The Story of Matthew...

The Story of Matthew…

Born 1 July 1988.

 

In April 1989, he was only nine months old.

 

During those nine months, he grew from a newly-born infant into a young boy with a personality that made every room feel brighter. He especially brought joy to me. I remember his smile. I remember his laugh. I remember the way he reached for my face with both hands — not grasping, just touching — as if he was making sure I was real.

 

Fast forward to today…

 

As I write this chapter of the memoir, it is a difficult day for me… as you will soon understand.

 

It’s been almost forty years. My sons are all grown and having children of their own.

 

As my grandchildren come into this world and reach the nine-month mark, I do not just see my grandkids.

 

I see Matthew.

 

The same age.

The same stage.

The same size.

The same smiles.

The same laughter.

The same determined crawl.

The same unstable but determined stance when pulling themselves up.

The same wide-eyed curiosity.

The same complete dependence.

The same vulnerability.

 

And I feel something that is both gratitude and ache — at the same time.

 

I long for my Matthew to return.

 

One of my priorities is to ensure that my grandchildren’s environment is baby-proofed. Checking every latch. Every gate. Every stair. Every edge.

 

Because I know what can happen in minutes.

 

In seconds.

 

Bear with me.

 

THE STORY OF MATTHEW

Many people are well familiar with four of my sons — Ricky, Brad, Rob, and Will — and their accomplishments. I talk about them often. I beam about them often. Sometimes I have to restrain myself from issuing what feels like an official press release when something good happens in their lives. They can be found on Google.

 

But few are familiar with our third son.

 

Matthew.

 

He would be thirty-eight years old this year (2026) if still living.

 

He was born on 1 July 1988 in Key West — and I almost missed his birth.

 

We arrived at 9:50 a.m. with Kum-Sun already deep into sudden labor — not early labor — but serious, “this is happening NOW” labor.

 

They wheeled her toward delivery.

 

I tried to follow.

 

“You can’t go with her. You NEED to fill out these papers.”

“B-b-b-b-but…”

“No. You NEED to fill these out.”

 

Up until that point, Ricky and Brad had been born in Japan at a military hospital. There were no complicated pre-registration requirements. Things were handled differently. This was our first stateside birth — and Florida Keys Memorial Hospital had rules. Paperwork. Administrative process.

 

“B-b-b-b-but…”

 

They won the debate.

 

While my wife was being rushed upstairs in active labor, I stood at a counter filling out forms.

 

At 10:20 a.m., her cervical dilation was complete.

 

At 10:40 a.m., Matthew was born.

 

And somehow, by the grace of God or pure timing, I made it into the room in time.

 

“Thank you, Matthew,” I whispered later. “Thank you for waiting for Dad.”

 

I was an extremely proud father.

 

He was beautiful. Solid. Alive. Another son.

 

Three Sgrignoli heirs down — two to go.

 

My goal had always been five children, just like the five in my own childhood home — Dawn, myself, Tonia, Joe, Stacy. Five felt right. Five felt complete.

 

Over the next months, I watched Matthew discover the world.

 

I watched him lift his head.

Crawl.

Try to stand.

I watched him pull himself up next to the glass coffee table.

 

He would pound his little hands against the glass — smack, smack, smack — then turn around to look at me as if to say, “Did you see that?!” When I smiled, he would laugh — a full-bodied baby laugh that came from somewhere deep and unguarded — then pound again, as if he had just invented percussion and needed me to appreciate the genius of it.

 

He would pull at my then-full head of hair with those determined little fists. Hard. Deliberately. With the complete confidence of a boy who knew exactly where he stood in the world, and that world was Dad.

 

He had a stuffed dog he carried everywhere. It was small and well-loved. Matthew knew exactly where it was at all times. It was his.

 

And when I held him close and said “뽀뽀” — bbo-bbo — meaning “kiss” in Korean, he would lean in and press his cheek to mine.

 

Those small moments are eternal.

 

You don’t know they’re eternal when they’re happening.

 

But they are.

 

Life was good.

 

It was simple.

It was loud.

It was chaotic.

It was beautiful.

 

20 APRIL 1989

Thursday.

 

The Florida Keys in April are warm but not oppressive. Sun on the water. A morning like every other morning.

 

I was working day shift at the Watchcase Facility (6947th Electronic Security Squadron) on Truman Annex, the western tip of Key West. I had ridden my ten-speed bicycle from Poinciana Housing to work, as I often did. It was routine. Predictable. Ordinary.

 

I remember nothing unusual about the morning. That is, perhaps, the cruelest part.

