Nine years ago, memories and missing

Uncle Mike, me and Susan in the bar at La Fonda, Santa Fe. Cuba Libre in the glass a few years ago

"Quartermaster Clark. Shipmate," said the white clad sailor as he concluded and presented a folded flag  nine years ago. Another sailor played taps.

A few minutes earlier at the Santa Fe National Cemetery,  I had given the eulogy for my favorite uncle, Michael Henry Clark, WWII and Korean War U.S. Navy combat veteran.

I've written about him and this many times as the years go by, and the memories pile up. I have a photograph of him teaching me, then a first grader, how to kick a football in Fort Worth. He was headed Korea. 

Now I miss most the late night stories in his apartment where he lived for years, across the Taos highway from the cemetery. Every night you could hear taps played at 9 p.m. And I miss the laughter and too much Cuba Libre as the night went wore on. I still have one of those glasses sitting on a shelf. 

A photo of he and Susan and I sits on my desk. I may need a Cuba Libre tonight.

Saludos, Sailor. 

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My post from nine years ago:

A Sailor's Final Port of Call

The U.S.A.--The United States of Afraid?

Great Wall of China

All the political talk about building a wall between us and Mexico is more than disturbing, considering history.
Remember, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall"? Now, we're saying, "Mr. Trump, Build that wall."
Consider the historic walls, many designed to keep people out, or is it to keep people in?  
What's the difference? A matter of perception, perhaps. Aren't they all built on fear? Today there is a story on the front page of the New York Times about Hungary building a fence to keep immigrants out. 

What kind of mindset does it create

for those living behind a wall?

Consider our high-priced "gated communities," many with guards at the gates and medieval architecture. All the houses are cookie cutter and all the people living inside think alike--perhaps medievally, excluding those who are different. 
You become hostages in your own land, thinking like medieval people seeking refuge in a stone castle for protection against the barbarians. I understand armed guards at military gates, but those living inside are not living in fear.
Has the U.S.A. become the United States of Afraid?
And, in the long span of history, have any of these walls actually worked? 

Here are some other famous walls, in historical order.

Hadrian's Wall, England

Maginot Line, France

Berlin Wall

North-South Korea

Israel

U.S.-Mexico

The veteran I knew best--Memorial Day thoughts

Because my Dad lost his leg jumping a freight train in Tucumcari in 1932, he did not serve in World War II. But three of his brothers did. Rex, Mike and Champ. Rex and Champ were in the Army, Rex in England, and Champ in the Aleutians. Mike joined the Navy.
It's uncle Mike who became my favorite uncle, me carrying his name as my middle name. He was the bachelor, the traveler. He sent me a balsawood, battery operated PT boat from Japan while he was serving in Korea. He taught me how to kick a football in Fort Worth. From me, he caught the mumps when we lived in Albuquerque. He showed slides of his travels to Machu Picchu and other places, working for the state department teaching English in Ecuador, Libya, Iran, Mali, Tunisia. He settled in Santa Fe, teaching at the famed Institute of American Indian Arts until retirement, making friends on all of the pueblos. Then as the years passed, we lost touch, until about 15 years ago  when I needed him most, his Santa Fe home becoming a place of refuge. 

Uncle Mike, Susan and I at La Fonda a few years ago

From him I learned much about my Dad and uncles I'd never known, in our long talks at the foot of the Sangre de Christo Mountains as the setting sun turned them purple and red, viewed from his porch. Sailor's tales of WWII and Korea added to my knowledge of history and family. We'd "run up the rooster," as he would say. A former signalman, the semaphore flag for cocktail hour was a rooster. Rum and coke, "Cuba Libre," would add to the flavor of the evenings.
Now his ashes are buried in Santa Fe National Cemetery. We buried him Nov. 10, 2011 in the place he had called home for 30 some years, just across the highway from his home, and within sight of the Sangre de Cristos.
I know this about veterans on this Memorial Day...all of them have rich stories, all of them affect more lives than they ever know. Saludos a los todos veteranos. Muchas Gracias!

