Since then, when
I hear or think of war, my daddy comes to mind.
Not because he did anything special during his tour of
duty in World War II, but
that he came back home bitter because the government drafted
him. As far back as I can remember, our
family knew how Daddy felt about his deployment and he
shunned conversation on the topic. The logic of
his feelings made sense to me. How many
wanted to be forced into risking their lives in another
country? Yet, we
know what the consequences would have been had no one
fought in WWII or any other “just” war.
Since
my parents’ deaths, I have looked at photographs
of them many times. As I look at my daddy in his uniform
with his comrades, their smiling faces seem to imply,
“Hey, not to worry,
we’re taking care of things over here.” The
scrapbook his parents kept of the things he sent home
is not only a treasure to us, but also a piece of history.
Years
ago while working at my job as a middle-school library
assistant, I had the pleasure of meeting an inspiring
lady. The sixth grade class was studying the Holocaust,
and they had a speaker come to school who had lived through
that time in history. Hanneke was from Poland, and she
and her family spent many years hiding Jews from the Nazis.
Now living in the United States, she was speaking to school-age
children throughout the country.
After
her talk in the auditorium, she came back to the library
with a box of books to distribute to the classrooms.
I went over to where she sat to thumb through one of them,
and realized she was the author. The book
was written about her family’s experiences during
WWII. When I asked Hanneke if I could buy a personally
autographed one, she said
she would take no payment. After asking my name, she took
one of the books from the box and began to write inside.
“My daddy
was in the army during World War II,” I commented
to break the silence.
Stephanie
Faulkner –