Bob Kucaba, 70, stood with his sister Kathy and 94-year-old mother, Arlene, at Bohemian National Cemetery Sunday afternoon after sticking four roses into the ground in front of a headstone bearing their last name.
Visiting the site where Bob and Kathy’s father — Anton Kucaba, a World War II veteran and Bronze Star recipient — is buried alongside his father, mother and great-aunt at the North Park cemetery is a Memorial Day tradition the family has carried on for decades. After Anton died in 2018, they continued as usual, now with one more loved one to visit.
He had been a medic’s assistant in the Pacific theater and earned the award for dragging an injured man away from combat. He took after his elder brother before him, who was an ambulance driver in World War I.
“It could’ve been somebody else, but it was him,” Bob said of his father.
In 1973, they visited one of his father’s army friends in Bodega Bay — the filming location of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” — when he learned his father had once fallen asleep while taking enemy shell fire.
“He could fall asleep just like that,” he said.
But their family ties to the site go beyond that, as elsewhere in the cemetery, underneath a washed-out, limestone headstone Bob can no longer find, are his great-great-grandparents and other relatives as well.
The site was a popular spot for Czech families who came to the city in the 19th century, in addition to having extended family they’ve since lost touch with as the family tree branched further and further.
“It’s not the most common name, but there’s quite a number of us here,” Bob said. “The carvings of the names are hard to read. It’s been about 15 years; I’m not sure where it is anymore.”