Robert McGinly

Robert J. Mcginly; Survived Pearl Harbor Attack

By Andy Wallace, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

POSTED: JANUARY 19, 1994

Robert John McGinly, 74, who used up a lifetime's worth of luck in surviving the attack on Pearl Harbor, then returned home to raise a family of eight and have a career as an electrician, died Monday at his home in Olney.

All his life Mr. McGinly kept this war memento: a small piece of shrapnel, about four inches square, on the mantlepiece in his living room. He found it in his shattered cabin aboard the USS Vestal, the quarters he had left shortly before the attack. His daughter, Mary Ann McGinly Coleman, said he had decided that morning to attend Mass on the island rather than play poker with his buddies aboard ship.

They all were killed, she said, and so was a friend who was crossing a baseball field, accompanying her father to church. Mr. McGinly survived and helped drag wounded sailors to safety.

He always considered himself very lucky, said his wife, Mary Ann Walker McGinly. "He said if he hadn't gone to church, he wouldn't be alive."

The war did put an end to Mr. McGinly's hope of playing major-league baseball.

As a youth, he was a better-than-average athlete. In soccer, he was a midfielder on the Lighthouse Boys Club Blues that captured the 1937-38 Junior Club Trophy in national competition. Mr. McGinly was the hero of the game, scoring the only goal on a penalty kick.

After graduating from Olney High School, he joined the Navy, where he learned a trade - but spent much of his time playing basketball, baseball and soccer.

A third baseman with a good batting eye, he was signed by the San Francisco Seals and intended to play for the minor-league team when his Navy stint ended. "He never had a chance to play because the war came along and everyone had to re-enlist for four years," his daughter said.

Throughout the war, he moved from ship to ship, where he worked as an electrician - when he wasn't needed to play third base for the ship's team.

After the Navy he returned to Philadelphia and took a job as an electrician with American Bakery Co. Later, he worked with various contractors as a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 98.

He married in 1948.

He was a volunteer baseball and soccer coach at the Germantown Boys Club and the Nicetown Boys Club.

"He introduced us all to ice skating," his daughter said. He regularly took his children - and as many friends as could fit into the family station wagon - skating at an outdoor rink in Olney or to the Wissahickon Skating Club, where he often worked weekends as an attendant, making sure the skaters behaved themselves.

Mr. McGinly, who did slapstick routines and minstrel shows in local vaudeville houses with his father and brothers during the 1930s, also loved to sing and dance and encouraged his children to enjoy those things.

"He played the ukulele and one year he bought six ukuleles and gave one to each of us kids," Mary Ann Coleman said. "I used to sit on the porch and practice 'Bye Bye Blues' on it."

He even allowed his sons' rock band to practice in the basement. "Even though he barked and complained about it, he let us do it," Mary Ann Coleman said.

"He had a very full life," she said.

He was also full of life. "On Christmas Day (Mr. McGinly and his wife) would get up and jitterbug in front of the family. When they got to a party, they brought the life to the party."

Surviving are his wife; sons, Robert J. Jr., Thomas J., John P., Michael A. and William T.; daughters, Mary Ann McGinly Coleman, Kathleen A. Yoskowitz and Maureen P.; nine grandchildren; two great-grandchildren, and a sister.