CHAPTER 1ALL ABOUT MIKE
In 2002, a thirteen-year-old boy sat down at his desk at the Michael J. Petrides School in Staten Island, New York, to complete an assignment titled “All About Me”:
My name is Mike Ollis. I live in Staten Island. I was born on September 16, 1988. I have two sisters and a dog. My dad’s name is Bob and my mom’s name is Linda. My sisters’ names are Kim and Kelly. My dog’s name is Sydney.
I like to play soccer, hockey and football. Soccer is my favorite sport. I play soccer for our school; I’m on the varsity team. I am a right midfielder. I also like to listen to music. I like rock and classic rock and sometimes metal.
I am in the US Air Force Junior ROTC. I like it a lot and have a lot of fun in it. I’m on the drill team: we march and do facing movements. We go and do drill competitions, which is a lot of fun. We go to New Jersey and Upstate New York, which is real fun. I’m on the color guard and do memorials for veterans and on national holidays. I carry the weapon in the color guard. I’m also on flag detail; I present the flag and take it down.
My rank is Airman 1st Class. My teacher for ROTC is Master Sergeant Jackson—he is also my sergeant. I have a captain named Captain Kuhn. He will teach me next year.
I want to join the US Army. I want to jump out of airplanes and helicopters. I want to be a sergeant.
Michael Harold Ollis declaring that he wanted to be in the army someday was not a new thing. Since the earliest days of his childhood, young Mikey wanted to be a soldier just like his dad, who had served during the Vietnam War’s bloody Tet Offensive. Mike had always idolized his father and even kept a poem about the heroes of Vietnam in his room. The author is unknown, but the poem was called “The Boys Who Fought in ’Nam”:
Passed hand to hand, the wishes
The dreams, the hopes of an entire generation
An entire nation sent to war,
A share of old men, leading all our boys to die
While we watched, in horror, in pain
In grief, the disbelief that we had to lose so many of our boys
Their FOYs [farewell feasts or gifts] barely left behind
Their eyes so young, so full of hope
The fight so long, so sad, the pain so bad
The wounds so deep until at last
Our young men sleep in their maker’s arms
Again their names carved in stone,
Never to come home, never to touch our fears
Again, lest we forget, the pain,
The cries, the agonies, the braveries,
The heroes and the smiles, the time
That was so long ago, across so many miles
In a land so bright, so green,
Caught in a place just in between hope and lies,
We must remember still, must promise,
That we always will touch their hearts
While we still can, remember friends …
Remember … the boys who died, who lived, who cried
The boys who fought in ’Nam.
Mike’s father, who was severely wounded by shrapnel during Tet, was one of those boys who lived. He had seen the horrors of war up close: from close friends being maimed to some being placed inside body bags in the middle of jungles full of unforgiving heat and unimaginable cruelty and violence.
Bob wouldn’t share any of those harrowing details with his only son until he was much older. For now, all Mike needed to know was that his dad was a US Army veteran who had volunteered to serve his country in Vietnam rather than wait to be drafted.
“This picture is of me and my dad,” young Mike wrote during an early school project titled “My Dad.” “He is special to me because he takes good care of me. He brings me to nice places. He coaches for my soccer team and brings me to his work so I can have a good time and learn about his job, and he takes me to the SportFest.
“Dad, Happy Valentine’s Day!” the project concludes. “Love, Michael.”
In the springtime of seventh grade, Mike’s history teacher, Tim Kielty, assigned a class project about the Civil War. As he later looked for the relevant file on Mike’s computer in order to grade the assignment, Mr. Kielty noticed a second file titled “Happy Father’s Day.” Unbeknownst to his teacher, the Civil War project had inspired Mike to start putting together an elaborate video for his dad that was far ahead of its time for a seventh grader in the year 2000.
Set to fellow native New Yorker Billy Joel’s hit 1982 song “Goodnight Saigon,” Mike’s son had been busy gathering hundreds of photos from his father’s Vietnam scrapbooks in order to salute his dad and the men he served with. Mike told his teacher that the special online video project, which was much more difficult to complete using the computer technology of that time, was still in its early stages.
