[As told by Tanta to her great-nephew Tom Kane in 1998. T.P. was interred at Arlington National Cemetery in 1987.]
It's World War II and Thomas P. McCartin [Tanta calls him Tommy; I know him as my great-uncle T.P.] of Merrick, Long Island, New York, is on one-day leave from the Army. He goes to the department store in Manhattan where Eileen Sheehan (Tanta) works.
Eileen works on the lingerie or makeup floor [Tanta couldn't remember]. No men are allowed on the floor, so Tommy stops a girl going up in the elevator and asks her if she knows Eileen Sheehan. She says she does, so he asks her to relay a message to Eileen:
"Tell her that Tom McCartin is on a one-day leave from the army before he gets shipped off to Europe and is downstairs to see her -- and will she come down?"
Upstairs, the girl tells Eileen, who hasn’t seen Tommy since high school. She has no idea what he wants. Half-joking, she thinks aloud that he might be looking to borrow money. Nevertheless, he’s on one-day leave, so she tells her boss and goes downstairs.
She spots him as she gets off the elevator. He’s "devastatingly handsome" in his uniform, and his blue eyes and spit-shined shoes glint and gleam in the fluorescent light. He tells her he has one more day in the U.S. – will she have a cup of coffee with him? She agrees and they go to a shop around the corner.
Over coffee, Tommy tells her he had one day to do whatever he wanted, and he used it to come to see her. He’s going to war in the morning and he may never come back, but he loves her and wants to marry her if he does. She thinks he’s crazy and scared of dying, but she’s touched and tells him to call her when he gets home from Europe.
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T.P. in the Korean War
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Tanta & T.P. (and Mishka) in Alexandria, VA, Aug. 1983
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