I knew my father was a good man who always tried to do the ‘right thing.’ I didn't know that he was an unsung hero… until just before my mother died.
In May of 1970, my husband Al was studying for his master’s degree in history at Ohio University, where we met and later married. I worked in the University’s Physics Department as a Secretary II with benefits, including insurance. I liked my job even though I knew little about physics. But the graduate students and professors liked me and said I was doing a great job. They were all males, and I liked that too. I was also five months pregnant with our son, Marc.
On May 4, l970, Ohio Governor James Rhodes sent the National Guard to Kent State University to try and quell students protesting and marching on campus against the War in Vietnam. After several confrontations, twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 live rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others. Two of the students who died on the scene were among the more than 300 students who gathered to protest President Richard Nixon’s planned expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia.
The shootings triggered an immediate and massive outrage on campuses around the country. Ultimately, more than 4 million students participated in organized walk-outs and protests at hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools.
*
On May 7, 1970, students at my alma mater, Ohio University in Athens, announced that they too would march through the town in opposition to the war in Vietnam, but also as a protest against those students at Kent State who were killed or wounded during a similar demonstration. I soon learned that the town of Athens was terribly divided. There were ‘townies’ who supported the war and thousands of students who felt the War in Vietnam was killing young people like them for no justifiable reason. On May 7, the townies, who’d heard about the upcoming march, took their guns, climbed up to the second stories of the buildings on Court Street, and then aimed their rifles out the windows at the marchers approaching. I was one of those who marched that day.
The University had called off classes and sent employees home, so I joined the march because I was strongly against the War in Vietnam. I had lost someone I cared about. My high school boyfriend, Terry Miller, who was a year ahead of me, had flunked out of WVU, was immediately drafted to fight in the war, and then killed a few weeks after he landed in Vietnam. My best friend and freshman roommate at Ohio University left the country and moved to Canada with her boyfriend/future husband, who learned he’d soon be sent to Vietnam. Then there were the four students who died at Kent State who most likely felt the same as I did about the war.
Even though I was five months pregnant, people told me I looked nine months. Marc was born nearly 5 months later and weighed 9 pounds, 11 ounces! As I marched, many students near me were concerned I’d have my baby during the protest. I was fine and finished the march with the thousands of students marching. There was no violence, only people singing songs about peace and chanting Four Dead In Ohio. However, I felt tears in my eyes as I marched down Court Street and saw the men on the rooftops and in second-story windows with guns pointed at the marchers. I had come to really like the town and was shocked by the response of the locals. Later, I learned that what happened that day in Athens, a non-violent protest against an unpopular war that was killing young people like me… was happening all over the country.
*
I remember a time when I was sitting with my father beside a campfire. We were vacationing at Holly River State Park in West Virginia, one of my family’s favorite parks, where we often went camping. I was a teenager, fifteen going on sixteen or sixteen going on seventeen. Although I cannot remember exactly how old I was, I can remember our conversation. My Dad, Bob, was a student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in N.Y. when the war broke out in Europe. He’d just finished his second year as a chemical engineering student, hoping to get a top job in the industry when he finished. Soon, every young man like Bob in this country was required to register for the draft. Eventually, most were conscripted into one of the armed forces.
Decades later, I learned from Bob’s mother that Dad did not take it well when he received the notice that he’d been drafted into the Army, but few did. The only good news was that he had been assigned to the 84th US Infantry Division called the Railsplitters. Cooincidently, I understand from my son Marc, that Henry Kissinger also served in the same division. Since my father was uncomfortable talking about his time in the war, I learned information I did not know from his mother, Hoy, and my mother, Nancy. Bob wrote to both of them often when he was in Germany and then France. He did not tell his mother the horror he witnessed when the war was almost over. Eventually, I learned that Nancy knew the rest of the story. After Dad passed, my mother told me what happened to him near the war's end.
*
That evening, by the campfire, I got the courage to ask him about his experience in WWII. Mom was in the station wagon reading, and my siblings were in the Nimrod camper, asleep. I’d often asked him about what happened to him when he was in Germany. Still, he usually wouldn’t talk about it. I knew he’d fought in the Battle of the Bulge but not much else.
So, while we sat watching the fire crackle under a clear night sky, I asked him what being in the Army during wartime was like. Was it scary? Was it horrible?
He just nodded. But first, he told me that we had something important in common. As a little girl, I’d often been taunted by kids on the bus because I was sensitive and cried easily. Dad told me that he had been relentlessly taunted by his classmates in school because he refused to go hunting. He said it was typical for men and boys in his upper New York State community to go hunting. Fathers would take their sons to the distant hills and hunt deer, rabbits, and geese.
