Senior Daze

by Katie Bourg

About Katie: Having arrived in time for the Great (?) Depression, WWII, and all other 20th century problems, I am endowed with long and varied memories. Writing classes have long been my home away from home. Other people's stories are fascinating, and sharing is growth at its best. Hope you seniors will join me with your stories. Try it. You'll like it.

I admit to being a minority of one. I didn't like it when our major holidays were moved to accommodate long weekends for pleasure. I felt they lost something important.

Memorial Day bothers me more than others. It was a time to think of what we gained as a people, and what we lost. A time to recall who we were. What we had become. Who paid the bill for it. A time to say thanks. To say it again the next year. And the year after. Over and over.

I grew up among disabled veterans. They were constantly coming and going in my childhood home. Their stories and concerns were as much of an educarion as anything I learned in a classroom, and maybe more lasting. Although I married a WWII veteran, my own adult life has been much different. But without closing my eyes I can still see what I saw then, and so much of the same that has followed.

There was a skinny old man in a blue uniform who walked our downtown streets. We were told he was a soldier for the North, and to be respected. At every holiday parade the veterans marched down Main Street, as did their wives. Sometimes a few of us kids got to march with them, wearing white dresses and blue and gold scarves around our necks. The old man rode in a convertible at the beginning of the parade.

The Spanish American War veterans used to float a little boat full of flowers down the Arkansaw river, at the end of the parade, as they played TAPS from the bridge above. Hugo Roedek, a German boy and new American fought in that one. My father would take me to see Hugo frequently. One day Hugo sat me on his knee, and told me, "We sunk the Maine. And don't you forget it!"

When the ship named after my hometown, Pueblo, was captured by the North Koreans, I remembered.

My father was injured in WWI. The men and women seeking his help were much the same. They came on crutches, canes. They limped their way up to our porch. They'd done their part, came home, tried to start a new life, and did their best to live with their infirmities, some with more success than others. When gathered they told war stories, laughed at themselves, sang. I sat and listened. (Does anybody beside me remember 'Lily Marlene'?)

They watched their sons go off to WWII. I still see Mr. Marsh, partially paralyzed--one side of his face pulled out of shape, with tears in his bulging eyes.

"They've already ruined us," he said. "Why don't they just take us, and leave our boys alone?"

Both his boys volunteered and served. My friend Ted West was a Navy Medic on a ship at Guadacanal, working to save damaged shipmates. He came home to become a pharmaceutical professor. Now he sings with the Stilly Singers.

At the end of WWII, I worked in the medical division of the VA. I saw 'the boys.' They were still young, but they were not 'boys' anymore.

My own life turned in another direction. My husband served but had only minor disabilities. Life went on and much smoother. Korean vets were treated with respect. A few years later Vietnam boys were not.

The casualties continued to pile up. They still do.

Memorial Day was started by southern women, who could not forget. They played no favorites, planting flowers on all the graves, both blue and grey. Time dulls but does not diminish pain. The idea spread, and eventually Memorial Day was for everybody.

We live a pretty good life in this country. We don't always remember the cost.

Go camping. Take in a ball game or go on a picnic. Enjoy your vacations. Don't forget who has paid for them.