 

Shortly after noon, I received a call in the Surveillance & Warning (S&W) Center.

 

Security Police.

 

“There’s been an accident at your house which requires your presence.”

 

I don’t remember if he elaborated. I don’t remember tone. I don’t remember specific wording beyond accident and requires your presence. I don’t know if I asked questions. I don’t know what I said.

 

But I knew.

 

Something in his voice told me this was not a scraped knee. Not a broken arm. Not a call that ends with a sigh of relief.

 

I told him I didn’t have my car. I rode my bike.

 

“I’ll be there quickly.”

 

I arranged for a backup S&W Supervisor as fast as humanly possible. My mind was already home.

 

And then I was outside. On a bicycle. In the Florida Keys. Racing toward something I could not name and could not stop.

 

There is a particular helplessness in that image that I have never been able to shake. A father on a ten-speed bicycle, pedaling as hard as his legs would carry him, while the worst thing in his life was already unfolding a mile away. No siren. No shortcut. No way to get there faster. Just the road, and the sun, and a man who would have given everything he owned to be somewhere else.

 

I pedaled hard toward the United Street Gate and toward Poinciana. The world felt strangely slowed, as if it had not yet received the news.

 

Shortly after exiting the gate and heading down United Street, a Security Police vehicle intercepted me. They recognized me immediately — likely the look of a father in distress speaks its own language.

 

He didn’t waste words.

 

He put me in the car. He put my bike in the trunk.

 

He drove me — not home.

 

But to the hospital.

 

And in that moment, whatever thin thread of hope I had been holding onto quietly snapped.

 

At home, Kum-Sun had been sewing.

 

She was — and still is — an outstanding seamstress. She sewed garments and handbags for Fabrics of Key West, a well-known manufacturer of Key West-style clothing and accessories. She worked from home so she could be present for the boys.

 

She was a proud mother.

 

Our sons were her life.

 

Ricky (5) and Brad (almost 3) had just finished a bath upstairs and gotten out to dry off.

 

Matthew, almost ten months old, had been downstairs crawling around, exploring — as usual.

 

Somewhere in that small window of time — unnoticed, unheard — Matthew crawled up the stairway.

 

Upstairs.

 

Into the bathroom.

 

He pulled himself up against the bathtub.

 

The same hands that pounded on the glass table. The same arms that reached for my face. The same determination that made me smile every single day.

 

And apparently, he pulled himself over the edge into the water.

 

The rest need not be elaborated upon.

 

You understand.

 

A short while later — the number of minutes unclear — Kum-Sun began looking for Matthew so she could also give him his bath.

 

He was nowhere to be found.

 

Upstairs, Ricky and Brad went back toward the bathroom.

 

Children remember flashes. Fragments.

 

What they saw next is something no child should ever see.

 

Matthew.

 

He was found in the bathwater.

 

Still.

 

Unconscious.

 

And everything changed.

 

I have the police reports. The investigations. The medical reports. The autopsy reports.

 

I have read them.

 

I will not detail them here.

 

It is difficult enough typing these words.

 

What happened next will never leave me.

 

The scream.

 

The panic.

 

The impossible realization.

 

Kum-Sun has never described that exact moment to me in detail — and I have never forced her to.

 

But I know this:

 

A mother knows.

 

And in that instant, her world collapsed.

 

THE HOSPITAL

I arrived at DePoo Hospital before the ambulance did.

 

I don’t remember how I got from the police car to inside the building. I don’t remember walking through the doors. I only remember that everything felt surreal — like I was present but not fully inside my own body. Like watching a film where you recognize every face but cannot control a single thing that happens next.

 

I knew it was serious.

 

I did not yet understand how serious.

 

Kum-Sun and Matthew arrived shortly after.

 

The room filled quickly — medical personnel moving with urgency, controlled voices, equipment, monitors, oxygen, motion.

 

I am not what most people would call a ‘religious’ person in the outward sense. I believe. But my relationship with God is personal. I do not believe in needing a ‘middleman’ to speak on my behalf. From my perspective, if God is who we say He is, He already knows what is in my heart. He hears. He sees. He knows.

 

If others want to judge that, so be it.

 

But that day — I prayed.

 

No eloquent prayers. No theological prayers.

 

Just raw pleading.

 

I prayed with dignity. Without constraint. As a desperate father.

 

I wanted a sign. To feel something. A nudge. A whispered reassurance. Something.

 

I felt nothing.

