by Digby Hand
pronematch.com is saddened to have to announce the passing of Albert “Uncle Al-The Shooters’ Pal” Metzger on December 11th at the age of 88.
Al was one of the Connecticut shooting community’s grand old men, truly a treasure, who will be missed by all who knew him.
During World War II served in the US Army Air Forces as a B-24 Liberator crewman with the 420th Bombardment Squadron (Heavy). After retiring from Harvey Hubbell in 1985 he became a school crossing guard. Pronematch is certain that the children of Second Hill Lane Elementary School in Stratford, whom Al, protected as they traveled from home to school and returned, were delighted Al’s brilliant smile and soft engaging laughter. It is easy to imagine the kindly Metzger using his skills with magical illusion to ease the first day of school by pulling a coin out from behind a anxious schoolchild’s ear.
Al was an avid competition rifle shooter and coached at the Bridgeport Rifle Club, the Stratford Police Athletic League, Bunnell High School and Fairfield Prep.
He is survived by his loving and devoted wife of sixty-six years, Shirley, and four children, Sons Stephen, Robert, and Tim and daughter Susan Lane, In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made in his name to your local chapter of the American Red Cross or the American Heart Association, a fitting tribute to a man who had a big heart.
Over the course of the years this kind and generous gentleman, who was a friend to all, displayed a keen sense of humor. An example might be the year whenFiocchi ammunition was all the rage. Al came to the line with his supply of the Italian knot lot all loaded into his ammo block, as would any good shooter, only his ammo block was a link of pepperoni.
Al believed that Shooting should be fun. The reason most of us shoot is because we want to do something that is both relaxing and rewarding. However, there are times when we go overboard and transform a labor of love into a labor. Camp Perry can be like that. We train all year so that we can be at our best when we get there. So, instead of taking our ease and doing the best we can we get wound up tighter than a two dollar watch. The tension rises and we find ourselves short of temper and score. It just shouldn’t happen but it does, usually on team day.
Some years ago, long before the NRA Smallbore Committee created the Made In America Match, a quartet of members of The CPL Digby Hand Schützenverein swept onto the firing line like a cool blast of air and slashed the tension like a hot knife through a slab of some effete Yuppie’s Brie. They were The All Americans! Tired of the pretentious and uptight air of the competitors on team day, Ned Lombard, Wally Lyman, and Steve Rocketto followed patriarch Al Metzger to the line. Rebellion was in the air and they would banish angst from the firing line during the most angst-ridden match of all: the any sight prone team match.
The ground rules were simple. They would heed the word of our first president, George Washington, and avoid all foreign entanglements. The All Americans would use only shooting equipment and ammunition manufactured in the United States. Remington and Winchester would be the names on their Director of Civilian Marksmanship issued rifles and ammunition while optics would be made by Lyman or Redfield. Ancient 10X mats would protect their ample bellies from grass stains. Freeland blocks would hold their ammunition; old yellow quilted shooting gloves would protect their hands from the cruel pressure of rifle slings made from the hide of a Texas steer. Creedmoor and Champions Choice shooting coats would pad their shoulders and calloused elbows.
They marched up to the line behind Metzger as he piped out the reedy strains of ‘Yankee Doodle” on his harmonica. Flopping down next to the United States Army Marksmanship Training Unit’s first team they made it clear that they were a shooting force with which to be reckoned. Not in shooting expertise, that would be hubris of a monumental proportion, but in love of the shooting sports. From the frame of the awning they hung a length of chain, with a small boulder attached, for a wind gauge and dug in to do battle.
After the last shot had been fired, the gear packed away, and the scores were posted the All Americans were, to no one’s surprise, in last place. It was, to them, a place of honor. They were not really last. They were the solid foundation and the true spirit of shooting which supported all of the teams above them. They had shown that shooting was more than just winning. They had shown that was also having the right spirit.
Jay Sonneborn recalls the follow up the next year when the All Americans Three Position Team, comprised of Al, Ralph Gilnack, Bill Johnston and Jay kept the faith. On a really foggy day they were led to the firing line by Al playing his ever present harmonica, taking their place next to the Army Team for a second consecutive year. Al proceeded to serenade the line. During the prep period Army team member Lones Wigger, never one to shy away from a prank, lightheartedly reminded Al of the distraction he was causing to some of the world’s greatest riflemen. The tale of the encounter must have taken all of three seconds to travel from one end of the line to the other end. The team was still hearing about the happening the next year when they returned to Perry. People could not believe that there would be shooters who would “disrupt” such great shooters as Wigger and his coterie. Thank you Al., Jay still has the photo to prove it.
