In his last years my father and his retired friends would play pinochle in his real estate office, a converted garage in a burb house in upstate New York.

A few hands into the game, and the real estate banter turned into stories about their failing health. I would be nearby writing his bills, embarrassed by this talk of what old Hamlet called “the natural gates and alleys of the body.”

One of his card buddies was a retired Army colonel named Dominick Vanzetti, a man as far from the famed anarchist as you can get.

Vanzetti had the right answer for everything. As a younger man he got into a fistfight at an officer's club. Vanzetti, having thrown the first punch, was charged with assault. Unwilling to pay a lawyer, he argued the case himself. Vanzetti was acquitted and praised by the judge for his presentation. My father loved this story of a man who won against the odds.