War and Remembrance

Gone were the copies of his letters to Oklahoma City bombers Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, as well as the letters that Nichols had written back. Gone was the benediction that White had sent him from death row, which Sunderland had read at the fiftieth anniversary of his joining the Jesuits: "I'll say a rosary for you and the other priests..."

Gone. All gone. None of it mattered now.

He turned to one last box, filled with old photographs and letters, most of them from his youth. He picked up a photograph, his mother's favorite, which showed him as a G.I. on the day in May 1945 that the war in Europe ended. He reached for another, which caught him carrying a bucket across the tarmac while wearing an Army Air Corps flight jacket. He came across one of his own favorites, taken right after he left West Point to become a priest, posing with his little sister, Patty, then a seventh-grader at St. Mary's Academy, and younger brother, Bob, a senior at Regis High.

And there were other pictures that tugged at his heart, all showing pretty Sheila Curry, his girlfriend before he'd chosen a different kind of love.

He planned to throw out this box and its contents, too, but first started calling some of the people shown in those photographs, as well as other family members and friends. He didn't contact Sheila, just as he hadn't called her when he'd left her 55 years earlier. But he knew she'd understand, as she had back then.

Most of his calls were answered by machines, and he left messages that were variations on the same theme. Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your friendship...I probably won't be talking to you again. I think I'm losing my mind. Goodbye.

After the calls were made, he sat down again in his easy chair. He felt tired, physically and mentally spent, as though he'd been swimming through tar. Well, that's it, he thought, and closed his eyes to wait for whatever came next.

Get that Jap.

Jim Sunderland, a senior tight end on the Regis High football team, couldn't believe what he was hearing. Regis was vying for the parochial school's state championship against a team from Walsenburg. They'd expected the Walsenburg players, many of them sons of miners, to be tough, and for their fans to be vocal antagonists. But they were unprepared for the chants of "Get that Jap" that were directed at Regis's star running back, Leonard "Buddy" Uchida.

Six days earlier, on the first Sunday of December 1941, the naval forces of Imperial Japan had bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. He knew emotions were running hot, but "Sundy," as he was called by his friends, was still outraged that his friend was being singled out because of his race.

Jim was a few weeks shy of his seventeenth birthday, which fell on Christmas Day. He'd come into this world at Denver's Mercy Hospital, the middle of five children born to James and Anna Sunderland, and was raised in south Denver just a couple of blocks from the Denver Country Club.

Theirs was a typical Irish-Catholic family. Both sets of grandparents had migrated from the old country to escape famine and poverty. The Sunderlands weren't rich, but they weathered the Depression reasonably well. There was always enough to eat and enough to serve the parish priest something special at Sunday dinner. James Sunderland ran a small coffee company out of the garage, and the family joked that each kid had his first cup of coffee immediately following his baptism, which was only a slight exaggeration.

Neither James nor Anna had had any formal education beyond the sixth grade, but their home was filled with books, and their love of learning was transferred to their children. It was understood that the Sunderland kids would go to college -- no ifs, ands or buts.

First, of course, they attended Catholic schools: Regis High School for the three boys, St. Mary's Academy for the two girls. It was an expensive proposition, but it helped that James Sunderland furnished coffee for the large community of Jesuit priests who lived and taught at Regis, as well as for Catholic hospitals and orphanages. That kindness earned the eldest son, Joe, free tuition through high school.

Jim wasn't as lucky: He was expected to pay his Regis tuition, which at $100 a year was four times as much as that of any other Catholic school in the city. When Jim complained that some of his friends got an allowance, his father replied, "Your room and board is your allowance."

So in the winter, Jim bagged groceries at Safeway for $2.50 a day. In the summer, he caddied at the Denver Country Club, where he was disgusted to learn that the wealthy were the cheapest tippers in town, griping about having to shell out just 65 cents a round. Meanwhile, the duffers at the public course paid a buck.

His favorite job was selling peanuts and pop during baseball games at Merchants Park. He loved baseball and, like most kids of that era, could cite every major-leaguer's batting average. But his favorite player of all wasn't allowed in Major League Baseball. Satchel Paige was colored, and only whites played in the majors. Still, Jim got to witness Paige's prowess on several occasions when he came to town to pitch for his Negro League team. On one particularly memorable afternoon, he watched Paige pitch an entire doubleheader, winning both games.