All About Andy

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Andy Sokol: The Best America Has To Offer

By

Kitch Loftus-Mussari

Tony Mussari

Andy Sokol was one of a kind, and his kind was pure gold. We crammed a lifetime worth of memories into the time we knew him.

This humble, unassuming man was a genuine hero at Normandy and Bastogne where he earned the Bronze Star and seven other medals for courage and valor. Yet Andy did not consider himself to be a hero. The heroes, according to Andy, were the people who did not come home.

Andy Sokol is representative of the best in every person who ever wore or will wear an Army uniform.

By honoring Andy, we honor his brothers and sisters in combat then and now.

Andy was not rich or famous. He was genuine. He was a humble man who served his country with courage and honor. He was an honest man who spoke his mind. He was a thoughtful man who defined friendship in beautiful and meaningful ways.

We first met Andy on a fall afternoon in Windsor Park. He came here to supervise his nephew, Jeff Yedloski, who was helping us clean up the gardens and get the park ready for winter.

We liked him from the first hello. He was happy and smiling when he introduced us to his faithful companion, Bunny.

Bunny came bounding out of the yard to be with his master and you couldn’t help but love him, too.

We met Andy again on Senior Weekend in 2004 at King’s College.

He came to see a presentation by Jeff who was graduating that year. He stayed for the day and he enjoyed the work the students did for their projects. We learned later that Uncle Andy, as we now called him, had gone back to school at 69 and was the oldest graduate at the Luzerne County Community College.

Uncle Andy and his wife, Aunt Faye, came to dinner at the greenhouse with the Yedloski family several weeks after graduation, and it was then we started to learn about his success as a gardener. He talked about starting his tomatoes from seed and the flowers in his garden.

So it was a no brainer that for the Gardens That Work segment of The New Windsor Park Stories Andy was the perfect man for the job. He became the Greenhouse Gardener at Windsor Park and we learned more from our sessions with him than we could from reading a library full of gardening books.

Uncle Andy had the proverbial green thumb but he was also a teacher extraordinaire. He knew how to show you what to do in a way that gave you the confidence to try it yourself. He demonstrated how to get cuttings from geraniums, root forsythia branches, plant tomato seeds, choose the right potting soil and water correctly.

It was fun to be with him and learn about gardening, philosophy, values, history and a thousand other things.

Andy was a World War II veteran who hadn’t forgotten his days in the service and proudly showed us the contents of his box of memorabilia from those years.

He talked great warmth about his career as a mail carrier in the Back Mountain and his love of the people on his route. He said he would trace the old paths on days when he felt nostalgic.

He took us to Kettell’s Greenhouses in Falls, Pennsylvania and proudly introduced us to Danny and his associate, Andy Germick. Andy went there every spring for his flowers. On our first visit, Tony videotaped Andy as he walked among the seedlings and admired the work underway.

In early May we made a pilgrimage to buy hanging baskets and flowers for Memorial Day. It was a joyous occasion and it took two trips to get it all back to Dallas. Another time we finished the day with a great lunch at Pickett’s Charge as Andy’s guest.

Andy Sokol was a joy to be around. He met the Angel of Resurrection in the shadow of Veterans Day and he is very much missed…not only him but his spirit, his enthusiasm, his love of life, his curiosity to learn and his loyalty and his honesty.

He became ill while working in his garden and he never really recovered from the surgery he had to undergo. During the last four months he tried his best to get better and get back to his real life, but God had other plans. We have to accept that, but we can’t help but feel sad that we didn’t have more time with him.

At least we can say that we knew him, we laughed with him, we wanted to be with him, we learned from him, we admired him and we will never forget him, because his spirit is now a part of our lives.

It was a wonderful three years…short but full.

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