Finally, Bob’s father, Ives, kept goading him, claiming it would be fun. They could do something together like a typical father and son. Although reluctant, Bob eventually agreed, and they went hunting. Ives carried the shotgun; Bob had a large loop of rope slung over his shoulder and a sheathed knife on his belt. Side by side, they hiked into the nearby hills early one morning.
Dad explained to me that he dreaded their outing since he did not want to kill anything ever, especially animals. He and his parents always had dogs, usually Schnauzers, and Dad had carefully trained them… but never to hunt. However, he also claimed that he and his father had serious conflicts, perhaps because his mother and father did not get along. Down the road, his father, Ives, would leave the household for good, and I understand from my mother that seventeen-year-old Bob strongly encouraged him to go.
But when he was about thirteen, Dad told me he did not want to lose face with his father and was tired of his schoolmates making fun of him, so he finally agreed to go hunting. After an hour or so of hiking, they hunkered down behind some evergreens and waited for deer to appear in a glen. A couple of hours passed, and then a young doe stepped out into the sun and trotted to a nearby creek. She bent her head to lap the water, and Ives shot her dead. Dad said that wasn’t the end of his nightmare; they had to gut the deer before dragging it home.
As my father told me this story, I saw how much it affected him. His face was drawn, and his eyes glistened. I was certain that remembering this incident bothered him. Finally, he explained that after that experience, he refused to ever go hunting again. That evening, by the campfire, Dad told me that he hated guns or, rather, the horrible things guns can do.
*
Bob met my mother, Nancy, in Virginia while waiting to be shipped to Louisana for his basic training. In Louisana, he passed with high honors all the tests concerning making careful decisions, precise mapping, evaluating necessary troop levels, and keeping accurate records while on the battlefield. But Dad told me he failed the tests that measured his ability to shoot a rifle straight and hit the assigned targets accurately.
So, after landing on the shores of France, Bob was assigned to operate a bazooka. He received that assignment because his eyesight wasn’t good, and he told my mother he could not shoot a target dead center with a rifle, no matter how hard he tried. His Army trainers figured missing a huge enemy tank using a Bazooka rocket launcher would be nearly impossible, even for shortsighted Bob. Dad said he got his first pair of glasses after he returned from the war.
A bazooka is basically a rocket launcher strapped onto the gunner's back. One of the other soldiers had to insert a rocket into the chamber, and then Dad would aim and fire, mostly at enemy tanks. In a letter to Nancy, he admitted that, as far as he knew, he had never killed anyone during the war and was privately thankful. However, Dad was often ordered to shoot the bazooka at distant German tanks to distract the enemy and make troop movements on the ground possible.
My son Marc recalled a story that his grandfather Bob told him, not too long before Dad died. While in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, Bob disabled a German Tiger Tank with his bazooka. Marc said it was a legitimately and seriously heroic thing to do. But that it was also an extremely big deal as all of the US troops were generally terrified of the Tiger with good reason and they were difficult to knock out. Bob hit it in the tracks, which was about the only way a bazooka could stop one of those things. Bazooka are very underpowered relative to the armor they had. One time, Dad accidentally hit the wrong target. He mistakenly shot a rocket into an old German barn that ignited and eventually burned to the ground. The men in his platoon thought it was hilarious and never let him forget that he ‘killed a barn.’
Even so, I learned from my mother that Bob’s captain thought highly of him. Eventually, Bob was promoted to sergeant during the war's final months. He was standing by the Elbe River in Germany when several German uniformed officers suddenly approached him with their hands in the air. They’d been told that Bob was the highest-ranking soldier in the area, which my father, a sergeant, thought was funny at the time. One German was a major, an important-looking man with metals on his chest. Dad said he spoke English fluently, and explained that they wanted to surrender and be taken to Bob’s superiors.
Dad told my son Marc that when they were at the Elbe before meeting the Russians, they could see on the horizon the constant flashes from the Battle of Berlin. The heroic Red Army pulverizing the place with some of the most horrendous artillery fire ever deployed. They were about 40 miles from Berlin and at that point about the furthest east Allied unit.
When I was younger, I remember my father telling us kids this part of his story and that in war, when a high-ranking officer surrenders… the person he surrenders to gets first dibs on ‘the loot.’ Dad said he took the major’s money, a silver luger, a beautiful German camera, a silver compass/watch on a gold-colored chain, and the man’s credentials. He also told us that if he hadn’t taken them, someone else would’ve claimed them as the spoils of war. Then Bob and the men in his platoon marched the Germans to a nearby Army headquarters.