 

My Flight Commander, First Lieutenant Paul Doucette, came to the hospital, stood beside me, and took my hands. He spoke words of encouragement. Words of hope. His presence meant more than he probably realized. He didn’t fix anything — no one could — but he stood there. That mattered.

 

But the room did not feel hopeful.

 

Eventually, the surgeons at DePoo concluded that they could not do enough for Matthew at that facility. He would need to be transported to Miami Children’s Hospital.

 

We were informed we were not allowed to ride in the ambulance.

 

Other transportation had to be arranged.

 

Miami was roughly four hours away by car — up US-1, the Florida Keys Overseas Highway — a road that, despite its name, is mostly a two-lane stretch suspended between water and sky. Beautiful on any other day. That day, it was simply the distance between my son and a hospital that might save him.

 

Somehow — and I still don’t know who initiated it — arrangements were made for the Navy base at Key West Naval Air Station to provide a dedicated helicopter for Kum-Sun and me.

 

To whoever made that decision, I am forever grateful.

 

We were escorted from the hospital by Navy Security to Boca Chica. The helicopter blades were already turning when we arrived. The sound was deafening. The wind from the rotors whipped everything around us.

 

I remember climbing aboard.

 

I remember the vibration.

 

I remember staring at nothing.

 

I remember staring out the window at the water below and thinking, This cannot be happening.

 

But it was.

 

We flew to Homestead Air Force Base, where we were met with a vehicle and a chaplain. From there, we were rushed to Miami Children’s Hospital in Coral Gables.

 

My sister, Dawn, flew in from Pennsylvania to be with us in the days that followed. Her presence was sanity. Stability. A quiet strength we desperately needed.

 

THE NEIGHBOR

Before I continue, there is something I must say.

 

During investigative interviews, it was revealed that a neighbor who was certified in CPR had been present in the immediate aftermath.

 

She did not perform it.

 

She declined.

 

Her reason: she feared being sued. Because she held a CPR certification in the State of Florida, she believed her professional liability was greater than that of an uncertified bystander. In her own reasoning, the very knowledge that qualified her to help was the reason she chose not to try.

 

I have thought about this for nearly four decades.

 

Florida’s Good Samaritan Act — which existed in 1989 — was designed precisely to protect individuals who render emergency care in good faith. The law was not ambiguous. It was not obscure. It existed to remove the barrier she cited. She was legally protected. Whether she knew that or not, I cannot say.

 

What I can say is this:

 

There was a ten-month-old child.

 

There was a woman who knew how to help.

 

And she made a calculation.

 

I do not know — and I will never know — whether CPR in those minutes would have changed anything. Matthew’s injuries were severe. The medical outcome may have been the same. I hold no illusion that I can say with certainty what would or would not have occurred.

 

But she did not try.

 

She did not kneel down.

 

She did not put her hands on my son.

 

She did not give him the one chance she had the training to give.

 

A child's life — any child's life — is not a liability calculation. It is not a risk assessment. It is not something you weigh against the possibility of a lawsuit.

 

The purpose of knowing CPR is to use it.

 

Not to protect yourself from using it.

 

I have never spoken her name publicly. I do not do so now. But I carry this.

 

And I always will.

 

THE WAITING

The days that followed were a blur of hope and setback.

 

Hope. Then setback.

Hope. Then setback.

 

I had no emotional framework for this.

 

Miami Children’s Hospital placed us in apartment-style temporary quarters nearby.

 

When we were not at Matthew’s bedside, I would retreat to the bedroom closet.

 

I would close the door.

 

And I would cry in a way I had never cried before — and have never cried since.

 

Morning. Afternoon. Night.

 

There is something about a closet — enclosed, dark, insulated — that feels appropriate for grief that has no words. No audience. No expectations. No one asking how you are. Just the dark, and the sound of your own breaking.

 

We met periodically with the Bereavement Counselor. She began preparing us for the worst-case scenario.

 

I resisted.

 

Hard.

 

I searched for unrealistic options. Alternative possibilities. Exceptions to the rule. I must have been an exhausting presence. I know that now.

 

Meanwhile, Kum-Sun continued to sit by Matthew’s bedside.

 

She touched him.

 

She spoke to him.

 

She sang to him.

 

I don’t know how she did it. I still don’t. Her strength in those days is something I have never fully been able to explain.

 

But the medical reality was becoming clear.

 

Matthew showed no signs of brain activity.

 

Under Florida law, if there is no brain activity, and subsequent testing twenty-four hours later confirms none, the patient is considered brain-dead — ethically, morally, clinically, legally.