Several years later Hap Rocketto’s oldest daughter, Sarah, asked if she could go to Camp Perry with him. She was not a shooter but, hoping that maybe the bug would bite her, he agreed to take her in a flash. His wife Margaret was not as easy to convince. She has been to Perry with and knew how focused he was on his shooting. He thought her concern was that he would simply ignore his ten-year old kid and allow her to wander off to Toledo where she would be stolen by gypsies and spend the rest of her life reading Tarot cards and tea leaves in empty store fronts throughout the Midwest. In fact, it wasn’t that. Margaret was positive that worse might happen; that is Hap would not insure that Sarah brushed her teeth, bathed, changed her underwear, and avoided junk food.
After a great deal of family discussion they were able to convince Mom that Sarah could go off with Hap and Uncle Steve. They next turned to Patty Clark who agreed to let Sarah occupy the empty bunk in her hut. She was rooming with her niece, Brittany Guba, and Emmy Caruso. Sarah hit it right off with these girls, even though they were seven or eight years older than she. They had similar interests such as purple nail polish, toe rings, strewing clothing about the hut, and sleeping in. What Margaret didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
All was well until bedtime. This was Sarah’s first time away from Mom and she was off to bunk in with some strange, and you can interpret that word in any way you wish, people. After a few tears and some strangled sobs she slipped into her hut, clutching her plastic baby “Dolly” with whom she has slept as long as she can remember. Hap was nearly a wreck figuring that he might have to get her on a plane bound for Rhode Island the next morning. Facing such a crisis he did what any sensible father would do, he ran off to Al Metzger and Lester Hull for advice. These two old gents have been the mainstay of the Stratford PAL Rifle program for many years. They are the support team that gets everyone and everything to its appropriate place at the appropriate time. Al and Lester seem to do it all. They are the foundation of a well-run program. They are the oil on troubled waters.
Al and Lester assured Hap that they would see to Sarah and he should not worry but rather turn his attention to shooting. The next morning Hap was up early to see that Sarah washed and changed her underwear. He gave her a sawbuck and turned her over to the genial gentlemen. The next he saw her she had been to town, had breakfast, spent the ten bucks, and had become a cocky Camp Perry veteran in a single trip to Port Clinton. Over the next week Al and Lester hauled her about, taught her magic tricks, and kept her profitably employed and out of trouble. By the end of the prone phase, to hear Sarah talk you would think she had been born in a hut and had her first solid food in the old Mess Hall. And though it all there was the prepubescent squeals of “Uncle Al says…” and “Lester told me that…” and “Me and Uncle Al and Lester were hawking the board and what happened to you in the Meter Match?”
When Hap asked Uncle Al when he first went to Perry he was a bit evasive and Lester was not one bit helpful. He is nothing, if not persistent, and eventually got Al to admit he had been there as a youth while he was in the service. Hap knew he had been in the Navy so he continued to harp on him as he figured he was a stalwart on one of the Navy Teams before World War II. Turns out, in a funny way, he was.
While Al will not admit to it publicly, a search of Naval enlistment records in the National Archives revealed that Uncle Al had joined the Navy as a young lad. His first berth was that of a powder monkey aboard the Lawrence on that fateful September day in 1813 when Perry beat the British. Wearing list slippers, he hopped from the powder magazine to the 32-pound carronades carrying serge bagged powder charges. If you don’t believe me just look at the celebrated oil painting of Perry shifting his famous “Don’t Give Up The Ship” flag from the Lawrence to the Niagara. If you carefully study face of the young lad who mains the steering oar you can’t help but recognize a young Al Metzger. The guy casting them off looks suspiciously like Lester Hull, but that could just be the powder smoke or the Mon Ami Chardonnay talking.
Generations of Connecticut shooters have been shepherded through their first trips to Perry by these wise old veterans. It is for certain that they got one scared little girl and her near panic stricken father through their first long trip away from home and Mom. They helped Hap’s little girl grow up and maybe did the same for him.
We are diminished.
