Monday, April 27, 2009
Living with history
I spend most of my time looking after my father, who will be 94 years old later this year. He was born in 1915, 50 years after the end of the Civil War. He has seen and experienced much in nine decades of life.
Yesterday morning, while having coffee at breakfast with my father and reading the morning paper, I read an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer by Kevin Ferris concerning the coercive interrogation issue, and it contained this paragraph:
"Look to World War II. After France fell, there were fears its fleet would fall into Nazi hands. Churchill ordered the destruction of that fleet, killing almost 1,300 allied sailors in the process. At the time, Hitler seemed unstoppable and an invasion of Britain imminent. Clearly a difficult decision, shocking even in its time. One admiral wrote, 'We all feel thoroughly dirty and ashamed.'"I read that paragraph to my father and asked him, "does that ring a bell?" knowing that my father had enlisted in the U.S. Navy right after the fall of France in 1940.
"Yes, the Brits were very concerned that French ships would be used against them. After the North Africa campaign, many French ships were recovered by the Allies, and a French battleship came to the U.S. for refitting. I went aboard the Richelieu in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1943."
I joked that it must have made the eight semesters of French at Princeton all worthwhile, to be able to converse with sailors in New York Harbor.
Sometimes, asking Dad is quicker than Googling.
11 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Apr 27, 01:43:00 PM:
TH, I am sure you already do, but enjoy him, savor him and ask him as many questions as you can about your family and about history. I lost my grandfather 1 year ago, he was born in 1912. I thought I had asked and he had answered all questions I could possibly have had. I was wrong. I think over the last year I have come up with another 2 or 3 dozen quesions I hadn't thought of before.
By , at
Mon Apr 27, 01:44:00 PM:
Escort 81, I apologize, I mistakenly thought TH entered this post! Same applies though!
By , at
Mon Apr 27, 02:21:00 PM:
My mother in law is 97 (born in 1911) and recently moved back in with us from a retirement home where the monthly maintenance fees were eating us up. She's a little forgetful and walks with a stroller, but surprisingly with it.
She was n the OSS during the war. She is briefly mentioned in "Sisterhood of Spies" by Elizabeth P. McIntosh as a "Washington Socialite". She was in Cairo, worked her way up the Italian peninsula, and ended the war in Vienna. She also worked up until the mid-50's for the CIA as a code clerk.
She had four sisters, and her uncle had five girls as well. She married a WWII SeaBee Batallion commander and eventual Navy Captain, A second married a Marine Corps BG who was on Iwo Jima as an LTC, a third married an eventual Admiral who organized and ran the first BUD school and was Sup. of the USNA, a fourth married a career Navy Chaplain, and the fifth married a ne'er-do-well at age 17.
We are working on an oral history with her and have several hours of videotape of questioning by a young relative and her reminiscences.
JLW III
By , at
Mon Apr 27, 03:59:00 PM:
Let that be a lesson to us all. Take care of your old people. More than once my father-in-law (USMC 3rd Div) has explained to his grandchildren what dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki meant to the Marines in his division. His take is very different than what the liberal teachers tried to teach my kids.
By 
Escort81, at
Mon Apr 27, 04:20:00 PM:
"Take care of your old people."
Well, I am not a person of enormous religious faith, but there are only ten items in the Ten Commandments, and I mess up on any number of them, but "Honor thy mother and father" seems pretty straightforward. I think that your phraseology is a subset of that, tyree.
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Apr 27, 04:26:00 PM:
The people who lived the Depression, defeated the Nazis, and led the free world to victory against communism are fading away and with them go some of our national virtues.
Now (beginning with Clinton's presidency) is the time for *their* kids to rule... the hippies, feminists, new agers, perpetually victimized post-national citizen-of-the-world activists, yuppies, serial divorcees, and 'I'm going to live forever' spoiled-by-easy-credit overweight fools who 'raised' their kids with pills and television.
Gods help us.
I think that every generation of kids thinks that they have bad parents. It's part of being a teenager, at least. But mine (I'm going on 30, and have my own kids to put things in perspective) may be the first one in a long time to be largely correct.
By Escort81, at
Mon Apr 27, 04:40:00 PM:
"Gods help us."
Intentionally ironic, or a typo (I make my share!)?
By , at
Mon Apr 27, 05:18:00 PM:
"Gods help us."
Dawnfire is a HUGE Battlestar Galactica fan...
By Dawnfire82, at
Mon Apr 27, 11:39:00 PM:
I say 'gods' instead of 'god' often. I see no reason to choose and champion any monotheistic faith over polytheistic ones. Besides, when I say 'gods' people tend to do a sort of double take.
Actually, I think we'd all be happier if, when we died, we discovered that in the afterlife the powers-that-be couldn't care less how you worshipped and fully expected you to spend the rest of time partying.
Eschatons are such buzz kills.
By , at
Mon Apr 27, 11:56:00 PM:
Link:
Count yourself lucky. My dad left when I was 19, mom 20. I hardly knew them.
By , at
Tue Apr 28, 02:08:00 AM:
Escort 81...
Honor thy father and mother is very appropriate.
Destroyer Escort 81?
