MICHAEL GRIECO—A Story for Memorial Day

       Now that Mike is somewhat advanced in years, a new career, or hobby, or something, has found him.  He’s a popular guy these days.  He is a WWII veteran, and there aren’t that many of them left.

          The calls started a couple years ago, from war museums, patriot groups, and the like.  Would Mike be willing to attend a banquet and a ceremony at our museum?  Would Mike like to join other veterans at a July 4^th celebration?  He agreed to do a couple of them, enjoyed himself, and now he gets called regularly. On his latest trip, a veterans’ organization brought him to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

          I think one reason he has become a sort-of star of these events is that he doesn’t need a wheelchair, he doesn’t have to drag a care-giver along with him, and when he speaks, he makes about as much sense as he ever did. Mike is easy.  Give him a nice ride, a room at a 5-star hotel, three squares, and some recognition from grateful patriots, and he will come to your party.  As a bonus, he also gets to meet other ancient warriors and swap stories with them.  It’s not a bad deal.  He does have his limits, though.  A while ago, a group wanted to fly him to France for a WWII event and he turned them down.  He said he would have felt silly doing it because he spent his war in the Pacific.

          Mike joined the Marines in 1943 (with parental permission since he was only 17), and was promptly shipped to the Pacific theater.  He was a grunt in the 2^nd (and later the 4^th), Marine divisions, and his military career was “distinguished” primarily by the fact that he somehow survived it.  But though the armies of the Pacific were unable to kill Mike, or even seriously injure him, it was not for lack of trying.  He was involved in three horrific battles of the Pacific War, all of which killed and injured thousands of American soldiers.

          First was Saipan, an amphibious assault by 8,000 Marines on June 15, 1944 that was later called the D-Day of the Pacific.  The battle ended three weeks later with 3,100 Americans dead.  But not Mike.

          One week after Saipan was secured, on July 24, American forces moved on to the neighboring island of Tinian.  The two are so close that artillery on Saipan was fired across the strait between the islands to soften Japanese resistance.  Though the battle took only one week, the invasion involved 41,000 Marines, 368 of whom were killed along with 2000 other casualties.  But Mike survived.

          Mike’s third nightmare was Okinawa, which was the largest amphibious assault of the war.  (Fun fact: Mike couldn’t swim.  He still can’t.)   Beginning on April 1, 1945 and lasting almost three months, Okinawa took the lives of 12,000 Americans, including 7,500 Marines.  It is believed Japan lost over 100,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians.

          Even then, Mike was not done.  American forces remained in the Pacific preparing for the invasion of Japan itself, which some have estimated would have cost another half million American lives.  It was only after the Japanese surrender following the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most of the Americans, including Mike, went home.

          After the war, Mike apprenticed and became a men’s tailor, and he was good at it, so that became his career until he retired in the 1990s.  Since then, he has spent much of his time pursuing his two hobbies, cycling and skiing, and his good health allowed him to do both until just a couple of years ago.  (There are no downhill competitions at his age, but I can state with no fear of contradiction that he was the best 95-year-old skier in America.) He has lived for many years in the Mayfair section of Philly, which used to be called a “working-class neighborhood.”  Maybe it still is. 

          Billionaires and neuro-surgeons tend to get a lot more ink, but Mike is what you need to keep a place like America going.  And you need a lot of them---guys who will do what has to be done when it has to be done, and not do a lot of bitching about it.  Then they move on with their lives and their families and their grandchildren.

          Mike was born in Philadelphia on May 26, 1926, so he is 97 years old today.

          Long may he wave.

 

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki

PHILLY MAYOR’S RACE---2023

 

          This Tuesday, May 16, Philadelphia will elect its next mayor.  It is actually a primary election, so the result will not be final until the general election in November, but with Philly’s 7-1 edge for Democrats in registration, the winner of the Democratic primary almost can’t lose.  The last time there was a Republican mayor was 1952, and Republicans long ago gave up the ghost on mounting some sort of opposition to Democratic rule.

