Look What Is In Our Front Yard!

Written by Keith Sunday, 06 June 2010 15:47

Now that the sign has spouted in our front yard, it's official: our number one project for this summer is selling our home of 32 years in the country and purchasing and moving to a condo in the city.

And what a job it will be, we're already finding out. All of that stuff we saved because "we might be able to use it some day" is going—one way or another.

So the cleaning-out process is underway. Thursday was both garbage day and recycling day. We contributed—and will for the next several weeks if our energy holds out.

We'll leave Pat's beautiful flowers for the next happy owner!

Memorial Day Address

Written by Donna Ihns Thursday, 03 June 2010 20:43

The Lime Springs Page is pleased to present the Memorial Day address given by Doctor Donna Ihns on Memorial Day, 2010, at the Lime Springs Community Center. Thank you, Donna, for sharing with us.

(Please note that formatting this is a bit of a challenge. Such errors are mine, not Donna's.)

I'm very proud to be here today, for Memorial Day in Lime Springs has always been a most special observance. Over the years, living in several states, I always find myself comparing other places with Lime Springs and this dear little town invariably comes out on top.

Here we are in this beautiful building which is in itself a statement of hope and belief in our future. The fire trucks housed next door remind me of Nelson DeMille's description of another little town, Midland, Georgia and of one aspect of Lime Springs history.

"Midland was an English trading post as early as 1710 and before that it was an outpost of the Spanish Colony of St. Augustine in Florida. Prior to that it was an Indian town...The Spanish burned the Indian town, the English burned the Spanish outpost, the French burned the English trading post, the British army burned and abandoned their fort there during the Revolution, and finally, the Yankees burned it in 1864.

Looking at the place today you wonder what all the fuss was about.

Anyway, they've got a good volunteer fire department now."

Back at Centennial time we sang 'Dear Hearts and Gentle People' for a Lime Springs theme song, but I think a better choice would be the wonderful 'Nobody Does It Better.' Lime Springs does so many things so very well. And consistently through the years nobody has done it better at setting an example of love for and devotion to country and community than the members of Lloyd L. Horton Post #545 of the American Legion.

Unless Irwin Munkel remembers him, no one is left who knew Lloyd Horton. We old timers knew his cousins Vincent, Millard, Laura and Lillian and his uncle & aunt, Del & Jessie Horton. At the time the post was named for Lloyd Horton there was controversy; his was the first death from the community in WW I but he was not a battlefield casualty; he died in the flu epidemic.

But in a very real way, his sacrifice represents what every one of you Legionnaires did. You were willing to go and serve your country, knowing very well what could be the result of that going.

Lloyd Horton was 28 years old when the United States went to war; he was a registered pharmacist, owned the drug store in Lime Springs, was married and had a small daughter; he did not have to enlist but he loved his country and he went. That spirit is enshrined in the motto of the United States Coast Guard, "You have to go out; you don't have to come back."

General MacArthur would no doubt have been frustrated if he could have foreseen that he would be best remembered, not for his military achievements, but for his phrase, "Old Soldiers Never Die." But sadly we add in our hearts the part he forgot to mention: YOUNG SOLDIERS DO DIE.

We are here today to remember those lives that were given so gallantly over the centuries to establish and defend a country where "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" might be the inalienable rights of all.

There's a Long Long Trail Awinding. It has been winding its way through our history:

• 234 years since the Revolution

• 174 years since Travis' sword traced a line in the sand of the Alamo

• 145 years since brother fought brother in the great Civil War

• 90 years since Armistice Day

• 65 years since D Day

And the trail winds on through Korea, and Vietnam, and the Gulf, and Iraq and Afghanistan And young men and women are still dying for their country. You could go online and add up the numbers to come close to a figure of how many Americans died in all those wars, but numbers, well, the first 4 letters of the word numbers spell NUMB and that's what the figures in such a list make us.

I think the first time I truly understood that numbness was when I stood in a military cemetery in Germany. The graves weren't even American--they were German soldiers; so many had died on that particular spot that mass graves were the only possible solution, but each recognizable casualty had been given a stone, a stone the size of a brick, and the bricks were like a pavement that went as far as one could look in any direction. The bricks gave the names and the ages and it was heartbreaking to read those ages--mostly teenagers. And that was just one side in one battle in one war in one country.

Casualty lists can't be understood in the black and white of newsprint. We have to see those numbers in color. We have to see them in the memorial of the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor, or on a stone in a small country cemetery, or on a flag-draped casket that holds the remains of someone we knew and loved.

They say that teachers never forget the first class they ever taught. I started teaching high school English in 1963 in Riceville. Lounging in the back row of the classroom, happily grinning and not too terribly interested in British literature sat the typical All American kid, Stan Setka. He was the football hero, the guy with the cute little blonde girlfriend; the only thing he didn't have was an enemy in the world.

Lance Corporal Stan Setka was 20 when he came home from Vietnam in one of those body bags. I know there has not been a Memorial Day since that I haven't thought about Stan Setka.

We're here because we know those numbers have faces. And all the losses aren't deaths. Thousands of young American service men and women have been medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan since the war on terrorism began. Many of them will never leave the VA health system.

Last year our Daughters of the American Revolution chapter went to visit the VA nursing home in Atlanta. You all know about nursing homes--you visit them regularly. This one was different. There were one or two old vets--they were from Vietnam; but all the rest were in their 20s. They'll never leave that place.