 

There would be no choice. Life support must be withdrawn.

 

There was no appeal.

No override.

No parental veto.

 

On the afternoon of April 24, four days after the accident, we were told the final follow-up testing would occur the next day.

 

April 25.

 

Our wedding anniversary.

 

That night, I had to make a decision.

 

I drove four hours back to Key West alone.

 

I needed to pick up Ricky and Brad. Pack clothing. Prepare for what would likely be Matthew’s funeral in Pennsylvania.

 

The drive down the Overseas Highway at night is long, dark, and quiet. Water on both sides. Little traffic. Endless bridges. The kind of road that leaves you alone with your thoughts whether you want to be or not.

 

I cried almost the entire way.

 

How I kept the car on the road, I do not know.

 

I reached Key West. Gathered the boys. Packed what we needed. And drove back to Coral Gables.

 

Another four hours.

 

Grief does not exhaust itself. It renews with every mile. And I was unsure how to communicate everything to Ricky and Brad in those moments — or whether to try.

 

25 APRIL 1989

The follow-up tests confirmed what we already knew.

 

No change.

 

We were told what would happen next.

 

We were given a few hours.

 

Ricky and Brad came to see Matthew and say goodbye.

 

Matthew was baptized.

 

Ricky and Brad were baptized as well.

 

I do not know if it was theology or instinct, but it felt necessary. As if we were anchoring something eternal in the middle of something devastating.

 

Then I was asked:

 

“Do you want to hold him when life support is disconnected?”

 

Of course I did.

 

Yes.

 

Without hesitation.

 

They placed Matthew in my arms. His stuffed dog — the small, well-loved one he carried everywhere, the one that was always exactly where he left it — rested beside him.

 

He felt smaller than I remembered.

 

Or maybe it was the weight of what I was holding.

 

I pressed my cheek to his the way he had always pressed his to mine. I said “뽀뽀.” I don’t know if I whispered it or said it aloud. I don’t know if I said it once or more than once. I only know I needed him to hear it.

 

I wanted him to know — beyond any doubt, even if he could not consciously know — that he was my son.

 

That he was not alone.

 

That his father was there.

 

I sat in that chair, holding my son.

 

At 4:10 p.m. on Tuesday, April 25th, 1989, Matthew was pronounced dead.

 

Ten months old.

Ten months of pounding on glass tables.

Ten months of pulling my hair.

Ten months of “뽀뽀.”

Ten months of smiles and kisses and laughter.

 

Gone.

 

And my life split into Before and After.

 

There are no words that can adequately describe that moment.

 

Writers like to think we can capture emotion.

 

We cannot capture that.

 

But only those who have lived it truly understand the physical tearing that happens inside your chest. It is not a metaphor. It is something your body does — as real and involuntary as breathing.

 

I recorded my thoughts in the days and weeks that followed onto cassette tapes. Those tapes were eventually lost.

 

Somehow, I wish I still had those exact words — raw, immediate, unfiltered.

 

But perhaps it is just as well. Some things are not meant to be replayed.

 

SUICIDE

On 1 July 1989 — what would have been Matthew’s first birthday — I went to Smather’s Beach.

 

I intended to walk into the water and drown.

 

As Matthew drowned.

 

I walked out as far as I could, past the sandbar.

 

The water rose.

 

I wanted to die.

 

But I did not want to feel death arrive.

 

Drowning takes time. There is a point of no return. I thought about that — would I regret it once it began? Would I fight it? Would the fear of drowning be the last thing I felt?

 

That thought terrified me.

 

I wanted it instantaneous. Certain. Final.

 

I turned back.

 

It was not bravery. It was not clarity. It was not some sudden will to live breaking through the surface like light.

 

It was fear.

 

And I felt like a failure for it — the same way I felt like a failure for not being there when Matthew needed me most. The same way I had felt like a failure at the counter, filling out paperwork, while my wife was being rushed upstairs. The same way every father feels when the one thing he existed to prevent — harm to his child — happened anyway, on an ordinary Thursday, while he was a mile away on a bicycle.

 

Eventually, I walked back to shore.

 

I am glad I did.

 

I did not know it then. But I am glad now.

 

LEGACY OF LIFE

Kum-Sun and I decided Matthew would be an organ donor.

 

There was no sense in taking hope away from others.

 

Some of his organs and tissues were transplanted successfully — heart valves, aorta, liver, right kidney, right ureter, spleen, pancreas, corneas.

 

Somewhere, other children benefited.

 

I occasionally reread the acknowledgement letters.

