Honoring My War Heroes

Growing up, Memorial Day meant two things: The first grilled hamburgers of the summer, and the Indianapolis 500. It also meant that on television would be coverage of the president placing a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery in Virginia, and his speech, but that was just background; something the adults watched.

As an adult, though, I have come to understand and honor the service and sacrifice of men and women in the military. Although on Memorial Day flowers are laid on the graves of all loved ones who have died, it is really to honor the people in the service who served and died.

And so I want to honor the people in my family who served in the Armed Forces. How fortunate for us that none of them died in battle.

1. Sigvald Lillehaugen, my grandfather

Growing up we heard stories about my grandfather's time in the Navy during WWI. From him I learned the words to "Pack Up Your Troubles," "It's a Long Way to Tipperary," "Over There," and snippets of other WWI songs. A first-generation Norwegian-American who grew up on a North Dakota farm, he was a student at Concordia Lutheran College, Moorhead, Minn., when he and a buddy hopped a train to Minneapolis and enlisted at Fort Snelling. After basic training he was made a communications officer, or "radio man," as he called himself. I still have a photo I found of him standing on board ship, radio in hand. He served only a year before he was discharged on hardship when his father died and he had to go home and take care of his mother. Although he never quite said it, I could tell he was disappointed that he never got to serve in combat. He was proud to be a Navy man, and always had a bet on the Army-Navy football game played for years on Thanksgiving Day. He died just short of his 92nd birthday.

At the reviewal the evening before his funeral, two members of the American Legion arrived to present a flag. They laid it across the casket, then quietly saluted him. It was a glorious moment that filled me with pride.

2. Floyd Nordland, my dad

Dad was 16 when he graduated from high school, and WWII had just ended. Smart and ambitious, he wanted to go to college, so he enlisted in the Army. He served his two years in the Phillipines, where, he used to tell us, he spent his time playing basketball and baseball when he wasn't on duty as a file clerk. When he returned home, he went to college, where he lettered in baseball, and became a coach and Biology teacher. By the time he retired, he was a college professor. He doesn't talk about his two years in the service much, because he served between wars. However, he stands as proudly as anyone when the Army's song is played in concert, and he always cares about the outcome of the Army-Navy game.

3. Fred Thomson Sr., my uncle

Uncle Fred served as a Marine in Korea, something he never seemed to talk about -- certainly I didn't know that about him until I was an adult. However, he had the dignity and strength of character that distinguishes men who served as Marines. He was a funeral director, first joining his father and uncle in the family business, then later on taking over. He conducted business with compassion and caring and a quiet faith that permeated everything he did. When he died from cancer, he was honored as a Marine and a hero. He was one of those men, though, who if he had never put on a military uniform, would still have been a hero.

4. Manvel Lillehaugen, a cousin

Manvel was a dreamer and a writer, a history professor who was respected and loved by his students at Minot State. My grandfather was his "Uncle Sig." Drafted in WWII, he served in Europe, including as part of the forces who freed France. A man who at first seemed the last person who would "make it" in the Army, he served with distinction, and went on to write memoirs that included stories of his time in the service and the war. When he died suddenly, his unpublished memoirs were found among his things, and his brothers and sisters posthumously published them along with other short works.

5. John Nordland, my uncle

Uncle John was one of my dad's brothers. He served in WWII in the Rangers, and was one of those guys who scaled the cliffs on D-Day. He rarely talked about his time in the Rangers, but he had his medals displayed in his modest home. He met his wife, Claire, a Cicilian-American, in New York while he was stationed there, married her, and brought her back to Minnesota. He worked as a carpenter, eventually disabled from war wounds, and spent many years in and out of VA hospitals. My dad would quietly tell us, "Your uncle was a real hero."

6. William Wallace, my father-in-law

I never met my father-in-law; like my mother, he died shortly before my husband and I met. In fact, losing a parent so recently was one of the commonalities we found. Bill served in the New Zealand Army during WWII. We have his medals, and in Australia my husband used to pull them out and wear them on Anzac Day. Although he would like to honor his father in the same way here, it is "against the rules" for anyone other than the decorated U.S. soldier to wear medals awarded in service. Bill went on to marry and move to Australia, where he worked as a master carpenter, beloved and respected by everyone who knew him. In the dangerous war in the Pacific, when Australia was in real danger from the Japanese, he helped keep Australia free.

