The Man I Always Knew: A True Story of Faith, Family, Honor

By Nicholas Fernandez

Stephen J. Crowley of Brooklyn, New York was an anti-aircraft gunner who fought in nearly every major battle of the Second World Wars European Theatre, from North Africa to Sicily, from France to Belgium. He served New York City in the worlds finest Police Department for over 27 years, was a Homicide Detective and finished his career as the President of the Detective Endowments Association. He was a faithful husband of thirty-four years and father of 15 children. His masculine presence, integrity, and humor painted the story of his life, which was lifted to excellence by his faith, hope, and love. He lived the kind of life men ought to live, but very few ever do. Among a generation of manly men, Stephen J. Crowley led by the strength and moral character entrusted to him by God, to the benefit of a countless number of grateful souls. This book is the story of his wonderful life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453569139

Nicholas Fernandez

Author Nicholas Fernandez is one of Stephen Crowley’s fifty-four grateful grandchildren. From Brooklyn, New York, he spent nearly three years working for the N.Y.P.D. like his grandfather before him, before entering St. Joseph’s Seminary to study for the priesthood for the Archdiocese of New York.

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Copyright © 2010 by Nicholas Fernandez.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010912910

ISBN: Hardcover 978-1-4535-6912-2

ISBN: Softcover   978-1-4535-6911-5

ISBN: Ebook       978-1-4535-6913-9

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Contents

Chapter One

Sunny

Chapter Two

The War

Chapter Three

A New Beginning

Chapter Four

Courageous Career of a City Sleuth

Chapter Five

Living on Borrowed Time

Bibliography

Dedication

This composition is dedicated to my Grandfather,

whose death came prior to my birth,

yet is the man I always knew.

May God’s Grace and Truth free all of us ensnared in the smallness of a self-centered life. And may the manly example of Stephen J. Crowley,

serve as inspiration for imitation for readers of this book,

unto the salvation of souls and the restoration of masculinity in the world and in the holy Catholic Church.

You must know that there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome for life in the future than some good memory, especially a memory of childhood, of home. People talk to you a great deal about education, but some good, sacred memory preserved from childhood—that is perhaps the best education. For if a man has only one good memory left in his heart, even that may keep him from evil . . . And if he carries many such memories with him into life, he is safe for the end of his days.

—Dostoyevsky

Unless you turn and become like little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of God.

—Christ

Chapter One

Sunny

A child is the very sign and sacrament of personal freedom . . . People who prefer the mechanical pleasures to such a miracle are jaded and enslaved. They are preferring the very dregs of life to the first fountains of life.

—G.K. Chesterton

He was a battle-worn veteran who marched through the purgatorial heat of North Africa, invaded and won the island of Sicily, stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, and remained staid and resilient through the bitter Battle of the Bulge in Belgium. He served New York City in the world’s finest Police Department for over 27 years, was a Homicide Detective and finished his career as the President of the Detective Endowment’s Association. He was a faithful husband of thirty-four years until death did part. He helped to bring 15 human beings into existence, and was a strong and loving father to them all. His intelligence, honesty, character, integrity, and faith drove his actions, no matter the crowd. He was a man through and through. Unaffected by what others thought of him, he was highly concerned about the man he was before God. He lived the kind of life men ought to live, but very few ever do. He firmly defended objective Christian morality in word and in deed, as laid forth by Jesus Christ and protected by His Church, and he lived according to the objective moral standards of right and wrong. A man who other men looked to for leadership, among a generation of manly men, Stephen J. Crowley lived by storing up treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust can destroy, and where happiness is pure and everlasting.

*     *     *

He was born on March 21st, 1919. The youngest of four, Stephen was named after his father, Stephen Aloysius Crowley, who would move up the ranks of the New York City Police Department to the rank of Captain. He had married a young lady named Mary Hunt a few years earlier. Stephen Joseph was born in a brick connected house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The family’s eldest was his sister Edna, and then came his older brother John, who spent much of his life caring for his ailing mother, and who served New York City as a firefighter. Margaret was the second sister, younger than John, and then came young Stephen.

