Dear Editor: In furtherance to the short obituary of Anton Dietrich (Feb. 24), may I add a few thoughts?
I first met Anton, a friendly and generous person, some 45 or 50 years ago. He was entering his Antique Car Club, including several of his own autos, in a Richmond Hill Centennial Parade. What better way to make a parade shine than with antique cars and marching bands? Maybe, because of his antique cars there was faint rumor that Anton came from a bit of money. This was not too unusual. Once there was “a lot of money in Richmond Hill.”
He was a complete generation ahead of me and circulated with different friends. He spent 30 years as a member of the Community Board No. 9 and was one of the outstanding political petition gatherers in the area. He was a promoter of the Purple Heart Foundation, and anytime I attended the 5 p.m. Saturday Mass at Our Lady of the Cenacle, he was one of the ushers.
Wounded in Europe during World War II, he had nearly no use of his right hand and arm, but he drove a car into his 90s. A generally happy, amusing and astute person, along with his wife, Charlotte, he raised two daughters. One became an NYPD officer.
One of the last times we were together was at a small dinner honoring him around his 90th birthday. He remarked about when he was in Africa during WWII and the Sicily invasion where his transport vessel steering was damaged from a German torpedo. The troop transport ship was forced to wander with the currents all day until as night fell they were towed back to Africa by an English ship.
Glad to be alive after being on the open sea all day, and sitting duck to any other attack, the men happily waded ashore, found cover and bivouacked where they could in this port town. Waking the next morning, he found he had slept in a cement factory and it would be days before that cement mess could be cleaned from his fighting uniform. Upon reconnoitering and joining up with his fellow troops, he began to realize all this was familiar, he had been in this town once before.
It seems back in 1934 while on a cruise with his family, he had visited this port town in Africa. Yes, while many in America at that time of the Great Depression were cutting corners to keep financially afloat, a teenage Anton was on a family cruise to the Mediterranean.
Be that as it may, Anton was one of the sincerest and most helpful men I ever met and at 99, one of the longest loved. God bless.
JOSEPH A. CULLINA
Richmond Hill
