Stories from Bob's Life

I believe it was two days after the wedding and Mary Anne and I began our lives as husband and wife by heading to Brooklyn to spend Christmas with Mary’s family, meet the relatives before heading across country to Monterey for German language school before moving to Germany where I would serve as the Personnel Exchange Program US representative to the German Navy’s version of their SEAL Team – the Kampfschwimmerkompanie in Eckernfoerde on edge of the Baltic Sea.

On Christmas day Mary’s parents had invited all their close friends and relatives over to to their home on Lenox Avenue in Brooklyn, to celebrate not only Christmas, but also to meet the new member of the family – me. This was my opportunity to officially become a member of the family, and connect with their extended network before we headed cross country and then to Germany.  Mary’s mother Peggy had prepared a big Christmas dinner for the guests and this special opportunity to celebrate our marriage and bringing me into the family.

That afternoon,  25 December 1979, as we were all getting ready for that special dinner and the arrival of all the relatives and close friends of Mary’s family, Mary Anne and I were upstairs getting our clothes out and puttering before the arrival of the guests. Suddenly, we heard a scream from Mary’s mother downstairs. We rushed down stairs to find Mary’s father Bob Bradley on the bed in the guest bedroom, convulsing and unconscious.

Mary and I had had some rudimentary training in CPR one evening, when we were dating, and I had had duty as the Command Duty Officer at SEAL Team Two. She arrived at the team to pick me up, so that we could go to the Officer’s Club at Little Creek where we could have dinner and I could be on call should anything come up.  When she arrived, there was an optional  General Military Training course on CPR going on in the conference room, so we decided to participate before going to dinner, which we did. Then we went to dinner, never thinking that, about a year later, that session gave us the tools to try to save Bob’s life, while we waited for the ambulance.

It was Christmas Day and the ambulance took nearly 45 minutes to get there.  While we were trying to do CPR on her father, I was giving him breaths, which unfortunately (and I didn’t know any better) were going into his stomach and not his lungs. He threw up on me, which I ignored and kept going. We quickly realized that having him on the bed was not helping, given that the compressions Mary was giving him were bouncing the bed vice giving him maximum benefit. When the EMTs and the ambulance arrived, they gave it their best,  realizing that perhaps we had kept him alive with the compressions and breathing.  They moved us out of the way, put the shock pad on him and did their own work for a while. I recall one of the EMTs telling me to go wash my face, as I was standing around, somewhat in shock, and still had his vomit on my mustache. They soon realized that it was hopeless and they pronounced him deceased.  At that point they packed up and left, and we closed the door to the guest bedroom, and soon after, the guests started arriving for the celebratory dinner.

Mary’s mother greeted each guest at the door and gave them the sad news, which was followed by crying and hugs. That went on for well over an hour as more close relatives and guests arrived. I recall going back up into the guest room and sadly visiting Bob Bradley one more time – lying still, alone in the dark room.  Eventually the coroner arrived, Mary’s mother filled out some paperwork and they took his body away. And meanwhile the family reunion continued, Mary’s mother finished the dinner and set it out on the big table that had been prepared for the banquet. As the word spread through the grapevine, more friends and family arrived to express condolences. Each time the door bell rang Peggy Bradley would answer, there would be tears and hugs, then the visitors would be invited in and fed.  The Irish wake had begun.

Mary’s brother Pat was a NYC Policeman and her father had been a strong and well known supporter and friend of the police. Pat’s police friends had regularly been to the house and enjoyed Bob’s company and many of them showed up that evening to support Pat and Peggy and Mary, and to begin the celebration of Bob’s life. The drinking, story telling and reminiscences went long into the night and into the wee hours of the morning.   Hosting all those friends and family, and the telling of stories and laughter and crying and drinking served to take Mary and her family’s minds off the loss of her father.

I had met some of those people on previous visits to Brooklyn to visit Mary’s family and thoroughly enjoyed meeting the greater circle family and close friends, but I was still an outsider – the young kid in the Navy who Mary Anne had agreed to marry and follow to Germany. It was all new to me – Irish wake, Catholic service, the culture of Irish-Americans in Brooklyn.   While I enjoyed the sense of community and meeting so many people from Mary Anne’s world, I felt awkwardly like an outsider – which I was. After 3 days, she and I left to begin our drive across country – as newly weds.  In the midst of all the activity, the wake, and all the preps for the funeral, I’d never sat down with Mary to sense her feelings. That was a mistake – but it was me – a 27 year old kid with little experience of something like that.

I was in a good mood – I’d met some great people, had fun at the wake, and was ready to get on with our next adventure – the drive across country, visiting my parents in San Diego, living in Monterey and attending language school, then moving to Germany. I was driving my fathers old Ford Mustang 351 – a muscle care fun to drive across country to deliver it back to my father – it had been stored at Little Creek while my parents lived in Naples Italy at his previous assignment. During the drive, Mary was still in shock and sad, as the realization that her father was gone began to sink in. She was quiet, withdrawn, and contemplative  – not the more gregarious, uninhibited, and fun-loving woman I’d dated for well over two years. I, on the other hand, had just come back from a difficult deployment to Europe, was done with the stress of finishing the deployment, checking out of my command, getting ready for the wedding, and now was on a “road trip” –  ready to enjoy being with Mary Anne again and picking up where we had left off.  So there was a big disconnect between her and me as we began our lives as husband and wife.

The trip was awkward as I sought to have fun, and she was not in the mood for fun.  Afterward, in speaking of this, we each shared with each other the misgivings we were having about our marriage.  We both were thinking what a mistake this was, that we had to wait an appropriate amount of time  before we announced our decision to bail on the marriage, for appearances sake.   We were cordial to each other – there were no big fights, but we weren’t happy together.  I take the blame for that – I had never had any real experience with that kind of loss, and the accompanying emotional pain,  and didn’t know how to process her behavior.

So during the trip across country, we stopped in Chicago to visit my college roommate Ernie Gundling where our car broke down in a very bad part of town.  We visited my uncle in St Louis, stopped for a few days of skiiing in Taos, New Mexico, and arrived in San Diego in time to attend the ceremony for my father assuming command as Commander Naval Air Forces Pacific, his first three star job.  That was something of a chaotic celebration as well – friends of our family having flown in from all over to celebrate my father’s promotion and assuming this prestigious command.  Here Mary Anne, having just spent 6 years in the Navy, enjoyed being part of the fanfare associated with a 3 star Navy Admiral’s change of command, and enjoyed meeting the extended network of my family. She especially liked Bob Billig, my father’s best friend growing up, who got drunk and railed against Jane Fonda “that traitor!”  As usual, she was charming, did and said all the right things, and even hung in there for all the partying – which is not normally something she enjoys. When all the celebrations concluded, we headed north to Monterey, for our next adventure as newly weds.  On our way to Monterey, we stopped briefly to visit Inge Staib, my erstwhile German girlfriend who I’d married to help her get her green card, then continued on to Monterey to begin language training.

We found what appeared to be a great house to rent in Pacific Grove – a house right under the famed “butterfly tree” which every year filled with monarch butterflies wintering over from their summer home in Latin America.  We threw our bags into the home and went out to drive around. We returned and found that our new home had been broken into and several things stolen.  The thieves did not find the diamond rings Mary’s mother had given her that were in Mary’s bags.  So out of caution, she asked a good friend of hers who lived in Monterey to keep the rings in her house. Within 2 weeks the friend’s house was also  broken into and the rings were stolen.

Welcome to California.