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A few blocks of Oregon Avenue were blocked off Sunday, with Cookie’s Tavern, 2654 S. Alder St., seated at the heart of the event as hundreds of Marines marked their birthday. Beer flowed into yellow plastic mugs, with attendees smoking cigars and consuming hot dogs en masse, and a marching and rock band entertaining in the early afternoon chill.
To be a Marine is to be a part of a brotherhood. And when the United States Marine Corps commemorates its founding every Nov. 10th, every Marine celebrates their birthday.
“A lot of people don’t understand that the USMC birthday is our birthday,” Tony Ghaffari, who had traveled from State College for the day and was wearing, alongside a handful of his brethren, a dark green sweatshirt that labeled him a member of a FAST company — Fleet Antiterrorism Security Teams, said.
When asked to pinpoint what the day meant to him, Ghaffari, who joins his peers in protecting high-value naval installations, often specific to nuclear and weapon stock, said “a celebration of the Corps. What we’ve done, where we’ve been and where we will go.”
What’s surprising to lots of Philadelphians is that the Marine Corps was founded right here — in Old City. In the same space where the Continental Congress often met, the now extinct Tun Tavern, formerly Front and Sansom streets, the Marine Corps materialized in 1775 with the beginnings of a naval infantry. Only the Army can claim a longer-running history of armed service branches, beating the Marine Corps out by five months.
“Philly’s where it all started for the Marines,” Edward Chestnut, a 30-year-old who was signed up by his father at 17 and has since been deployed three times (twice to Iraq and once to Kuwait), said.
The South Philly native, who previously worked security at The Philadelphia Navy Yard, 4747 S. Broad St., is now employed by the Transportation Security Administration.
Whether people have been deployed a handful of times or were based at home to perform essential tasks, they were family Saturday.
David Kamioner, executive director of the University City-situated Philadelphia Veterans Comfort House, was on hand to give out pamphlets and cards that might help find their way to veterans struggling with housing and employment.
“Cameraderie,” he said of one word to describe the spirit of the day.
The Army veteran spent 10 years in service himself, but branch rivalries were only playfully entertained among the crowd members.
“Branch rivalry will always be there, but we’re all brothers at the end of the day,” Kamioner said.
The Lower Moyamensing space is a haven for the huge swaths of veterans who return home to less than ideal circumstances and though it served as the headquarters for this celebration, the 1000 block of Oregon Avenue was the venue. And John Lang approached with resolve.
“I run the street,” the block resident, who served in the Vietnam War from 1967 to ’68, said, eyeing a notepad and adding that the M60 machine gun and M79 grenade launcher on the stage were his.
Vietnam is certainly one of the biggest and most brutal conflicts the Corps has endured in the 20th century, and arguably, an era of the Corps in which faith in the United States’ military efforts garnered a critical eye from young men and women. Membership waned and numbers fell.
According to the Marine Corps website, the ’60s was the decade of the Marines at its height. Presumably, the Corps benefited from an exultant return of World War II vets after a triumphant D-Day campaign in France. The decade began with 175,571 and ended with 309,771 Marines enlisted. The ’70s came to an end with 185,250 Marines, while this decade began with a little more than 204,000 men and women with the title.
Marine, by the way, is a title that is earned and not given. This distinction was made by Delaware resident and Vietnam veteran, Robert Wood Dailey Baird III, who was full of Marine and military lore, as was his friend, a Croydon resident named William T. Roadfuss, who served alongside each other.
They shared stories, quotes, and trivia, and even relayed some tidbits of Marine Day celebrations past. James “Daddy Wags” Wagner, the Marine and family man who opened Cookie’s nearly 40 years ago, is no longer around for the celebrations. His daughters have kept the doors open since their father succumbed to a brain tumor in November 2002. Wagner was no stranger to the celebratory nature of a Marine Day party. Baird and Roadfuss tell the story of Wagner, far from sober, singing the traditional Marines’ Hymn into a wireless microphone from the balcony above Cookie’s entrance before safely swan-diving into a crowd of Marines.
Roadfuss captured the essential need for a standing army and, perhaps more specifically an amphibious force, to protect our country in unsettling and unpredictable political climates.
“When in the history of time has there ever not been conflict and strife and war?” he asked.
There’s no doubt that only a certain kind of person can make it all the way to earn the title, Marine. They’ve provided manpower for every single substantial military ground effort in American history, and the United States would likely not be standing firmly as it does now without them.
Roadfuss shared a favorite quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, who though seemingly employed to rally spirit and get Americans to buy war bonds in the era of WWII, succinctly captured the essence of the Marine Corps in two sentences: “The Marines I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marine Corps!”
Contact Staff Writer Bill Chenevert at bchenevert@southphillyreview.com or ext. 117.
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