I just got a call from Mom and we ended up talking about ony and Angelica Marchetti and How Anjelica had last had dinner with Walter and his new wife ( Judy had passed away several years ago , and how Anjelica knows that Walter has a daughter still living in Brazil and does not know where the son may be now? Wow. A lot to digest and to record here as this conversation led to a big one that took place just after Larry was born in 1961 and concerned how our father Harry Quinn became a real hero and the whole world read about it, saw the photographs published juat after, or maybe even as this all was happening.
Walte Gainsbury was involved, too and our father never found out becaus Mom never told him when he got back from Recife and he asked her : " How are you doing? " But more on that a bit later.
Mom was speaking so quickly just now, breathless and very excited as she spoke and laughed and her voice revealed the true emotion there still as she recounted this rather incredulous story and how it affected her and the three of us, the children that were still in Rio de Janeiro while our father had been flown to Recife and boarded onto a ship there just off the coast of Brazil where all the action and how this exciting story was finishing and playing out that started in Europe on a luxury liner there in the Mediterramean somewhere way back when in 1961 or 1962? I will have to check for the articles published on this to get more of the details and the facts that were then recounted to the world.
What I relate here is simply the story that my Mom just recounted to me ( it was the second time now, the first I do not think I got all the information like this at once to really get this amazing story and picture in my head, in one! ).
According to my mother there was a luxury liner loaded with passengers, all wealthy Eurpean ones thinking that they were on a luxury liner about to take off on some wonderful cruise. But oh no , according to my mother just now. She tells the story that the captain of this ship was from one of the northerne African countries trying to get it's independence and the captain being from there had the idea to hijacl the boat ( the first-time ever my mother just said this had ever happened ) and to ramsom them for their money to give back to his country to help them fight their battle to gain independence.
Well, he was able to get their monet supposedly and he was able to manuever this ship that they were on and avoid capture and attention. he was good at this and he somehow got the ship . this luxury liner to Brazil and to where they finally hid and ran out of food off the coast of Recife the town. Many of our American Coast Guard and other military vessels, as well as those from other countries were all trying to find this ship? Where was it? Everyone was in hot pursuit and so everyone was looking, many military ships out in the Atlantic all at once trying to find this ship?
Our father, Harry Quinn that was stationed there at the American Embassy in Rio De Janeiro, it may have been Brazilia by now, but I think it was still Rion, was called to active duty to go and try and resolve this tense rescue of all these passengers that had finally been found. Once the food ran out the captain contacted those searching for them and alerted them to where they were. My father, according to my mother just now was the only one there at the time that had wartime experience having fought in World War II and he was the only one she said that was qualified there to try and attempt a peaceful and quick resolution to this now international world scandal.
While this was happening my mother was scared for our lives because she says that we received many threatening calls from those that had an interest in this and did not want our father to be successful in this quest and mission that was suddenly thrust upon him. She said that many threatening calls she got and that they were made on our lives if our father did not cease and desisit immediately.
She was afraid for herself, for the three of us and for Mariana and Baba that worked for us cooking and taking care of us all at the time. She did not call the American Embassy and she did not want the Marines to be dispatched to our home. She said that this would have been sudden death to have done so as the marines would have drawn more attention to us and where we were. She had fear still in her voice as it quavered and broke and she grew hoarse teling this.
She called our friends Judy and Walter and asked Walter what she should do? He said : " Nacy, have you ever fired a gun? " My mother said that she had and that she had learned how to on the Orme Ranch that she went to as a young teenager for the summers when growing up. here she had learned to hold a gun and aim it at empty tin cans and shoot and hit them! Once hearing this Walter told her that he would bring her a gun and that she would have to use it to protect herself and the three of us and Mariana and Baba, too. He did bring it, he did show her, and so she was ready with a gun to use if need be. Amazing.
She never did have to use it. Somehow Dad was flown to a ship that was close to this Luxury liner and somehow he was suspended in a basket on a line that was dangles with a crane of some type over the Atlantic between the ship and the Luxury liner, I suppose arranging with the captain of that ransomed/ hijacked vessel to negotiate terms for the safe release of all these hostages. Mom says that a picture of Dad in his basket that she said looked like an Easter basket was printed in the newspaper account ( she cannot remember if it was the New York imes of the Washington Post that she saw this in ? ), and so she knows it is true.
She said that Dad was a hero in all of this and that ther article and these pictures like this one which she claims was half the page alerted the world and her to parts of the story she knew nothing about as it was all so hush-hush being the first-ever international scandal like this that she was aware of that involved a luxury liner being hijacked?
I aksed her : " What was Dad's reaction to this when he returned? he must have been mad? " She said that she never told Dad about the gun and that three or so months later she returned the gun to Walter wrapped in newspaper and thanked him for it. he was a hero to her for helping her and not just outright dismissing her pleas and her plight and doing nothing.
It would be great to hear Walter's accounting of this story now so many years later? I would love to hear it myself.
Now I have the task of looking into all of this and finding out whatever I can and reading and seeing this picture and story as it is all quite exciting.
Mom just said that there was a storage facility that she wished that she had visited where many of these olf stories get sent to for safe-keeping. Maybe I will lookin into that myself now.
Wow, so much left for me to do now. More as soon as I have any to share here. Cheers,
Happy Sunday, February 1st, 2015 on Super Bowl Sunday where the Seahawks play the Patriots soon! More big news, but nowhere as exciting as this. Cjeers, TONY