*
One interesting side story: Bob’s great-grandfather on his mother’s side was German. His family in Germany were wealthy, and some had immigrated to New York State in the mid-l800s. They eventually established a prosperous business in Rochester, where I believe my father, his sister, and their mother later lived.
When Bob was hunkered down next to the Elbe River in Germany, he took out his map. Dad quickly realized he was directly across the river from the village of Germerscheim and his great-grandfather's ancestral home. He asked for permission from his captain to go across the river to see his family's home, but was forbidden to go.
Later, Bob looked at the river, quickly removed his shoes, and dove into the water. (His mother told me he was a competitive swimmer in high school.) A few hours later, he swam back across the river with a wonderful story he’d eventually tell his mother, his future wife, and then later his five children, including me.
Once in Germerscheim, Dad walked to his family’s ancestral home and stared at the stunning and opulent structure. Bob told us kids he wanted to knock on the door but feared someone would contact officials. They’d consider him an enemy and arrest him. It was getting dark, so he hurried to the river, swam back to the other side, and returned to his camp, tired but none the worse for wear. You can imagine how impressed his children were upon hearing this ‘war’ story?
*
Bob kept everything he took from the German officer, including the luger. After he married my mother and they built their home in West Virginia, he hid it somewhere, not wanting his children to stumble on it accidentally. Dad also refused to allow any other gun in our house, at least while I lived there. However, years later, he agreed that my youngest brother, Rex, could have a shotgun. But Rex had to promise to keep it unloaded while it was inside our home.
For the longest time, it bothered my father that he had that luger in our house, my mother claimed. I now believe there were so many terrible memories attached to that weapon it affected how he thought about it. Eventually, he sold it for a pittance (my mother thought) to an antique dealer, a family friend. Turns out that luger was one of only a few that Hitler presented to his top officers, and it had Hitler’s name inscribed on the back of the silver case. Dad didn’t care. He did not want that gun in his house.
*
During the Battle of the Bulge, a bomb exploded near him, and shrapnel hit his leg. After surgery to remove the shrapnel, Bob quickly recovered in a local French hospital. Then he walked the streets of Paris and nearby cities to strengthen his leg. Bob sent most of his Army pay back home to his mother for safekeeping. Still, he had enough to purchase a signed and hand-colored certified print by a famous French artist, John Francois Millet, at a small shop in the late artist’s former studio. Bob bought it as a gift for Nancy since he planned on asking her to marry him when he returned home. Decades later, I inherited the print, and whenever I look at it, I remember that my father bought it in France for my mother during the war. Someday, I will give it to my son Marc.
Unfortunately, after V-E day (Victory in Europe), he was low on the list of US soldiers approved to return to the States. So, while he waited to learn when he’d be shipped home, Bob continued to use the German camera. He took photos of the bombed-out buildings in France destroyed by German aircraft. Before he was injured, Dad photographed men in his platoon hanging around their temporary barracks or campsites, or hiding behind hillsides to avoid incoming fire. He also took many photos of Russians as they began their search for German soldiers. The images of Russian tanks in the middle of German cities are more than striking. However, I will never forget the images of German refugees, mainly women and children, trying to escape the Russians who were intent on getting even for the deaths of thousands of their comrades on the battlefield. Dad told me the refugees were searching for food, water, and shelter but mainly trying to hide from the Russian troops. Several photos of my father and Russian soldiers standing around and ‘talking’ to each other are amazing. To this day, his photos still impress me. They were, of course, in black and white, but he had an artist's eye when taking them.
As far as I know, Dad never shot a weapon again. He still wouldn’t say much about what he saw or did during the war. He did tell me that he lost many friends in his unit to conflicts with the German Army and enemy fire during the Battle of the Bulge.
*
After we returned home from our vacation at Holly River, Dad got out his WWII photo album late one evening. We sat side by side on the living room sofa while he showed me some photos he had taken of good friends who later died during the Battle of the Bulge and other conflicts. In the photos, his friends were thin, and their clothes were dirty and rumpled, but all had big smiles, probably hoping the war would end soon so they could return home. But Dad said many of them didn’t return home, and he pointed them out to me. I could hear the sadness in his voice and knew he still felt deeply about their loss. It must have been horrible to have been there when your best friends were killed or injured in front of you.
