I posted this earlier on my cousins wall and decided to post it on mine as well. This starts out about my grandfather, but its actually a tribute to my grandmother, who is still kicking. A couple of years after I presented a WWII Victory medal posthumously to my grandfather I attended a Memorial Day parade near my home in Portsmouth, VA . During the parade a float of WWII submarine veterans came by. The float had some proud vets on board, but they were few. I then started thinking about my grandfather and recalled my mother calling me, after I pinned my grandfather’s medal on... my grandmother two years before, and telling me something sort of startling. I returned home from the parade and I immediately called her to have her repeat what my uncle had told her. She said my uncle had told her my grandfather didn’t start out in the 82nd Airborne; he was paratrooper in WWII and ended up in the 505th of the 82nd Airborne. This kicked off an intensive search about my grandfather’s WWII history. Prior to presenting the medal I also did some digging into his personal life, I was only three years old when he passed. Setting aside his WWII history, his story just seemed incredible to me. I cornered my mom one day to learn more about him and she began to tell me about his personal life. She informed me that he came back from the war and at age 32, covering for a friend and working a second shift in the mines back to back, a rock fell on him and broke his back. He never walked again. He had three young children at the time and had just purchased a farm. He took rehab seriously and learned to drive, came back home to help build and then operate a grocery store while continuing to manage a cattle farm. He became a poster child and declared war on unsafe practices in the coal mining industry. He took the family on regular vacations during a time of limited handicap facilities and would sit in the parking lot in a car without AC while the family enjoyed Opryland, Candyland, and so on for hours at a time. My mom said she never heard him complain. After listening to my mother go on about her life growing up for some time I finally just had to stop her…she was in tears for much of it. I had to know, so I asked her, what it was like as a kid growing up with this heroic person that I barely knew. I was a little stunned to hear her say that she felt that she had a completely normal childhood; it seemed to her to be nothing out of the ordinary. My initial thought was how that could be? My mind soon started to drift to my grandmother. My mother’s stories did as well, as she started to tell me about his last days. It was near Christmas. His goal from the outset of the accident was to live long enough to see his children grown and to meet all of his grandchildren. He met all grandchildren but one. My mom said it was almost like he refused to let go and she was beginning to think nothing could actually take him out of this world. She was conflicted about it, because she could see the pain he was in. He finally went to sleep and didn’t wake up on December 20, 1974. As everyone else became somewhat overcome with the events my grandmother issued her first order. She sent all of the boys home to ready the house for Christmas. The grandkids did not miss Christmas that year. She then took everything on in stride: the farm, the store, etc.. never to remarry. She was only about 50 when he passed. She lives in that same old farmhouse on that farm they purchased just before the accident sitting atop Sandy Ridge in the middle of the Coalfields of Southwestern VA. People drive by and wave at the nice elderly lady. Gone are the sounds of the washboard used for washing clothes on the back porch, gone are the sounds of children playing upstairs and down, to include grandchildren, and now even the mementoes and keepsakes are slowly beginning to make their way out of the house. Like my grandmother the barn in the pasture field that used to house Buttercup, their horse, and the cattle is beginning to have difficulty just standing. Her past is similar to the 551st in a way. Very few know or recounts the struggles and difficulties, heroism, that went on in that home long ago on a daily basis. One of the pictures in my grandfather’s war album was a picture of my grandmother at Ft. Benning after the war. On the back he wrote, “Isn’t she a darling and I don’t mean the house.” Well, I think if my grandfather could come back and ask me that question today, about her being a darling, my answer would go something like this, “Are you kidding me Little Poppy, that’s what we called him, she turned out to be much more than that, and I know you know. She picked up the pieces and fought the battles that raged on within you on a daily basis, she may as well have been there too. She was your master enabler and comforter. You outlived your doctor’s best predictions by more than ten years and you met your goal of seeing your children grow. You even met all of your grandchildren, save one. I guess you could say she was a master nurse and caregiver too. People may ask me how you did what you did and when they do I’ll have to give a nod to her. I’m sure she cried at times when you cried over those that died and I’m sure she picked you up by the boot straps when it was called for with some tough love. She never left you, even after the wreath was placed on her door. In fact she did the incredible so well that her heroic efforts were almost mistaken for normalcy. Your own daughter even said so. Isn’t she a darling? Sir, she was the best decision you ever made and she is a hero just like you!”
Posted on: Thu, 01 May 2014 12:04:16 +0000
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