America was always a dream, a dream we wanted so much we would seek it, whatever the cost. You are here today on this Memorial Day observance because you do know that the cost was. Many of you are veterans. You know from your own experience exactly what it cost. Some of you are the loved ones of veterans. You too know what it cost.

The book of Genesis gives us the chilling and unforgettable story of the Sacrifice of Abraham. When I was a little girl, hearing that story in church, it puzzled me; I couldn't understand the title of the story. I couldn't figure out why they didn't call it the Sacrifice of Isaac, since he was the one who was going to have his throat cut and his body burned.

But now, having sent my own son off to war, I understand it better. You, the families and loved ones of those who went to war made the sacrifice too.

Tom Brokaw called the men and women of WW II THE GREATEST GENERATION. He saw them as heroes. I was 2 when that war began, 6 when it was over, and I agree with Mr. Brokaw. You couldn't grow up in those years and not know they were heroes. Even when you were just a little kid, you heard the stories.

You knew why the blue star in the window at Charlie and Madge Fish's house had been replaced by a gold one. You knew that Don Fish's plane had been shot down somewhere in a place called the Philipines. You saw the young couples, the man in uniform, who showed up next door at the home of the Rev. Trevor Williams, the old retired Welsh minister, not waiting for church weddings because they only had a short time together.

Everybody cried at my 6th birthday party because President Roosevelt was dead.

I remember Lime Springs' only WWII home front casualty. We were all observing the blackout. I can't imagine WHY we were doing that but all wanted to do their part. Anyway, Wilbur Wells, whose wife made hats in her millinery shop, was our Blackout Warden, and one night, checking carefully for chinks of light, Wilbur fell off the sidewalk north of the Locker and broke his leg.

Afterwards, when the guys came home, the stories got better and better as the years went by. I was the bugler for the Legion in those school years and got to go along on the yearly observances at the various Memorial Day and other services. I heard about how Clarence Ihns' submarine hit a reef and broke up, leaving the crew in the water for hours, not knowing whether the Japanese or Australians would get there first; I heard how Roy Jones and his outfit stood for hours in the broiling sun, waiting to be an honor guard for FDR; I don't know if FDR was impressed but I think the experience might have encouraged strong Republican leanings for Roy.

I heard how Shorty Lloyd almost got killed by a Japanese sniper.

And then I heard the rest of the story: that Shorty and his pals were playing poker on the deck of their ship anchored off one of the islands and some sniper almost hit the jackpot.

I remember Cuss Klomp, gentlest of men with a most improbable nickname, telling how he went through a French village and opened the door of a house, hoping to get a drink of water. What he met was a German soldier, gun poised. Cuss, who had survived D-Day and the weeks after, instinctively fired first. A few days later, coming back down the line, he went through the same village and felt impelled to open that same door. What he found was the dead soldier, still sitting in the chair, still holding his gun.

Every one of those guys had a story, and once a year, on Memorial Day, they unlocked that box of memories, and remembered friends who hadn't come back, and some who did but were forever scarred by the experiences. I saw how tenderly those tough guys made excuses for the ones who needed an alcoholic crutch in the years that followed; some could live with the memories and some could not. And they were my heroes and they still are.

And when that Greatest Generation came home, they knew how important the dream of America was and they went right to work to make it even better. I don't think the Civil Rights victories in the 1960s would have happened as they did without the hard lessons about equality and brotherhood and respect for individual rights American service men and women had learned during WW II. Men who had seen Buchenwald or Bataan knew a man named Bull Connor for what he was. Fighting the Germans and the Japanese was tough.

American soldiers and sailors of WWII had grown up in a Depression; tough was a word they already knew. We forget that in the 40s, 2 of every 5 men drafted were rejected, mostly for malnutrition. Then came Korea; the fighting was brutal but the politicians called it a Police Action. The GIs had a song they called "The Ghost Army of Korea:" "Just below the Manchurian border, Korea's the name of the spot, we're due to be spending our time here in the land that God forgot."

And then came Vietnam, the war that tore the country apart almost as badly as the Civil War had done and another sad song that asked, "How many deaths before one man knows that too many people have died?"

A lot of things had changed but the bravery of the kids in the front lines hadn't changed a bit.

The scene changed again and now the war zones are the deserts and mountains of the MidEast; the casualty lists are a little different too, names like Arizona's Lori Piestewa are on the final roll call. Lori was the first Native American woman in the United States Army to die in combat. Probably a number of them died in combat WITH the United States Army.

I'm sure Lloyd Lafayette Horton would have been most surprised to see Lori Piestewa in her BDUs but I'm also sure he would have understood the spirit that led her to put on that uniform. Both of them were among the millions of Americans who believed that freedom is a fighting word, who'd rather die than live without it.

The Bible tells us that things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal.

The writer Nancy Pickard tells the story of an American woman named Bingo Chakmakjian. Americans these days have all kinds of names. Bingo's family came from Armenia, a country that isn't even on the map any more. At the beginning of WW I the Turks decided to deport the whole population of Armenia, almost 2 million people. They sent them to Syria and 600,000 of them died along the way, starved or murdered, including 3 of Bingo's grandparents. "Everybody else in our family, just about. People forget about us....Not me. I don't forget. I figure it's my job to remember, it's the least I can do."

Our freedom and our liberty came at an awful price. This Memorial Day, and for every Memorial Day that is granted to us, I hope you will say, "Not me. I don't forget. I figure it's my job to remember, it's the least I can do."