"Once around for Tony B.—Full Send"

Remembering Tony Bonagura Two Years Later

I wrote this for a memorial for Tony Bonagura on 10-17-2021 in Gardiner, NY.

The “once around” is a reference to the final scene in the movie Once Around. That scene does not exist on YouTube or I would embed it here. You will have to go seek that film out and watch the end to fully understand . . .

I also wrote about Tony B. in one of my Song of the Day posts (see 6-21-2023).

“Once around for Tony B.—Full Send”

Full Send: “If you do something full send . . . you’re doing it full-throttle and with 100% commitment—even if you end up failing.”

Tony was a son, a brother, an athlete, an altar boy, a soldier, a veteran, a patriot, a husband, a father, a grandfather, an uncle . . . he was beloved by those who knew him best.

He was a sinner and a saint.

A friend and a mentor.

He lived his life with great passion and vigor.

For me there was no joy, no enthusiasm that was quite like the joy and enthusiasm of Uncle Tony.

He had a gift for living in the moment and for loving those around him. If you were fortunate enough to be in Tony’s tribe you were loved hard. As I knew it, this love for his tribe and the world embodied his relationship with Christ, and if you did not know that it would not be long before he told you about it.

He loved theology. He was a student and a scholar. He loved a debate. He was tenacious and unrelenting. He was bull-headed and stubborn as a mule. And somehow we loved him as much for these qualities as his more endearing ones. 

His love of debate was a reflection of his love for competition. He loved games of all kinds, from the trivial to the championship. He made everything fun. He hated to lose, but if you ever watched or participate in a penalty (a “full send”), you discovered that he knew how to make losing fun, too. At CICV reunions (the annual Vietnam Veterans/family reunions), stories, the best stories, were often about the penalties that followed a loss rather than a victory in one of the competitions.

His love for competition was often manifested in his passion for politics, and his passion and zeal got him in trouble from time to time. But no-matter what your politics were, Tony loved you just the same—just as hard—if you were in his family, in his tribe.

He loved the New York football Giants, and I used to watch games with him. I became a Giants fan because of Tony. In the early days, he used to get furious with Eli Manning—but I rooted hard for Eli. When the Giants beat the Patriots (twice) in the Super Bowl, I reminded Tony about his criticism of Eli. Like everything else, he took the ribbing with laughter and joy. Tony was a great sport.

Last summer one of my friends met Tony for the first time. He told me that though he barely knew him, Tony made him feel like family in the couple of days they spent at his house. And that was Tony, if you were in his house you were in his tribe, part of his family. And if you were lucky enough to be in his tribe, you were lucky indeed.

In the old days, marriage was bound in a fire that burned in the hearth of the home through the length of the union. In Tony and Snow’s home, this fire was symbolically cured through Snow’s cooking. Tony always beamed with pride as company raved over feast, after feast, after feast that Snow would make (no one left Tony and Snow’s house hungry). For me, his love for Snow was always reflected in the loving way he would talk about the way she ministered to others through her gift of cooking.

Tony B. had a way of making everyone feel important and loved. This was his great and special gift. Watching my children, nieces and nephews grieve his passing is a testament to the way his life ministered to all of us, from the youngest to the oldest.  

Tony moved the room—those of you who knew him know what I mean because of the way our tears flow now that he is not in it. He was a life force, and the largeness of his life was such that it has found an acute focus in his death.

*********

He was as comfortable in a bar as a church pew

Knowing as he did that the blasphemy of the supplicant

Was the prayer of the skeptic.

He loved Jesus and, as the old hymn goes,

he loved to tell His story. His passion for the what St. Paul

Called the foolishness of preaching—in that God

Chose the foolish thing to confound the wise

And the weak vessel to confound the mighty—

Was a knowledge that guided his days.

Loving penalties the way he did, he must have delighted

In the fact that Christ’s greatest loss, death,

Was His greatest victory, resurrection.

For me, his life, his home, was a foretaste of the Kingdom—

One of my enduring memories of Tony is of him at his house on Dusinberre Rd. in Gardiner, NY, on Resurrection Sunday. He has his arms opened wide and a smile on his face—he has his eyes closed and his face is turned up towards the sun and he is singing Washington Phillips “What are they Doing in Heaven Today?” He looks like he is singing to someone I can’t see:

And there's some whose bodies were full of disease
Physicians and doctors couldn't give them much ease
But they suffered 'til death brought a final release
But what are they doing there now?

What are they doing in heaven today,
Where sin and sorrow are all done away?
Peace abounds like a river, they say.
What are they doing there now?

As he sings he dances. It looks terrible at first . . . and then it is beautiful. He gets all the words wrong, but they are a perfect expression of what is in his heart. His eyes are fixed upon the sky. He is locked in. It’s like everything else that he has done in his life; it’s a Full Send.

Raise ‘em high to the roofbeams, my friends, my family, my tribe.

Let’s take it once around for Tony B.—Full Send!