As best I know, I have never had a personal reason to celebrate Memorial Day.
I had two grandfathers who served in World War I and two Dads who were WWII-era veterans. All four survived their experience and died later, one as early as 1947 and the other as recently as 2008.
Three of them served in the Army, one in the Navy.
I only knew two of them. One grandfather died nearly three years before I was born, my birth father disappeared before my third birthday.
My maternal grandfather was a sergeant on the staff of Col. Robert McCormick and he was particularly useful since his parents were immigrants from Germany and he grew up speaking German at home in Ohio. McCormick was of course the famous right-wing newspaper publisher and he always welcomed my grandfather graciously at First Division reunions.
My dad served in France in 1944 and ’45, and 18-year-old Jewish kid from New York City. He earned a Purple Heart and his unit received a Silver Star, and he nearly lost toes to frostbite in that last winter of the war.
My uncle, my mother’s older brother, was an army veteran of World War II. I know nothing about his service, but he raised a family and lived until 2010.
I had older friends who served in WWII. My very good friend Walter Masterson, who had a long career in big league baseball, served in the Navy in the South Pacific. Another man I got to know a little while working in North Carolina was Buddy Lewis, who was actually one of Walt’s teammates for part of his career.
His story was sadder. He played third base and outfield, and when he left for war in 1942, his career batting average was above .300.
He returned to America and played from 1945-47, retiring because it just didn’t feel the same anymore. But Senators owner Clark Griffith asked him to return for one more year. He did, and 1949 was his worst season. He hit .245, pulling his career average down to .297.
“It just wasn’t the same,” he told me in 1983. “Baseball had been so important to me, but once I was in the service and saw life and death up close, baseball just didn’t matter anymore to me.”
He died in 2011, at 94 the oldest of my WWII acquaintnaces.
None of the seven men I mentioned here died in action, but Charles Albro Whitcomb, Paul Theodore Kindinger, John Kelly (Buddy) Lewis, Walter Edward Masterson III, Paul William Kindinger, Norman Lewis Rappaport and Wesley Kenneth Whitcomb all would have celebrated the holiday for friends lost and gone.
I never served, although the nearer I get to the end of my own life, I wish more and more that I had. True, I might have died in Vietnam, but if I had survived it, I honestly believe the years of my life from 18-29 could not possibly have been a worse clusterfuck than they actually were.
I only really knew one person who died in Vietnam, and I didn’t know him very well.
But I have written about him several times over the years, and I consider his older brother my friend.
So here is my tribute to Memorial Day:
