The Writer's Life 8/14 - A Great American Family

An article in today's NY Post sent me searching for more info on a great American family. Here are excerpts, edited by yours truly, from a piece at wfxl.com: Dominic and Victor Ragucci are the last survivors of an eleven-sibling Philadelphia family. Five brothers fought in WWII. Two died less than 90 days apart. Nicholas, killed in Italy in 1944, was brought home right after the war. Emil, who died in 1943, remained lost on the Central Pacific atoll of Tarawa, where more than 1000 Marines perished in a three-day battle. The family thought Emil's remains would never be found. He was 19 when he underwent basic training. A breakthrough came from the work of History Flight Inc., a nonprofit group of forensic anthropologists, archaeologists and other volunteers formed to help repatriate the remains of American soldiers missing in action. In 2013 they found what was labeled Cemetery 33, a small plot of land with a couple dozen sets of remains. The Department of Defense arranged to fly them to its forensic anthropology lab in Hawaii, and it was discovered that Emil Ragucci was among them. Kudos to that organization for giving survivors a bit of closure. Here's a picture of the young Marine:

And here are his parents, Carmela and Nicholas, and sister Mary:

Last week I filled out a will online at legalzoom.com. It arrived in the mail yesterday. Of course, there was a goof. I chose my youngest niece as executor. I used her maiden name - duh! Since that might invalidate the document, I will make the change. Fortunately, there is no charge if it is done within a month. There's another hitch. New York law requires that the will be notarized in front of two witnesses, and it can't anyone who will benefit from the will. Before I bother anyone, I will ask my bank rep if I can do it there. I suspected the process seemed to easy to be true.

My thanks to the woman who donated five books in Russian, and to Herbie, who handed me a large paperback; and to the retired super who pulled his SUV to the curb and gave me a hardcover on battling addiction. Wolf bought two books in Russian, one a bio of Landau, the father of the Soviet atomic bomb; another gentleman also purchased a book in that language; and a young man pounced on a hardcover version of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, the novel that had the largest influence on yours truly, and which led directly to Close to the Edge. In the blurb I wrote: "Raskolnikov was sexless. These three are not." Thanks, folks. 

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