Dunkirk NY – Tony never liked Veterans Day. He would allow me to call him and wish him a happy Veterans Day, but I always had to endure a rant about his intense dislike for the “thanks for your service” bullshit. As far as he was concerned, the words meant nothing as long as he was living in an 8’X10′ dormitory-style room along with other veterans who were homeless, jobless, on methadone programs, or otherwise dysfunctional, and as long as he was receiving poor health care service from the VA.
Anthony J. Rasemus, May 2016
Tony died a little over a year ago, on Sept. 21, 2018, at 2:00 PM, in the VA hospital on 23rd St. in Manhattan. When I received the phone call from the doctor, I was standing in his room at the veterans shelter on E. 119th St. I had gotten up early and was driving down that morning to see him in the hospital, as I was told he was not doing well. I was supposed to be getting my first knee surgery on my left knee at the end of September, but when I was told he was close to dying I had to postpone the surgery and try to get back to the city. I had visited him the weekend before, and he looked very weak and emaciated. I stopped in his shelter room because he was missing his wallet and cell phone, and he thought he might have left them in his room when he was transported to the hospital after falling out of his bed (they were more likely stolen). I was two hours too late. It took me almost two hours to drive from E. 119th St. to E. 23rd St., park the car, and walk up to the hospital room.
His eyes were bluer than I had ever seen them. He had an expression on his face that suggested he was surprised to be dead. I never met any of the doctors who treated him, not even the one that had been keeping me apprised of his condition over the week. It was left to a very young intern who I think was fresh out of medical school to tell me how he died and take my questions. From what she told me, Tony managed to inhale some food into his lungs while eating, and asphyxiated himself. I had no real questions for her, because I already knew that the questions I did have, she could not answer. She told me this was the first time she had ever done anything like this. She was called out of the room, and I sat there for a few minutes. When I left the room, I went to the nurse’s station and let them know they could remove the body. I sat out in the hallway thinking about my next steps, and as I was sitting there I saw them moving the body out of the room in something that looked like a flag-draped coffin. He was on his way down to the morgue.
Since there was no one else to attend to his affairs, those were left to me. Not being next of kin, the tasks became complicated, more so because he had left no will or other legal post-death documents behind. I did have his power of attorney, but I quickly found out that it became null and void upon his death. I spent the first week after his death calling and visiting every veteran-connected office I could think of to ask how to get him buried/cremated. In cleaning out his room ( a task made particularly distasteful due to his failing ability to tend to his colostomy bag properly) I found his DD-214 and some other papers, so at least I knew I had the document that would entitle him to burial in a national cemetery for free.
The greatest difficulty was trying to get a funeral home to attend to his remains. Because there were no next of kin, and because he left no written instructions, technically there was no one to claim the body legally and have him moved from the morgue to a funeral home. Cost was also an issue, as Tony had no money at all save what was coming in from Social Security and his pension. Those agencies, once notified of his death, would want to claw back payments made after his death. So I also knew the cost of his arrangements would be on me. The situation was a bureaucratic nightmare, and I was unable to solve it during the week after his death. So I went home, had my knee surgery, and waited for someone from the VA to call me, figuring they’d eventually want to get his body out of the morgue.
After two weeks they hadn’t called, and I was fearful that they would simply take his body and bury it in the potter’s field on Hart Island. So I once again called the VA and talked to a woman whose job was to deal with families after a death. After explaining the situation and making a couple of calls to her, she finally gave me the number of a funeral home in Brooklyn. I called, and unlike other funeral homes I had talked to, they asked me no “next of kin” questions. Over the phone, I arranged for death certificates and a cremation for $899, with the shipping of the cremains to my home for an additional $100, paid over the phone via my 2%-back credit card. Today his cremains sit on a bookshelf in my back office, along with the cremains of his uncle Tom, a WW2 vet whom Tony always said he wanted to bury alongside his mother (Tom’s sister), but as was his wont, never seemed to get around to it.
Of all the things I discovered after his death, perhaps the most surprising was reading his DD-214. Tony had always claimed to have served with the Navy Seals in Vietnam, and all through his life he told very fascinating and compelling stories about his service there. He also claimed to have won the Navy Cross along with a Purple Heart. None of this appears on his DD-214. It does not list any overseas service at all (meaning he never went to Vietnam), and in fact shows he was in the Navy at the rank of E3 Mechanic for only 9 months. He received an honorable discharge, but his DD-214 also lists his re-enlistment eligibility as RE-4, meaning he was ineligible for re-enlistment. There is nothing else specified on the DD-214 as to why he received an RE-4. In short, for all the time I knew him, he was lying about his service record.
