Floyd Jones Youngs Jr., a Marine and his sister Joanne Youngs. Around 1940.
My Father, Marine Veteran - Commentary by Robin Young Story aired: Monday, May 26, 2003
On Memorial Day, I think of my dad, the proud Marine, and the time I had to stop his funeral, and throw the minister out.
Let me backtrack here.
That my adored dad was a Marine was hardwired in each of us four kids at birth: we knew how he lied about his age to enlist, how the Marines became his family after his own disintegrated, how he'd fought at Guadalcanal, came home, led a move to force a local college to go coed, attended the school on the GI Bill, and then married my mom - the May Queen for good measure - how they bought their first home for $5,000 on that GI Bill
As kids we'd sneak into his dresser drawer to look at medals and terrible little pictures, old black and white photographs with perforated edges, my dad ,staring at the camera, surrounded by dead friends, and enemies, body parts.
Maybe he drank in part to forget some of those images. He drank like successful men who'd survived the war drank back then: martini's at lunch and dinner, beer while golfing. He was an exquisite golfer, Class A champion at the notorious Bethpage State Golf Course.
After several decades the liver failed, we all gathered at his first death bed, from which he got up and went into an alcohol recovery program. much to his, and our astonishment. But as it turns out, a liver can only regenerate so much, and a year later he fell ill and died suddenly on Christmas Day.
Our family went into shock and tried to catch up with dad's second family, already organizing the funeral. There were so many stories from that day, but I will tell you just one, and it's true, even if it sounds like I'm making it up.
it seems that ,at the end dad had been in the hospital, where he met an ambulance-chasing preacher apparently trolling hospital halls for quickie funeral candidates. Our beloved family minister had long ago died, so I guess my dad signed this guy up for the service he knew was coming even if I didn't.
When he arrived, the preacher seemed surprised at the hundreds of people who were there, but that turned to astonishment when he took to the pulpit for the eulogy, looked out over the crowd, and saw... Robert Duvall.
Yes, that Robert Duvall. My sister was married to him at the time, and suddenly the minister stopped looking at his watch, and began, to speak:
"Some men," he said, "just travel through life.They have peaks and valleys. Floyd Youngs was such a man, but some men," and here he was speaking directly to Robert Duvall, "some men, achieve greatness!"
I kid you not. He went on like that for 10 minutes, gesturing with pity to my dad's little box, - he'd been cremated. Then grandly over to his new best friend, Robert Duvall. I remember looking down the row at family that I loved, their tear stained faces that had been contorted in grief now frozen in disbelief, "Robin" my sister mouthed, "do something!!" and I did. I stood up, and said, "excuse me, thank you very much, pastor, but we won't be needing you anymore." Then I took to the altar, and talked about my dad, about the war, about the gift he had given us, his children, by showing us that it was never too late to make life changing decisions, about how his liver had failed, but not his will.
Then it was over.
But what to do with dad? He had wanted to be buried under a tree on the golf course, but that was illegal, so, as he had years before, we turned to the Marines.
Come spring, the four of us, his kids, traveled out to the veterans cemetery on Long Island. I worried at first. There were rows and rows of white crosses, It felt so impersonal. but they played taps, and affixed his cross. I realized how perfect it was, how very wrong that minister had been. We left dad there, grave 239b, section v. Forever at attention, indistinguishable from the 323,000 men buried around him. And special.
