ENTRY 1: August 15, 2026 -- Who Was Anthony C. Acevedo?
Some people say the right role comes along when an actor is ready for it. In my case, I think it was both the right role and the right story. I just didn't know it when Anthony C. Acevedo first came into my life. Perhaps I should introduce myself before I introduce Anthony.
My name is Rodolfo Alvarado. Rudy to most people who know me. I'm a playwright, historian, writer, father of seven, and an actor who spent a good part of his life away from the stage. I had books to write, children to raise, a career, bills to pay, and all those other things that have a way of filling the years. There were other creative projects along the way, and I never stopped being a storyteller, but acting gradually became something I had done rather than something I was doing.
Now, at sixty-five years old, I find myself preparing for an extended Off-Broadway engagement in New York City, performing a one-person play I wrote and stepping onto the stage every night as a man whose life has been part of mine for more than a decade. His name was Anthony C. Acevedo.
Anthony first came into my life in 2015. It was a time when Mexicans and Mexican Americans were once again being discussed in the national conversation in language I found deeply troubling. We were hearing words like rapists, drug dealers, and murderers. As a Mexican American historian and writer, I found myself thinking about the stories we tell about people—and, perhaps more importantly, the stories we don't tell.
I began looking for a connection to American history that people might never expect to find through a Mexican American life. Not because I wanted to manufacture a response to what I was hearing, but because I knew our history was larger than the narrow picture being presented. And then I found Anthony.
A Mexican American Army medic. A prisoner of war. A survivor of Berga. A young man who had tried to care for dying American soldiers with almost no medicine or equipment and who secretly kept a diary recording what happened to the men around him. A man who returned home carrying that history and lived with it for decades before finally speaking publicly about what he had witnessed.
I remember thinking: How did I not know about this man?
I was a historian. I had spent years studying and writing about Mexican American history. Yet here was a Mexican American soldier whose life intersected with World War II, the Holocaust, the Battle of the Bulge, American prisoners of war, Nazi forced labor, trauma, faith, family, and the complicated meaning of loyalty to one's country.
And I had never heard his name.
That question--How did I not know?—eventually became something much larger: How many other people don't know?
That was the beginning.
But researching Anthony was one thing. Meeting his family changed everything.
I came to know his son Fernando, who became one of the great champions of his father's story. Fernando understood how important it was that people know what had happened to Anthony and the other American soldiers imprisoned at Berga. Through him and other members of the Acevedo family, Anthony stopped being simply a historical figure I was researching. He became a father. A husband. A son. A complicated human being who laughed, hurt, loved, struggled, survived, and carried memories that affected the rest of his life.
Fernando entrusted me with something enormously precious: his father's story.
He never got to see Undesirable Secrets onstage.
That is difficult for me to write.
I have a photograph of Fernando and me standing together at Anthony's gravesite at Riverside National Cemetery. I look at it differently now. At the time, we were two men standing at the grave of his father. Today, I see something else in that photograph. Fernando was helping place Anthony's story into my hands.
I wish he could see where it has gone.
Some people say the right role comes along when an actor is ready for it. In my case, I think it was both the right role and the right story. I just didn't know it when Anthony C. Acevedo first came into my life. Perhaps I should introduce myself before I introduce Anthony.
My name is Rodolfo Alvarado. Rudy to most people who know me. I'm a playwright, historian, writer, father of seven, and an actor who spent a good part of his life away from the stage. I had books to write, children to raise, a career, bills to pay, and all those other things that have a way of filling the years. There were other creative projects along the way, and I never stopped being a storyteller, but acting gradually became something I had done rather than something I was doing.
Now, at sixty-five years old, I find myself preparing for an extended Off-Broadway engagement in New York City, performing a one-person play I wrote and stepping onto the stage every night as a man whose life has been part of mine for more than a decade. His name was Anthony C. Acevedo.
