its-time-my-360-view-of-the-ufc

4SECRETSEvery family has its secrets, things that the adults never discuss with the kids and thatyou have to piece together for yourself as you get older. Our family was no dierent.When he was seventy years old, my father nally got a look at his real birth certicateand discovered that he was actually sixty-nine years old, not seventy as he believed. Hisfather, the prizeghter Johnny Bu, had falsied my father’s age when they were llingout his military enlistment papers. My father had spent his whole life thinking he wasone year older.There was only one reason my grandfather would have done this. My father had beenrunning around with a tough crowd in New York City. At the age of thirteen or fourteen,he’d been kicked out of Catholic school for punching a priest. He punched the clergymanin the throat and sent him spilling down a ight of stairs. It was a nasty incident, butmy father had become enraged when he saw one of his best friends being viciouslydisciplined by the priest.It’s hard to purge your record after pulling a stunt like that. My father was headed fortrouble if he didn’t clean up his act. While military service is not right for everyone, itwas for my dad. He entered the military and became a stand-up guy.My brother Brian and I were still coming up empty-handed every time we tried topiece together our family history. Every time we saw photos of John Lesky, aka JohnnyBu, he was depicted with a woman who was not our grandmother, and children whodid not include my father. To top it o, we never got a chance to meet him. Johnny Buhad died in East Orange, New Jersey, in 1955 at the age of sixty-six, two years before Iwas born.Brian and I wondered: Was our father Johnny Bu’s illegitimate son? Or was he theproduct of a marriage that had ended in a quick divorce? We still don’t know the answerto these questions, because my father was not the kind of man who took kindly to beinginterrogated.He never told stories of his experiences in World War II. In fact, my father seemed tofrown upon such tales. He kept a case that held all the medals he was awarded for hismilitary service. Peeking into that case, seeing his Purple Heart, among others, was all Ineeded to imagine what he’d seen and experienced. He was a walking military historianand proud of his service. Unlike some veterans, he bore no ill will against his formercombatants. His attitude was, “I served my country. You served yours. We should bothbe proud of that.”That was the world my dad inhabited. He wasn’t one to talk about personal stu inhis past. But when I was a young man, I was struggling to understand his past becauseso much of it was a mystery. I love old movies, especially those old lms noir where