Don't Let Them Die Twice
Submitted by John Maniec, Class of 1964
Next June 2024, God-willing, I will experience a significant milestone in my life. It will be 60 years since I graduated with my Hicksville High School Class of 1964.
As I contemplate how my life has traveled from adolescence to old age ( so far 77 years here on this earth), I wonder what if I had taken significant other paths instead? The Vietnam War was raging as I started Nassau Community College in September 1964. In my high school yearbook, I listed going to college as my immediate goal. I wanted to be a teacher. This war was getting hotter, and the government instituted a lottery draft system assigning each birthdate a number (from 1 to 365). The lower the number, the better chance of being called up to serve in one of our nation’s Armed Services. My birthdate (October 14th) ended up with a very high two hundred number. I was able to go onto SUNY Oneonta earning my bachelor’s degree in History in June 1968. I told myself that if I had been drafted, I would have willingly gone to serve my country, but that didn’t happen.
These last 60 years have flown by, and my adult life overall has been a very positive experience. I have a wonderful wife (the second time around ) and four grown children given to me by my first wife. The children were also kind enough to provide me with four grandchildren who have made my twilight years outstanding.
Now, you are probably asking yourself, what does all of this have to do with the title of this article? There is a movie that I regularly watch. It has a key phrase that clearly explains this above title. Equalizer 2, has a scene where Mr. McCall (Denzel Washington) is talking to a Black teenager about how his older brother had died violently when someone wanted his gym bag. The teenager was a talented artist who marked each of his drawings with a symbol of his dead brother. To paraphrase: “To not remember someone who was taken away early and especially violently is like they died twice.”
Allan Robert Gianelli was a classmate of mine whose immediate goal in the yearbook also listed his desire to go to college upon graduating in June 1964 with the rest of our class. Unfortunately, Allan was killed in Vietnam on September 14, 1968, and his dreams and aspirations ended in a foreign nation sixty years earlier than mine. I think of Allan often now. Why was I so lucky to have six decades of time more than him?
We need to create a way today to honor the ultimate sacrifices made by U.S. Armed Forces men and women who were Hicksville residents/HHS alumni. Hicksville students attending the high school must realize that our freedom comes with a heavy price.
Let’s now fast forward to April 13, 2004. Attached to this article is the poster “Never Forget!” It shows a very handsome U.S. Marine named Cpl. Kevin Kolm KIA in Iraq on that date at the age of 23. This young man graduated from Hicksville High School with the Class of 1998.
What if circumstances had been different for this U.S. Marine, and he never entered the service for his country? He was probably born in 1981 and would be around 42 years old in 2023. He could also already be married and have one of his children scheduled to graduate with the HHS class of 2024. Unfortunately, Cpl. Kevin Kolm paid the ultimate sacrifice to defend his country and didn’t get a chance to grow old, marry, and have his own children.
Is it not about time to find a way to honor and remember all the fallen heroes who grew up in Hicksville and attended its public schools? Otherwise, not remembering their names and service to our community, its youth, and nation amounts to them dying twice. Over the past century, many Hicksville High School alumni probably served in the various branches of the U.S. Armed Forces and didn’t come home to their families and close friends. I now remember often Allan Robert Gianelli and Cpl. Kevin Kolm. Shouldn’t we find a way to honor meaningfully and remember these two heroes and many others, too?
Editors' Note: HixNews has a long history of remembering Vets but we weren't sure if that extended past Vietnam. Thanks to Webmaster Gail Schwartzman Mayer's (Class of 1973) efforts, photographs of memorials to Cpl. Kolm are included here. We are proud that Hicksville and the Town of Oyster Bay remembered him and others. HixNews previously highlighted the dedication of the Memorial Garden at the Middle School. The section on the south side honors Hicksville grads who died in the line of duty following Vietnam. Kevin's name was the first one on the center stone. Thank you to Bill Walden (Class of 1965) and Jay Tranchina (Class of 1964) for information about the Memorial Garden.
Photos from the Town of Oyster Bay Kevin Kolm Memorial Park
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