Letters To Home
Today is Memorial Day. We celebrate the holiday as the beginning of summer and often forget the true meaning of the day. Yesterday at church, our preacher, David Butler, said it best.
“It’s not about cookouts, boat rides, trips to the beach or the lake. It’s the day that we remember the military warriors who gave the ultimate sacrifice, their life, so we can have freedom to live as we please.” Veteran’s Day is in November when we honor those men and women who served our country.
Living in the panhandle of Florida carries a different type of patriotism because of all the military bases. In Fort Walton Beach, we have Eglin, Hurlburt and Duke Fields. In Panama City, there is Tyndall. Pensacola is home to the Naval Base and the Blue Angels. So many of my clients have ties to these bases. I have lost count of the number of TSP rollovers I have performed. Everywhere you turn, families around here have deep military connections.
My Dad like most veterans, never talked about their days in the European Theatre or Pacific. If anyone ever attempted to call them heroes, they would quickly tell you: “No. The heroes were those who never returned. Those were the heroes. The rest of us were lucky and just did what we were asked to do.”
Let me set some of this up: my Dad’s family were poorer than poor. They were pore. Daddy was delivered by a midwife in their sharecropper’s shack in the red clay of Lawrence County, Alabama. His parents were second cousins, aged 16 and 19. They chopped cotton, picked cotton, chopped corn, pulled corn and worked the land for the landowners. No electricity or running water.
They survived on love, family and a work ethic that meant no handouts. It was called “making do.”
In those days, “poor white trash” (as they were called) didn’t matter to many. My grandparents held my father out of school in the first grade since some bullies kept picking on him where he walked to catch the bus. His sister, Vera Mae, was a year younger so they went through Hazelwood in Town Creek in the same grade. Many people thought Howard and Vera were twins.
Daddy was an exceptional athlete and migrated to the coaches. He quit school after his junior year, hitchhiked to Decatur and joined the Army Air Corps. Patriotism was running sky high, especially for those dirt farmers during the Depression. They saw the service as a way out of poverty. A way to change their family’s lives and adventure to see the world. He was a momma’s boy who had never been away from home for just one or two nights. Imagine the shock of having to grow up when a short time later, he was in flight and gunnery school in Arizona, South Dakota and Georgia. His first overseas station was in Morocco, then Foggia, Italy.
That was a long way from Town Creek, Alabama.
Last week, I sat with my sister and read a bundle of letters that my dad had written to his sister (my Aunt Vera) while he was in the service. Yes, there are a few more water drops on them after reading them.
Here are a few observations after reading many of his letters:
He stated over and over, how “mail call” was the highlight of the day. In one letter, he thanked Aunt Vera and his mother profusely for the homemade candy they sent him for Christmas. Dad mentioned that he shared some of it with his flight crew who hadn’t received anything from home.
As a radio operator on a B-17, there were 10 members in his crew. One of his letters contained a picture of his crew. In the picture, he was standing tall and proud in the back row. Like a teammate on an athletic team, they were one unit protecting each other, regardless of their background. The outcome of that game in the forties was pretty important.
As I looked at the picture, I wondered about the other nine members’ background. Were they rich, poor, country or cityfied? Educated or dropouts? How did they all end up together on this B-17? In one of his letters, he spoke of his 18th mission as they returned to base, seeing other planes on fire and spiraling into the sea. I reread that letter over and over.
In a couple of his letters home, he seemed to reassure his family that everything was Ok. He apologized to Aunt Vera that he hadn’t sent her anything for her birthday yet. In another, he asked how the chickens were doing back home. Since Vera was a student at Florence State Teacher’s College, he said to tell his mother to feed the hens good so that they would be big enough to eat when he got home. It was humorous reading about the fried chicken they cooked on the base in Italy. In his words “they can’t compare to Momma’s!”
He even asked Vera if his cousin, Stanley, was getting any better at chopping cotton. The only letter that he seemed to boast was one which began: “Dear Sis: Ahem. You are now getting a letter from CPL (Corporal) Bradford. I got the promotion this week.” During the war, he ended up flying 31 missions and finished as a Tech Sergeant.
The most symbolic parts of the letters home were the 4 letters of the alphabet that were written where the stamp is placed on the envelope.
It simply read “F R E E.” Daddy underlined it for emphasis.
Today, we are FREE indeed.
Happy Memorial Day.