With this part, I want to be very careful--after all, September 11th is not something to exploit or merely connect to other events. Nonetheless, think about--if you will--September 11, 2001 and September 24, 2008--as if our economy needed any more pain (after all, human lives were already impacted and the financial center of global trade attacked on September 11th)! Then think about October 24, 1929 and December 7, 1941. In a--if you will--weird or strange way--which is hard to explain--, we have lived the reserve parallel of what my great-grandparents and grandparents lived.
In other words, we were attacked before our economy crashed--actually, twice (once in 1993 with the World Trade Center bombed, the second time with people murdered due to murderers who crashed planes with people in the World Trade Center--and I will not call the murderers "suicide bombers" or " jihadis" due to that there are real suicide victims and people fighting for real holy causes in violent ways).
My great-grandparents, on the other hand, saw their economy crash before they were attacked--and if one counts the J.P. Morgan bombing, they went through an attack-Depression-attack pattern. We went through an attack-attack-"Recession"--actually, "Depression"--pattern. Also oddly enough, the First Great Depression happened on Great-Granddad's 25th birthday--after which he had to go to a mental hospital (He had met Great-Grandma either before he left Sugar Notch for Wood River, Illinois or after he came back from Wood River--since they both worked in a silk mill at least in the 20s, whereas he may have been coal mining around the time that and after he went to Wood River.). September 11th, on the other hand, happened on a steprelative's 77th birthday--and he was suffering an unrelated mental problem--though the steprelative has nothing to do with this story but that he shares a creepy parallel with a man who saw a tragic event happen on his birthday. On another unrelated note, "December 7th" and "September 11th" kind of rhyme.
Meanwhile and anyway, my great-grandparents lived through the Depression--and Pop-Pop (as you may already know if you have been paying attention, Jack) and his brothers Francis "Red" Anthony and James "Jim" Julian Czarnecki were all born into the Depression. I sadly have nothing to tell about what they remember about the First Great Depression and Pearl Harbor--I am estranged from Pop-Pop and Granduncle Red died before I was born. As for Granduncle Jim, he was only two and probably could not tell me much--if anything--about the Depression--that is, he was only two when the Depression happened, and not even conceived when Pearl Harbor happened.
What I do know is that Great-Granddad was too old and too mentally unable to serve in World War Two, his brothers Edward "Ed" Leo, Joseph--aka, the wicked "Suzy"--, and Bernie all served. I have already discussed Great-Granduncle Bernie, and spare me if I'm repeating details--I'm discussing Great-Granduncle Bernie again.
Pfc. Bernard "Bernie" S. Czarnecki was born on March 15 (though his dad claimed that he was born on May 15), 1920 at the 203-207 Freed Street compound--although the Census indicates that 203 was being rented at the time, and he therefore was born at 205 or 207 Freed Street. Pfc. Bernie Czarnecki enlisted in the military on December 12, 1940 and was recorded as enlisting again on February 17, 1941. Pfc. Czarnecki served in the Army's 111th Infantry Division Medical Corp., in which he was attacked while he was in the battlefield. With a piece of shrapnel in his head and a botched operation to remove the shrapnel, he was discharged exactly five years after he enlisted. After dischargement, he lived the rest of his life in the Lebanon, Pennsylvania Veterans' Affairs Home and Hospital.
As stated, his widowed sister--Alexandria Alice Czarnecki Dombroski--took care of and set up a Social Security account for him. As also stated, Johnkie and Suzy cruelly took his--and their sister's--benefits when he died from his war wounds on July 16, 1963. Meanwhile, I once tried writing to the Department of Veterans' Affairs to get more information about him--and I was not next-of-kough for them to get any information. Pfc. Czarnecki also never even got a Purple Heart--much less someone to claim him as next of kin and preserve his memory in the past three generations.