Soldiers go marching, old men remember

  Harry Miller in WW2

 

Canes, walkers, wheelchairs

 

Old men.

 Miller on the left

 

 

Harry was in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam

USMC

Army
Navy
Army Air Corp

Korean War
Vietnam war
Now, war in places unknown.

US Navy air craft carriers sending planes to fly off

Army Air Corp, carrying food, supplies,
and bombs—

Men and Women,
not on the front lines,
But at home, making survival
possible.

Gold embroidered

On black.
Proud to wear their caps.

Old men in caps.

Walking away,

Walking on ahead.

Oldest veteran of WW 2, Richard Overton, died at age 112 In December 2018

Lately, I see fewer WW 2 veterans, as most are in their nineties. When I do, I shake their hands and thank them for what they and their comrades did.

Now, the Korean vets are the old fellers. They still walk straight and tall. Shake their hands and thank them for their valor.

The Vietnam veterans are from my era. I thank them and ask how they are doing after their unappreciated service. We talk a while, share our memories of friends and families. 

My small county with the rural towns had many men who headed to Vietnam. Some returned, some returned but with scarred memories, and too many found their ways home in caskets.

Now veterans from this era come home and are welcomed by a grateful nation.  Too many come home with prosthetics and horrible scars. If you meet one, shake their hands, thank them for what they and their comrades sacrificed. 

Try not to cry.

 This was originally a re-post from 2013, now re-written.

My appreciation and understanding have grown. I have shaken many hands.

We live near Camp Pendleton.

Home

How many people are from our small towns (where people's names I know.) from 1966 - 1972?

the end of the war 2,970 men from the state of Illinois were either dead or missing. 

 

In our towns of Pittsfield, Griggsville, Pleasant Hill, Quincy, and others, 30 men+ died, fighting for our country.

 

In these local towns and their cemeteries where I grew up, with veterans from WW1 to Vietnam, these names are remembered and honored. 

 

Where are you? Where were you?

Where did we start?  Where did we go? Where did we end up? 

My children have been in and then moving to different cities and states all over. My siblings live in Illinois and Ohio.  I live in California.  My husband's group live in Utah, Georgia, Missouri, Colorado, Vermont, and somewhere else. 

Our most eventful move took us to Ireland. We traveled with our children, saw castles and more.  And from Ireland our family headed out to distant places.

   

My daughter lives in Bern, Switzerland, with husband and our grandsons. Since Covid, our trips to see them were cut off. October 2023? Maybe?

My brother Don lives in Springfield, in Lincoln Land. This is a lovely city to visit. Lincoln lived there and ultimately was buried there. So much history surrounds this legendary place.

 

I grew up 100 miles from Springfield.  Our son now lives near Champaign-Urbana. St. Louis is about 90 miles from our farm.  Dad took hogs to market down in east St. Louis. I flew into St. Louis innumerable times over the 40 years when I visited my parents.

 

My brother went from farm boy in Illinois, to being a police officer in Texas, He was a cowboy at heart. But he lived around Galveston, along the coast. Bill had an adventurous spirit.

 

We have been to Phoenix many times. Irish Dance Festivals were our most recent ventures. Great city, do not go to visit in the truly Hot Season.  It is always hot there. We were once walking across mall parking lot; a man drove by in  a large golf cart to get the people to the mall stores alive.  121+ degrees is nothing to laugh at. 

 Small towns become smaller. Our farm was on the north side of town. The house was torn down (built in 1850+) and the pieces of the barn can be seen in between trees. We lived on the Nebo-Pittsfield road, in Pike County, Illinois.

Where we began and have ended up amazes me.  Once my siblings and I were wild cowboys, warriors, soldiers, wreaking general havoc. Now we have taken our own journeys, much milder and more introspective.

 

The Maze of a Small Town

My Grandmother and Grandfather Cardiff with their four daughters (Mom on the left).

The faces of my mother’s hometown all look familiar, as if there is a mold somewhere which makes each family member.  A distant cousin has the same nose as my aunt, and the way someone smiles calls up the memory of a long dead parent. 

When I visited my mother, we went out to the local restaurant frequently.  We always planted ourselves where Mom could see who entered and where they sat.  All it took was for me to ask:  “Mom, who is that lady?  Do I know her?”

I know my grandmother is the tall girl in the back, but...

Mom would lean back.  “Well.  That woman is Lydia Roberts.  NOW her maiden name was…..and her mother was….”  The twists and turns of births, marriages, and deaths plus maiden names and odd events that happened down through the years led deeper and deeper into a maze of genealogy. 

Mom knew it all.  All the names and relationships, all the side events that make small-town life interesting, and all the history of decades past were imprinted in my mother’s mind. 

 My grandmother was the same, and I would guess that there was an oral history of telling family lines at Sunday dinners, funeral memorials, and births of new generations.

Mom, who is the lady on the right?

My mother traced back through to the early 1800s, and then, “…NOW Orley Jenkins came here from Kentucky at that time.  BUT his mother’s family—the Jones family—were from Wales.  What was her name?  Lizzie?  NO.  Margaret, that’s her name…”   

She would pause then, glanced at the woman who was eating her fried catfish and coleslaw.  “Oh.  No, no you don’t know that woman.”

I had gotten lost at the second turn in the maze, but I didn’t dare interrupt Mom.  When Mom was weaving her journey through over 100 years of people, it was best to let her find her way back to me. 

This blog post is part of two families who merge when my parents meet and marry. "Roads Run Both Ways" is a way of recounting their lives.  You can find this collection at Susan Kane, Writer, where the most recent post is shown. 

My parents, Irma and Bud Peck in back; Donald, Robert, Bill, Mary, and me

Mom

Dad

Dad, Aunt Helen, Uncle Bill, and Grandma Peck