On the day Stephen was born, the headline story of the New York Times informed the country: Official sources indicate that Bolshevism, with heavy financial backing is making rapid headway in New York and soon may become a menace to organized government in the state and nation. The President of the Senate, New Yorker J. Henry Walters, submitted a resolution for an investigation to trace the dangerous movement to its source.[1] The resolution was adopted on the floor immediately. Another article ominously explained that most of the Ukraine had now fallen into Bolshevist grip. The President was Woodrow Wilson and the Pope was Benedict XV. The First World War had just ended the previous year, and the Treaty of Versailles was about to be penned. In New York, a terrible influenza pandemic that had plagued the state in 1918 was finally beginning to subside.[2] In Washington, Congress was less than a year away from ratifying an eighteenth amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit the manufacture and sale of alcohol nationwide. The New York Yankees had yet to win their first World Series, and the Brooklyn Robins played at Ebbets Field. Dirt roads and horses were more numerous than paved streets and automobiles in Brooklyn, and the country was only fifty-four years removed from the assassination of President Lincoln. Just seventeen months before Stephen’s birth, the Blessed Mother appeared for the last time to the three Portuguese children in Fatima, Portugal, and performed to the witness of thousands, the miracle of the sun. It was during this period of history that Stephen Joseph was born.

As a boy, Stephen had an exceptionally cheery disposition and possessed a knack for brightening spirits in every room he entered. He was known for his ability to cheer up his mother, who at times, was inclined towards spurts of melancholy. He was such an uplifting and joyful presence as a boy that he was widely called, by all who knew him, Sunny. Steve was an intelligent and good student in grammar school while attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help on Fifth Avenue in the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, a large school adjoined to a massive Basilica that can be seen from far distances in Brooklyn. A close friend of Steve’s growing up was a boy named Francis Donlon, with whom Sunny spent much time. One story that has been passed along through the years, tells of Francis’ older brother, who was strangely antagonistic towards young Stephen, needling the younger boy constantly, physically and verbally, to the point of cruelty. After the situation dragged on for a time, Sunny’s older brother John caught wind of the unseemly trend of rude behavior perpetrated against his younger brother. Having patiently waited for just the right moment of action, John quietly approached the bully on his own terms, and gave the boy reason to alter his desires of cruelty towards Sunny, leaving bruises as a reminder. A general principle was set forth by John to his brother. An active and strong defense of the weak was exampled to the boy by his caring older brother.

The young red-headed boy won a freckle contest as a kid, and shared with family his jocund sense of humor. He possessed a fear of bums; of homeless men who walked the streets during those years of the Great Depression. This fear was inflated when a wino once grabbed his arm as he was walking home one evening. And each year he looked forward to visiting the police camp recreational center in upstate New York, where he would swim and play during the summer months with family and friends. Stephen enjoyed his grammar school years at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, along with thousands of other children in the neighborhood. Among those who went to school with Sunny was Chuck Connors, famed movie actor who starred in The Rifleman television show in the late 50’s, and who is the only man to play both for the Boston Celtics (1946-1948) and the Brooklyn Dodgers (1949).

Steve’s grammar school years transpired from 1926 through 1934. During these years, Sunny belonged to the O.L.P.H. Cadet Program. The program, founded in 1914[3], was run by Colonel James Francis Rorke, out of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish. The program trained young boys in military gait, taught proficiency in self-defense, and familiarity with firearms and self-discipline. Professionally run by the active Marine Corps Colonel, the boys wore crisp-looking uniforms, took trips to the nation’s capital, to West Point, to Mount Loreto in Staten Island, sported a capable drum and bugle corps, and learned how to become masculine Catholic leaders. This was the ultimate purpose of the whole program—to foster Catholic leaders in the community and for the country. Developing leaders who would carry on the perpetual fight for the good and true on behalf of the Church was the goal. The program wound up serving young Stephen very well; preparing him early on for the disciplined training he would begin in 1941. The program served the country well, by teaching hundreds of boys these valuable skills and military qualities that the nation needed at break of the Second World War. These men understood the truth uttered by America’s first president, who said, To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