Mike's view of the Sangre de Christos

Growing up in the long shadows of 'The Bomb'

Death at Nagasaki

These days mark the anniversary of the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan, a prelude to the end of World War II 67 years ago. I was home snug in my crib when thousands of similar aged children were incinerated in Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki, Aug. 9, 1945.
I won't join the debate over dropping those bombs, killing a quarter million civilians within four months, and perhaps saving thousands of American lives from an invasion. That will go on a long time. Let is pray that it won't ever happen again.
But when I grew up in grade school through high school in Albuquerque, N.M., ten to 15 years later, the long shadows of those mushroom-shaped clouds hung over us. They still do..
We lived on Sandia Base, close to some of the scientific labs involved in nuclear activity, next to an airbase with Strategic Air Command bombers,  and only 60 miles south of Los Alamos, where those bombs were perfected. Our enemy wasn't Japan, but the Soviet Union, which had stolen and developed its own atomic and hydrogen bobs, plus Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), capable of hitting Albuquerque in about 30 minutes of launch time.
It affected our lives every day. Our parents had two cases of canned food stored under the kitchen sink in case we had to evaluate to the nearby mountains on the east of town. The entire base went through evaluation practice, driving to empty mesa land nearby to be escorted in an orderly manner to the supposed safety  of the mountains. Albuquerque only had about 200,000 people then, but there was literally only one road to the mountains, old US 66 coming through Tijeras canyon. I thought even then that there was no way the entire town could get evaluated in 30 minutes. I'd seen photos of allied planes strafing jammed retreating Nazi armament in WWII along a single road in North Africa.
Then we were shown grainy black and white films of  the bombs blowing away test structures  and people. But still we practiced getting down under our Desks and covering our heads. That didn't make sense to me either, but we all did.
In junior high our textbooks were filled with information on how much better America and capitalism was than the USSR  and communism. This followed the defection and brainwashing to Americans by communists in the Korean War in 1950, and the Communists of Mao Tse-tung defeating Chang Kai Shek who retreated to Formosa.  It's the same time that McCarthyism in the latest "Red Scare" became a national witch hunt for supposed "Commies."
We knew we had reason to be afraid, because of Russia's isolation of Berlin, the split of Germany and Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech. We'd seen what Russia did to protesters in Hungary in 1956, and their infiltration of African countries. Europe was divided, with tanks massed on both sides.
You cannot imagine the fear in 1959 when Russia launched the first satellite--we were all vulnerable.
The shadow of those bombs really accounts for use ending up in Vietnam to prevent the spread of communism, and our continuing isolation of Cuba, which fell to Castro in the early 60s. Kennedy and Johnson  and then Nixon were following the national mindset of fear. I can remember high school debate where "detente" between the US and USSR was a controversial subject. With Russia getting ready to put missiles in Cuba, 90 miles south of us, what could we think. Khrushchev banging his shoe at the U.N., and threatening to bury us fit right in. The building of the Berlin Wall only cemented that fear through the '60s, and led to accusing hippies and war protesters as infiltrated by communists.
With the perspective of years, I react to much of the fear I see in America today after 911 against another enemy we don't understand. How else but fear do you recommend putting duct tape on your windows? That's as effective as getting under your desk or evacuating an entire city. Yet the long shadows of the bombs still linger, as we debate options of dealing with Iran and its nuclear development, and bandied fearful political name calling of "Socialist."
That's one  perspective of growing up in the shadows of nuclear bombs.

Hiroshima

Mystery of two cemeteries, part 1--Saturday sightings

I came across this tattered flag in a rural cemetery today, a cemetery filled with veteran's graves. It was one of those Saturdays to spend meandering through the country.
North of Edmond in Logan County I came to Seward Road, and there were two graveyards, one on the northeast corner "Seward Cemetery" and one on the southwest corner, "Seward Memorial 1897." They're old, and I stopped at the northeast one because I could see some old gravestones.