7. James Moore, husband of my daughter's 1st grade teacher
James is a young Marine who recently married my daughter's 1st grade teacher. When my daughter was in 1st grade, however, they were still newly dating. He served (last I heard) 3 tours in Iraq, one of which was while my daughter was in 1st grade. He and his buddies not only were pen pals with her class, but with another 1st grade class in the elementary school as well. In fact, he said that if his platoon buddies wouldn't write, he would write to all the kids himself. (Fortunately he had help.) To those children, and the children in Mrs. Moore's other classes who wrote to him, James is a hero. He is now stationed in Virginia where they are starting their married life.

So this year, as I watch the president lay the wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, I will be honoring these men, as well as the men and women who are serving both at home and abroad.

The Final Shuttle Run

NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis comes back to Earth on Friday after freshening up the Hubble telescope. And when that crew lands, it will be the end of the Shuttle Program.

While the shuttles flew a lot longer than originally planned, it will still be a bittersweet moment when it touches down. And even more so, because it feels like the end of a chapter in my life.

I am a child of the Space Age. I was five in 1962, and I remember watching every Mercury, Gemini and Apollo launch. If it took place during school, we watched, or listened on the radio, in the classroom.

In my home town of West Lafayette, I was able to get out of school on the day when Neil Armstrong made the first speech he made after walking on the moon to an audience at Purdue University. I sat far, far back in bleachers, and you could hear a pin drop as he quietly spoke of his experience.

I remember when the Apollo program finished. It was disappointing that the final two moon missions were cancelled. But there was SkyLab and the promise of a space station ahead. And plans to build a re-usable ship, which eventually became the shuttle program.

But now feels different. Plans of returning to the moon, and continuing on to Mars, are constantly spoken of. The past two presidents have pledged to support a return to the moon, but NASA's budget gets cut. I feel like I may not live to see man return to the moon, when we originally thought that men would be on their way to Mars by now. New modes of space transportation are "in the works," but they seem more conceptual than anything.

We need to continue with space exploration. How sad it will be if I am prophetic, and my generation dies out before man again enters space in a U.S. craft. Surely we are more of a leader than that.

Self Editing

"Happy talk
Keep talking happy talk..."
-Oscar Hammerstein, "Happy Talk" from South Pacific

"You've got to accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative..."
-Johnny Mercer, "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive"

My life, like everyone's is full of a variety of events and emotions, positive and negative. Yet, when I sit down to blog, or write in my journal, I edit myself, recording the positive and remaining silent on the negative. Even when I write about the negative, it is in a positive way.

Why is that? Self-preservation, perhaps. I keep thinking that someday someone else will be reading my journal, or today or tomorrow someone will be reading my blog, and I want to look good. Goodness knows I don't want to embarrass myself!

Or maybe it's the Norwegian-American stoicism that taught me to ignore the bad and concentrate on the good. In a way, that is also self-preservation, but it is also a sense of a greater good.

For instance. My older brother is in the hospital right now. He was rushed there unable to breathe, with sky-high blood pressure and fluid on his lungs. Heart attack is ruled out but they continue to test. However, I don't feel like writing about being worried about him. Instead I want to write about how he is under the care of a friend of his who saw his name on the admittance list and stepped in and took over his care. And how thankful I am that he is in good hands, and I am confident he will recover and be better than he was before he took ill when he comes out.

I don't consider myself inspirational -- I leave that to other people who truly are gifted with being an inspiration. Instead, I think there is enough bad stuff in the world, and we all know about it. After all, conflict and struggle make a better story than competence and good work. But we need more of that.

While I am an idealist, I am not naive. In fact, in my life, I am very good at finding the the "no"s in a situation. But when I write, I don't want to make it about the negatives, I want to make it about the positives.

And so I self-edit.