Blown away by what he had already accomplished, Mr. Kielty urged his student to press forward, which Mike did. It wasn’t until an eighth-grade field trip to the nation’s capital that Mike was finally satisfied with the project, which he had meticulously and exhaustively edited for more than a year. Fittingly, the last photos taken for the video showed Mike visiting the National Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the first time and pointing to the name of one of his father’s fallen friends on the famous Vietnam Wall.
“And we would all go down together,” Billy Joel, who was always one of Mike’s favorite rock stars, sings in the “Goodnight Saigon” chorus. The camaraderie in the song deeply inspired Mike, as he longed to one day feel the same bond that his dad shared with his best army buddies—including those who didn’t make it home.
“Dedicated to all the Vietnam Veterans who died for our country,” Mike wrote at the end of the more than six-minute video.
After Mr. Kielty shared the montage far and wide with fellow educators to show the power that online videos could have in the classroom, he heard that Apple had used Mike’s project in a public presentation to demonstrate the huge potential of technology’s impact on education.
Mike expanded on the deep respect he held for his father in one of the last school projects he completed during his high school years.
There are many reasons why my father is special. There are numerous reasons why I admire him. My father has always been there for me when I was growing up. He never let his job stand in the way of his family. He did all the usual father things that are expected of a dad. He taught me to ride a two-wheeler, took me to my first baseball game, played catch, coached me in soccer on a traveling team, drove me to and from school, and taught me how to drive as well.
Yes, those are the typical things that good dads do with their sons. But what I think makes my dad stand out is his love of country and how he passed that down to me. You see, my dad was in the Army when it wasn’t the cool thing to do. When other guys his age were dodging the draft or enrolling in college just to get out of service, he pushed up his military duty before even being drafted. He became a soldier and served valiantly for his country. He fought in Vietnam and received the Purple Heart for wounds received. My father thought it was a privilege to serve the country he lives in and now, so do I.
* * *
“TAKE COVER!”
Those two words were repeatedly yelled by little Mikey Ollis not on a battlefield but while playing on Burbank Avenue in Staten Island as a young child. While he loved sports—especially soccer—nothing was more fun for Mikey than dressing up in an old National Guard uniform given to him by a long-serving neighbor and playing war. His big sisters, Kimberly and Kelly, would often put battle-inspired makeup on Mikey’s face to make his war games seem even more real.
From the moment Mikey first appeared in their hardworking, heavily Irish and Italian neighborhood of New Dorp in 1988, most who encountered the energetic boy running through the street thought they just might be witnessing the birth of a future American soldier.
Whenever Mikey’s dad would come home from his job as a mechanic or his mom from her job as a registered nurse, they could fully expect to be “ambushed” by their only son. Other parents and kids on Burbank Avenue had the same experiences, with the most humorous being Mikey occasionally sneaking into their homes or even climbing on top of their garages to surprise them with a barrage of sniper fire from his toy rifle. He would do the same at home with his treehouse by jumping out to “shoot” his two sisters as they got home from school.
His sister Kelly’s math tutor, Ed Palone, was so amused by Mikey’s ambushes that he bought him a new toy gun. As soon as Mike saw it and said thank you with a huge smile, his face immediately turned serious. For the entirety of Kelly’s math session, the tutor watched in amazement as Mikey didn’t just play with the toy gun, but did so while shouldering up to corners of the house’s walls and popping around quickly to shoot the imaginary enemy. Mikey’s focus while shooting from the standing, prone, and crouched positions was so intense that he seemed to forget Kelly and her tutor were even there. Years later, Ed would also tutor Mikey in math.
If Mikey’s horseplay wasn’t army-themed, it usually involved chasing his sisters or friends down their American flag–lined street while driving one of his huge toy trucks. His dad worked primarily on servicing trucks that delivered the New York Daily News to points around the nation’s largest city every morning. Mikey loved accompanying his father to work, where Bob would eventually teach Mikey to both drive and repair cars, trucks, jeeps, and even tractor trailers, which helped foster a lifelong fascination with operating large vehicles. It was the kind of special bonding time that could be experienced only between father and son.