Anthony first came into my life in 2015. It was a time when Mexicans and Mexican Americans were once again being discussed in the national conversation in language I found deeply troubling. We were hearing words like rapists, drug dealers, and murderers. As a Mexican American historian and writer, I found myself thinking about the stories we tell about people—and, perhaps more importantly, the stories we don't tell.
I began looking for a connection to American history that people might never expect to find through a Mexican American life. Not because I wanted to manufacture a response to what I was hearing, but because I knew our history was larger than the narrow picture being presented. And then I found Anthony.
A Mexican American Army medic. A prisoner of war. A survivor of Berga. A young man who had tried to care for dying American soldiers with almost no medicine or equipment and who secretly kept a diary recording what happened to the men around him. A man who returned home carrying that history and lived with it for decades before finally speaking publicly about what he had witnessed.
I remember thinking: How did I not know about this man?
I was a historian. I had spent years studying and writing about Mexican American history. Yet here was a Mexican American soldier whose life intersected with World War II, the Holocaust, the Battle of the Bulge, American prisoners of war, Nazi forced labor, trauma, faith, family, and the complicated meaning of loyalty to one's country.
And I had never heard his name.
That question--How did I not know?—eventually became something much larger: How many other people don't know?
That was the beginning.
But researching Anthony was one thing. Meeting his family changed everything.
I came to know his son Fernando, who became one of the great champions of his father's story. Fernando understood how important it was that people know what had happened to Anthony and the other American soldiers imprisoned at Berga. Through him and other members of the Acevedo family, Anthony stopped being simply a historical figure I was researching. He became a father. A husband. A son. A complicated human being who laughed, hurt, loved, struggled, survived, and carried memories that affected the rest of his life.
Fernando entrusted me with something enormously precious: his father's story.
He never got to see Undesirable Secrets onstage.
That is difficult for me to write.
I have a photograph of Fernando and me standing together at Anthony's gravesite at Riverside National Cemetery. I look at it differently now. At the time, we were two men standing at the grave of his father. Today, I see something else in that photograph. Fernando was helping place Anthony's story into my hands.
I wish he could see where it has gone.
I wish he could sit in the audience and see Anthony walk onto a stage again. Because something happened during the years I spent writing Undesirable Secrets that I hadn't anticipated. Anthony stopped being the subject of a play. He became my companion.
Writers will understand what I mean. You can spend so much time with another person's life that eventually you begin carrying that person around with you. I heard Anthony while I was writing. I argued with him. I questioned him. Sometimes I resisted him. There were moments when I thought I understood him, only to discover months later that I had missed something completely.
And then came the stranger experience. I had to become him.
When I walk onto the stage as Anthony, I don't simply tell an audience what happened to him. For the next eighty minutes, I live portions of his life with him. I become the frightened boy facing his father. The young medic who wants desperately to save his men. The prisoner trying to survive Berga. The man waking from nightmares decades later. The old soldier finally deciding that silence has lasted long enough.
There are nights when I say one of Anthony's lines and understand it differently than I did the night before. There are moments when an audience becomes completely still and I can feel that they are no longer watching an actor perform a play. They are listening to Anthony.
Those are the moments when I feel closest to him.
Anthony has taught me a great deal about perseverance, but not the easy version of perseverance we sometimes put on posters. His life has taught me that surviving something does not mean it is over. That silence can protect us and imprison us at the same time. That healing can arrive very late. That sometimes the work we were meant to do waits patiently until we're finally ready to do it. Perhaps that's part of why Anthony found me when he did.
My seven children are grown now. My youngest is a senior in college, just north of Manhattan. The years when so much of my life necessarily belonged to raising a family have changed. I have books and other projects still calling me, stories I want to write, and work I hope remains ahead of me. But for the first time in many years, I also find myself able to return fully to something I once loved—the stage. And the man bringing me back is Anthony Acevedo.
At sixty-five, I am preparing to walk onto an Off-Broadway stage in New York City and tell his story. There is something wonderfully improbable about that.
Maybe the right role really does come along when you're ready for it. Or maybe, once in a lifetime, if you're fortunate, you discover a story before you are ready—and then spend years becoming the person capable of telling it.
