Mark Bartoloni and Zazil-xa Davis-Vazquez

[00:01] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Hello, my name is sacilja. I'm 25 years old. Today's date is March 3, 2020. I'm in Las Cruces, New Mexico with Mark and we are new friends.

[00:19] MARK BARTOLONI: My name is Mark Bottloni. I'm 72 years old, born April 10, 1948. Today is March 3, 2020. Location, Las Cruces, New Mexico. Name of my interview partners. I'm so self centered, I don't remember them. I'm sorry. That's okay.

[00:39] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: I'm Cecile.

[00:40] MARK BARTOLONI: Cecile. Thank you.

[00:42] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Absolutely. So, Mark I'm so happy to be sitting down with you today. Can you tell me about where you grew up and what it was like?

[00:51] MARK BARTOLONI: Yes. I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. That's Boston. And I grew up with two older brothers, two younger sisters, two step brothers, a mother and father that were just. My mother was a Christian, good woman. She was a saint. My father came home, he landed Omaha Beach, D Day, got wounded twice, fought through the battle in France, and eventually made it to Germany. He came home an alcoholic, didn't make it home for a few years, would come in, stay for a while, and then promise me the world and disappear. You know, that's the way it was growing up. But God bless my brother Pete, my brother Al. They kept me safe and kept me going the way I should be going. My brother Pete played football in high school and I learned from him and played football also. And you know, growing up, I never knew what was wrong with me because I thought I was crazy, like I guess a lot of kids do. I had so much stuff going on inside me and I had nowhere to let it loose. And I discovered the football field and man, I let loose on the football field. I was captain of the football team my senior year and wound up breaking my leg. And the next option was the military. So there I went. I graduated from high school in North Quincy High School in North quincy, Massachusetts in 1966 and went right into the military. Why they go into the military? I come from a family of warriors. I come from the 1% in this country. The Warriors. Not the billionaires, not the Donald Trumps we have to live with and die with every day.

[02:49] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Can you tell me a little bit more about playing football? Do you have any fun memories of being on the field?

[02:55] MARK BARTOLONI: Yes, I do.

[02:56] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Can you tell me some?

[02:58] MARK BARTOLONI: Yeah. We had every Thanksgiving. We played Quincy High School. I played for North Quincy High, we played Quincy High School. And it was a rivalry that I remember as a little kid. And it always took place on Thanksgiving and it Was just a wild, wild time my senior year. I wound up breaking my leg the second to the last game of the year and wasn't able to play in that game. And sat on the sidelines and watched everything and just loved it. But I wanted to be out there.

[03:32] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Do you remember any of your fellow players?

[03:35] MARK BARTOLONI: Oh, yeah, yeah. Our quarterback was Richie Wanolds. Richie Wanless. Pete Vanny was a tight end. He went on to play for the Chicago Cubs. Yeah, Pete was a hell of a ball player. Let me see. The smallest guy in the team's name was Kenny McPhee. He was about £150 and he played left guard. The kid had more guts than anybody ever in my life. He just. He played with reckless abandon. And it was just a great time in my life, you know. I mean, my outside life was crazy, but. But the football just made everything all right, you know, and that's the way it was, you know.

[04:16] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: What about the day that you enlisted? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

[04:20] MARK BARTOLONI: Yes, it was an affair. Six of us went in together.

[04:27] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Who were the other five?

[04:29] MARK BARTOLONI: The other five were Dicky Green, Mike Campanella, my brother Al. He didn't come in with me, though. He came a little bit after. He was always my protector and he chased me right into the military. I don't want to remember the other guy, Marty Keefe, because he got killed over there. Marty got killed and he was a good kid. He was a real good kid.

[04:59] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: So. But tell me about the day when you enlisted. What happened that day?

[05:04] MARK BARTOLONI: We went up to in Quincy. They had a recruiter there, and the recruiter would come to the courthouse. And as a football team, we were all out at Squaw Rock. Squaw Rock was where we all hung out, all the cool kids, all the jocks back in the day. And we used to party out there and everybody got liquored up one night, and I don't really know what happened the rest of the night because I heard stories from a lot of different people. But I wound up. Four of us wound up in front of a judge. About a month later, the police come out and arrested us. And the judge said, you can either go to jail or you can volunteer to Vietnam. That was the way it was back in Quincy in the day. If you went to court and you had a charge they could really scare you with, you either opted for the military or they threatened jail. So we all signed him, went. And we were grateful to go. We really were. We were all from families that had fathers. I found out after the Vietnam War, what was really going on? They were sending poor white boys, poor black boys, poor Indian boys, poor everybody that they could send to Vietnam. And I am not saying rich people, good people didn't go in. They did, of course. Of course they did. But the bottom line is they were drafting the point. They didn't draft us. We enlisted. And I do not step back for one minute. My Vietnam experience is what it was, and I'm eternally grateful that I had it. It has taught me to be the kind of human being that I am today. And I don't think without that experience, I would be where I am today.

