There’s been several Memorial Day essays – but this is one of my favorites.
Calling Home
It’s Memorial Day, and for the first time in a very long time, I actually felt like calling Mom and Dad. I do think about them a lot, but it’s not often that I just feel like picking up the phone and talking to them. Mom passed away in 2011, Dad in 2016, so it’s really not possible to make the call. But we talked a lot throughout their lives, often by phone, and always on Sundays and holidays. So there’s that “motor memory” of connecting.
You didn’t call before nine. By nine they were both up, at the table, drinking coffee. Before nine they’d answer the phone, but they weren’t really ready for a conversation. We could talk about almost anything; Mom and Dad were always involved in the world. This morning’s conversation might have been about school shootings and politics. Mom would be happy that I retired; she always worried that something would happen at my school and I might get hurt.
Memories
And we would have talked about Memorial Day. It was always a day of remembrance for them. Mom and Dad both served in World War II: it was the seminal event in their lives. Not only did the offer up their lives for their country, but they met, fell in love, and married all in the crucible of world conflict. Memorial Day is not Veterans Day; it’s a time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice in their service. But Mom and Dad lost lots of friends in their War, “the War” as they would say. Memorial Day took them back to those times. For them, like Dickens, it was “…The best of times, it was the worst of times”. There was nothing worse than the losses, but there was nothing more involving, energizing, and intense than their war experiences.
“Their War” ended a whole lifetime ago, seventy-eight years. Since then there have been American wars in Korea and Vietnam, Panama, the Balkans, Kuwait, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. We have asked our military to defend our national interest, and they have. And there has been political turmoil about many of those wars, turmoil that has sometimes spilled over onto those just doing their duty. It isn’t that every war the US has fought was “righteous”, but that’s not the fault of those soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice on all those foreign fields.
So on Memorial Day, we should remember those who sacrificed in all of those wars, whether we were in favor of them or not.
There are two memories, “stories” I would share on this Memorial Day.
Small Town Boy
The first is about my early teaching years living in the small town of Pataskala. As a teacher I’d hear the kids talking about the “scary old guy” who would walk the streets of the town, talking to himself. The kids didn’t know what to do, and made up all sorts of tales about him.
I found out the real story. He had been a kid, just like them, in 1943 in the middle of World War II. He graduated from high school and went into the Navy to serve his country. And he was on board a ship when it got torpedoed in the Pacific. We don’t know exactly what happened on that ship, but we can imagine the terror of flames and explosions. Eventually the order was given to abandon ship, and that young man, hardly a year out of high school, went into the sea.
Hours later he was pulled from the waves, physically undamaged. But sometime in the crisis, from the chaos on deck and into the water, he lost his mind. It turned inside itself, and he was never the same. High school kids sign up for the military, and they know the risks. They might die in combat, or come home injured or even disfigured. But they don’t think about losing themselves out there in the battle. But that’s what happened to him.
He lived with family here in town, and every morning he’d walk the streets, talking to himself. The local restaurants knew his story, and he had a free coffee or breakfast whenever he stopped. He was our little town’s “memorial” to the ultimate sacrifices of war.
A New Monument
And the second is about Mom and Dad. It was around 2007, and they had not visited the new World War II monument in Washington. So we loaded up in my Suburban, and did the trip “overland” along US 50 to the Capital. It would be their last time to go, and we couldn’t walk the miles we used to in DC. But we could go to the Mall, and Mom and Dad could see the new memorial to “Their War”: to them.
Mom was in a wheelchair to save her strength, and the three of us explored the beautiful columns and water features of the monument to the “Greatest Generation”. But what really struck them were the engravings on the wall, depicting iconic images of the War. You could not only see them, but feel them, touching the figures in the bronze pictures. Mom cried, Dad was solemn, and folks came up and thanked them for their service. There were others from “the War” there as well, and Mom and Dad shared “the honor” with all those other World War II vets; and all that did not live to see the monument.
I’m glad I could take them to see it. I’m honored that I was able to share that experience with them. And I wish I could talk to them about it on the phone today.
