ProetryPlace Blog 54 Lest We Forget

    The scene on our television screen was of the crowd gathered on the National Mall for the National Memorial Day Concert. The cameras panned to symbols of our great country—the capitol dome, the Washington Monument. The winner of “American Idol” sang the National Anthem. The National Symphony Orchestra played. Other popular singers belted out patriotic songs. Dignitaries spoke briefly—General Colin Powell and various chiefs of staff of the military.

    Interspersed with all the not-quite as-usual stuff, actors and actresses, as surrogates for both the living and the dead, spoke their stories.

    A Gold Star Mother spoke of the loss of her son, her love for him, her pride, her everlasting grief.

    A young veteran of the Army spoke of returning to the battlegrounds of Afghanistan after suffering a severe head wound and months of hospitalization. On his second tour he lost both arms and legs to a roadside bomb. After many more months of pain and suffering, surgery and despair, he found courage once again to take up the battle of life and live. He is now engaged to be married.

    The surrogates spoke other similar tales of valor, loss and triumph. Recorded scenes of battle from WWII to the present reminded viewers of our country’s many wars in defense of our freedom and that of others living far from our shores and with those battles, the price paid by our young and healthy men and women in casualties to their minds and bodies. We viewed the orderly rows of simple, white marble tomb stones that mark hundreds of thousands of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, a small fraction of the millions who have made the sacrifice in the history of our country and now lie at rest.

                                                                   

    Honor guards of all the military services presented the colors while men and women who had served in that branch stood at attention, proud and humble. A tenor sang the Lord’s Prayer.  

    There were no fireworks for this solemn holiday, one given more to gravesite visits than to parades. It is a day to honor those who gave all in defending the freedom that all the rest of us still enjoy like no other country on this earth. It is a day to think of those still serving while we enjoy the comfort and safety of our homes and families. It is a day to offer thanks.

    Patriotic song, prayer and speeches are fitting for the occasion but can never be adequate to fully pay tribute or express our gratitude to those who paid the ultimate sacrifice. They did not wish to die. Their loss is our loss. Let us honor them by living a life they would have been proud to live.

Memorial Day

Honor those who died at war—

backyard barbeques

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com

for Helen on Mother's Day

ProetryPlace Blog 53 for Helen on Mother’s Day

    Helen Spears, my mother, was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 11 August 1904, almost 110 years ago. She was the second of seven children born to Ida and George Spears. She shared her birth year with a number of notables and celebrities, including musicians Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey and Count Basie, artist Salvador Dali, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (the Manhattan Project) and actors John Gielgud, Cary Grant and Ray Bolger (Wizard of Oz, Tin Man).

    Various documents show her given name to by Myrtle, Helen Myrtle and Helen Myrtle Kora (or Cora). Cora thankfully dropped away early in her life, but she retained Myrtle as her middle name. In my eyes, Helen suited her best as appropriate to her quiet beauty.

    Her youth was a time of horse and buggies, home deliveries and small, corner grocers. The Ford Model T, better known as Tin Lizzie, the first mass produced automobile was not born until 1908. Theodore Roosevelt was president. American engineers initiated construction of the Panama Canal. It was a time of great potential.

    By the time she was ten years old, the world was engaged in the First World War. More personally devastating was the disappearance of her father in 1917. Teen-age Helen became a second mother to her five younger brothers while her own mother, Ida, struggled to eke out a living for the family. Later, she joined the work force to help provide family income.

    Helen married Edward Anderson in September, 1926, months before Charles Lindberg piloted the Spirit of St. Louis from Long Island, NY to Paris on the first nonstop, solo trans-Atlantic flight. The couple reared four children in the midst of America’s Great Depression. She shopped frugally on Ed’s limited income, prepared all meals from scratch (as was common at that time), sewed clothing for her family and, at times worked to supplement the family income. I remember best her delicious baked deserts—Schaum Torte, Pineapple Upside Down Cake and Devil’s Food Cake. I was intrigued by the doughy toroids floating in bubbling hot grease when she made homemade doughnuts. Many Sundays and holidays we were served roasted chicken, fresh from a cousin’s farm, or an even more rare German treat, sauerbraten with rich brown gravy and potato dumplings.

    I was born in 1932, the third of Helen and Ed’s four children. My mother read to me often from the few books of nursery rhymes we possessed. She encouraged my meager artistic abilities, assuming perhaps I had inherited some of her diverse artistic skills. She took me to see my first movies, those I shall never forget—animated greats like Gulliver’s Travels, Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo. I was six when we went to see The Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger and other greats. The music and the magic have remained with me for over 70 years.

    Helen Myrtle Cora (nee Spears) Anderson lived to see her grandchildren born and the advent of many miracles of modern science and engineering, none of which were so miraculous as the quality of human spirit and goodness that she herself possessed and which graced the world around her.  Helen died of Acute Leukemia at age 77, too early, still youthful and beautiful, but after a full and productive life.

    Happy  Mother’s Day.

Richard Allen Anderson http://richardandersonblogs.blogspot.com