*
Much later, during the Vietnam era, we discussed that war often. Sometimes I would call him, and sometimes he called me. They were not always easy conversations. He and my mother voted for Richard Nixon, who supported the war in Vietnam, and my husband Al and I did not. I admit we had some strained conversations, but nothing that ruined our relationship.
The young people of my generation stood up by the thousands to protest the war in Vietnam, and yet 58,220 US troops died there. In our defense, the rationale for that war has fallen apart over the years.
The young people of my father’s generation fought in World War II because Germany invaded Europe, our allies, and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, destroying the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Back then, they had no choice but to enlist, believing it was their patriotic duty. Yet 400,000 troops (mostly young men like my father) died during that war.
*
Years after the Vietnam War ended, what concerned me again was another conflict that would send young men and, this time, young women to fight, with many wounded and killed. It was the war the US began against Iraq. I spoke to my father concerning it because, once again, I had serious questions about the rationale for the war. He said not to worry, that he believed the war in Iraq would not last long and that our government was simply ‘rattling their sabers”.
Sadly, my father, Bob, died about a week after that conversation. Also, sadly, the Iraq war continued for eight more years. Bob was a brilliant, thoughtful, complicated, yet intense soul devoted to his wife, Nancy, and his mother, Hoy. He loved his five children, their families, and his many dogs. My father was also what I’d describe as a critical thinker. Maybe that had something to do with his training as a chemical engineer. He always tried to look at both sides of an issue. He never took someone’s word or position without evaluating whether it was fact or fiction. I so admire him for that quality. I try my best to emulate him in that regard. He also valued the lives of animals over the temporary thrill of hunting and killing them for sport.
*
A HORRIBLE DISCOVERY
Author’s Note: The following is a true account of my father Bob's experience during the war.
I have tried my best to tell this as accurately as possible, including comments or reflections from my father Bob, his mother Hoy, my mother Nancy, my son Marc and my husband Al. I recently learned that Dad also spoke to my Brother Rob about what what happened.
A few of the following accounts are graphic.
*
When I was about sixteen, my mother was driving me to town when I decided to ask if she knew anything about Dad’s time in the war. (I was obsessed about learning more even then). I remember Nancy was quiet for a moment, then said only this: Dad had a terrible experience at a camp near the end of the war, but he won't talk about it.
Her statement became the catalyst that caused me to discover what happened to him and why it was so “terrible.” It took me decades to learn the real story. And now, here it is:
*
Soon after my father took charge of those officers next to the Elbe River, Bob’s captain sent him and his platoon into a German encampment called Neuengamme, which they wanted Bob to assess. The war's end was at hand, and German troops had begun to retreat from their positions throughout Germany. Before Bob and his men entered Neuengamme, US intelligence revealed that the German officers in charge of that facility had hurried into their vehicles. They then raced along the Elbe River, heading north to distance themselves from the oncoming American troops.
Those American troops, including my father, his platoon, and scores of other US soldiers like them, would soon discover some of the most horrendous murders of thousands and thousands of people in hundreds of similar encampments across Germany and Poland. Human history has few tragedies that rival the magnitude and moral bankruptcy of the Holocaust, the systematic state-sponsored killing of six million Jewish men, women, and children.
Bob also learned that one of the cowards racing away from Neuengamme and heading north along the Elbe River…was a man that US intelligence had identified as a high-ranking major and one of Hitler’s most trusted officers.
Bob and his men were the first U.S. troops to enter what they soon discovered was one of the horrific German concentration camps. In time, Bob and his men found gas chambers, execution rooms, ovens, and other monstrous torture chambers inside the camp. He never spoke about it to me, but my mother described it as the worst experience of his life.
*
I’d gone to her assisted living center, where she had a room filled with treasures from her past. My sister Jill told me that our mother, Nancy, was failing. So, I dropped everything at home and hurried to West Virginia. I wanted to see her one more time. But I also hoped she knew the answers to my questions about Dad’s experience in the war. Bob had died a few years earlier, and I felt I would never get another chance to learn the real story about his time in Germany if I did not ask her then. Finally, in her room at the center, Nancy explained what had happened to Bob when he and his men entered that camp. She welcomed my questions and went into a lot of detail to answer them. My mother always had a great memory, which served me well that day. I admit that I cried most of the way home to Ohio.
*
Once he returned to the States after the war ended, Bob and Nancy married in Roanoke, Virginia. Eventually, they rented an apartment in Rensselaer so he could finish his degree in chemistry. It was in their tiny apartment that she learned about the encampment. Nancy said the images of what he saw there still tormented him. Although he did his best, she said that Bob could not dismiss them, no matter how hard he tried.
