Thomas Joseph Conniff

1917-1919 US Armed Forced medal at home of RC.

"Tommy, the family legend has it, went nuts from having to get up at 4 or 5 every day, march who the hell knows how many miles in dead of winter, wade across and build bridges over freezing rivers, then demolish them, only to rebuild, on and on, an earlier version of The Bridge on the River Kwai (except for the weather). Tom had enlisted with the Corps of Engineers under some misguided influence or his own perverse impulse. Anyway, I guess they discharged him, sent him home, where at one point he surged up out of what must have been pathological depression and tried to kill my sleeping Grandfather with a butcher knife. Thereupon, they put poor Tommy in the then county nuthouse known as Snake Hill, in the meadows just west of upper Hudson County. My Dad used to visit Tommy, as did his brothers and perhaps also his sisters, the latter no doubt contributing to if not intensifying his madness. Tommy died there at some point when I was in college, if I recall..." (JCGC)