Please Agwe, Don't Flood My Garden...

Other than a performance tomorrow before the school, my older daughter is finished with her run of "Once On This Island" (Junior version) in the role of Agwe, goddess of Water. Even with the limitations of a stage in a commons of a middle school with minimal wingspace and no fly space, they do a pretty good job. Here are some photos of Agwe in action:

And Agwe's box, designed and executed by herself (see her standing on it above):

Crafting as a non-crafter

I consider myself a non-crafter, because it doesn't come easily to me. Face it: others always make things look better than I can. Fortunately, as busy people do more crafting, there are more and more pre-made things to just put together and create a beautiful craft with little or no talent.

Set decorating is a lot like crafting, which is why I usually leave it to others to do, and concentrate on costumes and makeup in the backstage realm. So it was with an inner groan that I learned that my older daughter "gets" to decorate her box for the musical, "Once On This Island Jr." She is Agwe, god(dess) of Water. Each of the four gods has a cube they stand on that elevates them upstage behind the action, as they observe everything that happens. The cube is painted black, and they are supposed to decorate it with things that represent their character.

I had a couple of ideas, and the costumer gave us some leftover shells and plastic sea plant stuff that she had used on the Agwe costume. I thought and thought about it, devising my vision, only to find out that my daughter knew exactly what she wanted to do.

So armed with shells, seaweed and a glue gun, we are creating what will be an interesting, cohesive art piece on the front of her box. Because, unlike me, she has an ease of artistic vision and execution. Fortunately, I can use a glue gun, and can quickly buy into someone else's vision. (I'm also a great editor.) Luckily I have also learned efficiency in crafting, because I am helping her. And we'll have one hour to do it.

May Day

With Obama in office, May Day is no longer a disaster signal, but once again a beautiful spring tradition.

My younger daughter's 3rd grade class went for a walk around the neighborhood by their elementary school, handing out flowers and greeting people. The daffodils are finished blooming, and the azaleas and other flowering bushes are beginning to brighten the yard.

Yesterday I put up two hanging plants -- fuscia and red geraniums respectively, and I was inspired to fill the cedar planter on the back deck with geraniums, pansies, and other colorful flowers.

As I bought those red geraniums, I thought about my grandparents, who always had red geraniums in planters on either side of their front stoop in their house in South Minneapolis. Putting in geraniums every spring makes me feel like I am carrying on my grandfather's gardening legacy. He taught me so many things about gardening and yard work.

Many times I would talk to him while he used a hoe to edge the sidewalks, keeping the grass from growing over it, and pulling weeds from the cracks.

"Edging is just a small thing," he would say, "but it will mean a lot to your neighbors. Keeping your front yard neat-looking improves the neighborhood, and is a sign of respect for your neighbors." "If you weed a little bit every day, then you never have to spend a lot of time weeding." "Pull the dead blooms off a flowering plant and they will bloom again." "Petunia flowers are done when they come off easily." "Always plant petunias on the edge of your tomato bed and it will keep away the rabbits." "Corn should be knee high by the fourth of July." "Always water in the evenings."

And he always managed to weed without getting his hands dirty. Perhaps it was all those years of farming experience in North Dakota when he was growing up, or just years of experience tending his own garden. But I'd end up with hands black with the rich earth, and he'd quickly brush his hands and look like he'd just sat down to dinner.

Spring also brought baseball season. Every year on Opening Day, Grandpa would call me, whether the Twins were home or away for the first series of the season. The first opening day after he died, I called my grandmother and said, "Grandpa always called me on Opening Day."

"I know," she said, "He always said, 'I have to call Ann.'"

The smell of warm earth and geraniums and the sound of the crowd and the crack of the bat bring such strong memories of being with my grandfather at their Minneapolis home that sometimes the memory seems more real than the present. I can almost hear Herb Carneal saying, "O and two. Here's the pitch..."

I am still a Twins fan, but these days I more closely follow the Mariners. And I have an edger instead of a hoe, and a driveway that is almost as long as the block my grandfather lived on. But when spring comes I am out there planting my geraniums and half waiting for the phone to ring one more time.