Little Al Would Have Been 72 years old today

The weekend had been one of the field exercises where ROTC guys played Army out on Blood River, one of the many embayments on Kentucky Lake. It had been cold, damp, and miserable. However, as we packed up, everyone seemed reasonably satisfied with the performance.

James Alphonso Caruso, or “Little Al” as we all called him because his dad was “Big Al,” seemed down and depressed about something. Since he had ridden with me, I figured we had time to talk it out on the ride back to Murray State.

Little Al was one of my ROTC brothers, and we also sat next to each other in Miss Evelyn Bradley’s Psychology 101 class. He was six doors down from my room 404 in White Hall, so it also wasn’t uncommon for us to stand in the hall and visit and now and then even share a pizza.

But something, I was not sure what it was, was bothering Little Al.

A native of upper state New York, a short fellow, 5’ 8” at most, had a well-honed and toned body of about 150 pounds. Little Al had beaten the crap out of me in the boxing ring one day during one of our ROTC training bouts.

A few days after that, he taught me a few things about “boxing,” none of which complied with the “Queensbury” rules of boxing, of course, but which most assuredly would keep me on my feet and alive to fight another day.

I appreciated that and still keep some of that “street knowledge,” which I used on only two occasions, — a story for another time. We were friends from that day forward, and Little Al, well, he had few friends.

Like me, he was an only child.

His Dad did union business on the docks, and his Mom was a teacher in the public school system.

He was a brilliant fellow and had scored extremely high on his ACT and SATs, a fact his parents told me the first time we met on move-in day at Murray State University my first year in 1968.

And as I had, he had chosen Murray State to get a scholarship and work part time. He also liked the Racers ball teams, but I never knew where that interest originated.

His Dad frankly looked and even acted “Mafioso” and “macho” while his Mother was demure, quite striking, and very polite.

Little Al had a private room, which was uncommon in those days as we usually bunked two to a room and shared a bathroom with two other suite mates.

I suspect that Little Al wanted it this way, though, because he was an earnest student, and when not excelling in almost everything we did in ROTC, he was studying to excel in his classwork.

I beat him one time on the rifle range, and he didn’t take it so well. The next to go round, though, he creamed me in points.

The goal he told me was to become an engineer and make a career out of the Army and never have to go back to upper state New York and work on the docks.

Dad was a Marine. His Dad had fought in the Korean War and was, I am sure, one tough SOB; at least, he acted as if he was. Dad thought Army grunts were pussies. That was Little Al’s perception.

We hit it off while sharing class time in Miss Bradley’s Psychology 101.

The human mind and how it worked fascinated us both.

He was constantly probing and questioning Miss Bradley about this or that regarding one of her lectures. Miss Bradley liked him and often would turn the tables and explore his viewpoint.

We both concurred that her teaching style, her wealth of knowledge, and her willingness to be questioned and challenged are what led both of us to major in psychology.

I would get a degree in behavioral psychology. Little Al never made it to his second year.

On the way back to the campus, I asked Little Al what was up.

At first, he denied anything was wrong, but I just listened as I am prone to do. I had asked, and I had realized in my life that if you are quiet and patient, the person you asked it of will eventually talk.

Little Al finally broke the silence and said he was concerned that maybe engineering was not his thing.

That perplexed me since we were just in our first year,

He later explained that the goal of him becoming an engineer was his dad’s, not his. He also really didn’t see making a career out of the Army because he wasn’t sure he was good enough. That assessment came from a young man in the top ten performers in our 80-man company.

ROTC built character and sought to turn us into leaders. In those days, all non-disabled men were expected to spend the first two years of their college education in ROTC. It was mandatory unless you were a pacifist, a minister were physically handicapped, or a Quaker, as I recall.

As now, my goal is no debt for me or my family. To me, it was simply a scholarship among the other small scholarships I had scored on and a way to pay for my education partially. I still had to work several jobs, but I would not be in debt or my parents when I graduated.

However, I was confident Little Al was brooding over more than just this.

I asked if there was anything else on his mind. Yes, he said he was concerned that he hadn’t made an “A” on his first Military Strategy exam. Hell, neither had I, and a C grade in that class would later blow my Magna Cum Laude.

Just as we passed a bend in the road, Little Al asked me to turn and pull up into an overgrown, old logging road. He got out and walked up a slight rise that overlooked the lake, and motioned for me to come to see.

I walked up and below us lay Kentucky Lake with a flock of geese and ducks. The wind was chilly, but the scenery would be magnificent, especially on a sunny day.

We both remarked on how this would be the perfect place for a cabin. When we returned to my old ’59 Chevy, his mood sank again.

Little Al was sad, depressed, frustrated, and anxious. He was not a happy camper, but then I had been through some of that already myself, and there were days when I was in the same boat.

However, I never expected this would amount to much.

Little Al and I packed our gear back to our rooms, took long hot showers, and joined a few other guys for a pizza and cokes down at Gino’s, next to the dorm.

Yeah, we would have liked to have had pizza and beer, but in Murray, in 1968, you had to go “South” for a beer, and after this weekend, no one had any intentions of driving 20-miles down to Hazel and the “Big Apple,” our favorite watering hole.

Sunday evening at about 08:00 hours, I called it a night. Little Al had told us he was going to the library and study and signed off with us with his signature, “keep your head down, bros. – Semper fi.”

