Richard Hyle says his military training from WWII helped him resist a robber recently.
Posted on 01/07/2007 6:14:12 PM PST by Coleus
Richard Hyle says his military training from WWII helped him resist a robber recently. |
When you've struggled to regain control of a plane spiraling 20,000 feet over Italy, there's not a lot left to be afraid of, says 82-year-old Richard Hyle of Clifton. So when a robber burst into a local newspaper store two years ago, the decorated veteran wasn't about to give in without a fight. "A guy comes in with his sleeve over his hand, like he has a gun," recalled Hyle, sitting in his living room as he flips through an album of photos from his war days. As a technical sergeant with the 15th Army Air Force bomber base in Italy, he survived 50 bomber missions. "I thought, 'I went through all of that, for this?' "
The "this" he refers to was intruder Michael Stuart, who is scheduled to be sentenced before state Superior Court Judge Ronald G. Marmo today for the robbery. Because of the 33-year-old Paterson man's extensive criminal record, he faces a maximum life term in prison. As the owner of the store turned over $250 in cash from the register that early morning on Jan. 17, 2004, Hyle, then 79, ignored the perpetrator's orders to give him whatever he had. "I got mad. I went right to him and said, 'I'm not giving you a [expletive] thing. Go out and get a job. Work for a living, like I did.' " With that, he started to leave – but didn't make it very far.
"He let me have one. Oh, he gave me a punch. I didn't see it coming. What a whack. Next thing I knew I was on the floor, bleeding like hell." Hyle was brought to the hospital but was not seriously injured. Stuart fled but was soon captured, put on trial last spring and convicted of armed robbery. Hyle was among those who testified at the trial. Today's scheduled sentencing will not only close the book on the case, but on the latest chapter in the life of a scrappy survivor. "I worked for Public Service [Electric and Gas Co.]. I was a cable splicer. There was a 24,000-volt cable that blew up while I was in a manhole. I was blind for about seven or eight hours. I was in the hospital for three weeks," he explained.
After recovering and returning to work, he had another brush with death. A large transformer Hyle was working on tipped over onto him. "It cracked all my ribs," he said, laughing."So you think I'm going to let somebody like this guy...." He doesn't finish the sentence. He pauses. "After everything I've been through?" Hyle possesses an interesting combination of fearlessness and knowing when to be careful. He used to walk every morning to Village Stationary in Clifton, where the robbery occurred, to have coffee on his designated stool and chat with store owner Sandip Kapadia. Now, he said, he will only drive, even though it's only about one block down the road.
"It isn't safe on the streets anymore," he said. Similarly, for as proud as he is of his war experiences, he is even more humbled by them. There is a bittersweet sense of always wanting to remember, but never wanting to go back. "There was many a time when I was over there and I thought, 'What am I, an idiot, doing this? Why the hell did I enlist?' I enlisted. I had to fight like hell to get my mother and father to sign the papers," said the Jersey City native, who has lived in Clifton since 1955. "When I went, I was only a kid," he added. "I was 18 years old. I didn't even shave. It was my first experience with anything like that. At the beginning, I thought I was in the movies. It was like when you go to the movies and see these planes getting shot down. You don't believe it. Until one of your engines gets shot out."
Hyle, who was an engineer and turret gunner, received the Distinguished Flying Cross for staying with that plummeting plane over Italy with its pilot and assisting in saving it. Other crew members on board bailed out and parachuted to safety. He returned home to the States on a 30-day furlough following his 50 missions. "A colonel says, 'We're going to send you over the Pacific in a B-29 now. Any objections?' I stepped forward. I said, 'You're not getting me to go back over there, after all I've been through. I don't care what you do to me.' " They instead sent him for a month to a military rehabilitation hospital in Florida, he said. From there, he was given various other tours of duty Stateside.
Down at Village Stationary later in the afternoon, it's heartening to see how Hyle and store owner Kapadia -- from such different worlds -- can be so bonded. Hyle is from Jersey City, Kapadia from India. Hyle's wife passed away about six years ago and he has a grown son, while Kapadia is a young father whose daughter was just born this summer. They are generations apart, and Kapadia knows little of Hyle's war experiences. Yet as they joke and chat with each other, it's clear they are good friends made even closer by a shared encounter. "I thought he was crazy," said Kapadia, laughing, of Hyle's standing up to the robber. "I was nervous." Kapadia, who never had any trouble in the store before, now has security cameras set up. Hyle's stool is still prominently positioned, front and center, near the service counter's lottery ticket machine. He still comes bright and early every morning for coffee and conversation. He's not about to be scared off. Just like the war, it's a difficult memory. But it's one he won't try to forget about, either. "You know why I like to remember?" he said of the war. "Because I say to myself, 'I don't know how I ever survived.' "
Don't let the bleedin' hearts hear about that!
WW2 Vet bump
if only it would have read "a minimum life term".
bump for later
I don't know if I (or any of the current generation) can imagine what the WWII generation went through without complaint or doubt
A million brave guys and gals, a million heroes.
["I got mad. I went right to him and said, 'I'm not giving you a [expletive] thing. Go out and get a job. Work for a living, like I did.' "]
Way to go, Pops!
Clifton Ping!
But this is New Jersey, so an old guy getting whacked is a Nice Story. Bet if Pops had popped the perp center mass, the story would be all about him Taking The Law Into His Own Hands.
ping
Agreed. I would like to see more people in the habit of standing up to thugs. It bothers me that the young guy behind the counter just handed over $250 when the punk walked in and demanded it, though he obviously didn't even have a gun, just his finger in his sleeve. It bothers me that one deranged guy can take a dozen hostages with one handgun and just shoot them at his leisure, without any of them fighting back. And it bothers me that too many people will witness their neighbor beat the crap out of his kid and then they just close the window and turn up the TV so they don't have to hear the kid screaming, while they think to themselves that it's a shame that sort of thing takes place.
The majority of people of this country need a mental adjustment to regain the positive fighting spirit of kicking the bad guy's ass that we used to be proud of.
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