Tough week for my family, buried my favorite uncle in Minnesota yesterday. He was my Dad's brother, retired Minneapolis Police Lt. Pat Hartigan who was a Robbery/Homicide detective and a highly decorated cop. The old cliche' is that every Irish-American family had a cop and a priest in it, he was the cop.
Among other things, he was Police Officer of the year in the state of Minnesota in 1975, and won a major humanitarian award for his work with American Indians in MN. He was also a brilliant detective and great patrol cop because of his extraordinary people skills. Yeah, I was pretty proud to be his nephew. He was childless, so I inherited his police stuff, including his badge and 1958-issue nightstick, plus a really cool (and valuable) special Colt .357 commemorative gun in a display box w/ Mpls. PD engravings on it. I will post a picture of it later when it arrives here.
We had a really nice funeral in his Catholic parish w/ MPD honor guard, and burial at Fort Snelling National Cemetary with full military honors, (he and my Dad were both Korean war combat vets), 21-gun salute and flag ceremony. I was tearing up, partly for my Dad who has cancer and won't be too far behind him. Can't imagine what it felt like for my Dad standing there in the cold during the salute, all 130 lbs. of him thinking about himself and his brother as young Army soldiers who were tough as nails.
Anyhow......, don't mean to blather on but knew that I had to share this w/ my brothers (and sisters) here, there was never any doubt of this.
Here is his retired badge in a special plexiglass thing that they gave him when he retired:
Here is his obit in the Mpls. paper:
http://www.startribune.com/466/story/218197.html