I'm reminded of my post on an old Veteran's Day thread. To me, it's more important to do something for the living, than to remember the dead, though remembering the dead is part of my heritage.
Interestingly, Memorial Day was started as a holiday by Confederate widows, to remember their war dead, and freed slaves, to remember the men who had died for their freedom, after the Civil War, as Decoration Day. My cousin-several times removed, and by four generations-Warren Cuffee served in that war, and even received a letter from Abraham Lincoln.....
Memorial Day, for my family, during my life, has always been the unofficial start of summer. On this weekend, we'd open up the house in Sag Harbor, where we spent the summer vacation. We'd get the boat ready for the season. Come that Monday, though, we'd be at the cemetary, placing flags on the the graves of war dead. My grandfather, who went on to major in Anthropology at Columbia, and become an Episcopal priest, had been something of a hero and, I'm told, a butcher, in WWI, receiving the Croix de Guerre for swimming across the Muese river underwater with a communications cable tied to his back, under heavy gas and artillery fire, made a point of remebering those who didn't make it. My father, who served as a Navy chaplain in peacetime, would take me out as a boy to do the very same thing. Memorial Day weekend holds a special place in my heart because of him: he was born on May 29th, and died, after a long illness, on the very same day-so today, I'll remember him, a veteran, though of no war, who died in bed rather than the field of battle, with strawberry shortcake for dessert-his birthday cake of choice. He'd have been 83 years old.
For some time, after coming to New Mexico, one of my teachers and mentors in the Native American Church was Henry Gomez, of Taos Pueblo. Henry was a trouble maker. :lol: When he was sent to boarding school-which the government did to Indians to turn them into...well,not white people, but defintiely not Indians-he was 15 years old. He'd take some of his fellow students, mostly Navajos, out at night, and do the peyote ceremony with them. It's because of him that the Native American Church has 250,000 Dine members-he brought that ceremony to the Navajo people-and I can't express how proud I was when my Dine friend's mother said in a peyote meeting, Thank you, Creator, for Henry Gomez, and his bringing this ceremony to our people. Later, still a boy, he was called up to fight in WWII. He went to the Phillipines-saw his unit decimated, and, depending upon who is telling the story, later was captured by-or captured-a band of Negritos, with whom he fought a guerilla action (to hear Henry tell it, long after the stroke that limited his speech, he captured the Negritos with baseball cards: they'd thought he was Japanese until he showed them to them...:lol: ) Odd to see him cry, 60 years after the fact, telling how his Negritos had been gunned down by the Japanese, and he'd been captured. Later, in the prison camp, the Japanese-who were starving themselves-would send Henry (who was an Indian, and must know how to hunt) out with one bullet in a rifle, to get them some food. Henry made a bow and arrow, and would toss two monkeys over the fence for his fellow prisoners, for every one he gave to the Japanese. When the war was over, Henry came home, and later taught the peyote ceremony in the 60's to the hippies that are now my friends.....from 1996 to 2004 when he died, I proudly took Henry to lunch for Veteran's day. These days, I take a fellow named Andy Steck, who I worked with at LANSCE, and who served as an electronics intelligence tech in Laos, when we weren't even supposed to be in Laos, back in 1971. The day I asked him to lunch, this very hard man cried, because he knew about Henry, and knew that it meant that Henry had passed.
My son turned 28 this year. He's seen classmates, from high school and college, die in our ten long years of war. Young men-boys, really-who will never get to be as old as he is now. I had to hold him through a good long cry when one of his bandmates from high school -a good guitarist who joined the service to learn to work on engines-was reported dead. There've been many more since then-even more who come home with brain damage, or PTSD-men who, like my grandfather-survived the war, only to bring home and deal with a deeper than physical wound.
So, yeah-I'm kinda like Patton-the object of war isn't to die for your country, it's to make the other dumb son of a ***** die for his country-but I don't know anything about it, really. Today, for dinner, we have ribs and strawberry shortcake, in honor of my dad, and tomorrow I'll go to the National Cemetery in Santa Fe, and put fresh flags on graves for an hour-because it's only an hour, and some of those men-boys, really-gave their all for me and you, and didn't even know us. But I'll try to pay more attention to those who are coming home, from a war we didn't need, with wounds that will be with them for the rest of their lives-and they don't even know us.
