Remembering on Veterans Day

Remembering veterans on Veterans Day is something that comes easy for most Americans. That is because just about everyone has a personal experience or story to tell about a veteran in their life; dead or alive.

My veteran story hit home when my mom died not so many years ago. My mom had been married to a man early in her life who served in Germany and the South Pacific in World War II before returning to Dallas in early 1946 full of life and ready for the future.

Unfortunately, he died in August of 1950 of a brain tumor.

The love of my mother’s life – a man she had only been married to for eight years, four months and one day – and the war had taken him away for a good portion of that time.

My mom, who was known as “Rita” just like me had married Harold Burnett Wright in the spring of 1942 when she was just 17-years-old. Burnett, as she called him throughout the years when she spoke of him to me was exactly the opposite of my father who my mom married in the mid-50s and who is also deceased.

I realize now that my mother really needed a strong, loving man like my father in her life after such a blow as a first husband dying so young.

When my mom died, I found Burnett’s footlocker with all kinds of letters from both my mom to him and from him to her. Letters that are truly a snapshot in time from a young soldier to his bride (he was drafted in January 1943) and a young bride desperate for his letters home – hoping her first love would come home soon too.

My mom will never know what a gift she left me. When I found the letters and the memories that she had carefully preserved, I have never felt so close to both her and Burnett and even my father. I innately knew the two men would certainly have liked one another under the right circumstances.

In addition to the letters I found in Burnett’s footlocker, there were also pictures and even items he brought back with him from Germany and the South Pacific. I found wooden sandals from the South Pacific with beach scenes delicately carved in the platform heels by a craftsman long since gone, a jade bracelet that had been put away and forgotten since the 1950s and rings that Burnett picked up in Germany. Also, there were old coins and knives and banners offering just a tiny glimpse into a past I will never understand. I even wear his neck scarf as a reminder of him and my mom’s true love and the fact that he gave a portion of his life willingly to fight for this country and keep folks like my mom and me free.

While I commend the men and women who have gone to any war for this country, I also must mention the folks like my mother who was left behind. Moving from Temple, Texas in the early 1940’s, she learned to navigate buses and streetcars, and she even got a job at Sears downtown all while she was alone. A young woman forced to be independent and never once being angry about it. Lonesome, yes, but understanding, her famous words in her letters were “there is nothing I can do, and it will all work out.”

The delicate structure of the relationships of the men and women that leave to fight for our country and the spouses and children left behind, it has gone on since the beginning of time and will continue to be a way of life forever. However, hats off to the strength of those who believe in life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness enough to give up a piece of their life or in some cases life itself so that we all can go on living.

To that, I say, this county’s veterans will never be forgotten!