*
Dad told her he’d never seen anything as horrible as the ravaged people in Neuengamme. The heartbreaking conditions that men, women, and children suffered were beyond anything he’d ever seen or imagined possible. Bob described the bodies of men, women, and children lying unburied in piles around the back of the encampment.
Bob and his men were shocked and unprepared to discover the emaciated prisoners who welcomed them with open arms yet with tears streaming down their faces. Cheers arose as the soldiers entered the encampment, Bob told my mother. Some prisoners cried, some fell to the ground, and others prayed. Those imprisoned appeared in disbelief…. until it dawned on them that they’d soon be rescued from a true hell on earth.
Dad and his men quickly learned that most of the Germans in charge of the camp had left in a hurry. Two stayed behind to guard the prisoners but were no longer present. Weeks earlier, the camp had run out of food and coal to heat their large building. Most of those still imprisoned there were starving, and Bob and his platoon soon realized many adults and children were dying or already dead from lack of food and the bitter cold every day that passed.
After Bob hurried to contact his captain at headquarters on his radio, trucks of food, coal, clothing, and medicines, along with a team of doctors and nurses, were quickly dispatched to the camp. Just as important, a group of Army resource personnel was also on their way. They planned to interview the prisoners and record their experiences. Hopefully, U.S. officials could bring those responsible for their reprehensible crimes to justice. Mom told me that Bob and his men stayed at the camp until the other units arrived, wanting to ensure the incoming assessment groups fully understood the nightmare that had happened there.
Bob immediately sent five of his men into the nearby town to ask for food donations so they could have something to give the starving people in the camp. They were thankful that the townspeople collected everything they had, and brought it to the camp in several old trucks. It was enough food to ward off their hunger until provisions arrived from Army headquarters in two more days.
While waiting for reinforcements, Dad and his men asked those willing and able to form a line so they could learn their names and how they came to be at the camp. Two of the men in his platoon spoke German and offered to translate if necessary. The soldiers stood in a circle around them and carefully listened as, one by one, they learned about the unbearable suffering and terrible losses caused by the worst of humanity. As they recounted their personal experiences in the camp, most of those who’d been imprisoned cried. Dad told my mother he was ashamed and horrified to learn the truth and cried with them.
*
After telling Nancy about the horrors he’d seen and heard, Bob assured my mother he could never speak of it again. Even so, he feared the stories and the images would stay with him for the rest of his life. Finally, Dad promised her he’d never repeat what he had seen and experienced to anyone else…. because what happened was beyond horrific. Decades later I learned that Bob was finally able to talk about it. Bob told my son Marc, his son Rob, and my husband Al. He did not tell them all of the story but enough to prove that my mother had been correct all along.
While I sat beside her chair in the assisted living center, I asked my mother if she thought Dad had eventually recovered from what he’d seen in the camp. Did she think he got over it in time? My mother only shook her head. She said nothing more about what he had been through. But even though my mother was frail and failing, she seemed relieved to have confided everything to someone else in the family. I thanked her many times for allowing me to know what happened. I was finally at peace about it. But I wished my father was still alive so I could thank him for his humanity and for what he did to help all those poor people.
*
One question sometimes keeps me up at night. Was the German major who surrendered to my father… the same person who oversaw the concentration camp that Dad and his men later liberated? And was he the same officer who handed Bob his silver luger inscribed by Hitler? Perhaps that was why my father detested the luger and gave it away. He could not stand the probability that they might be one and the same man. Maybe he hoped that if he no longer had the luger, his terrible nightmares… that began after going into the camp…would vanish.
Were they the same man? And if so, in the end, did that despicable major escape being punished for his unforgivable crimes? Finally, I asked my mother if Dad had ever told her the major’s name, but she shook her head again. The last thing I remember about this mystery was that my mother told me something else I was upset but not surprised to learn.
After the war, Nancy said Dad had terrible nightmares that kept him awake at night. It happened often, and he could not return to sleep. Sometimes, he had dark moods he could not dismiss. Bob’s mother, Hoy, also told me about my father’s nightmares and dark moods after returning from the war. Finally, my mother admitted he was a man “haunted by a never-ending nightmare that began when he and his men opened the doors of that camp.”
