Salvatore (Tato) Mirto
10/14/1926 - 05/20/1998
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Uncle Tato
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It was February 5, 1941, Uncle Tato’s twenty eighth birthday, and he was in the Armed Forces Entrance Examination Station housed in the old Post Office building on State Street in Albany, New York. Earlier that morning in Poughkeepsie he had boarded the New York Central with an overnight bag, a change of clothing, a tooth brush and a razor. He was told to pack light and not to celebrate the night before because on arrival at the induction center he would be put through a battery of tests that would determine his military future. Screw those up and it was the Infantry.
The country was not at war, but a year earlier Roosevelt had signed the Selective Service and Training Act and a peace time draft would insure that each able bodied man would spend one year in the service of his country. Tato was a straight arrow and doing his duty. He had never been further away from home than Manhattan where he stayed one summer with relatives. Now began a journey that would take him out of the house, the family and normal life for the next five years. This odyssey would lead him through the American South, across the Atlantic Ocean, over the deserts and dunes of North Africa, to the village in Sicily where his mother was born and beyond to Salerno, Monte Casino, Naples, Rome and Florence.
In 1941 his sisters and brothers living in the house on Mansion Street tuned the radio to “The Jack Benny Show”, “Fibber McGee and Molly” and Edward R Morrow reporting from London. Sisters Babe and Gert downed pop corn at screenings of “Citizen Kane”, “The Maltese Falcon, and Walt Disney’s “Dumbo”. His brother, Sammy, munched Cracker Jacks and listened to the exploits of the Yankees, the Giants and “dem bums” from Brooklyn. On Sunday Nana cooked dinner and Ray and Jen, Pete and Jane, and Josie and Johnny, Anna Longi and assorted cousins swelled the rout and crowded around the dining room table for spaghetti and meatballs. Pop doted over Delores and Barbara, the only children in the house.
In Albany Tato was poked and prodded, quizzed and questioned, weighed and measured and approved for service. They observed that he was five feet and one inch tall, had at least half of his natural teeth, weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds, did not have flat feet, a hernia, or venereal disease, and with one year of high school they concluded that he had suitable gray matter to become a non commissioned officer and put him on the fast track for training in the Signal Corps. He was sworn in, packed on a train with other befuddled inductees and sent him to Camp Dix, New Jersey, for Basic Training.
Whenever I remember Uncle Tato, I recall a quiet decent man whom I loved. He was a second father to me. In 1945, when he returned from the war, I was living at Nana's while my mother was going through a divorce. He bought me a book of nursery rhymes and read them to me so many times I memorized them. He would take me with him when he visited friends and I would show off and recite them and it made him proud. He enjoyed golfing ,bowling, fishing and he let me be part of his world of sports. He respected and followed the letter and spirit of the rules of those games. He had patience, intelligence, common sense , practicality and prudence. At twenty eight, leaving the world of the Mirto family to live and work with a diverse world he had never encountered, he would draw on those qualities and conform to the Army Way. He would be the good soldier.
The country was not at war, but a year earlier Roosevelt had signed the Selective Service and Training Act and a peace time draft would insure that each able bodied man would spend one year in the service of his country. Tato was a straight arrow and doing his duty. He had never been further away from home than Manhattan where he stayed one summer with relatives. Now began a journey that would take him out of the house, the family and normal life for the next five years. This odyssey would lead him through the American South, across the Atlantic Ocean, over the deserts and dunes of North Africa, to the village in Sicily where his mother was born and beyond to Salerno, Monte Casino, Naples, Rome and Florence.
In 1941 his sisters and brothers living in the house on Mansion Street tuned the radio to “The Jack Benny Show”, “Fibber McGee and Molly” and Edward R Morrow reporting from London. Sisters Babe and Gert downed pop corn at screenings of “Citizen Kane”, “The Maltese Falcon, and Walt Disney’s “Dumbo”. His brother, Sammy, munched Cracker Jacks and listened to the exploits of the Yankees, the Giants and “dem bums” from Brooklyn. On Sunday Nana cooked dinner and Ray and Jen, Pete and Jane, and Josie and Johnny, Anna Longi and assorted cousins swelled the rout and crowded around the dining room table for spaghetti and meatballs. Pop doted over Delores and Barbara, the only children in the house.
In Albany Tato was poked and prodded, quizzed and questioned, weighed and measured and approved for service. They observed that he was five feet and one inch tall, had at least half of his natural teeth, weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds, did not have flat feet, a hernia, or venereal disease, and with one year of high school they concluded that he had suitable gray matter to become a non commissioned officer and put him on the fast track for training in the Signal Corps. He was sworn in, packed on a train with other befuddled inductees and sent him to Camp Dix, New Jersey, for Basic Training.
Whenever I remember Uncle Tato, I recall a quiet decent man whom I loved. He was a second father to me. In 1945, when he returned from the war, I was living at Nana's while my mother was going through a divorce. He bought me a book of nursery rhymes and read them to me so many times I memorized them. He would take me with him when he visited friends and I would show off and recite them and it made him proud. He enjoyed golfing ,bowling, fishing and he let me be part of his world of sports. He respected and followed the letter and spirit of the rules of those games. He had patience, intelligence, common sense , practicality and prudence. At twenty eight, leaving the world of the Mirto family to live and work with a diverse world he had never encountered, he would draw on those qualities and conform to the Army Way. He would be the good soldier.
Note: During the WWII, Tato fell in love with an Italian girl. Neither would leave their homeland and families to be married. Tato returned to the States and never married.
---per Cousin Barbara Johnson
---per Cousin Barbara Johnson