memento mori

Aug 13, 2007 — Lisa and her husband, U.S. Army 1st Lt. Neil Santoriello, really wanted a dog, never guessing the chocolate lab’s future value. “He’s my buddy,” Lisa Santoriello said. “If it weren’t for that dog, I would not have gotten through Neil’s death.”

She spoke from Fort Irwin in California, where she was renewing the bonds with friends she had made when her husband was stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas.

Lisa Santoriello didn’t want the dog after learning her husband would be going to war. What would she do with him? He told her he didn’t care. She would have a dog.

Neil Santoriello made a game of naming their pet. He insisted it be named after an American Indian warrior.

“He picked out some very crazy names and I said ‘no’,” Lisa Santoriello said.

Then, she said she heard a woman at a picnic call for her son Diego. Lisa Santoriello asked where the name came from and learned the boy was named after an American Indian warrior.

When her husband left for Iraq, Lisa Santoriello and Diego remained on the base with the spouses of the other soldiers. “I sent Neil a dog catalog while he was in Iraq, and he would order treats for Diego,” she said.

His death

On Aug. 13, 2004, her 24-year-old husband of Verona, Pa., died when an improvised explosive device detonated near his mounted reconnaissance patrol vehicle in Khalidiyah, Iraq, according to the Department of Defense. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 34th Armor, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division.

Lisa learned the details of her husband’s death from members of his unit when they returned to Fort Riley.

“I have spoken to everybody who saw it and who were on his tank,” she said. “When they came home, they all came to see me. I knew most of them and their wives. They spent time with me. They considered Neil a brother over there. They said all Neil did was tell them stories about me and his college days.”

Neil Santoriello was the lieutenant commander of the tank, which was on its usual, daily patrol, she said. His head was exposed so he could look around.

He could not see the bomb attached to the back side of a light post that curved over the road.

As the tank rumbled under the light, an enemy detonated the bomb by remote control.

“Neil was killed instantly,” she said. “The other men in the tank were absolutely fine. They saw the boom and he sunk down into the tank with blood on his face.”

He was due home in three weeks.

Aftermath

She had already lived a year on the base without her husband. She stayed another nine months weighing her choices.

She decided to return to York, where the newlyweds had first lived. It was midway between his hometown in Pittsburgh and hers in Philadelphia. Her father lives in York.

“It didn’t hit me until I moved back to York on Memorial Day 2005,” she said. “That summer was not fun. I had bought a house and was living by myself. I had one college friend.”

Her parents helped her, she said.

Neil had always called her a jock, but he was gone.

“I had to find a new passion and it was sports,” Lisa said. “I have always played sports, and still do.”

She returned to college and expects to earn her master’s degree in sports management in December.

She said she looks forward to college coaching.

Today, she and Diego will make their annual trip to Arlington National Cemetery to spend time by her husband’s grave.

On their first visit, she said Diego ran straight to Neil’s grave site.

“He sat straight up and looked all around,” Lisa Santoriello said. “Then, he looked down at the grave and began digging a hole. I stopped him. Now, he just lies next to the stone.”

A flag in her husband’s memory has been placed in the display at Prospect Hill Cemetery and Cremation Garden. His name appears on the memorial plaque at the old county courthouse.

Reach Caryl Clarke at 771-2032 or caryl@ydr.com.

WHAT HAPPENED

U.S. Army First Lt. Neil Anthony Santoriello of Verona died at age 24 in Iraq while in a tank on routine surveillance patrol. His head was exposed as he searched for danger in Khalidiyah.

An enemy combatant detonated a hidden bomb that killed Santoriello Aug. 13, 2004, three weeks before he was to return home.

Santoriello had dreamed of being an officer since fifth grade, one of his Boy Scout leaders said, according to an Aug. 17, 2004, article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

He joined the Army ROTC at Dickinson College and was one of nine ROTC applicants to win a $20,000 annual tuition scholarship, the Post-Gazette states. He rose in rank to become the ROTC executive officer, the second in command of fellow cadets.

“That’s the toughest job because you’ve got to lead your peers and enforce what the commander wants done,” his ROTC director, Lt. Col. Mark N. Mazarella, said in the Post-Gazette article. “You could count on him to get the job done.”

Santoriello and his future wife, Lisa Santone met at Dickinson College. Santone graduated in 2001. Santoriello graduated with a degree in political science in 2002 and became a commissioned officer in the Army in May 2002.

They married in October 2002.

Santoriello received a post-humous Purple Heart, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Sources: Department of Defense, Lisa Santoriello and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Young, Gifted, and Not Getting Into Harvard

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By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: April 29, 2007

ON a Sunday morning a few months back, I interviewed my final Harvard applicant of the year. After saying goodbye to the girl and watching her and her mother drive off, I headed to the beach at the end of our street for a run.

It was a spectacular winter day, bright, sunny and cold; the tide was out, the waves were high, and I had the beach to myself. As I ran, I thought the same thing I do after all these interviews: Another amazing kid who won’t get into Harvard.

That used to upset me. But I’ve changed.

Over the last decade, I’ve done perhaps 40 of these interviews, which are conducted by alumni across the country. They’re my only remaining link to my alma mater; I’ve never been back to a reunion or a football game, and my total donations since graduating in the 1970s do not add up to four figures.