What a terrible burden Bob and many others like him witnessed during the last days of the war. It had to have been incredibly hard on him to remember those haunting images and terrifying stories…..because I am sure that they did stay with my father for the rest of his life. That is the kind of good and honorable man he was. In every way, Bob is an unsung hero. He is definitely a hero to me and I will be forever proud of what he did during the war, and the rest of his life.
*
While writing this part of Guardians of the Road Memoir, one final story about my parents needs to be told. Bob and Nancy traveled all over the world with a group of Americans called the Friendship Force. Each trip had different travelers and went to different countries. Usually, they stayed with families in the homes of the host countries. Bob, Nancy, and some of their children visited England, Japan, Norway, South America, and Latvia with the Friendship Force. One of their most exciting trips was to Russia right after Perastroyka when that country opened its borders to non-Russian visitors. It was a tour guided by an English-speaking Russian, and they later learned the tour was closely monitored by the Russian government. My mother told me it was their most dramatic Friendship Force trip.
Their group of Americans in the Friendship Force were on a bus taking them to a Russian city north of Moscow. The bus stopped briefly for petrol, and people chatted about their experiences thus far. Then Mom said one of their group, a short, stocky man with a pinched expression, loudly cleared his throat. He stood, turned, and glanced at each one of his fellow travelers. Finally, he said something truly horrible.
“I want to make sure you all know the real truth. There were no German concentration camps that killed Jews by the thousands. There was also no such thing as a… Holocaust, either. It was all just a lie!”
My mother told me that Dad was speechless perhaps because he was shocked by the comment.
So Nancy stood and said to the man, “You're mistaken. My husband Bob was a sergeant in WWII and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He and the men under his command were the first U.S. troops to enter a German concentration camp near the Elbe River, where thousands of people were killed: men, women, children. He eventually learned that most of those who were imprisoned, along with hundreds that the Germans murdered in that camp…were Jews.”
Everyone on the bus looked at Bob, who turned his head away, refusing to say anything. Later, he thanked my mother for speaking up. By then, Nancy knew the horrors Bob faced when he and his men entered that camp in Germany.
When this occurred, our country and many other nations initially turned their attention away from this horrendous mass murder that killed six million people. The United States was fighting two wars on opposite sides of the world then. That said, many still deny that it happened even today. Why should we be surprised that a young man far from home, a sergeant, a chemist, and an animal lover, faced the horrible truth firsthand and suffered mightily for discovering it?
Bob lived a good happy life, with a big family who loved him completely. However, we must never let this abomination and tragedy happen again. I am sure my father would agree.
*
Sitting on our dock with Murphy dog still sleeping by my feet, I recalled this story about my father during the war. I’d finally discovered a familial connection that had been absent most of my life. Some have told me that I resemble my late mother, Nancy. I did look a bit like her when I was much younger, but we were not alike personally or intellectually. I spend a lot of time studying complicated concepts, evaluating positions, researching, solving difficult problems…I am a critical thinker if you will. My mother was not; it wasn’t in her wheelhouse. She was a good mother who loved her five children… but not a person who evaluated complex issues or spent time on weighty subjects.
So, I feel I am actually more like my father, Bob. I am analytical and organized. I have stood up to people who did terrible things and have had to teach myself complicated processes to accomplish monumental tasks. I wrote local, state, and federal grants requiring intense study and annotation. I wrote this memoir but also a full-length novel. But most of all, like my father, I have a distaste for the antiquated rationale for wars that have no end and the deaths caused by them. Finally, like my father, I cannot abide the idea of killing any of God’s creatures, both human and animal. In a way, I’d like to believe I inherited those values from my father, Bob. I was and am a true Guardian of the Road, you know.
Perhaps that is why the deaths of the Beaver and Deer bothered me so much. They were senseless killings, and no one will convince me otherwise. Although their deaths could not begin to compare to the murder of humans in concentration camps or in wars, even so, I feel certain that my father would agree since he was a Guardian of the Road… long before I came along!
After I wrote the first draft of this memoir (which did not include most of the latter stories), I sent my parents two copies of the manuscript so they would not quarrel over who had read what chapter. One day, my father called to tell me they’d finished it. A bit nervous, I asked him what he thought…did he like it? Did Mom like it?
Dad said both of them laughed and laughed while reading it and thoroughly enjoyed the Guardian tales. That made me happy and relieved. For by then, they needed to laugh.
I sent my father his Guardian of the Road certificate for Christmas, a year before he died. He went to Heaven as an official Guardian of the Road, and I’m positive he was welcomed there.
Check back in a couple of weeks for the next installment of Guardians of the Road. There are not many left.
*
Comments