A devoutly patriotic young woman, Boyington said she and the country owe their freedom to men like Czupkiewicz.
Frederick Czupkiewicz, of South Hadley, throws out the first pitch at Fenway Park in Boston Monday in the Boston Red Sox game against the Chicago White Sox.SOUTH HADLEY – “Are ya ready?”
That was a Red Sox representative, speaking to Frederick Czupkiewicz, 94, of South Hadley, at Fenway Park in Boston before the game against the Chicago White Sox on Memorial Day.
Was he ready! Czupkiewicz had been practicing for days. His granddaughter-in-law had been waiting five years.
That’s how long Lynn Boyington, of Granby, has been asking the Sox to let her “Gramps” throw the first pitch.
“He’s an avid Sox fan,” said Boyington.
Czupkiewicz is also a veteran of World War II, a former POW who was liberated from a German camp in 1944.
His granddaughter-in-law has adored him from the beginning. Boyington had lost both of her own grandfathers, and her grandmother had died recently.
“The day I met him,” she said, “he was holding a rhubarb leaf that was bigger than he was. I just fell in love with him.”
A devoutly patriotic young woman, Boyington said she and the country owe their freedom to men like Czupkiewicz.
She was relentless in pursuing her dream for Gramps, and knew she was close this year when she started getting emails from Red Sox events coordinator Dan Lyons.
At one point Lyons asked her if Czupkiewicz used a wheelchair.
A wheelchair? HAH!
Czupkiewicz walks, drives and cultivates a sizable vegetable garden. “He grows things that are taller than me!” said Boyington.
He uses a cane once in a while “only to keep my balance,” Czupkiewicz insists.
On the morning of Memorial Day, veterans had been assigned a variety of honors, such as singing the National Anthem, but no one knew who would make that ceremonial pitch. Finally, when Sox staffer Lyons met Gramps in person, he made up his mind.
Czupkiewicz threw the first pitch before a roaring crowd.
Standing next to his grandson Michael Boyington, a Marine veteran of Somalia, he succeeded in propelling the ball the requisite 45 feet.
“It was a dream,” said Lynn, who rode to Fenway in a two-car family caravan. “I am so proud of him.”
Czupkiewicz wasn’t worried about having thousands of eyes fixed on him. In another situation he might have been afraid, he said, but this time it was all about the ball.
The video Lynn took gets shaky at points. “I got a little emotional,” she said, tearing up again as she watched the scene.
When Czupkiewicz came back from the war, he worked for printing companies in his native Holyoke. His friends used to tell him he was a workaholic.
The game on Memorial Day lasted about two and a half hours. Who won doesn’t matter. Gramps slept a little on the way home.
Now Lynn jokes that she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with herself. She tried so hard for so long.
“It was such a huge thing on my bucket list,” she said.