My grandfather clambered out of the Great Depression, subsisting on a diet of raw onions, ketchup sandwiches, and the occasional egg. Despite being diagnosed with a terminal illness, he still did his part to help smash the Axis, serving in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in both the European and Pacific theaters, during World War II. And you know what? He managed to live another half-century, doing whatever he could to keep it together and support his family: chicken farming, carpentry, bus driving, credit managing. This is a man who had dreamed of becoming a doctor and had to drop out of school when he was just getting started, because his medical bills ran him dry.
He was soft-spoken and modest. If he talked about the war, which was rare, it would be a humorous recollection, like the time one of his Army buddies took a welder to a drum without considering it had once contained gasoline. The drum took off like a rocket, he said, the guy was lucky it didn’t take his head off. Or something crazy, like the time a plane was flying over at night and they heard the engine cut out and suddenly everyone had to dive for cover. At the crash site, the only thing they could find of the pilot was his feet.
He didn’t say much, but once, when we were alone, when he was in his late 70s, he let something drop that hinted at just how harrowing it could be to live under constant threat of enemy fire, and how, after a time, he just became numb and wound up taking a crazy chance. Afterward, he said he never told anyone about it before. After he died, I shared the story with my mother, and she said she had never known that side of him. Now that she’s gone, I’m probably the one alive who does.
Back in the day, he served as a Republican committee chairman of his county. He would be appalled to know what the party of Eisenhower has become. How could people in public office be so transparently self-serving and abhorrent, and how can so many voters sanction it? I was 8 years-old when Richard Nixon resigned, and we watched the speech together in his living room. I remember him saying, “Watch this. This is history.” I was just a kid, of course, but the significance was impressed upon me, and as I matured, I noticed that whenever my grandfather had anything to say about politicians, it was generally with an air of disgust.
50 years on, Watergate wouldn’t have even been a blip. It’s nauseating to consider that all the sacrifices made by my grandfather and his contemporaries, and all the other American soldiers down the generations, may have bought us but a few decades. Is America really going to be driven into the ground by greed and grievance?
Holidays like Veterans’ Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day are so important. Not so one can go through the motions of raising a flag, or to fly one off the back of a truck, but to prompt one to step outside oneself and take a moment to reflect and to honor those who put themselves on the line for the preservation of the higher ideals of the United States of America.
My grandfather was the hero in a family of heart murmurs and flat feet. Of the younger generations, our veterans have all been in-laws (U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force). One suffers from severe PTSD. I remember in my early 20s the creeping dread of the Gulf War, that it would spiral out of control and lead to a reinstatement of the draft. That kind of service isn’t in anybody’s plan. But people like my grandfather understood the necessity and did what they had to do.
Thank you for your service and your many sacrifices, Pap, wherever you are. And thank you, honorable men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces.