[06:48] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Can you tell me about what basic training was like?

[06:51] MARK BARTOLONI: Basic training was fun for me. My leg had healed, you know, I was pretty much full heel by then. And I loved basic training because I was in great shape. We all, not all the guys I went in. One of the guys played baseball, Marty played soccer. We were all in good shape. We ran, you know, we all were all in good shape. We got to basic training, we stuck together. We went out on the buddy plan after basic training, you know, I was good at the physics and stuff. I loved the running. I was again picked out as a platoon. They made you like, if you were physically fit and did real well. And the poor guys that come in that were overweight and stuff, they ran. They tried to do it, but they were putting. Some of them were put behind. They had to go through it again. I'm grateful I was able to go through it. I went from there to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and boy, oh, boy was that I had never experienced anything like Washington.

[07:54] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: D.C. tell me about what you remember from that time when you arrived.

[07:58] MARK BARTOLONI: I wound up at Fort Belleville. And as a kid, I was scared, you know, I mean, I didn't know it. I couldn't talk to nobody about what was going on inside me. So therefore, I drank and I got. I. I didn't project who I really was. I projected who an alcoholic who a hard drinking Mark was, you know, And I didn't want to be that kind of person, but I had no way out because I had all this crazy stuff inside me. And the only thing that seemed to take care of it was booze, you know, it was the only thing. And I tried. I tried, I tried, and then I just succumbed to the booze. And I didn't go right to Vietnam. I wound up in Europe. Heidelberg, Germany, one of the most beautiful places in the world. I traveled around. I was at Patton Barracks right in downtown Heidelberg. They Had a University of Maryland there and Southern Cal was there and met a bunch of people and was enjoying my life and get into a little bit of my military stuff was going real good and everything else was going good in my life. And I got artists for Vietnam. Me and another guy, a guy from San Antonio, Texas, flew back to Massachusetts. We were the only two from the plume. Now, we did nothing wrong, but we were both radio operators at the time. Radio operators were getting killed left and right in Vietnam. So me and him were back to Mass. Two weeks up in Mass with my family and two weeks down in San Antonio. The first time I had really ever been, you know, I mean, I'm in the military, but the first time I've really been on my own with another guy to enjoy two weeks or a month we had all together and it was fun.

[09:52] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: What did you do during that month?

[09:54] MARK BARTOLONI: Oh, man. Well, I never made it to see the Alamo. I wanted to see the Alamo. We went into Mexico. I had never been out of the country. And that was so exciting.

[10:03] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: What did you do in Mexico?

