His boiler room fire still burns
"Sal" Fico's heart is still on the USS Miami, but now he has a piece of the ship in his hand, too.
By BETH N. GRAY
Published August 14, 2005
SPRING HILL - Reggiero Salvatore Fico is Navy through and through. If a vein were opened, he'd probably bleed seawater.
Sal, as he is known by many, wears a collared, white knit shirt with "USS Miami" printed in black over the left chest. A tiny gold anchor earring adorns his left ear, pretty "today" for an 84-year-old. He had the ear pierced as a rite of passage in the 1940s when his ship left the Port of Los Angeles.
Fluttering just below the U.S. flag on the standard in front of his home in Windward Village is the Navy ensign.
Inside, Fico bustles around a spacious table laid out in military orderliness with his service decorations, yellowing "Ship's Orders of the Day," a stuffed skunk toy that plays Anchors Aweigh, a tan teddy bear in a white sweater emblazoned with "U.S. Navy" and a photo glued to its chest of the 20-something naval fireman - eventually petty officer - back in the 1940s. The display is flanked by black ball caps brightly embroidered with "USS Miami" and "World War II Vet."
A glass-top wooden case, front and center, holds Fico's most treasured medals and a replica of the light cruiser USS Miami, on which he served from Dec. 8, 1942, to Nov. 29, 1945.
"I was aboard that ship from the day it was launched," he said with pride.
A special piece of the ship is ensconced in the case. It's a polished portion of the deck planking, topped by a bronze plaque: "Presented to USS Miami Association, May 5, 2005." Fico qualified for the memento as a member of the commissioning crew.
Although the cruiser was constructed of steel, wooden timbers were laid between sections of deck plating to absorb expansion and compression of the metal plates caused by temperature variations, Fico said.
Visible on the sides of the plank are striations caused by the moving plates.
While the Miami was struck from the Navy list in 1961 and sold for scrap in 1962, someone mindful of memories saved pieces of the timbers.
"After all these years, they found a cardboard box with the planks," Fico said, pointing to a letter from the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C. The center parceled out fist-sized chunks to veterans of the crew that served in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Regardless of the lapse, the timing was propitious in advance of the 60th anniversary of V-J Day. Hostilities with Japan ended 60 years ago this week - on Aug. 15, 1945. Japan officially surrendered Sept. 2, 1945.
Whatever date veterans choose to remember, Fico remains pleased he was part of the campaign, but he admits to naivete at the time.
"I had fun," he said. "I was young then."
Assigned to the Fast Carrier Task Force, the ship supported air strikes and raids in the Mariana and West Carolina islands, in Luzon and Leyte in the Philippines, at Okinawa and Iwo Jima. At Iwo Jima, the Miami provided firepower five days before Marines raised the flag of victory immortalized in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph and in the Marine Corps War Memorial statue across the Potomac River from Washington.
Iwo Jima is one of Fico's most memorable encounters. As the fleet of destroyers, battleships and support vessels changed formation to confuse Japanese attackers, he said, the Miami almost collided with another U.S. vessel at 35 mph. It could have been mortal.
"Our ship was lucky," he said.
In the Marianas, steaming with a 25-ship fleet on what Fico called "a turkey shoot," U.S. ships' guns shot down 169 planes in the first day of engagement.
In another encounter, the destroyer USS Sigsbee was hit by a kamikaze pilot. The Miami steamed alongside to help, evacuating the injured to its sick bay and transferring food and supplies, Fico said.
Near Luzon, the cruiser ran into a typhoon. Three men were washed overboard, and one of two scout planes on the ship was carried away.
The Miami was shot at "many times, also torpedoes," Fico said, "but no serious damage."
The Navy was natural for the 21-year-old's enlistment when war broke out. His ancestors immigrated to the United States from Amalfi, on the Italian seacoast. In New Haven, Conn., all of the family was employed in fishery businesses, he said.
Fico and about 1,300 other crew members and officers were assigned to the USS Miami as it was being constructed by the Cramp Shipbuilding Co. in Philadelphia. It departed Boston in April 1944 for the Pacific via the Panama Canal, then to San Diego and Los Angeles, reaching Pearl Harbor in May.
Fico saw no sights along the way. He labored in the boiler room of the 10,000-ton displacement vessel, 38 feet below the waterline, a scary place to be stationed when Japanese kamikaze pilots came calling and when underwater torpedoes came fishing.
"That's a chance I took," Fico said with a shrug of his massive shoulders. "I'm just one of the lucky ones."
While the engine room was connected to the bridge via earphone, Fico and his fellow boiler men knew before the message "prepare for engagement" that the situation was turning dicey. It would be preceded by "full steam ahead." The boiler men would pump oil to escalate steam in the boilers, providing ultimate power and speed.
After his Navy years, Fico worked as a pipe fitter for 32 years in New Haven. He retired to Florida with his wife, Elfrieda, in 1981 and became a local government gadfly.
As president of the Spring Hill Civic Association in the 1990s, he battled the Hernando County Commission over what he viewed as the need for deed restrictions in the unincorporated community and on other issues, both county and school related.
Fico admits: "I was a pistol."
Although now beset with heart and respiratory problems and no longer allowed to drive, Fico still has boiler fire in his belly.
He scoffs at the revamped civic association - now called the community association - as "a country club."
Two weeks ago, he was up on a ladder trying to repair a recalcitrant garage door opener. His chauffeur and caregiver for four years, Sandy Schardine, coaxed him down when his face turned purple and rushed him to the hospital. Doctors said he had narrowly averted a major heart attack.
Fico admits he remains short on patience, whether it was on the ship, in local government meetings or in service to his wife of many years, an Alzheimer's patient at Bayonet Point Health and Rehabilitation Center.
While Schardine smooths the paths, Fico can still get up a rant. But when he looks on his naval mementos, a sense of satisfaction and peace radiates.
Beth Gray can be reached at grathbethn@earthlink.net