Remembering Jack

Jack touched many of our lives and this blog has been created to share all of the wonderful stories about Jack and some of the great stories he told us about the "Old Neighborhood".

Jack West Point

West Point 1946

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Adam Matyskiel
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John Emil Vaci

Before the crystal ball dropped in Times Square announcing the first minute of the first day of the second decade of the 21st century, the gates of heaven had already opened for Jack Vaci…a man who’d fought the good fight…finished the race…and kept the faith for eighty-eight years. He is with us here today and he’ll see us in heaven.

Jack died peacefully saluted by displays of fireworks across the world harbors from Sydney, Australia to Boston…and…come to think of it…considering the man and what he meant to us, worldwide fireworks celebrating his life seem entirely appropriate.

Jack and his brother Bob were the sons of Anne and John Vaci—a young couple who loved life, cherished America, and raised their sons during some of the most difficult years of hardship this country ever faced.

Jack was born in 1922 in Chicago where the Wrigley Building had just been completed… the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote had just passed… and Mussolini and the Fascist party had come to power in Italy with a terrible foreboding. The roaring twenties and a few years of peace, prosperity, and fun were to follow.

The Great Depression and prohibition followed next—but to Jack and Bob growing up, these were the best years of their lives. To this day Uncle Bob calls Jack his hero—one reason may be because Jack once saved Bob from drowning by diving underwater, standing on the bottom and then holding Bob up on his shoulders, until help arrived.

Everyone remembers our grandfather Poppy as fun-loving and kind. But Jack’s and Bob’s father was also one. tough. son-of-a-gun. Poppy enlisted in WWI and served in combat. Twenty years later and twenty years older, he again enlisted during WWII. With this in mind, imagine Poppy’s pride when Jack received a congressional appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Jack graduated in 1946 and served four years in post-war Japan under General Douglas MacArthur. Jack adored his mother, whose fortitude during all the years of waiting through two wars, kept her family strong and thriving. Anne fought as hard as Poppy on the homefront – always with the success and happiness of her sons foremost in mind.

The Fourth of July has always been a Vaci family favorite. For years, our Poppy, Jack, and Bob brought an entire family and all their friends together in one place to celebrate “the Fourth.” It was a day-long celebration shared by more than a hundred people. The fun seemed to be without end and Jack built a diamond for his favorite sport, and played ball all day long while Poppy cooked Italian beef and grilled sausage & peppers for sandwiches. Beer and soda flowed freely from huge coolers, and just how much food was consumed no one really knows. It was a family day celebrating everything that the Fourth of July in America means—Faith, Family, and Freedom.

Jack had a passion for physical fitness and loved boxing, swimming, handball, golf, and softball. And he was a good sport who didn’t mind being on the short end of a good ribbing dished out by his buddies after one of his golf balls mysteriously got sucked into the lake. It was on the golf course that my Dad taught us the other half of our vocabularies.

But he also taught us courage. Courage served him well and instilled the strength he needed to live with a lousy leg, get through multiple surgeries, overcome adversity, and quietly live with pain… but without self-pity.

He spent most of one of his high school years in a huge cast that covered one entire leg to above his hip. H needed that courage to fight back and ultimately lead his baseball team to a city-wide championship. He never gave up. There was never a hint of self pity. Then again, he had a father who volunteered for combat duty in both World Wars for whom the “impossible” was always within reach…“like father, like son.”

To say my father was not handy would overlook the destructive nature of his repairs. He could fix something till it was broken yet he found salvation in the miracle of duct tape. To my dad, duct tape was one more proof of God’s love for us. Anyone who picked him up at the airport knew to look for the giant duct tape “V” on the side of the suitcase—that “V” did not stand for “Vaci”—it stood for “Victory” over all things broken.

For those he leaves behind:

Gladys, his beloved wife of 59 years… who was with him until the moment of his death…

his brother Bob…

his five children who include three daughters: Terry, Joan, and Karen…

and two sons: Dan and me…

seven grand-children…

and a herd of friends and acquaintances…

There’s now an empty space filled only with memories of a man we dearly loved and honor as a man who knew who he was, knew what mattered and what didn’t—a man who backed his decisions with strength, courage, and integrity.

Jack would be first to call himself a “common man” – a man who hated pretense and people who put on airs to impress others. Jack drank wine out of a jelly glass and once wore a coat he patched with duct tape because he liked it and it kept him warm. In the truest sense of the word, Jack Vaci was the real thing.

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

God blesses us with wondrous memories that inspire the retelling of Jack’s great life story.

How we miss you, Jack, and how much we wish you could have stayed just a little longer.

Thank you for watching over us all those years, thank you for watching over us now and in the days to come. Keep on swinging, Jake.

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