Thirty-seven years ago, at the height of the Vietnam War, a 21-year-old door gunner from Fairmount named Patrick E. Ward ran to board his departing helicopter, but, caught in a swirl of fear and adrenaline, leapt onto the wrong one. The bird he was supposed to be on completed its mission safely. The one he actually hopped into did not.

Back in Fairmount, a devastated community gathered for an enormous funeral. Patty's friends from Roman Catholic High School turned out en masse; his father's buddies from the police force all came to show support. Bill Phillips, who runs Phillips Funeral Parlor at 23rd and Brandywine streets, says it was the biggest funeral of his life.

"Patty was a special kid," he says. "[The Wards] were a good kind of people."

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

As time passed, normalcy began to return for many, but not for Patty's father, who was so broken up that he had to be assigned to the "roundhouse" (radio control room) — or for Phillips, who had known Patty "from a little boy" and felt that something was amiss.

"I said to myself, 'Geez, this kid deserves something we can remember him for,'" Phillips says.

His eye settled on a small plot of land at 24th and Aspen streets that was owned, but not maintained, by the city. Phillips made a few phone calls, and before long he gained permission to turn the plot into a park, and dedicate it in Patty's honor.

Ward Park looks as though the corner house has been plucked from a block of row homes, leaving in its wake a small, concrete rectangle. Inside this void is a stone commemorating Patty Ward; pinned on the back wall are plaques for other neighborhood veterans. There are also flags of various sizes, trees — including one incongruous Christmas tree and others that have old, moldy stuffed animals strung from the branches — and several chairs and benches. Usually, there is a group of older men in the seats.

"It's either sit here and socialize or sit home by myself," says Fran Ryan, 82, a World War II vet and former quality control manager for A&P. Since his wife passed away six years ago, Ryan has been one of a group of about 10 regulars who sit in the park, on and off, between 9:30 in the morning and late at night. In the winter, someone parks a car nearby and the men sit in that, running the engine for heat if necessary.

Almost all of these regulars are veterans (most, of World War II), and have lived in Fairmount all their lives. Had Patty Ward survived, he might have begun sitting here in a few years. But despite being a group of veterans in a veterans' park, which happens to be across the street from a Veterans of Foreign Wars building, the men say that they rarely discuss their military experiences. They describe themselves as boring.

On a recent Thursday morning, four men sit in Ward Park, enjoying a molasses-paced conversation about area lumber yards and how to pay for repaving the park floor. Late morning commuters say hello as they stop to pick up a Metro from the pile on a bench, and Hugo "Augy" (pronounced: Oogy) Caroselli watches for an electrician he has promised to let in for a neighbor. The neighbor is a medical student, and the men sometimes argue over whose girl she is.

Augy says that once you reach a certain age, change doesn't excite you much anymore. But the men do sometimes talk about how Fairmount is changing.

"The yuppies are moving in," says Jim O'Brien.

"They call it gentrification, don't they?" asks Augy.

"Well, I think you have to be a total ghetto to get that," O'Brien explains. "We were never quite there. Close, but no cigar."

Patty Ward's sister, Elaine Favuzzi, hasn't been chased out by the yuppies, and every now and again she drops by the park that she calls "a beautiful memory" of her brother. Bill Phillips visits, too. He still lives and works a few blocks away in a combination house and funeral parlor, the exterior of which is decorated with numerous American flags and yellow ribbons. Inside the house, there is a wealth of military paraphernalia, including a collection of books about World War II and an old cassette tape, sitting on the coffee table, labeled "Taps."

Phillips is a veteran of the National Guard, though he never served in combat. His son, William Jr., is serving with the Guard in Iraq right now. Though Phillips built Ward Park in the middle of a controversial war, he thinks it will take some time before anyone does something like that to commemorate an Iraq war vet.

"It'll have to wait for more men to come home," Phillips says. "That'll inspire people to do something in their honor."

The key, he says, is for an entire community to come together to honor one of their own.