The first winter of the cadet corps in 1914 saw Colonel Rorke train 225 boys in the streets and hills of Bay Ridge. At the time, dirt roads were predominant and cars were extremely sparse. The man who would eventually retire a colonel would utilize the open country territory between the Church and the Fort Hamilton Army Base (a span of over two miles), lay out problems for his officers in the form of an attack to be made on designated locations, and with firearms loaded with blanks, a kind of war game training was played out.[4]

Rorke was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the Marine Corps in the winter of 1915, and was ordered to organize a reserve company of Marines. He continued training the Brooklyn cadets in his free time. In the following year of 1916, Company ‘A’ of the boys regiment, composed of older Cadets, enlisted in the Marines. At midnight, on the night of February 3rd, 1917, when diplomatic ties were severed between the U.S. and Germany, the Cadets, known as the 1st Company, National Naval Volunteers, Marine Corps Branch, assembled in the 2nd Naval Battalion Armory, and became the first troops to move against the enemy, in the then anticipated World War I. Once the war began, most of the young men in the Cadets were sent to France, along with the now Captain Rorke. By wars end, Captain Rorke had won the Silver Star for Gallantry in Action, the Purple Heart for being wounded, and the Croix de Guerre. The 1920’s saw the Cadet Corps program at O.L.P.H. grow tremendously in number and quality. Among those young men was Stephen J. Crowley, as he was involved into the thirties.

In 1934, Sunny won a scholarship to Saint Michael’s Catholic High School, which was in his neighborhood. After completing his freshman year at St. Michael’s with high academic achievement, he was suspiciously informed that his scholarship was actually not intended for him at all, but rather, had been given to him by mistake. It was supposed to have been given to a boy who happened to be the nephew of a local prominent Monsignor. And rather suspiciously, the scholarship was taken away from young Stephen in a fashion unwarranted. It is unknown whether or not his father could afford to pay the tuition for the remaining three years. At any rate, Stephen would begin his second high school year at the Manual Training High School, which was located on 5th street at 7th Avenue in downtown Brooklyn, a good distance from his home. He was taught how to write in short-hand and how to type, which later helped him in his future career. After only a few years of attendance there, Steve left the school, and took a series of odd jobs, including one position as a postal clerk. At that time, it was far more common than today for a young man not to complete high school. The Great Depression was on, and was being prolonged by the deflating New Deal government intrusion of Franklin Roosevelt. Steve spent these years as a teenager who hung around with friends and cashiered at the Post Office for a buck.

Although at this time in his life, his father, Stephen Aloysius, had become a very well respected and prominent man in the neighborhood, achieving a reputation of honesty and intelligence by way of his exceptional work as a Captain in the Police Department, his father refused to pull any strings for his son, to get his son a job someplace. He explained his reason for this, saying that there were men with families who had and needed the jobs, and he wasn’t about to take a man’s livelihood away who had a wife and children to feed. Stephen A. was a man who kept the big picture in mind rather than limiting himself and his son to a type of short-sighted selfishness. In addition, it would have set a bad precedent for his son. He wanted his son to be able to work for himself, so that he would become a competent man who earned his way legitimately. This lesson of honesty and fairness actually lived out, left a lasting impression on Sunny, and he, later in life, would pass this same virtue on to his sons.

As a boy, Steve spent time with his Uncle Tom, who was a performer on the famous vaudeville stage. Tom Crowley had an act with a man named Toby Lyons in which they would sing well-known songs of the day, and satirically change the lyrics around, creating hilarious versions of the tune. Hanging around his Uncle Tom spurred Steve on to act in plays at the local parish as a boy, and to continue this practice into adulthood. His ease before crowds as an adult may have its roots in the early influence of his Uncle Tom.