I didn’t see Little Al for the next 7-days and became concerned on Wednesday of the following week when he didn’t appear in Psych 101. I went down and knocked on his door, but there was no answer, and none of his other closer acquaintances had seen him since Sunday.

On Sunday morning, December 15, 1968, I awoke very early. It was cold, and there was some light snow and a little ice on the ground.

Walking the hill to get to the cafeteria was a challenge that morning, I and my roommate and suite mates made it up ever so slowly.

George, my roommate, asked me if I had seen Little Al. It seemed no one had. Then we really became worried. We called Campus Security, and they were of little help. I called my Captain, and he called the Colonel. No one had seen or heard from Little Al since Sunday evening, December 8.

We could only think of checking and seeing if his Jeep was in the compound. If you were a freshman at Murray State in 1968, you were required to keep your car in a particular parking lot, as you were not to drive it during the week. Yeah, right!

I got around those rules by paying the Catholic Church, next to the dorm, $5.00 a month to park in their lot during the week.

His Jeep was gone, and from the looks of the ice and snow in his parking space, it had not been parked there recently.

George and I returned to our room, and we called the platoon members. We all agreed we needed to find Little Al. As I recall, we reached the 15 members of our platoon, and all but one showed up; the one had gone AWOL.

George, Hugh, and I would go out to Blood River on a hunch. We rustled up three cars and piled in. One car would search the streets of Murray; one car would search areas Little Al hung out when he wanted time away down around KenLake State Park and Aurora.

Little Al went off “camping” by himself, and since we had just been out there, maybe he decided he liked it enough to go back

We drove out to Blood River on a gray and very gloomy mid-morning. We searched all the areas we had played Army in and the informal campsites and make-out parking places and found nothing except some beer cans and condoms.

As it was nearing dark, we started back to campus. That was when I remembered that Little Al had asked me to stop and see a future cabin site. Driving a 1959 Chevy up an old logging road is not a simple task, so I told my brothers that I would pull in and walk up the road a bit, that I wanted to check something.

We were all cold and wet from a bit of snow and sleet that was falling, so George and Hugh stayed in the car.

A vehicle had gone up the road, but not recently.

As I topped the rise, there, sitting with the front-end facing the lake, was Little Al’s Jeep. The first thing I noticed was a piece of flexible plastic pipe was run from the exhaust to the Jeep window.

I walked to the driver’s window, and there sat the remains of Little Al. The tape had secured the window to ensure no leakage. I stood there in what I now realize was shock.

I recall running back to my car and throwing myself against the hood and retching repeatedly. George and Hugh immediately jumped out. I did my best to explain what I had seen and kept saying we needed to get to a telephone. Hugh took my keys, and we drove about a mile to a cabin and made the call to the Sheriff’s office. We had the presence of mine not to disturb anything.

We would lead the Sheriff’s deputy to the Jeep; later, several other law enforcement types showed up from the city of Hazel, Calloway County, and the Kentucky State Police. I believe even a Ky Fish and Wildlife officer came, but I couldn’t swear to that.

Each of them wanted a statement from each of us. We spent several hours giving statements. Eventually, the coroner showed up and pronounced Little Al dead.

I remember sitting in my car that evening giving a statement and hearing Dion’s song Abraham, Martin, and John in the background.

Little Al’s death was not my first. I had seen my share of car accidents, fire-related deaths, and even the remains of a murder victim while working at the county newspaper in Princeton during my junior and senior years of high school. Family members had passed, and I had gone to those funerals. I had even done photos at the morgue on a couple of occasions, a story for another time. I thought even at 18 years old that I had become calloused and hardened about death by some of that experience. Would I later find out that wasn’t true!

However, I had never experienced finding a person in such a state and the death of someone I knew and counted as a friend. Also, I immediately asked myself the age-old question of what I could have done or said to prevent his outcome.

In retrospect, only years later would I understand there was nothing I could have done; the decision to take one’s life is a choice that Little Al made.

I can speculate about some reasons, and there were non-verbals and language and other signs that in retrospect should have been clues, but then at 18-years of age, you don’t think through such things.

Little Al left a few notes and letters of explanation. They were on the seat beside him when he turned on 1959 red hard-topped Jeep to let the carbon monoxide carry him over the river and to the Gate.

I kept the note that eventually came to me later that year. His Mother sent it to me.

It started, and I recall the opening from memory; it was a quote from Joseph Heller: “I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service.” Heller was the author of Catch-22, an anti-war activist and one of Little Al’s favorite writers.

A few other paragraphs mainly tried to explain why he felt he couldn’t live up to his dad’s dreams. He closed it by saying that he knew that neither I, his few friends, and his brothers in the platoon would understand, but that our lives would go on.

His mom and dad showed up to pack up his room and have his body sent home later the following week. His dad had asked if the platoon members that had searched for his son would come over and help pack up his things. We all agreed.

He said he wanted to thank us personally.

His dad said that the autopsy showed he had died on Monday morning, December 9, shortly after sunrise. As his dad spoke in so soft a voice, you had to strain to hear him; I could see Little Al sitting there dreaming of his cabin as he drifted off to the big sleep.

His father cried as hard as I have ever seen any man cry, as he told us all.

His mom was the strong one and tried to comfort him.

I never forgot Little Al.

Despite all the deaths I have witnessed in 71 years of age from every conceivable vendor of demise, finding him still haunts me.

Only later in my life would I understand no one wants to commit suicide; they do so to stop the pain.