 

Matthew is still walking this earth.

 

In other children — now grown.

 

I do not know their names.

 

But he is still here.

 

And I find more comfort in that than I ever expected.

 

THE FUNERAL

Matthew’s funeral was held at Myers Funeral Home in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

 

During the service, Kum-Sun did something I still struggle to comprehend in terms of strength.

 

She asked to play the organ.

 

She played and sang Jesus Loves Me — the same song she had sung to Matthew from the day he was born. The song he had heard in our home, in the car, at bedtime. The song she had sung to him in those last days at the hospital.

 

I cannot tell you what it sounded like in that room. I cannot describe it.

 

I can only tell you it was the bravest thing I have ever witnessed.

 

Her faith did not rage.

 

It endured.

 

Mine wrestled.

 

She is stronger than I.

 

THE QUESTION

For years afterward, I struggled with one simple question:

 

“How many children do you have?”

 

Four?

 

Or five?

 

If I say four, I feel like I am erasing Matthew.

 

If I say five, I must explain.

 

And explaining means reliving.

 

There is no clean answer to that question. There is no version that doesn’t cost something.

 

But the answer is five.

 

Matthew is my third son.

 

The answer is five.

 

MY CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR AT WORK

One detail I learned much later added a quiet layer of frustration to an already painful chapter. Following Matthew’s death, I was eligible for an immediate Hardship Transfer — a reassignment that would have allowed our family to leave Key West, the very place where our son had died. I did not know that option existed at the time.

 

For seven years, I remained stationed there.

 

When I eventually learned that such a transfer could have been requested, I struggled with that knowledge. Not because I was looking to assign blame, but because staying in the same place where every street and every routine carried memory made healing extraordinarily difficult.

 

From 1986 to 1989, my assignment in Key West had been marked by professional success and forward momentum. After Matthew’s death, from 1989 to 1994, that changed.

 

I will not pretend otherwise: I was not an easy person during those years. I carried anger. I carried confusion. I carried grief I had never been shown how to process. Some of the challenges that followed were, unquestionably, of my own making. I could have handled situations better. I could have responded differently.

 

But what I truly needed in those years was help — not correction. I needed space to grieve. I needed understanding. I needed someone to recognize that a father mourning his son is not a disciplinary issue to be managed.

 

In hindsight, I do not believe anyone intended harm. Leadership sees mission readiness; they see discipline; they see order. I understand that now more than I did then. But grief does not respond to policy. Trauma does not submit to rank.

 

I was a broken man trying to survive.

 

THE CRUCIBLE

I would not survive reliving it.

 

But over time, it changed me.

 

It deepened me.

 

It humbled me.

 

It made every success of my other sons sharper.

It made every grandchild sacred.

It made every latch matter.

It made every ordinary day extraordinary.

 

Today, when I see my grandchildren, I see Matthew.

 

I see what was. I see what could have been. I imagine the man he would have become. The laughter he would have carried into a room. Whether he would have had Kum-Sun’s quiet strength or my restlessness. Whether he would have been a father by now. Whether he would have pounded on a glass table just to make his own children laugh.

 

I do not have the answers to those questions.

 

I only have ten months.

 

But those ten months are mine, and no passage of time changes that.

 

Again, I am immensely proud of my sons — all of them. Their discipline, diligence, achievements, and choices of life partners reflect both their mother and the lessons life has given us.

 

But Matthew is not a footnote.

 

He is not a tragedy to be quietly filed away.

 

He is my son.

 

And if there is one thing I have learned, it is this:

 

Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.

 

Cherish your children.

 

Cherish your grandchildren.

 

Tell them.

 

Preserve the memories.

 

Matthew, my son — I love you.

 

Watch over us.

 

– Dad

 

ADDENDUM

Matthew is currently buried in Pennsylvania, in a family cemetery plot.

 

But he will not remain there.

 

Arrangements have already been made to ensure that, in time, we will all rest together at Arlington National Cemetery. Approval has been granted, and a case number has been assigned. The process is in place. When the moment comes — whether now or later — Matthew can be moved to Arlington so that our family will share one gravesite.

 

It will be one grave.

 

My name will be on the front. Kum-Sun’s and Matthew’s will be inscribed as well, together — united in the same place.

 

There is comfort in knowing that this has been settled. No uncertainty. No confusion. Our wishes are documented and assured.

 

I am grateful to Arlington National Cemetery for the clarity and dignity with which they handle such matters.

 

In the end, we will be together.

 

Together again, my son.

 

– Dad