[10:04] MARK BARTOLONI: Nothing really. We really didn't. I just drove around. I wanted to look at stuff. And there was all sorts of stuff I had never seen in my life, you know, And I just. And we just had a fantastic time. Back to San Antonio, got on a plane in San Antonio, was at Travis Air Force Base. Put in a great big hangar. Hundreds, thousands of guys. I had never been no place like it in my life. It was a huge aircraft hangar with double bunks, just row after row. And you were given a section. You come in, they give you say, B14. So you go to B section, bed number 14. That's your bed. You go out, do what you need to do during the day. They tell you, be back every night. They're going to call your number. If they call your number and you're not there, then you get written up for being awol. So everybody was back, and about four days later, they called my number. I landed in Camon Bay that night. We landed in Camon Bay. He went one way. I've never seen him again. He'd get killed. His last name was Eanes. He was a real good guy. And, you know, I can remember the flight over and it was like, wow, you know, the waitresses are coming down. We had a couple of foreign waitresses, beautiful girls and stuff. And everybody's like, ah, man, this is going to be easy. Just do what you got. Bop ba ba Everybody's talking trash, you know. And we got there and the first thing I remember was the heat. Boom. I mean, I got off the plane and that heat just. It almost knocks you over. By the time I got to the bottom of the stairs, I was soaking wet sweat. I've always been a sweater. And then it was really. It was pouring out of me. They gave me a bottle, saw how much I was, you know, drank some water, and they gave us a little talk, showed us some pictures, put us in a certain place, said, they're going to come for you. We don't know when. Could be today, could be tomorrow, could be next week. That night I lived through my first mortar attack. You know, we got laid in, and they come in, they dropped it didn't come close, any one of us, but that's what they did to keep you up at night. So when you get up in the morning, when you did get a little bit of sleep, get up and you weren't on your toes, they. We. I spent, I believe, three days, could have been four days. And a convoy came in and they told me I was up. I went out and told me to jump on the truck. We're going north. You're going to 48 signal in quinyon, which is part of the 1st Cavalry Division. I said, okay, that's fine. We headed north. We get up to Yankee Pass, and there it came. Ba boom, ba boom. We got hit. They hit a gas truck, about five vehicles. Four or five vehicles in front of me. The truck went up. Guy come running to us, engulfed in flames. I just stood there. I didn't know what to do. The first sergeant that was on, he was driving, jumped down, shot the guy. The guy couldn't have been saved. You know, he was crisp, and the smell just crippled me. I just. I remember asking him, I said, God, what's that horrible smell? He said, it's that man burning. I said, oh, my God, what did I get myself into? And I got up there and just shut my mouth and followed instructions. But I spent altogether 14 months in Vietnam. I went there as a young Catholic boy, Roman Catholic. Brought up, made my confirmation, made all the things that a young Catholic boy does. And I can remember I was in Vietnam, I don't know, a week, maybe two weeks. And all these different things were happening one after another. And any belief I had in the Catholic Church, I left right there and never to return. Because I also have other Catholic stuff I'd rather not go into today. That. That has turned me against and, you know, my life in Vietnam. What I did was I tried to follow around the guys that were there before me, just like I do in life today, you know, because that's how you learn. You don't learn by trying something yourself. And I had a lot of good guys before me and a lot of good guys behind me. And my worst experience in Southeast Asia came. I was there nine, nine and a half months, I believe. And we had been out for three days. I was TDY with the first cab and.

[14:54] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: What is tdy?

[14:56] MARK BARTOLONI: Temporary duty. Yeah, we got sent to a lot of different units. I was basically out of the 41st. 41st signal. Yeah, 41st signal, which was out of Quin Yon. And we supplied pretty much all the units around us with the radio operators if they needed them. Sometimes you didn't go out for a week, two weeks, you know. Sometimes you went out a little more. But anyway, that night was monsoon season. Raining everywhere. And we were hunkered down. We were in a rice paddy. We had been there for a little while, and there was all sorts of firing going on around. And company commander got hit that night in the shoulder, and he was doing okay. And he called in some coordinates. And I don't know if I made a mistake on the coordinates. Nobody ever told me. Nobody really cared. But a couple of rounds wound up short. I don't know if they were from my mistake or the mistake of whatever. Fifty children were killed with those two rounds in an orphanage. And it changed my life. It changed me. Man, I thought I could do this without the tears, but, you know, I guess sometimes you just got to do what you got to do. And that changed my life. I am not blaming anything that happened in my life on that experience, but it did change my life. I came out of the military and I was gone. I spent three years in the psychiatric hospital in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. It was a locked ward, and it was really a crazy ward. There were homicidal and suicidal people on the same ward. Only the government would put that combination together. But what it was. And it was a very bizarre place. They had me tuned up with about 1500 milligrams of Thorazine A day. I couldn't walk. I couldn't do anything. Pills at night to make you sleep. I got out of the military 100% disabled veteran. A short time later, military loaded me up on any kind of dope. Not the military, I'm sorry. The VA at the time loaded me up on any kind of dope that I want on it. I shouldn't say that. They loaded me up on suckinols, tuanols, nemutals, at the time, for sleep during the day, they gave me Turazine. I never took it. I found my own way to deal with that stuff, and that was through alcohol. Alcohol nearly killed me many, many times. I told you, I came from a family of warriors. My brother Pete, my older brother Pete was a marine. He served in Turkey along the Russian border. He deciphered Morse code for three years listening to that. Did it, that, that did it, that, that. I don't know what happened to my brother Pete, but he's been in prison for 47 years, since he got out of the military. Not because of anything he did in the military, but he came out the same way I did, I take it. And he got himself jammed up with a bunch of guys. And in prison to this day, I talk to him every Sunday. He's just a duplicate big brother. I know he's in the New Hampshire state prison system. My brother Al is in a psychiatric home in Massachusetts. My sister Patty's a banker. She's been a banker her whole life. It just goes to show.