Interestingly, Memorial Day was started as a holiday by Confederate widows, to remember their war dead, and freed slaves, to remember the men who had died for their freedom, after the Civil War, as Decoration Day. My cousin-several times removed, and by four generations-Warren Cuffee served in that war, and even received a letter from Abraham Lincoln.....
Memorial Day, for my family, during my life, has always been the unofficial start of summer. On this weekend, we'd open up the house in Sag Harbor, where we spent the summer vacation. We'd get the boat ready for the season. Come that Monday, though, we'd be at the cemetary, placing flags on the the graves of war dead. My grandfather, who went on to major in Anthropology at Columbia, and become an Episcopal priest, had been something of a hero and, I'm told, a butcher, in WWI, receiving the Croix de Guerre for swimming across the Muese river underwater with a communications cable tied to his back, under heavy gas and artillery fire, made a point of remebering those who didn't make it. My father, who served as a Navy chaplain in peacetime, would take me out as a boy to do the very same thing. Memorial Day weekend holds a special place in my heart because of him: he was born on May 29th, and died, after a long illness, on the very same day-so today, I'll remember him, a veteran, though of no war, who died in bed rather than the field of battle, with strawberry shortcake for dessert-his birthday cake of choice. He'd have been 83 years old.
For some time, after coming to New Mexico, one of my teachers and mentors in the Native American Church was Henry Gomez, of Taos Pueblo. Henry was a trouble maker. :lol: When he was sent to boarding school-which the government did to Indians to turn them into...well,not white people, but defintiely not Indians-he was 15 years old. He'd take some of his fellow students, mostly Navajos, out at night, and do the peyote ceremony with them. It's because of him that the Native American Church has 250,000 Dine members-he brought that ceremony to the Navajo people-and I can't express how proud I was when my Dine friend's mother said in a peyote meeting, Thank you, Creator, for Henry Gomez, and his bringing this ceremony to our people. Later, still a boy, he was called up to fight in WWII. He went to the Phillipines-saw his unit decimated, and, depending upon who is telling the story, later was captured by-or captured-a band of Negritos, with whom he fought a guerilla action (to hear Henry tell it, long after the stroke that limited his speech, he captured the Negritos with baseball cards: they'd thought he was Japanese until he showed them to them...:lol: ) Odd to see him cry, 60 years after the fact, telling how his Negritos had been gunned down by the Japanese, and he'd been captured. Later, in the prison camp, the Japanese-who were starving themselves-would send Henry (who was an Indian, and must know how to hunt) out with one bullet in a rifle, to get them some food. Henry made a bow and arrow, and would toss two monkeys over the fence for his fellow prisoners, for every one he gave to the Japanese. When the war was over, Henry came home, and later taught the peyote ceremony in the 60's to the hippies that are now my friends.....from 1996 to 2004 when he died, I proudly took Henry to lunch for Veteran's day. These days, I take a fellow named Andy Steck, who I worked with at LANSCE, and who served as an electronics intelligence tech in Laos, when we weren't even supposed to be in Laos, back in 1971. The day I asked him to lunch, this very hard man cried, because he knew about Henry, and knew that it meant that Henry had passed.
My son turned 28 this year. He's seen classmates, from high school and college, die in our ten long years of war. Young men-boys, really-who will never get to be as old as he is now. I had to hold him through a good long cry when one of his bandmates from high school -a good guitarist who joined the service to learn to work on engines-was reported dead. There've been many more since then-even more who come home with brain damage, or PTSD-men who, like my grandfather-survived the war, only to bring home and deal with a deeper than physical wound.
So, yeah-I'm kinda like Patton-the object of war isn't to die for your country, it's to make the other dumb son of a ***** die for his country-but I don't know anything about it, really. Today, for dinner, we have ribs and strawberry shortcake, in honor of my dad, and tomorrow I'll go to the National Cemetery in Santa Fe, and put fresh flags on graves for an hour-because it's only an hour, and some of those men-boys, really-gave their all for me and you, and didn't even know us. But I'll try to pay more attention to those who are coming home, from a war we didn't need, with wounds that will be with them for the rest of their lives-and they don't even know us.
