Rich wrote those words in a scrapbook sixty years ago, not knowing the life that lay ahead of him and how many lives he will have touched by the time he was done.
Click the button below to leave a message or share a memory of Rich and to remind us all how much of a hero he was.
Before Rich and I got married, he bought a coconut and a pineapple at the grocery store and proudly presented them to me. He was so openly excited to learn about our Philippine culture he always made it a point to do all the research etc and he always tried his best to make the young and naive Filipina have a little taste of home. Well this was New York in the 70s and let’s just say tropical fruits one found in the grocery stores didn’t quite hit the mark. So he comes home with an OLD coconut that was thick and very hard. Apparently people bought those and just chewed them like jerky. The pineapple was green and extremely sour. With a lot of excitement he asked me what I thought of the coconut to which I replied: “Back home, coconut like that was either made into copra or fed to the pigs”. All said in jest which, Rich being Rich, just took in the spirit it was delivered. Pineapple: sorry. Sour as a lemon.
Fast forward to when we went to Cebu to get married and:
1. He finally tasted young coconut with the very soft and fine “meat”, juice sweet enough to just slurp. Exactly what the natives enjoyed.
2. For our honeymoon we spent a few days at the DelMonte plantation where my uncle worked for many years. He took us out to the pineapple fields one day, took out the trusty knife he was never without, cut a pineapple, peeled it right there and then and gave us chunks to try. The pineapple was warm from the sun, sweet as sweet can be and we feasted with the juice running down our chins.
Richi’s comment : Now I understand.
To add to this little core memory: when we first arrived in Cebu for our wedding, driving home from the airport, he kept looking up at the sky. I asked him what he was doing that for and his answer: “looking for the pineapple trees”.
Brooklyn boy, you were truly one of a kind and you will be forever loved and missed. Enjoy the pineapple FIELDS and climb all the coconut trees up there.
Fast forward to when we went to Cebu to get married and:
1. He finally tasted young coconut with the very soft and fine “meat”, juice sweet enough to just slurp. Exactly what the natives enjoyed.
2. For our honeymoon we spent a few days at the DelMonte plantation where my uncle worked for many years. He took us out to the pineapple fields one day, took out the trusty knife he was never without, cut a pineapple, peeled it right there and then and gave us chunks to try. The pineapple was warm from the sun, sweet as sweet can be and we feasted with the juice running down our chins.
Richi’s comment : Now I understand.
To add to this little core memory: when we first arrived in Cebu for our wedding, driving home from the airport, he kept looking up at the sky. I asked him what he was doing that for and his answer: “looking for the pineapple trees”.
Brooklyn boy, you were truly one of a kind and you will be forever loved and missed. Enjoy the pineapple FIELDS and climb all the coconut trees up there.