{"id":7342,"date":"2013-11-11T09:29:45","date_gmt":"2013-11-11T14:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=7342"},"modified":"2017-01-07T09:19:18","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T14:19:18","slug":"a-son-remembers-a-north-country-veteran-of-wwii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2013\/11\/11\/a-son-remembers-a-north-country-veteran-of-wwii\/","title":{"rendered":"A son remembers a North Country veteran of WWII"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following remembrance from Jeff Dickson<\/strong> arrived in my email this morning with the attached message “”Do with it as you see fit.” I see fit to share it. Dale Hobson, NCPR<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Fountains<\/a>

Fountains at the WWII Memorial in Washington, DC. Photo: Andrew Anderson<\/a>, Creative Commons, some rights reserved<\/p><\/div>\n

My Dad was a World War II veteran.\u00a0 He joined the Army soon after Pearl Harbor and was assigned to the 4th<\/sup> (Ivy) Division, 22nd<\/sup> Infantry Battalion as a combat infantryman.\u00a0 His unit landed at Normandy, fought across France and Belgium and into Germany.\u00a0 During that time, he earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star among other recognitions.\u00a0 After VE day, he was transferred home and given leave before being resupplied to head to the Pacific to join the probable invasion of Japan.\u00a0 On August 14, 1945 he was with family celebrating his 27th<\/sup> birthday when word passed that the Japanese were in the process of surrender.\u00a0 We never came close to matching that birthday present.<\/p>\n

It was clear that the war and his experiences had profoundly impacted his life and the way he lived it.\u00a0 Whether for better or worse.\u00a0 He told the funny stories, the crazy stuff but almost never the dark side except occasionally very late in the evening after one more gin than usual.\u00a0 And then only after Mom had died and the two of us were alone.<\/p>\n

Around his 80th<\/sup> birthday in 1998, he began to get around less and became restricted more and more to his home.\u00a0 About this time, the political wars in Washington were raging over the building of the World War II Memorial.\u00a0 When stories about the disagreements would air on the TV news, he often became incensed.\u00a0 It would invariably end with some variant of \u201cGet the damn thing built \u2013 there\u2019s a 1000 of us dying every day\u201d.<\/p>\n

By the time it was completed, he was no longer able to travel and never got there himself.\u00a0 But at least he knew it was there and he took a certain degree of satisfaction \u2013 clearly tinged with anger over the delay \u2013 with the fact that so many men that he knew had finally been honored.<\/p>\n

He died in February, 2006 and was cremated in Florida for return to Northern New York.\u00a0 The bulk of his ashes were buried beside my Mother\u2019s grave in Riverside Cemetery, Gouverneur, New York.\u00a0 But not all.\u00a0 Some are nurturing a tree at the family summer home at Sylvia Lake.\u00a0 Some are spread at the hunting camp near Cranberry Lake where we spent every fall weekend.\u00a0 Some \u2013 and he would have absolutely loved this \u2013 were placed in a 10 gauge blank cannon shell and fired out over the lake as a final salute to the neighbors.\u00a0 And I set about a cup full aside for another destination.<\/p>\n

In early November, 2006 I was near Washington for some meetings.\u00a0 Early on an absolutely cloudless spectacular Sunday morning, I drove in to Washington to locate the WW II Memorial.\u00a0 I was all alone trying to contemplate my next move with not even a security guard in sight.\u00a0 As I moved around the Memorial, it became clear.\u00a0 Among the other features, there are two very powerful recirculating fountains \u2013 one commemorating the European Theater of Operations and one for the Pacific.\u00a0 After looking around to make sure I was still alone, and with a few moments of recollection and remembrance, the ashes were poured into the European Theater fountain.\u00a0 Those ashes had been pulverized so fine that they can clean that fountain monthly for the next hundred years and some will still remain.<\/p>\n

Right after it was done I happened to look up into this blue cloudless sky.\u00a0 There was not a sparrow or a starling or a pigeon to be seen but a lone eagle flew overhead.\u00a0 My practical side knows he was just on his way to the Tidal Basin to find a dead fish for breakfast, but that did not matter in that moment.\u00a0 All I could do was lose sight of him in the blur over my eyes and think \u201cThanks, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeff Dickson<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following remembrance from Jeff Dickson arrived in my email this morning with the attached […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7342"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7342"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18595,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7342\/revisions\/18595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}