Texas Heroes (Part II)

I spent part of my weekend assisting with my father-in-law's seventy-first high school reunion in a nearby small Texas town. The Class of 1933 meets every year for a barbecue lunch and gabfest. The past two years, the reunion has been held in the community center of the retirement development where my father-in-law and his wife live.

The class has dwindled over the years, of course. Of the original 28 graduates, there may be only 3 of the original group still there. With wives and a couple of folks from the classes of '32 and '34, we had about 10 on Saturday. Two in wheelchairs, 1 on a walker, 1 with canes, and the others amazingly spry for all but one being in their late 80's.

The routine has grown over time. I always seem to butt in with my own ideas for these sorts of things, so about 3 years ago I started bringing grab bags. They seem to like drawing a number and getting some useless or silly surprise present. This year I added teddy bears that I had picked up at my favorite dollar store and decorated with pipe cleaners and beads, so that everyone went home with a bear in the old school colors.

On my way to the reunion, I had to pick up some crepe paper and balloons to help mark the directional sighs. In the party section at the grocery store, I saw some plastic medals on red, white and blue ribbons. I picked up a dozen and tried to figure out what I might do with them when I got to the reunion.

Once all the folks were there, we played "bat the balloon" for a while. This is good physical therapy for old folks, but it ran me ragged. I decided it was time for the medals. I asked each of them in turn what they did during World War II. Some stayed home to farm. "That deserves a medal," I said, because, of course, the farmers were an important part of the war effort. Some of the women worked at jobs, but others stayed home on the farm. I gave them medals, too, as I drew them out about rationing cards and recycling efforts and the contributions that each of them had had to make to support the war. I talked about Mama and Daddy a bit, whenever their stories would resonate.

And then there were the 3 who had been overseas. Old and bent and nearing the end of their time, they still remembered very vividly what they had seen. We only heard part of it, of course, but even that little bit gripped me in ways I find hard to express.

One had been in the Phillipines at the same time my father was. We talked about that a bit. He talked about going from place to place in the war, leaving out what happened at each place. When I gave him his medal, I leaned down close and told him that this toy medal was nothing like what he had or what he deserved, but it came with great love and much thanks for what he did. When I then said that I knew that he had not told about what happened on those islands, but that I knew there was much he couldn't tell, there were tears in his eyes and mine.

And then there was the fellow who flew reconnaisance over Marseilles--the day before D-Day. He was a gunner, but he had never fired his gun. Instead, he was always taking pictures. It gave me cold chills to realize how dangerous those missions must have been to get intelligence for the invasion. He had had to bail out once, he said, but he didn't tell us more about that. I gave him his medal with the same love and gratitude and wished that I could do the same for my father.

The third fellow flew air transport. In WWII, in Korea, and in quite a few other places. He knew how important his work was after a long military career, but I assured him that we, too, also recognized his work. Only he, of the three, had a wife still. I had to hold her hand to take her to the bathroom when he wasn't available to be her "walker."

I somehow felt that it was important--as we recognized Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day--to look closer to home, so to speak. I don't know what recognition these folks have ever gotten for their work--whether in the military service or keeping things running at home--but I wanted to tell them how much I cared and give them a moment to realize that someone thought of them as heroes.