A word to the wise from 2 poets and an educator

AUBURN, Maine — I lost two of my favorite New England poets and a brilliant junior high science teacher over the past three months.

All three contributed to the greater good and gave us insight into life’s travails and achievements in our brief lives. Gifted poets and teachers have the aptitude to get inside our heads with their life-changing works and their flair in a classroom.

Eileen Merullo, 95, served in the classroom and her country during World War II.

According to her obituary in the Revere Journal:

“She graduated from Revere High School in 1940 and received her B.S. from Boston University’s Sargent College in 1944. Immediately upon graduation, she enlisted in the United States Army and served as a registered physical therapist in the Army Medical Corps, working with wound- ed soldiers in the Amputation Center at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. Always proud of her military service, she was a lifetime member of the Revere chapter of the Disabled American Veterans, and a charter member of Women in Military Service of America, as well as other veterans’ organizations.”

Mrs. Merullo inspired her students, sparked my curiosity about the natural world and is the reason why I have never lost interest in science.

I will miss her and the way she handled herself in the classroom. She didn’t take any guff, but her compassion for her students came shining through during each lesson.

Diana Der-Hovanessian, who died in March, wrote a poem entitle “Shifting The Sun.” I read this poem to mourners at St. Anthony’s Church in Revere, Mass., when my father, Albert John Blasi, passed away from Alzheimer's in 2014.

SHIFTING THE SUN

When your father dies, say the Irish

you lose your umbrella against bad weather.

May his sun be your light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Welsh

you sink a foot deeper into the earth.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians

When your father dies, say the Canadians

you run out of excuses.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Indians

he comes back as the thunder.

May you inherit his light, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Russians,

he takes your childhood with him.

May you inherit his light say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the British,

you join his club you vowed you wouldn’t.

May you inherit his sun, say the Armenians.

When your father dies, say the Armenians,

your sun shifts forever

and you walk in his light.

Losing any parent is an ordeal and it is easy to get lost in a maze of grief. I am just fortunate I can still walk in his light. Der-Hovenessian’s poem is a powerful look at how people around the globe deal with the death of a patriarch.

I heard Donald Hall’s poem “Affirmation” on National Public Radio.

Those tender words about aging stuck with me and I began to read other poems by Hall and discovered he was a former Poet Laureate. He passed away at 89, but “Affirmation” has never left me.

Affirmation

To grow old is to lose everything. 

Aging, everybody knows it. 

Even when we are young, 

we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads 

when a grandfather dies.

Then we row for years on the midsummer 

pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,

that began without harm, scatters 

into debris on the shore, 

and a friend from school drops 

cold on a rocky strand.

If a new love carries us 

past middle age, our wife will die 

at her strongest and most beautiful. 

New women come and go. All go. 

The pretty lover who announces 

that she is temporary

is temporary. The bold woman,

middle-aged against our old age,

sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand. 

Another friend of decades estranges himself 

in words that pollute thirty years. 

Let us stifle under mud at the pond’s edge 

and affirm that it is fitting

and delicious to lose everything.

“Affirmation” is blunt and doesn’t shy away from aging as life slowly slips away from all of us. But it was privilege to know them through their inspirational poems and in a classroom.

Save the Olympia

Olympia

What shall be done with such a mass of floating steel?

Should she be sunk to become another ocean meal?

For though she belongs to us, we belong to her.

And if they say she should be scrapped, I cannot concur

For across the seas and in the enemy's grasp, she sailed to them and let loose her mighty blast.

And when this cruiser at last avenged the Maine, she sailed herself and America onto better fame.

And when she brought our last soldier home in the fall of '21, this great deed, we all know, did not go unsung

And when our children ask, where is this brave ship now, will we tell them where and will we tell them how?

Even though she survived her wars, the enemy sinking her not.

Is it our American duty just to let her rot?

And though you may sink her, or tear her up for scrap, you will not destroy her legacy or find it in that trap.

And posterity will read of her and think of her with pride. Will they see her at the wharf, as Philadelphia pride?

- Anthony P. Blasi, 2011

"A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace."

                                                  - President Theodore Roosevelt, 2 December 1902, second annual message to Congress.

AUBURN, Maine - Anthony's passion for ships and boats began when he cast his oversized plastic vessels into the sea and watched them being tossed about by large waves at various beaches across New England.

He would study the toy ocean-going vessels being pummeled by breaking waves at Popham and Revere beaches. This 4 year old found it fascinating as the ocean's force capsized his fleet over and over again. He would marvel at how some of his boats would slowly sink to the bottom of the raging waters. 

Although he was still fascinated with cars, planes and trains, Anthony was eventually consumed by his passion for ships and the sea itself.

The years would pass, but his fascination of ships, particularly naval vessels, grew as well as his love of the ocean and all its sweet mysteries.

He began reading book after book about sailing ships and then set his sights on the world's navies and their amazing and destructive warships. The introduction of ironclads and the construction dreadnoughts between 1870 and 1920 fueled his passion to learn more about these behemoths and their deadly force.

Anthony also embarked on building his own fleet of Lego and plastic model warships, organizing battles between these toy fleets on our parlor floor. He would bring his Lego ships to the ocean and navigate the vessels on the tranquil seas as parents gathered to watch this young man let his fleet loose upon the world's oceans.

During our visits to the waterfront in Portland, we visited the U.S. Coast Guard's training ship, "Eagle," which was a Nazi vessel that America received for war reparations. We have seen huge cruise ships and toured the U.S.S. Cassin Young and the U.S. Constitution in Boston.

But his particular interest in dreadnoughts steered him to great warships like the Cruiser Olympia, which was Admiral Dewey's flagship during the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish American War and also saw action during World War I. He created the Olympia out of Legos and sailed his toy masterpiece in pools and on the high seas.

He was astounded to learn that this great ship with a storied history was in danger of being scrapped because of a poor economy and lack of funds to preserve the Olympia.

His disgust prompted him to write a poem entitle "Olympia" about her uncertain fate for a classroom project. 

I am forwarding this article to the Independence Seacoast Museum in Philadelphia to demonstrate our support for this great ship.

The Olympia is a wonderful piece of American history, and it would be a travesty to see this great ship drift into obscurity without a fight to save her from the scrap heap.