While performing odd jobs in Brooklyn as a nineteen year old in 1938, monsoons of fear and cowardice were sweeping through Europe, and on September 30th, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Germany’s Adolf Hitler, smiling in appeasement as he signed formal acknowledgement that Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia would be accepted without opposition, in the Munich Agreement. Soon after, Germany would violate their 1934 nonaggression pact with Poland by invading the nation on September 1st, 1939.

Sometime before 1940, Steve considered joining the Navy. His mother discouraged the idea, although his father was for it. His father invoked several points to support its desirability. Comparing Navy life to Army life, Stephen A. pointed out that the former was cleaner, had less marching involved, provided a guaranteed bunk to sleep in, and three square meals a day. The daily life of a soldier in the Army was dirty, exhausting, sleeping (if at all) was done outdoors on the cold ground, and food was sparse. Sunny’s father could speak about such things with authority, having lived it nearly three decades before. Young Steve went the way of his mother’s wish and did not enlist in the Navy.

In return for this decision, Stephen J. would spend his 22nd birthday in March 1941 preparing for boot camp with the United States Army, after being drafted in the nation’s first ever peace-time conscription. This took place just months after President Roosevelt had made a pre-election campaign promise that he would not send any of the nations’ boys to war. Steve was drafted with full knowledge that America was on the brink of war with Japan, Germany, and Italy. He prepared himself to serve his country, and fight to restore freedom overseas and to preserve it at home. From April 1941 to July 1945, he would fight in the unforgiving heat of North Africa, would storm the often-attacked beaches of Sicily, invade the beaches of Normandy in France on D-Day, fight at bloody Aachen, and would march into the frighteningly bitter frost of the Ardennes forest in Belgium for the Battle of the Bulge. Before leaving home for basic training, his father, a man intensely strong in the Catholic faith, warned his son to prepare himself spiritually, because, he told to him, you probably won’t be coming back home. Mr. Crowley gave the fatherly advice that his son must make his reconciliation with God and be certain to go to confession. Be prepared, he was compassionately told by his loving and proud father, who himself knew the scourging reality of war from fighting in Cuba decades earlier. Death tolls rang so high throughout the war years, that when Stephen did come back home five years later, all of his clothes had been sold off by his parents. They hadn’t expected him back.

The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 was passed by Congress on September 14, 1940, becoming the first peacetime conscription in United States history when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it into law two days later. The Selective Service Act required that men between the ages of 21 and 35 register with local draft boards. Later, when the U.S. entered World War II, all men aged 18 to 45 were made liable for military service, and all men aged 18 to 65 were required to register. On October 20th, 1940, the United States registered twelve million men in one day for the draft. Steve walked about ten blocks down from his house to nearby P.S. 102 to register on that day. He was inducted (drafted) into the U.S. Army on April 18th, 1941 at the armory in Jamaica, New York at 93-05 168th street.

One of the few stories that Steve would share with his children about the army decades later, dates back to a day before even basic training. After being drafted, Steve had to go down to Jamaica, Queens for a series of tests, including a physical examination. They had thousands of guys there that lugubrious morning. At one point, they lined up about a hundred men in a room and had them strip for physical inspection. Uncomfortable and naked before a handful of doctors, all were reticently obedient to slow-developing orders. Steve remembered that when all the men sat down at once on the series of benches, it sounded like applause! This was the well-chosen type of war story that he chose to share with his children decades later.

On the day that Sunny was inducted into the Army, the New York Times ran a story telling about the Army’s plan to assemble, by the upcoming June, some sixty anti-aircraft regiments organized and in training . . . [5] It is unknown if Steve read the article, but he would know all about it very soon, because he would be a part of one of those very regiments that the Army was gearing up to create. The need to