Father & Son

After the first shock of his marine son's death on Corregidor in the spring of 1942, Joseph Fain of Independence, Mo. reacted just like thousands of other fathers--he kept a stiff upper lip, comforted his wife and went on about his business as if nothing had happened. Fain prospered: he had been a policeman, then a member of an Independence Municipal Light Department line crew; after his son's death, he started his own electrical shop and did well.

Through those nine years, Fain had a gnawing desire to hear more about the last days of his son, who had been named after Fain's old friend and fellow townsman County Judge Harry S. Truman.

At a Navy Mothers' convention in New York in 1946, Mrs. Fain heard that a Marine gunnery sergeant named Rosindo A. Tiritilli had been her son's closest companion in the Philippines. The Fains wrote to Tiritilli, who had survived Corregidor and 32 years of Japanese imprisonment. The sergeant responded with a 14-page letter about Truman Fain. Other letters followed, but gradually the correspondence dwindled.

This year, Joseph Fain began to fail; he had an incurable cancer of the throat. He told his wife that he had one great desire: to meet Tiritilli face to face and hear more about Pfc. Truman Fain. Last week Fain got his wish. At the Fain family's request, the Navy Department took Sergeant Tiritilli--a husky, somber soldier of 30--away from his duties at Norfolk, flew him to Independence. Fain was dying by the time the sergeant arrived at his bedside. But when his wife whispered the visitor's name, Fain opened his eyes, smiled, squeezed the sergeant's hand.

The sergeant talked quietly and matter-of-factly. "Truman was behind his machine gun when the Jap artillery got him. A guy came over and gave me the word just a few minutes later. I went up to see him. He was dead when I got there. They told me he died instantly. We buried him . . . there on Corregidor."

A few hours after Tiritilli spoke to him, Joseph Fain died. Said the sergeant: "He couldn't say anything. But he had a look in his eyes."

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