Veteran plans memorial for son who fought different battle

LYNN – A Marine Corps veteran who fought on Iwo Jima is planning a memorial service for a son who refused to go to war but fought a battle of his own.”He did his own thing,” said William Quinn. “He spent his life taking care of others. That was his job.”On June 9, Quinn will hold a ceremony at the Rose Garden in Lynn Woods with a small circle of family and friends, for his son, Wayne, who died March 8 after a 19-year battle with cancer.”He was a different cut from my (other son) and me,” he said. “I was in the service, in Iwo Jima, Marines. My other son was in the Vietnam War, Air Force. Wayne didn’t want to go into the service.”Wayne Quinn said he could never kill anyone, his father said, so instead he spent two years doing what he called “grub” work in the bowels of Lynn Hospital.”But that’s where he learned what he wanted to do, nursing,” he said.Wayne Quinn grew up across the street from the city’s convalescent home on Tower Hill, “the poor farm,” William Quinn said. But he believes that is where his son first got a taste of what would become his passion.Despite their differences, his father may have also shaped Wayne Quinn’s views. William Quinn admits that there were times, particularly cold nights, when he left the basement door open to give those who would otherwise be on the streets a place to stay.Wayne Quinn graduated from Sacred Heart, St. Mary’s and eventually from nursing school before leaving New England for Seattle where he would live and work taking care of the city’s homeless until his death at age 63, his father explained.”He became a street nurse,” William Quinn said.Quinn hangs on tight to a 25-year-old copy of Pacific, a Seattle Times news magazine. The cover story focuses on Wayne Quinn, the “sidewalk Samaritan” who took care of the downtown’s homeless. He said his son was always bothered by the number of homeless in the city and across the country. He rallied to get them services and protested in Washington, D.C. to get them funding, and was arrested on more than one occasion for his efforts, William Quinn explained. He was by all accounts a protester, but William Quinn said he and his other veteran son were okay with that.Armed with a doctor’s bag and a stethoscope, Wayne Quinn also treated the homeless, for a time, right on the streets, William Quinn said.”First he had to build a rapport, become friendly with them,” William Quinn said. “But even when the city gave him a clinic it was down an alley, through a door to an (old) elevator and up on the fourth floor. It was terrible.”Quinn admitted he thought the whole idea of his son working on the streets was terrible but his admiration as he speaks of him is palpable.”Of course I was proud of him,” he said. “He made it his life.”Quinn said he decided to honor his son, who is also survived by a wife and two daughters, with a bench in the Rose Garden because Wayne Quinn loved Lynn Woods.”He used to go into Lynn Woods all the time as a youngster,” he said. “Sometimes we wouldn’t see him for two or three days.”Wayne Quinn was also a musician, part of an Irish trio, according to his father, who also plans to have a little Irish music at the ceremony.”We don’t want it to be a dreary thing,” he said. “It’s a ceremony, just a little thing, but not a sad thing.”Chris Stevens can be reached at [email protected].