We don’t need to keep everything, okay?
She first saw her father’s historic war memento about 10 years ago,
then not again until April 19 when a Cook County bomb squad took the
land mine after officers determined the bomb was live and confiscated
it.
“I don’t think it would have gone off, unless of course a vehicle
had driven on it,” Welch said, adding that her father never physically
handled the land mine as if it was dangerous.
Her sister even snapped a photo of the bomb before police evacuated the home, as well as a few neighboring homes.
Welch and her family were cleaning out the basement of her parents’
home in the 7700 block of Bristol Park Drive when they found the land
mine on a work bench. DiCarlo died almost five years ago. Welch’s
mother and DiCarlo’s wife, Mary, died earlier this month.
To be safe, Welch’s family called Tinley Park police. Then the bomb squad arrived.
An Army military officer during the war, DiCarlo likely confiscated
the land mine from a prisoner, Welch said. The bomb traveled from
Texas, where DiCarlo was stationed in the early 1940s, to the many
homes Carmen and Mary DiCarlo shared in the Southland. After Texas,
they moved to Chicago, then to Harvey, to Chicago Ridge and finally to
Tinley Park, where the DiCarlos lived since 1997.
Welch was somewhat surprised to find the land mine, but she said her father was a pack rat.
Obviously a very good one.
Heh.
A.