In Memory of Staff Sgt. Andrew Louis Rusnak (Andrash HaLevi ben Andrash v'Aviva; USAF-WW2)

I didn't really know Great-Granduncle Andy (z'l), but I know this much:

1. He was humble. Even when he talked about his military service, he tried to make "Andrew Rusnak" and "Mr. Andrew L. Rusnak" look completely different—and they were the same Andrew Rusnak, even though he surely didn't (though he could have) noted "self" as the relationship of the honorer to the honoree. 
2. He loved his parents—he's even being interred at their gravesite.
3. He had that 1900s movie quality in his voice—I wish that I had recorded the call or calls that I made. If you'd wanted to hear a voice from that era, you'd've wanted to hear his.
4. He loved his family.
5. He—and I just figured this out—clearly loved his heritage. He is being cremated and interred at his parents' gravesite—like Tibor (z'l), who directly went through the Holocaust, he felt guilty about surviving (Why else would he want to be cremated when his siblings were all buried? Also, he served on the homefront—and his brothers, Sgt. Carl Stephen Rusnak and S2C Joseph John Rusnak [z'l], served overseas.). Tears came to my eyes when I figured that out—what could he do? As far as I know, he wasn't the one to whom Vilmos and Zoli wrote—Great-Grandma Gaydos (Great-Granduncle Andy's elder sister) had the mitzvah of helping Vilmos, Zoli, et. al. out; and she reneged on her mitzvah (He was single and serving in the Air Force; she was married with four to five children—he was doing what he could; she wasn't.)

I could list more points, but Point Five sticks in particularly with me. Think about this: Every Jew at the time of the Shoah—whether Anusim or openly-Jewish Jews, Messianic or Non Messianic, and inside or outside of Europe—went through the Shoah—whether directly or indirectly. Every Jew who could help fellow Jews had the mitzvah to do so, and Great-Granduncle Andy fulfilled his part of the mitzvah. 

"‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.’" and "‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world"

Great-Granduncle Andy died of Alzheimer's Disease—and, in a way, thank God that he did; for:

 "The righteous perishes,And no man takes it to heart;Merciful men are taken away,While no one considersThat the righteous is taken away from evil.
He shall enter into peace;They shall rest in their beds,Each one walking in his uprightness."

Would God have been fair to Great-Granduncle Andy to have him be able to comprehend such times? After all, he died on October 2nd—the middle of the week of the government shutdown—, and he'd been battling Alzheimer's Disease for a long time—and what times in which we live, and what times from which God had Great-Granduncle Andy escape!

Alzheimer's Disease was, in a sense, a blessing for a man such as Staff Sgt. Andrew L. Rusnak—a Levi tzedek, a good son, brother, and dad (and if you just know about—let alone at all know—any of his children, you know that); and (indeed) the last of the Fosko Rusnaks (Incidentally, Grandma and I were on the same brainwave—that is, about the mantle passing on to the next generation.).

Staff Sgt. Andrew Louis Rusnak HaLevi ben Andrash v'Aviva, shemo v'zichrono l'bracha (12 Kislev 5677 -25 Tishrei 5773).

From the 1999 Rusnak Family Reunion Cookbook (I should've scanned in the picture better at the time that I did so.).

From one of the Rusnak family reunions. 

From the 1999 Rusnak Family Reunion Cookbook (I should've scanned in the picture better at the time that I did so.). Here is Andrew L. Rusnak with his surviving brothers, Carl and Joseph (of blessed memory)—their oldest sibling, John, died shortly after he was born

From the 1999 Rusnak Family Reunion Cookbook (I should've scanned in the picture better at the time that I did so.). Here is Pvt. Andrew L. Rusnak with his mother (of blessed memory).