[19:25] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Does she still live in Massachusetts?

[19:27] MARK BARTOLONI: Yes, yes, she is. She works at the Braintree bank now, and she's worked in big banks and Watson her whole life. But she didn't want to retire. She loves work and she loves being with people. And she's done for all, all the family for years. You know, she just. She just does for all my sisters and my brother, you know, and she does for me. She's just been a doer. My two step brothers, you know, she's got a huge heart. And my sister Joanne was caught up in this disease that I have, the alcoholism. My brother Pete, my brother Al, you know, it's a family illness and I found my way out through a program. I am not going to talk about that. But today I haven't had a drink of alcohol for 32 years. And I am so grateful for that. It wanted to kill me, but it didn't. You know where I am today? I'm at the soldiers home and truth of Consequences. New Mexico. What a beautiful place. Jimmy Han, Korean War veteran, reminds me of my grandfather. I got a bunch of people in there. There's an older. There's a woman there that reminds me. Get my mom's hair cut, you know, and just a lot of real good people.

[20:50] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: So when did you move to New Mexico?

[20:54] MARK BARTOLONI: I moved to New Mexico after I married the most beautiful woman in the world. Actually, it was a little while after that I got. I just talked about my. A little bit about being sober And I got sober in the Northampton VA Hospital in Northampton, Massachusetts. And I get into. The reason I got onto that ward was because of two men, Ben Maresegan and Dr. Ken Linchik. And those two men started Ward 8. If you go on the Internet and just look up Ward 8 PTSD, you'll see what's been going on at the Northampton VA Hospital for a lot of years. And it's guys getting better, guys licking this thing and getting through their nightmares and all the stuff that goes on inside any combat veteran. And these two guys molded me. The only place they would allow me to go is to a program to stop drinking. And they also would allow me to spend time over at the alcohol listening to people talk. That's all I did. I sat down, I listened. And one day, the most beautiful woman in the world walked through those doors. And her name was Dahlty. She's a Cherokee from. Her family is from the hills of Tennessee. But her father was a lifer in the military. And she helped me heal. She helped me heal. And we spent a lot of time just talking. And I said, I was 40 years old. I never married because I was never going to be like my father. I was never going to give away what was inside me. I was never going to give away. I knew I was loaded up with Agent Orange, and I was right about that. I had a buddy that came home that had twins, and they were defective, and they have great kids today. You know, he's done a fantastic job. But I just didn't want to take that chance. So I never got married. I met her when I was 40 years old in the program. And we kind of just hung out for a while. And then she was in the same program I was. So we started going around to different places together, and our friendship caught fire. And three years later, I drove up in front of the psychiatric ward I was on, driving a 1968 Dodge. Dad. I popped the trunk, got some roses, and got on my knees and said, sweetheart, will you marry me? And she said, yeah. And she said, when? And I said, I got reservations. We're going to go to Las Vegas in two weeks, get married. And we did. We got on an airplane. It was a second American Indian AA convention out there. I'll say that it was an AA convention. And my wife and I flew out. We went to the AAA convention. It seemed like thousands of people. There were probably hundreds of people, stood up and honored us. We got asked to dance, and it was just so much fun. We went out to Lake Mead, skinny Dipped and went up to Overton, up to the Overton, Nevada, a little small town. I went into the florist. I said, is there anybody in town that can marry us? And. And she said, yes, my bishop. And brought up Catholic. I said, no, I can't be a bishop. It was a Mormon bishop. A Mormon bishop got his son and came under that tree and married my wife and I. And it was like, you know, I've heard people talk about Mormons as scum for so many years and I found out that's not true. You know, this man and his little son married us. And it's been great. My wife is in TSC now. She's about a mile and a half. She brings the dogs up a couple of times a week and we walk to dogs and hang out. But the biggest gift my wife has given me is the gift to know myself. She's given me insight, she's given me a lot of things. And I want her to know that no one's know that she's very special.

[25:11] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: What's one of your favorite things that you've done with your wife?

