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The death of the Pope has got me doing the same as thing as millions of other people around the world -- recollecting my own insignificant contacts with him in his manifestations in my corner of the world. The year was 1979 and he was making his first visit to New York as Pope after taking office in 1978. Years earlier when I was with the Narcotics Squad in Greenpoint in Brooklyn he had come there a couple of times as bishop of Krakow to visit the Polish community centered around St. Stanislaus Kostka church, but I hadn’t been particularly attentive. Now I was.
When I reported at Yankee Stadium the night of October 2nd I was assigned to take a detail to a section of the right field stands there to ensure that a state of complete public tranquility obtained while the Pope made his appearance before the waiting crowd. Considering the nature of the occasion I didn’t anticipate a lot of difficulty with the assignment, and so it was. The crowd was there to demonstrate loyalty and no dissidents could be found.
Eventually the Pope arrived. I was looking down at him from the staircase landing over the doorway through which he entered the Stadium. With me were a couple of my neighbors I’d met in the crowd, whom I tipped off about the arrival, on condition they kept quiet to prevent a rush to our vantage point. So, we were the first to know when he left his car and walked inside. Shortly after he emerged onto the field to thunderous cheers.
I patrolled my section while the ceremonies on the field proceeded. I ran into some nuns at a refreshment stand and grabbed their check. It was that kind of night. Helen Hayes was on the stage and did some of the readings. Later she said she’d finally found the ultimate co-star. Thousands of people left the stands to receive communion from the army of priests officiating. At the end the Pope circled the field in the Pope-Mobile, while a cheer rang out that I’d never heard before “Long live the Pope! Long live the Pope!” No politician had ever heard it in America before either.
I left with the crowd and hurried home to get some sleep before I was reunited with the Pope the next day. This event was coming off at Shea Stadium in Queens in the daytime. When I got there the population was pouring in in spite of the heavy rain and wind. Television told us the Pope was braving the elements and motorcading the city with Cardinal Cooke sitting behind him holding on to his cape to stop it from blowing up in his face. Things didn’t look promising for the soaked crowd of people and police waiting at the stadium.
Then it happened. The Pope drove in at the east end of the stadium and the sun came blazing out at the west end. I was there and I saw it. So did the crowd present and they were deeply impressed. In fact they gasped. No one talked about a miracle, but also no one failed to notice what had happened. Clearly this man was extraordinary and it would be well for us to listen to what he had to say. We did and we weren’t disappointed. He told us he was happy to be back in New York and to see Brooklyn again. He didn’t forget Queens either. He slipped only once talking about the New York “skyscrappers”, but he corrected himself immediately and got it right. He didn’t seem a bit frazzled from his Yankee Stadium experience and his wet day in the city. We listened to him talking about familiar things like churchgoing and brotherly love and at the same time we speculated about the man we were listening to.
Everybody knew he wasn’t just ordinary. His election had been a direct challenge to Communism. The Poles were known to be restless and now they had a leader. He couldn’t be suppressed the way others had been. If the Russians moved in, the world would hear from him. It didn’t seem credible they would want an all-out fight on their hands, they had avoided one in Czhechoslovakia, so they would have to back down. Something was going to give and it didn’t look like it would be the man in white.
It all happened as our instincts told us it would. The Poles got their inspiration and started to tear down the Iron Curtain. In time everybody else joined in and ten years after Shea Stadium it was gone. We could stop thinking about what kind of horror weapons the Russians might be hiding behind it and start buying the discarded Red Army insignia being peddled on Fifth Avenue. We hadn’t been quite so worried about the Russians as in the post-war days, but still there had always been a lingering doubt about what they might be up to. Now we knew, and it wasn’t much.
All that was in the future. It was time now to say goodbye to the Pope and look around for what came next on the schedule of events. Oh yes, the New York Marathon. Well, with my appetite for novelty having been aroused, this would do for my next experience of it. I’d never seen a marathon, but I was willing. Not that the police department cared whether I was or not; they were sending me. So on a sunny Sunday morning in October I found myself standing on First Avenue waiting for the first runners coming off the Queensboro Bridge. Finally they came in sight, first individuals, strung out a little, after them, groups, also strung out, but tending to bunch up as more and more of them arrived. Finally, the levee en masse, the thundering herd stretching out as far as the eye could see. Big, small, old, young, male, female, fat, skinny, native, foreigner, white, black, oriental, all with their eye on the Willis Ave. bridge three miles ahead.
That was where you hit the “wall” fighting the steep grade that led to the bridge. If you made that, there was a second chance to fall out when you got to the next bridge that took you out of the Bronx and returned you to Manhattan and the last lap. From where I was standing it looked like they would all make it. They were plugging away hard enough. And they had support. The spectators were six or seven deep on the sidewalk, hollering encouragement and dishing out cups of water by the gross. I had never seen New Yorkers in a better mood. They could be a pretty good bunch of people when given the opportunity. They had stood tall for the Pope and equally so for the poor sweating runners. I was proud of them, even though I had retreated to a radio car where I spent my time broadcasting “Give ´em room, please. Stand back, please. Let ´em run, please. Please!”
This was all part of my last hurrah in the Police Dept. At least I was leaving with some good memories to offset all the others. I’d seen New Yorkers rise to an occasion twice and it had given me a good feeling. It still does. The Pope thought of it often too, I’m sure. The visit I’ve described was the first of his famous trips to all parts of the world, so it must have stood out in his memory. It was the place where he had made a good start.
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