By JOSEPH KELLARD
The front-page story is about fourth-graders at Hegarty School in Island Park who finally met a young soldier they wrote letters to while he was stationed in Iraq. The other is about a middle-aged teacher at Oceanside High School who just published a novel that¹s based on a local World War II veteran. If you look deeply enough, you'll see that the first story is a potential prelude to the second.
The Hegarty students are too young to fully understand why Keith McQue, a 21-year-old specialist in the Fighting 69th and an alumnus of their school, was in Iraq, or, broadly speaking, the situation in the Middle East, a hotbed for militant Islam and America's potential destroyers. Yet these students showed they at least grasp the fundamentals involved, as when they wrote on a plaque for McQue, "...you worked hard to keep us free." That is, they grasp that our nation's mission in the Middle East is to protect us from those who would annihilate us (even if our leaders are, in many respects, defaulting in this mission). The letters they wrote from their Hegarty classroom to McQue in Baghdad were meant, at root, to boost his morale. By McQue's own admission, the kids succeeded.
Frank Nappi, the OHS American literature teacher who published his first novel, "Echoes From The Infantry," used Ed Hynes, an Oceanside resident and a World War II infantryman, as the model for his central character, James McCleary. Nappi's focus is on the side of war in which some soldiers take home and struggle with psychological wounds throughout their lives. While I've yet to read Nappi's novel, it sounds like a fitting tribute to a man who battled against and helped defeat an earlier enemy bent on destroying America.
Just as I believe the Hegarty students showed genuine concerned for McQue while he was in war-torn Iraq and have forged a special relationship with him, I think Nappi has a similar relationship with Hynes, who visits his class each year to talk about his war experiences. It seems clear that the teacher has a heightened respect for his elder, who risked his life to keep America free from totalitarians and paid a psychological price for this noble mission.
While reporting on McQue's return to Hegarty for his welcome-home party, I noticed that he understated some of his war experiences in Iraq. Certainly McQue understood that he had to be cautions about sharing with kids the disturbing details of war. But there was also something about his hesitancy that I sensed was reminiscent of Hynes's inability to talk much about his war experiences for decades. "I sort of try to forget it," McQue said of those experiences. Out of respect, I probed no further. I can only hope that he doesn't suffer the psychological wounds of war that Hynes still experiences.
What I can confidently hope for is that a Hegarty student or two were affected enough by their experiences writing letters and meeting a real, battle-tested soldier to admire such a man and want to write a book about him one day. Perhaps a student will stay in touch with McQue, or search for and contact him when, as an adult and a budding novelist, he or she wants to write a war story.
If this comes true, I can still only hope that the psychological wounds the soldier based on McQue experiences will be a fictional element of the novel, while the enemy McQue helps fight and ultimately destroys will be based on history.
It would be art imitating life at its most victorious.
Comments? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