[25:15] MARK BARTOLONI: The most favorite thing. She'd be probably kind of mad when I say it, but the most favorite thing is when my wife and I were asked to. I don't even want to say it because the most favorite thing I do with my wife is hang out with her, with the dogs, to go to tsc, to the dog park. We got a new dog park. Until you see a woman, Ms. Wheeler went. Did a lot to put that up. And that's my most favorite thing. I gotta ask you. We're getting close to the end. Okay? Cause 10. Okay, super. I need to talk a little bit about what's going on today. My wife. My wife is real. She's got a lot of physical problems too. And I know that. And sometimes I can get, you know, I can get like, well, why can't you come up and see me today? Well, I don't feel good, you know, I got this, I got that. And I'm like, well, you know, don't you want to see me, you know, just brain dead, you know, And I'm acting like a two year old and she'll straighten me out with a couple of words and then I'm okay, you know, But I'm sorry.

[26:29] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: You miss her?

[26:30] MARK BARTOLONI: I miss her, yeah. Yeah, I always miss her. Always. When I'm not with her, I miss her. You're right.

[26:37] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: That's not brain dead. You just miss her.

[26:39] MARK BARTOLONI: Okay. But what has happened? She's the one that got me into. I had. Two years ago, I had open heart surgery. They replaced the valve in my heart. After that, I have my left hip done. I have my right hip done. I have my left shoulder. My left shoulder can't be done because it's crushed. But. But they kind of put me back together and things of where I am are just so, so good. And it's had so little to do with anything except a lot of prayers. I believe, I firmly believe that the truth of consequence of soldiers home is a beautiful place to be today. It really is. A year ago, I couldn't say that. A year ago, I could say it's a very dark place to be. I could possibly even say it's a naval place to be. I felt bad for the workers. They were working hard and doing what they needed to do. I felt bad, real bad for the veterans. And through some work, through veterans there, we've been able to realize that. We have. I don't even know how to say this, but anyway, Rebecca Dow, she's a New Mexico representative. That's what you say. Representative. New Mexico representative. And I called her and I asked her to come up just to chat for a few minutes. And she came up, she talked to me, and she was very nice. And, you know, we had a real good talk. And I just felt like, okay, another politician, maybe she heard a couple of things I said, but she went to bed, she went to the Congress or whatever they have up there in New Mexico when they all get together and do what they do. And she come out of it with some great things for the soldiers home. Just amazing. And we just recently got a new director, and her name is Juliet Sullivan. And she came in and just knocked this place apart. People were running around, oh, my God, what's going on? What's happening? And we're going through all sorts of. But it's all for the good. Guys are walking around with a smile on their face. Honest. Honest. And it's because they have a little bit of hope. That's what I see is hope. A little bit of hope goes a long way. I got to talk about, you know, there's just so much ignorance in the world. I want to say so many people are getting so stupid. I just don't know what's going on. You listen to people and one day they're talking about this, and it confuses the hell out of me because every day it's a different story. It's like the world's going to end today. No, it's going to be tomorrow? No, it's going to be next week. You know, it's crazy. And I just try to leave it all. I had to stop watching the TV as much as I can because that'll make me real nuts. And I know today the Creator is giving me nothing but love. I know that today. The longest journey in my life that I ever took, and I learned this from a man a long time, not a long time ago, a number of years ago, but a very, very wise man. The longest journey I took was from my head to my heart. And when I arrived at my heart, I found out I have more love to give more people. I just. You know, all my life, I hurt people. I did. I never worked a job you could tell your mother about or tell your grandmother about. I was always outside the law. I got sober. My life changed. I started realizing that, you know what? Maybe I can be a good person. Maybe I can do for others. And I found I can do that. And I like doing it. It feels good. Feels so good. It feels so good to come down here and talk with you guys today. I couldn't do this 20 years ago or even, I don't know, 10 years ago. I got around people and I got all jammed up inside. But the Creator has allowed those things to leave me and allowed other things to fill up inside me. And, God, it feels good. I don't know what else to say except, you know, I love the United States of America. I'd do anything for it. My father did, my grandfather did, my brother did, my other brother did. I did. And many before us, and many after us. And I just want to say thank you very much for having me. I have enjoyed myself. And I'm going to go get something to eat now. Thank you.

[31:35] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Thank you, Mark I'm so happy to hear all of that.

[31:38] MARK BARTOLONI: Thank you.

[31:39] ZAZIL-XA DAVIS-VAZQUEZ: Thank you.

[31:44] MARK BARTOLONI: Good night.