No matter how glowing my recommendations, in all this time only one kid, a girl, got in, many years back. I do not tell this to the eager, well-groomed seniors who settle onto the couch in our den. They’re under too much pressure already. Better than anyone, they know the odds, particularly for a kid from a New York suburb.

By the time I meet them, they’re pros at working the system. Some have Googled me because they think knowing about me will improve their odds. After the interview, many send handwritten thank-you notes saying how much they enjoyed meeting me.

Maybe it’s true.

I used to be upset by these attempts to ingratiate. Since I’ve watched my own children go through similar torture, I find these gestures touching. Everyone’s trying so hard.

My reason for doing these interviews has shifted over time. When I started, my kids were young, and I thought it might give them a little advantage when they applied to Harvard. That has turned out not to be an issue. My oldest, now a college freshman, did not apply, nor will my twins, who are both high school juniors.

We are not snubbing Harvard. Even my oldest, who is my most academic son, did not quite have the class rank or the SATs. His SAT score was probably 100 points too low — though it was identical to the SAT score that got me in 35 years ago.

Why do I continue to interview? It’s very moving meeting all these bright young people who won’t get into Harvard. Recent news articles make it sound unbearably tragic. Several Ivies, including Harvard, rejected a record number of applicants this year.

Actually, meeting the soon-to-be rejected makes me hopeful about young people. They are far more accomplished than I was at their age and without a doubt will do superbly wherever they go.

Knowing me and seeing them is like witnessing some major evolutionary change take place in just 35 years, from the Neanderthal Harvard applicant of 1970 to today’s fully evolved Homo sapiens applicant.

There was the girl who, during summer vacation, left her house before 7 each morning to make a two-hour train ride to a major university, where she worked all day doing cutting-edge research for NASA on weightlessness in mice.

When I was in high school, my 10th-grade science project was on plant tropism — a shoebox with soil and bean sprouts bending toward the light.

These kids who don’t get into Harvard spend summers on schooners in Chesapeake Bay studying marine biology, building homes for the poor in Central America, touring Europe with all-star orchestras.

Summers, I dug trenches for my local sewer department during the day, and sold hot dogs at Fenway Park at night.

As I listen to them, I can visualize their parents, striving to teach excellence. One girl I interviewed described how her father made her watch the 2004 convention speeches by both President Bush and Senator John Kerry and then tell him which she liked better and why.

What kind of kid doesn’t get into Harvard? Well, there was the charming boy I interviewed with 1560 SATs. He did cancer research in the summer; played two instruments in three orchestras; and composed his own music. He redid the computer system for his student paper, loved to cook and was writing his own cookbook. One of his specialties was snapper poached in tea and served with noodle cake.

At his age, when I got hungry, I made myself peanut butter and jam on white bread and got into Harvard.

Some take 10 AP courses and get top scores of 5 on all of them.

I took one AP course and scored 3.

Of course, evolution is not the same as progress. These kids have an AP history textbook that has been specially created to match the content of the AP test, as well as review books and tutors for those tests. We had no AP textbook; many of our readings came from primary documents, and there was no Princeton Review then. I was never tutored in anything and walked into the SATs without having seen a sample SAT question.

As for my bean sprouts project, as bad it was, I did it alone. I interview kids who describe how their schools provide a statistician to analyze their science project data.

I see these kids — and watch my own applying to college — and as evolved as they are, I wouldn’t change places with them for anything. They’re under such pressure.

I used to say goodbye at my door, but since my own kids reached this age, I walk them out to their cars, where a parent waits. I always say the same thing to the mom or dad: “You’ve done a wonderful job — you should be very proud.” And I mean it.

But I’ve stopped feeling bad about the looming rejection. When my four were little, I used to hope a couple might go to Harvard. I pushed them, but by the end of middle school it was clear my twins, at least, were not made that way. They rebelled, and I had to learn to see who they were.

I came to understand that my own focus on Harvard was a matter of not sophistication but narrowness. I grew up in an unworldly blue-collar environment. Getting perfect grades and attending an elite college was one of the few ways up I could see.

My four have been raised in an upper-middle-class world. They look around and see lots of avenues to success. My wife’s two brothers struggled as students at mainstream colleges and both have made wonderful full lives, one as a salesman, the other as a builder. Each found his own best path. Each knows excellence.

That day, running on the beach, I was lost in my thoughts when a voice startled me. “Pops, hey, Pops!” It was Sammy, one of my twins, who’s probably heading for a good state school. He was in his wetsuit, surfing alone in the 30-degree weather, the only other person on the beach. “What a day!” he yelled, and his joy filled my heart.

I hate life.
Life hates me.
If life was a woman?
She would be divorced from me.

I have had wine for dinner the past two nights,
That is what the snow and cold will do to you.

Though if a woman was a 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon that came oh so inexpensively. I would be more than happy.

I got new personalized stationary, because i officially have another degree.

It ends with a kafka quote.
“A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

my mom told me not to send any to her friends, as they will only talk about my depression.
i asked if that was better than my rampant alcoholism or womanism?

I guess Western Pennsylvania got use to the later two.