I always miss my father a little bit more on Memorial Day. He was a WWII vet and fought in every major European battle from Normandy to The Battle of The Bulge. Dad carried a little Brownie camera with him throughout his entire tour of duty and pretty much documented his Army career. One of my favorite snaps is of a Belgium family taken shortly after the Allies liberated Belgium. This family was so thrilled to see the Americans march through their town that the wife hurried into her home and retrieved an American Flag she had secretly sewn during the Nazi occupation. She rushed out of the house waving the flag and shouting her hoorahs as the allies marched past. My father stopped and gathered her family proudly displaying this small American flag. Unfortunately and rather sweetly the woman had sewn the flag backwards! But that was okay, she waved it proudly, my father kissed her cheek, snapped the photo and marched on. Years and years later I did an editing job for a woman near my home. She was a poet and had written some poems about her experiences as a little girl in Belgium during WWII and the Nazi occupation. She told me how the Nazis would come into her home and take their blankets and food. She also told me how her family hid people from the Germans until the Allies came and set them free. When I told her my father was in that battle she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "he was my liberator." He probably was.
Thank a soldier today!
In the Beginning
It all started in the third grade when Mrs. Nichols told us to write a story. My story, The Day The Martians Came To Earth, was about, well, you know, Martians who came to earth. They came in their tiny ships and yellow space suits to knock over Fort Knox because apparently Martians eat gold and they had run out. Mrs. Nichols said my story was superior. Yep, that was the word she used and asked me to share it with the whole school. So I went classroom to classroom and read my little story. In those days I had a problem with sweaty palms so by the time I made it back to my classroom the pages were soaked, the writing runny and pretty much illegible. Yet, it was the day I knew I wanted to be a writer. Everything else about school—math, geography, science became superfluous to my goal. I still cringe at the thought of fractions and couldn’t point to Yugoslavia on a globe if you paid me, but I am a writer, an author. Wow.
There's more to the story so if you want to keep reading, please click on over to CBD and read the rest (if the story isn't there, please check back. It's coming) and while you are at it you can always order Agnes or any of the other fine novels from Abingdon Press. Thanks, and have some pie.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)