The only other possibility I can come up with is that his DD-214 is a phony record of his actual military service. He always claimed to be working on “black ops” in places like Cambodia and Laos, involved in the kidnapping and assassination of Viet Cong military leaders. I would not think it impossible that he became a “ghost soldier” working for the CIA whose existence would be denied by the US government if he were ever captured or discovered. I have no way to prove this, and will probably never be able to prove it, but I certainly find it plausible that he was “discharged” after 8 months and then went underground until he got what he called his “million dollar wound” in his back, and was actually discharged home.
Tony and I were two people you would never expect to be friends. It is still hard to believe that he became the person with whom I had the longest continual ongoing relationship apart from my wife. We met in college in the spring of 1972, and became roommates for one semester in the spring of 1974. I’m a lifelong pacifist, Vietnam-era conscientious objector, and progressive liberal. He was by all outward behavior a sociopath, a psychopathic liar, a conservative patriot, racist, and a leech. He was constantly expressing a hostile persona to the world, and reveled in his Vietnam Vet persona, complete with dark aviator glasses, a Viet Vet baseball cap, and a leather jacket, which he thought was an intimidating look. He claimed many associations with low-level Mafia operatives both in Syracuse, where he was born, and NY/NJ. He was a skilled gambler, poker player, and pool player. He always claimed to have a lot of money “working” on the streets, but of course that was just another of his many created stories about himself that never squared with his reality.
Yet he was also a skilled actor, incredibly well-read, a self-taught military historian specializing in the Civil War and WW2 (he did major in history as well as theatre in college), a superb chess player, incredibly well-read in philosophy and literature (with a particular affinity for Russian poetry), and, of all things, a wine connoisseur. He also possessed an inner sensitivity that he displayed to no one but me. He was the most complex mind I knew. His intellect was unlike any other I had ever known, and it’s the main – and maybe the sole reason – I kept him as a friend all these years.
He was emotionally and psychologically unable to participate in mainstream society. Every time a career opportunity came about, he would find some way to self-destruct. He had an opportunity to earn higher degrees in history at Columbia, but he came to hate academia and academics for their liberal ways. He could have taken the exam to become an apprentice in IATSE Local 1, the Broadway local for stagehands, and didn’t show up for the exam. He could have married a smart woman with whom he was living, but he abused her until she threw him out. He became homeless for three years until moving into the vet shelter.
His 8’x10′ room in the shelter
I tried in the last two years of his life to move him upstate, but he refused to change his behavior (i.e. quit smoking) in order to get better housing. I had a small house lined up for him about two blocks away from where I lived, and offered to bring him food and other living essentials, but he claimed the owner was an idiot and he wouldn’t budge, despite many, many claims that he needed to get out of the vet center. He went to Alaska in the early 80s to “work on the pipeline” and try and create a new life, but eventually came back to NY by getting $2K from me at a time I really didn’t have it, lying about the health of his Mom. Truth was he probably was broke, couldn’t find a job, and hated the dark nights and cold. He had dreams of becoming a rugged hunter/woodsman, but couldn’t cut it.
I supported him because he was a Navy veteran, and he always seemed to be struggling to survive. He was my “pacifist payback.” Because I did not serve in the military, I owed the country something, and for me, that became keeping Tony alive. There were a few good years in there when he was living with his woman on the West Side of Manhattan and getting work loading in Broadway shows with Sam Gossett, but when Sam died he lost work, and when his partner threw him out he lost his home. He got prostate cancer, his health declined in several ways, and at the end he appeared so miserable that death at 72 was probably a blessing.
Like Tony, I dislike Veterans Day and the accompanying national patriotic displays that accompany it. It’s all lip service, and the nation is annually treated to a show of hypocrisy and lies. We fool ourselves about war, its aftermath, and the men and women who served. I know a whole shelter of men who live in terrible conditions, and their shelter is only one of many like it (the hospital where I was born, St. Albans Naval Hospital, is now a VA Primary and Extended Care facility. I was looking to get Tony there as well for extended care). The homeless population has a high percentage of veteran among its numbers. Care in most VA hospitals is substandard at best. All Americans get are rosy made-for-TV images designed to stoke patriotic pride and hide the ugly realities.
I won’t participate in that. I’ve done my share; I took one veteran and kept him going until there was nowhere else to go but the grave. I’ve still more to do, because he and his uncle have not yet received their resting places in a national cemetery. Come this spring, it’s the last detail I have to take care of before Tony and his uncle can rest in peace. The year past has been one of dealing with the first knee surgery, winter, my daughter’s accident, theatre commitments, and a second knee surgery. Come this spring, Tony will finally be able to rest in peace, having served for a nation that never gave one good goddamn about his life after his service. -twl