers to him as “Lugi” when his name was Luca.

The final reference was in another post trying to pin down Babe’s initial movements after he arrived in North Africa.

I am grateful for hearing from Luca’s children, Pia and Luca Edward, when I initially sought out some information. Luca Edward gave me a summary of his father’s service in the war. In his introduction to the summary, Luca Edward writes: Read more of this post

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Hope for Families Seeking Info from the Personnel Records Center

January 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

In October 1994, I wrote to the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis seeking information that might shed some light on how Babe died. Nearly three months later, I received a reply. That was the first time I was aware that there had been a fire in 1973 that destroyed millions of records.

The form (included here) notes “his army record has not been found; it apparently was a 1973 fire loss.”

I found alternate sources and pieced together a few documents, but I still think there is more to be found.

I mention it here because on Monday, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote a story about the renewed efforts, with painstaking work and new technology, to restore some of the records that were burned. My former colleague, Steve Giegerich, had this story on the front page headlined “Labor of love and duty at St. Louis County records center after 1973 fire.”

Six and a half million documents in one form or another were ultimately recovered; 18 million perished forever. The files are stored at the new facility in a climate-controlled warehouse with a constant temperature of about 35 degrees and with a relative humidity that never dips below 40 percent. When the summons for a document is delivered from a family or government official, the files move from the warehouse to the archivists on the third floor. The work can be tedious. With time being their enemy as they plowed through Dumpsters after the 1973 fire, agency employees could not devote any time to cataloguing the debris.

In 1994, I lived in South Florida and had nothing but U.S. mail to connect me to the records center. Now, I live 15 minutes away from it. Perhaps it bears another go.

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