There was a significant age gap between Mikey and his two sisters. Kim was thirteen years older, while Kelly had been born a decade before her little brother. That meant both sisters played a huge part in raising Mikey, especially since their mom spent many years working nights while their dad often worked odd hours, too. They did everything from change diapers to help Mikey learn how to walk, talk, read, and write. Even though he would sometimes bang his head against the wall in frustration when he didn’t get his way, Kim and Kelly adored their little brother. Later in life, both Ollis sisters would credit the time they spent helping raise Mike for making them better mothers to their own children.
Staten Island’s Burbank Avenue in the late 1980s and 1990s was a throwback slice of authentic Americana. From those flags outside nearly every home to kids like Mikey constantly playing in the streets over summers or after school, it was one of those places where all the neighbors looked out for one another and everyone felt safe. Most front doors were unlocked and each kid playing outside knew that their one and only curfew was when the streetlights came on. That meant it was time to hightail it home, wash your hands, and sit down for dinner.
There were no “playdates” and barely any scheduled activities other than team sports back in those days, especially in the summertime. If there weren’t kids playing out in the street after Mikey woke up and had his breakfast, he would simply walk over to a friend’s house and ring the doorbell or—in some cases—walk into their house like he did when he wanted to stage one of those ambushes.
“Is Keith up?” a five-year-old Mikey said one Saturday morning after opening the front door of the house across the street, which was owned by a New York police officer and his wife.
“I’m not sure, why don’t you go see?” Keith’s mom said.
Mikey booked it up the stairs and immediately woke up Keith Flannery, who was thirteen years older and about to graduate from high school one year after Mikey’s oldest sister. He had been out late with friends the night before and, like most teenagers, had absolutely no problem sleeping in the next day. While Keith’s first instinct might have been getting annoyed by the impromptu wake-up call, he adored Mikey and couldn’t possibly get mad at him.
After clearing a few cobwebs, Keith was outside playing basketball with Mikey in his driveway. Shooting hoops had become an increasingly frequent ritual since Mikey became old enough to ride his Hot Wheels around the neighborhood. Whenever he heard a basketball bouncing, Mikey would run outside and tear over to Keith’s after his mom, dad, or one of his sisters supervised him safely crossing the street. Most of the time, Mikey would bring his toy rifle, which he would position between the handlebars as he headed to Keith’s. Upon arrival, he would ambush the much older neighbor, who would fall down and pretend to die.
If you walked down Burbank Avenue on most summer days or evenings after school in the early to mid-1990s, you would find a future NYPD homicide detective and a future US Army infantry soldier playing basketball, baseball, or soccer in the street. Whenever Mikey made a basket, hit a home run, or scored a goal, Keith would yell “FLEX!” so Mikey could imitate Arnold Schwarzenegger or a professional wrestler flexing his muscles. Mikey, who had blond hair as a child before it got much darker later in life, would always do so while sporting a big smile.
“I’m gonna call you Mikey Muscles from now on, okay kid?” Keith said while patting his young neighbor on the head.
On one hot Staten Island summer day, Keith’s mom happened to be outside filming her son and Mikey playing baseball with the family’s new handheld video camera. As usual, Keith and Mikey would talk trash to each other while taking turns pitching and hitting.
“Okay, that’s two strikes,” Keith said with his thick New York accent while getting ready to throw a pitch. “Are you nervous? I’m nervous.”
Mikey blasted Keith’s pitch, nearly hitting a gray Ford Taurus that was parked on Burbank Avenue. He then let out a big laugh.
“That’s what you get!” Mikey said.
The friendly jabs ramped up as Mikey, who was wearing a very ’90s-style green-striped shirt and matching shorts, continued batting.
Copyright © 2024 by Tom Sileo
