The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Author details father’s journey home from war
SHERRILL, N.Y. » A World War II prisoner of war’s journey home through the Adirondacks helped inspire his son decades later.
Local author John Taibi’s father, John Salvatore Taibi, is the subject of his newest book -- a book about railroads, history, mountains and “human connection.”
The story begins shortly after Taibi’s mother, Margaret, married his father on March 29, 1944. Taibi said his mother was a woman who didn’t care about Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day, but she cared about her anniversary and made sure people remembered it.
Taibi’s father was already in the military when he married and was shipped off to Louisiana in July for training before leaving on the QueenMary in August for England. He arrived on Nov. 4, 1944, as part of the 9th Armored Division.
Taibi said his father was sent to the Ardennes Forest in France to get acclimated to the war, but by then the Battle of the Bulge had erupted. Come Christmas, Taibi’s father was captured by German forces only two weeks into the war. John Salvatore Taibi kept a diary of events for his entire time as a POW, detailing everything from events in camp to the state of fellow prisoners.
The elder Taibi also chronicled marching from town to town as German forces retreated. Prisoners were forced to walk in the nude, he wrote, a fact that shocked his sons as they read over their father’s words, wondering how he was able to keep the diary in such good condition.
On April 13, 1945, American forces liberated the camp John Salvatore Taibi was beingheldat. He stayed in France and England for a few months before being shipped back home and reunited with his wife.
“The army made arrangements to send them to Lake Placid and I remember my mother and father saying there were a lot of prisoners of war there,” Taibi said. “And I remember my father making the comment that the army sent all the prisoners of war east of the Mississippi there.”
In Aug. 1945, John Salvatore Taibi and Margaret rode the rails through the Adirondack mountains, taking the train from New York City, to Utica and finally Lake Placid.
Taibi said he never learned about his father’s diary until after John Salvatore died. Using his father’s writings, Taibi details the journey his father and mother took through the Adirondacks, showing photos taken at the time at every stop and station along the way, from Wood Gate Station and Otter Lake to Saranac InnandLake Clear Junction.
“I thought ‘When I write the book, I’m going to write in such a way that this is what they would have seen’,” Taibi said. “When I write, I don’t focus on the nuts and bolts, I focus on the human connection.”
By the time the 6-hour train ride finished, the POWs and their families found themselves at the Lake Placid Club on Mirror Lake. Taibi said the army requisitioned the old club for returning GIs from Europe before they were shipped home.
The Lake Placid Clubwas founded in 1895 by Dr. Melvil Dewey and at its height, there were more than 1,000 buildings that made up the exclusive club only meant for white American Christians. By the 1932 Winter Olympics, access to the club had been expanded, and it was here that GIs had a chance to go boating, play tennis, golf, go for bike rides and sightsee. Whiteface Mountain, the fifth highest mountain in New York state, was one of the many sights John Salvatore Taibi andMargaret got to take in.
Eventually, the elder Taibi went back home and raised a family, his first child being born nine months after the trip to Lake Placid, Taibi said.
John Salvatore Taibi lived a full life, working at the United States Post Office. He watched his children grow and settled down in North Carolina before de- veloping lung cancer in 1992 and passed away in 1994.
“On one visit to the Veteran’s Hospital, March 29, 1994, we walked into the room and he’s on his last legs. He’s sitting on the bed and he looks at my mother and says to her ‘Do you remember what happened 50 years ago today?’,” Taibi said. “And they kissed.”
Taibi said he has so many questions for his father, so many things he wanted to know, but it’s all lost to the passage of time.
“All of us here have experiences in our lifetime and we think ‘ Who gives a hoot?’. Somebody gives a hoot,” Taibi said. “All of us should write down, in our own way, our life experiences so the future generations can say they don’t give a hoot or enjoy it.”