          For most of my life, ethnicity and skin color was the primary concern of voters in Philadelphia.  Italians voted for Italians, Irish voted for Irish, and blacks voted for blacks.  In the 1970s, Judge William Marutani was elected to the Court of Common Pleas twice, pulling close to 100% of voters with Italian ancestry.  He was actually of Japanese descent, but he NEVER let his photograph be taken.

          Around 1990, the city became majority non-white, and it was assumed that Ed Rendell (1992-2000) would be the last white mayor Philly would ever have.  And in fact, for the next sixteen years, John Street and Michael Nutter, two black men who knew how to play the game, held the office.

          Then in 2016, an interesting thing happened.  Jim Kenney, a white leftist with a familiar ethnic name and experience in city government, rolled to victory.  At the time, there were plenty of crusty old wise guys in Philly politics who said Kenney could never be elected, but as often happens, the wise guys are often the last people to see that the old paradigm has crumbled and been replaced with something new.

          While identity politics is very much alive in Philadelphia, old-fashioned race hustling went out of style while nobody was watching.  John Street (2000-2008), was probably the last pure practitioner of it.  He had been a rabble-rouser in North Philly and had worked his way into the establishment as a City Councilman, but he was a product of the streets.  His successor, Michael Nutter, was also black, and he knew how to play the card, but he had been educated at prep schools and was something of a nerd.  Then came Kenney, the white radical.

          In its simplest terms, young black voters became ideological.  Increasing numbers of young black people went to college, and inhaled the leftist indoctrination that takes place there.  Also, the race politics of the past were embodied by men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who were now geezers and increasingly viewed as an embarrassment.  It was no longer necessary to vote for someone with your skin color or ethnicity.  You could now vote for the most leftwing candidate no matter who he was.

          Which brings us to the election three days from now.

          Of the nine candidates, four of them are throwaways with 2% of the vote or less.  The other five, in a poll two weeks ago, were in a five-way tie.  The winner (and nobody knows that will be), will probably get 20% of the vote.  Nobody will get 25%.

          Of the five, three are white---two businessmen and a woman with experience in city government.  One is a woman of Asian descent.  And one is a middle-aged black woman, the “establishment” candidate, who has been involved in politics since she was a teenager and has held a number of elected offices.

          Twenty years ago, this would have been a no-brainer---the one black candidate (Cherelle Parker), would win since she would get a few white votes and ALL the black ones. That does not, however, appear to be what is going to happen.

          My prediction is that Philly will elect the most radical leftist who has at least some experience in government or elected office.  That is Helen Gym.  Bernie Sanders and AOC are coming to a rally for her tomorrow, and thousands of lefties from all over the country are knocking on doors for her this weekend.  For several years, under Mayor Kenney, Philly has been sliding into crime and drugs and homelessness.  Police get arrested for doing their jobs, so they don’t do their jobs as much as they used to, and many of them have retired.  All that will continue at an accelerated pace if Gym is elected.

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki    

NOTES ON JURIES

 

          In the 1980s, I would occasionally drop into Room 236 in City Hall, where my father plied his trade as a criminal court judge.  He was assigned all the “Career Criminal” cases in Philadelphia.  This was Pennsylvania’s variation on 3-strike laws, which require enhanced sentences for repeat violent offenders.

          There were not a lot of laughs in Room 236.  The victim and his family were often there, along with the defendant’s mother and any other relations.  The defendant himself was thinking about spending the rest of his life in prison.  Sherriff deputies stood at attention, watching everyone, waiting for a rumble to start.

          And sometimes it did.  Judge Kubacki had to seek cover more than once.  The one incident that stuck with him was a melee where a young woman with babe in arms waded into the fray and tried to use her infant as a bludgeon.  He told that story more than once.  I think he disapproved of her behavior.