It wasn't until I visited the one catty-corner from it that I discovered a mystery, a mystery answered by calling a Guthrie funeral home, and doing a little research on the computer when I got home.

Can you guess? We've zoomed past Seward Road hundreds of times on I-35 a few miles east of here, never thinking about how the road got its name. Most folks who turn off it, go east to the Lazy-E Arena, I suspect. I had driven north on the backroads, eventually  ending up on what is Broadway, but north of Waterloo road. It was cloudy and a morose kind of day for me, and the cemeteries were just there waiting for me. Solving the mystery was the best reward, after wandering around, taking photos of veterans and other graves, wondering about the stories.
Before I tell you about the mystery, the other mystery was why there were so many veterans graves in the first one. It's out in the country, but there were more than 20 veterans graves there, starting with veterans of the Civil War and Mexican War.

The oldest veterans' grave I found belonged to this man, buried in 1898. Most of the graves of the Civil War veterans you have no idea when they lived or died, because they're identified just by their units. Twentieth Century graves identify people by what service they were in. Civil War graves list their states and units--and here were graves from Missouri, Kansas, Illinois and Indiana infantries. They're also distinctive, with their whitish gray marble and slightly rounded tops. I think it is remarkable that people still decorate these old graves. How American.
This cemetery also has newer graves, including veterans of WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Here's the most recent I found.

It's interesting to me that he lived and served about the same times as my uncle Mike who died in October.

One footnote before we return to the mystery. I found this grave, of someone who would be my age, but he  never made it. His name must be on the Vietnam Wall in Washington. Can you imagine the heartbreak of parents and loved ones? Why do I visit, why am I interested in cemeteries and veterans graves? I guess it is mortality, and history, but there's more. I hoped to find a Confederate's grave...they are scattered throughout Oklahoma, but I didn't here. Still, there are so many stories to tell.
Now, back to the mystery of the two cemeteries.  I'll post more veterans graves photos later.

Happy Birthday, Sailor

He's been in my life a long time.

Today. 89 years ago in Comanche, Oklahoma, Michael Henry Clark was born, the fourth of eventual five Clark boys to Erle Thweatt and Cuba Jon Miller Clark. Michael, after whom I have my middle name, is the only survivor of those five boys.

Terrence, Lewis, Rex, Mike and Champ Clark, in the home of their mother Cuba Reasor inWhitesboro, Tex., in 1973.  photo by me. Dad died later that year.

Mike ran away from home in the 30s, hitching a free ride to the east coast, and eventually enlisted in the Navy. In WWII he was a signalman on board PC1212 a sub hunter in the Caribbean.

After the war he went on to earn his bachelors and masters degrees at the University of Colorado, and was called back up to serve in the Koren War, on  LST 975, that landed in the first invasion wave at Inchon. He was on the bridge, under fire, using semaphore flags when it hit the beach. A mortar shell went through the deck a few feet from him, and didn't explode.

He went on to teach English and other subjects in Espanola and other places when I was growing up in Albuquerque. In fact, he was the one who helped move us from Fort Worth to New Mexico, and we often went places with him in New Mexico when I was a kid. 

Mike and I at Bandalier, years ago.

Then he taught English in Ecuador, Iran, Libya, and Mali as a Fulbright before returning to New Mexico and teaching subjects at the Indian Arts Institute in Santa Fe, where he retired.

Terry and Mike on the bridge of his Santa Fe apartment.

Last November, after living in the same apartment for 32 years overlooking the federal cemetery and the Sangre de Cristos, we had to move him to a Veterans home in Colorado, where he is today, in dry dock as it were, but doing well for an old sailor.

Mike and Dad...the war years.

I've learned much about my Dad I didn't know over the past few years, and understand that Mike and Dad must have had a special bond as brothers. especially to give me his name. 

Mike was best man at our wedding at the Nedra Mattucci Gallery in Santa Fe a few years ago.

Happy birthday, sailor. Carpe Diem. Thanks.