I think that is what Anthony has been doing with me. And that is why I'm beginning The Diary.
Anthony kept his diary because he believed he had a moral obligation to remember the men around him. Mine will serve a different purpose. Over the coming months, as I prepare to return Undesirable Secrets to New York, I want to share what I'm discovering—not only about Anthony and the Forgotten Soldiers of Berga, but about writing, acting, memory, history, community, aging, family, and what it means to carry another person's story onto a stage.
Sometimes I'll write about Anthony. Sometimes about one of his men. Sometimes about something I've discovered in rehearsal or a line I've suddenly come to understand after saying it a hundred times. I'll introduce you to people I've met because of this journey and to communities now helping carry Anthony's story forward. And sometimes I'll simply tell you what it feels like to be sixty-five years old, standing backstage in the dark, waiting for the lights to come up.
I don't know exactly where these entries will take us. That's why it's a diary.
But I know where it begins. With a young Mexican American medic whose name I had never heard until 2015. Anthony C. Acevedo.
And, more than ten years later, I'm still discovering who he was.
Writers will understand what I mean. You can spend so much time with another person's life that eventually you begin carrying that person around with you. I heard Anthony while I was writing. I argued with him. I questioned him. Sometimes I resisted him. There were moments when I thought I understood him, only to discover months later that I had missed something completely.
And then came the stranger experience. I had to become him.
When I walk onto the stage as Anthony, I don't simply tell an audience what happened to him. For the next eighty minutes, I live portions of his life with him. I become the frightened boy facing his father. The young medic who wants desperately to save his men. The prisoner trying to survive Berga. The man waking from nightmares decades later. The old soldier finally deciding that silence has lasted long enough.
There are nights when I say one of Anthony's lines and understand it differently than I did the night before. There are moments when an audience becomes completely still and I can feel that they are no longer watching an actor perform a play. They are listening to Anthony.
Those are the moments when I feel closest to him.
Anthony has taught me a great deal about perseverance, but not the easy version of perseverance we sometimes put on posters. His life has taught me that surviving something does not mean it is over. That silence can protect us and imprison us at the same time. That healing can arrive very late. That sometimes the work we were meant to do waits patiently until we're finally ready to do it. Perhaps that's part of why Anthony found me when he did.
My seven children are grown now. My youngest is a senior in college, just north of Manhattan. The years when so much of my life necessarily belonged to raising a family have changed. I have books and other projects still calling me, stories I want to write, and work I hope remains ahead of me. But for the first time in many years, I also find myself able to return fully to something I once loved—the stage. And the man bringing me back is Anthony Acevedo.
At sixty-five, I am preparing to walk onto an Off-Broadway stage in New York City and tell his story. There is something wonderfully improbable about that.
Maybe the right role really does come along when you're ready for it. Or maybe, once in a lifetime, if you're fortunate, you discover a story before you are ready—and then spend years becoming the person capable of telling it.
I think that is what Anthony has been doing with me. And that is why I'm beginning The Diary.
Anthony kept his diary because he believed he had a moral obligation to remember the men around him. Mine will serve a different purpose. Over the coming months, as I prepare to return Undesirable Secrets to New York, I want to share what I'm discovering—not only about Anthony and the Forgotten Soldiers of Berga, but about writing, acting, memory, history, community, aging, family, and what it means to carry another person's story onto a stage.
Sometimes I'll write about Anthony. Sometimes about one of his men. Sometimes about something I've discovered in rehearsal or a line I've suddenly come to understand after saying it a hundred times. I'll introduce you to people I've met because of this journey and to communities now helping carry Anthony's story forward. And sometimes I'll simply tell you what it feels like to be sixty-five years old, standing backstage in the dark, waiting for the lights to come up.
I don't know exactly where these entries will take us. That's why it's a diary.
But I know where it begins. With a young Mexican American medic whose name I had never heard until 2015. Anthony C. Acevedo.
And, more than ten years later, I'm still discovering who he was.