Page 28 - November 2015

My father, the hero
Seaman Patrick John Angelo “lied” about his age so at 16 years old he could join the Navy. That was in 1941, and the man who went on to become a Chicago firefighter, Chicago Park District three-wheel motor- cycle officer and CPD homicide detective. He was involved in some of those most heroic sea battles of WW II.
Seaman Angelo, whose son Dean is now the president of Lodge 7, advanced from basic training to become a plank member on the destroyer, the USS Twining. The plank crew is the first on a brand new ship.
The Twining was part of the campaign that sunk the Japanese bat- tleship Musashi on Oct. 24, 1944 during the Battle of Leyete Gulf near the Philippines. The Musashi was the biggest ship in the Japanese fleet, and its wreck was located in March 2015 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and his team of researchers.
Seaman Angelo, now 90, has a medal from that campaign and several others during WW II. President Angelo remembers his father’s medals and other pieces of memorabilia from the war he and his sib- lings still treasure.
“He didn’t do a lot of talking, so we used to go through his old Navy bag,” Dean remarked. “He had an old teletype of an aerial schematic of the positions of all the ships in the Pacific and a congratulatory telegram from Admiral Nimitz to the crew of the Twining.”
Seaman Angelo’s medals deteriorated over the years, so Dean con- tacted the Department of the Navy to see about getting new ones. For Patrick’s 75th birthday, his family presented him with a framed collec- tion of all his medals that is now displayed prominently in the Presi- dent’s office at Lodge 7.
‘It was the best move I could make’
In the difficult economic times of the mid 1950s with jobs hard to come by, Karl Walter joined the Navy straight out of high school and became a cook.
“It was either that or get into trouble,” he said with a laugh.
Back in civilian life in 1966, fate showed up at Walter’s door in the form of a person asking if he’d like to serve as a volunteer police officer in Romeoville, where he lived at the time. Walter stepped up and earned $1 an hour, but enjoyed the experience enough to decide a law enforcement career was what he really wanted – and he had his wife’s endorsement.
Walter remembers showing up to test in Chicago to find people lined up around the building twice to get in. Within weeks he found out he ranked 28th on the hiring list.
“It was probably the best move I could make,” he shared.
As a Chicago cop, he worked intelligence, undercover drug details and was on the streets during the late-1960s riots. By 1974 and for 20 years after, he brought that experience to the U.S. Coast Guard, eventu- ally becoming a special agent.
“I was the first special agent in the 9th Coast Guard District,” noted the now-79-year-old Walter. “All the things I did were related to what I did with the police department.”
Walter considers himself blessed to have made the types of connec- tions that led him to such a fulfilling set of career opportunities.
“It was a commitment and I loved it,” he added, acknowledging the inevitable time and family sacrifices involved with his work. “I had no way of knowing (my choices) would work out the way they did. I don’t have any regrets.”
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ NOVEMBER 2015
~Mitchell Krugel
~Dan Campana
PATRICK ANGELO
KARl WALTER