When did my relationship with Tony Vinciguerra begin? Probably the day we jointly pledged DU. That’s when we first met. However, I really did not get to know him very well. He was difficult to know. He had not participated in many of our pledge-class activities. He was a year older than I was, but the interval seemed much wider. He had served as a Marine and was probably stationed in Korea. He certainly thought that our college-oriented behavior was too childish for him. No doubt it was, if he had served in Korea. (Several other brothers had also been there, but they preferred to leave memories behind them as much as they could.)
During our pledging, Tony had expressed some annoyance with me, especially on our hunt for the Smith’s Corners cemetery. He declined to participate in any of the fraternal-building-events of pledging, primarily on the grounds that he had a sensitive stomach and would not be able to endure some of the actions he had heard about.
Our relationship had not improved during the previous summer when we lived together in the House while taking extra classes. We were both “loners” in our own, individual Italianesque ways. Our interaction became even more strained in early October of my junior year. The cause was a fight he had with Dick Owen, my big brother who had come back to Kent for a visit after his graduation.
Dick was trying to sleep on the couch on the first floor of the House. Tony, while working on something in the cellar, was listening to records. Dick went down and lowered the volume. Tony turned it up. Dick lowered it. Tony said Dick was drunk. Dick laughed at him. Tony attacked Dick and would have really beat him up, given their difference in size and strength, if one of the other brothers had not intervened. The current pledges were in the cellar with them and saw everything that happened. They became very disturbed and were about ready to de-pledge, for they wanted no part of a fraternity which demonstrated this kind of “brotherhood.” No doubt the incident would be discussed at the Chapter meeting to be held the following week. It did not occur.
Three days after Tony’s fight with Dick, Vinciguerra was hurt in an inter-fraternity football game against SAE. He had been hit hard during the game. He left the field and drove back to the House, parking on the lawn. He stumbled into the foyer where I was talking with a visitor. Tony looked green and white at the same time. He went into the Chapter Room and laid down on the couch. I asked him what was wrong. He only groaned. I called the Health Center and Tinker’s ambulance service. Tinker arrived first. They took Tony, who was screaming for his Mother and for St Mary, to the Health Center and then to the nearest hospital in Ravenna. The brothers weren’t sure if he was really hurt or not, since he had acted in a similar way when he wanted to escape a pledge event he didn’t like. At the time, I wrote in my journal: “You can never tell about Tony. He appears to be as strong as a young bull but is more fragile than a Spring flower.”
My entry for the following day, Friday, October 14, states: “They removed Tony’s kidney last night! Evidently he will be OK. When he comes back, there will probably be no mention of his attack on Owen. You never question the act of a martyr.”
The next morning, I left with two other brothers to drive to Ohio University for the weekend for their homecoming game with Kent State. The visit to the DU House in Athens was pleasant enough, but we left early on Sunday to return to Kent. My journal entry written that evening, Sunday, October 16, states: “Upon getting home we learned that Tony had been taken to Akron Hospital and was in critical condition. The doctors believe he had only one kidney and they removed it, thinking that he had another. A person can live on 1/4 of one kidney. He can’t live without any.”
My diary entry for Monday states: “After [Chapter] meeting tonight we said prayers for Tony. I guess that’s what a fraternity really means – brotherhood. Last week we were angry at Tony. Tonight, we pray for him. The pledges have no intention now of de-pledging. Life is strange. You can never tell what’s going to happen tomorrow. I suppose everyone realizes that sooner or later. But when the revelation comes, it is a shock.”
Meanwhile, college life went on. There were further notations in my journal about those who accepted bids to join the House. At Student Council I was appointed Parliamentarian for the body, when one of the other members resigned the position. Our Homecoming events were held. Our front yard display was supposed to have looked like a blue football; it didn’t; we called it “the blue abortion.” Martha Heinselman, a chemistry major, went with me to the Homecoming dance. At the time, I viewed her as a college version of Martha Smith from high school and had hopes that our relationship might blossom better than that with the first Martha. She agreed to go with me to the forthcoming Pumpkin Prom. Meanwhile, I took Lucy Fell to see a college play, “By the Skin of Our Teeth” which we both enjoyed. I would have enjoyed the evening even more if she weren’t pinned/engaged to Dick Owen. The Fall elections for Student Council were held; several fraternity brothers were elected. My term continued for the remainder of the academic year.
The routine, tranquil life of a college junior did not continue. My journal entry for Wednesday, October 26, 1955, read: “Anthony Vinciguerra died at Akron City Hospital at 3:35 a.m. Tony, the strong bull and the fragile flower. The young Adonis of the fair hair and sandy-splotch eyebrows – his fair skin still showing the tan of the summer’s beach and youth’s mad life. The fellow who liked to sleep in the nude and show off his manly form in contrast to others. Tony with an Italian donkey’s stubbornness, who was always right and could never be proven wrong. The boy who wanted more passion in his love and felt cheated, insulted, if it were not given. The lad who was disliked for his arrogance and revered for his industry. The man of passion and fervor in all his acts, whether of anger, love, or religious zeal. He’ll be mourned by some and soon forgotten. He, too, was a mortal, imperfect in his structure – the part over which he had no control. The supple young bull crushed by the flower. He who conquers by war is conquered by himself!”
The entry for Thursday read: “This evening Dan and I and several of the brothers went into Akron to view Tony’s body. But it wasn’t Tony. His blond hair was white and old. His skin was pale wax. As I knelt there at his bier, I didn’t see Tony; I saw my father. Maybe that’s why I never liked Tony; he was my father twenty years younger. Tony and I had never been friends, and now I could not mourn for him. I told Dan all this and he probably thinks I’m crazy. But, nevertheless. There it is. I saw my father dead tonight. And I did not mourn.”
My reflection for Friday concluded: “The brothers rose early today. About 95% made the journey into Akron to Tony’s funeral. The crowd was large; the procession of cars was long. In a Hollywood setting we marched before the casket and into the church. The funeral Mass was chanted. A fanatic shouting, high-squeaking priest delivered the sermon on “Why?” The setting was paradoxical, the events an antithesis. But we sat and stood and marched and waited as the coffin of the young bull was carried home.”
I began this memory with a question about when did my relationship with Tony begin? The question of when did it end has a more complex response. My relationship with him has really not ended.
In the months – and years – which followed his sudden death, I continued to think about him and to pray for him. At every Mass I attended for the next decade, I prayed for him when intentions were made for the repose of the soul of the deceased. The names of others were added and subtracted over the years, but Tony’s has been recalled even sixty years later. Thoughts and prayers about him have occurred more often than they have for almost anyone else I have known.
The only other person is probably my cousin, RoseMary, who was as beloved as any sister might have been. It’s strange thinking about the two of them in tandem. My affection, my love, for them has existed on opposite ends of the continuum of life. With RoseMary this is a result of what a relationship really is or was; with Tony it is what a relationship might have been.
I still have not really mourned the death of my father. Perhaps, I mourn Tony as a substitute, as a man I could never truly understand, but one I felt I should have known better.
What becomes of Vinciguerra, “The One who Conquers in Warfare?” Will I ever know? Perhaps, this will occur when “I have no more questions.”