          But this is about juries, and that is because most of the trials in Room 236 were jury trials.  Judge Kubacki, for about twenty years, presided over more jury trials than any other judge in the city.  Juries made up of random citizens from the voting rolls inject an element of chance into a contest, and the only hope for most defendants was to get lucky, so they all demanded juries.

          For the judge and his staff, jury trials are a LOT more work than non-jury trials.  Jurors must be separated from the participants at all times.  You don’t ever want a juror in the same elevator or restroom as the defendant’s sister, so you take steps to prevent that sort of random encounter.  It took work, constant attention to detail, and always knowing the location of everyone interested in the trial.

          Also, juries and jurors are mysterious and unpredictable.  The lawyers and the judge asked a few questions, and would typically find out what neighborhood the person lived in, what they did for a living and maybe where they went to school.  Then, just from looking at them, you get male/female, white/black, old/young---and that’s about it.  There are consultants who claim to be experts who will help lawyers pick jurors, but I always wondered whether they really know anything at all.

          Because of this, and because of all the jury trials in Room 236, my father and his staff developed a fascination with juries and jurors.  They all had theories on how to read jurors and the factors that might sway them.  They were convinced, for example, that a nasty-looking weapon in evidence (that the jury could look at and touch), would tend to lead to a conviction.  It doesn’t make any real sense, of course, since the only important question should be whether the defendant used the nasty looking weapon, but the court staff swore by it.  Prosecutors generally believe this as well.  Maybe it’s because a long sharp knife or a cold, gray semi-automatic are real.  Even the most uncynical jurors realize quickly that people lie at trial.  Witnesses lie, cops lie, the defendant lies---but a chain or a gun or an ax does not.

          Another topic they wondered about was the effect of a large contingent of supporters and family for the victim or the defendant.  I don’t remember what they concluded, but I know that a crowded courtroom full of on-edge, emotional people put everybody on a state of alert.

          All of them had their individual roles.  The Court Crier was Helen Wolf, a tiny, no-nonsense woman who worked in City Hall for forty years.  She was in charge of wrangling juries and moving them from place to place, but she never catered to them or let them dawdle.  They had a job to do.  She had several jury-deliberation rooms at her disposal, and if it were July and she felt a particular jury was taking too long to reach a verdict, she might move them to the room where the AC didn’t work so well.  There was also a drafty room where the radiator rattled constantly and didn’t kick out much heat in December, and Helen would move the jury in there in the colder months if she felt they needed a kick in the ass.

          Jack Woods, the Tipstaff (the judge’s general factotum and body-security man), had the job of taking lunch orders for the jury.  He saved them, correlated them against the verdict eventually rendered in the case, and theorized about them.  He was convinced that meat-eaters generally favored conviction, and that an order for twelve roast beef sandwiches basically guaranteed a guilty verdict.  Salads and tunafish were wild cards.  Three or four of them in a lunch order meant anything could happen---a hung jury, a wrongful acquittal, or screaming arguments in the jury room.

          Because of the expense, juries are rarely sequestered in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, but it does happen.  My father told me he would do it occasionally once the testimony was over and the case had been given to the jury to decide.  If it had been a lengthy trial, or the case had gotten a lot of press attention, he might put them in a hotel to keep them under the court’s control and maybe protect them from any outside influences.

          In one case, he told me, the jury had started deliberating that morning but it was getting late in the afternoon, so he decided to sequester them, and he had the staff start calling their homes to tell the families not to expect the juror home that night.

          On one of these calls, Jack Woods reached the husband of a juror and said, “Hello, Mr. Smith.  I’m from Judge Kubacki’s courtroom where your wife is on the jury, and I’m calling to tell you the jury is deliberating now and the judge has decided to put them up in a hotel overnight.  So you shouldn’t expect Mrs. Smith home tonight.”

          There was a pause, then the response:  “Tonight?  TONIGHT?  And exactly where the hell has she been for the last two weeks?”

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki