Beyond the giant white garage door that reveals Alioto-Lazio fish processing on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, a visitor’s gaze will scan the glass tanks filled with Dungeness crab to the walls lined with historic family photos of relatives holding massive fish — and then come to the small fading photo of a young Marine.
The photo of Thomas A. Cincotta — known as Tommy — was taken in 1968 at his graduation at Camp Pendleton — the same year his Marine unit shipped off to fight in the Vietnam War.
“He wanted to do his part to make the world a better place,” said his sister, Angel Cincotta, who along with her sisters run the 85-year-old family seafood business.
Like many who served in the Vietnam War, Tommy didn’t come home alive. He was killed a year after he arrived in Vietnam. His picture hangs above the seafood-themed tchotchkes, below the window of the booth where his sisters peddle crab and locally caught fish. The photo is at first blush a conversation piece and then a thing of reverence as visitors learn of his sacrifice.
“This is the one that everyone sees when they walk in,” Cincotta said, looking at the photo. “And even so small, for military guys, they zero right into it.”
One of those who zeroed in was a tourist named Richard Banks — a Navy veteran from Massachusetts who was visiting the wharf with his wife. He began asking questions about the photo and then learned of Tommy’s fate. But rather than receive the story and move on, the details of Tommy’s death stuck with him. From then on, every Memorial Day he would send an email to the Cincotta family to let them he was thinking of them and that Tommy was not forgotten.
“He and I were pretty much the same age when we went into the military,” said Banks over a video call from his home in Massachusetts. “He went in the Marines and I went in the Navy. And he never came home.”
A couple weeks ago, a mysterious FedEx envelope showed up at the Alioto-Lazio business. It was a plain envelope with the sender’s name barely legible.
“Of course being Sicilian and northern Italian mix, you start wondering what’s in the package,” laughed Cincotta.
But when Cincotta opened the envelope, she was moved by what she found inside. It was a rubbing of Tommy’s full name, Thomas A. Cincotta, from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington, D.C. The sender: Richard Banks.
“I just felt that just in case they didn’t go that I would get a rubbing of his name off the memorial wall,” said Banks.
It turned out that a month back, Banks took part in an Honor Flight – a nonprofit that transports veterans to Washington, D.C. to see the memorials dedicated to their service. As soon as Banks found out he was going, he planned a side mission to the Vietnam Wall, which is inscribed with the names of 58,000 service people who died or are missing in Vietnam.
He skipped a couple of the memorials on the tour to make sure he had plenty of time to execute his plan: to climb up a ladder to make a rubbing of Tommy’s name on the wall and send it to his family.
“What he did was a tremendous sacrifice for our nation,” Banks said. “And I take that very personally.”
Back in San Francisco, the gesture floored the Cincotta relatives.
“For someone that doesn’t really know us, to take the time to do this for us, is just incredible,” Cincotta said.
In the years since Tommy died, there have been other tributes. Members of his Marine unit flew out to San Francisco to remember him on the 40th anniversary of his death, and they regularly check in with his family.
“I have now I don’t know how many big brothers,” said Cincotta.
Along with the rubbing of Tommy’s name and a pamphlet from the Vietnam Memorial, Bank’s envelope also included a person note describing the rubbing. At the end of the note he wrote “never forgotten,” a sentiment he echoed in an interview.
Fifty-years after the official end of the Vietnam War, it was a statement that Tommy is still remembered by those who knew him, served with him and even those who didn’t.
“We should never ever forget those people who gave their lives to protect all of us,” Banks said.
Source: NBC Bay Area