Monthly Archives: February 2012

The Diary of Frank Hayhurst: Time Traveler

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The following is a glimpse into the sequel of Archimedes’ Claw:

Prologue    April 1865

Civil WarLight; reflected off of green fields he had only imagined; filled the skies with singing birds he had never seen; lifted the air scented with pollen and fragrance foreign to his nostrils; broke through the heavy shroud of despair that was the prisoner’s night. It poured into a stone arch window close to the roof of the cell that he shared only with an occasional hungry rodent. Beams of light reflected off of the slippery walls made moist by humid air encountering cold stone. The moisture would coalesce and he could make out thin streams of water trickling down the walls in ever increasing rivulets. If he acted quickly on these mornings, he could gather enough extra water to help himself survive another scorching day. He would drink it quickly by licking the stone crevice where it gathered adding even the sense of taste to the confining space that had been his cell for countless days.

His senses had become refined here in the isolation of this cell. Depravation of normal human experiences sharpened his perception. Cold damp nights were endured for the doubtful pleasure of experiencing the ghastly hot and humid days. Each phase of the sensations of cold and damp to hot and humid were interchanged with a predictable rhythm, and each one followed the other. Just as the prisoner had reached his own pinnacle of exhaustion, dealing with an oppressive temperature, stimulus to his skin it would change. He held onto each most noxious discomfort driven by the certain knowledge that he could bear anything for a short time, and then it would end only to resume the cycle over and over. In essence it was the pendulum of a clock swinging left then right, and then back again, a pendulum of never-ending sensation from cold to hot and repeating the same journey. At first he thought of it as what damnation to hell would be in eternity. Then he reasoned that in a crude way, it was another method of measuring time. It became another focus of information that he could rely on to break the monotony of an otherwise timeless cell.

His hearing grew more acute as time passed in this place; he could now hear the rats come foraging through the bars into his cell. He knew when they were there from the gnashing of their teeth as they readied for an assault on anything edible. He heard the rat feet running and clicking their nails along the cobble stone floors. They would come anytime it was dark and remain in the shadows awaiting opportunity for food. If he were not careful they would overwhelm him, steal his daily bread or grain and feast on it in the dark corners where he preferred not to reach even when the light came. His bed, a burlap sack of straw and feathers, had been torn and the grain eaten while he slept. His training forced him to listen sharply and when they came he would rise up off the burlap sack and raise it up onto a hook and rope. The guards set the rope from a high place from which they would use it to send down a new bucket of water or haul up his covered chamber pot to the opening ten feet above. The bed was safe there off of the ground. The rats usually scampered about his floor intentionally missing his bare feet while he stood there and attempted to count them for amusement. They only tried once since he was there to bite and nibble at him when he was awake. He made a stand. It was him or them. The rats seemed to prefer peaceful coexistence. After that encounter his confidence surged. He would not tolerate being eaten. The rats also seemed to understand this and at least left him alone when he was awake. Sleep was another matter.

Abe LincolnHe would often awaken from his dreams of freedom to the thunderous advance of a hungry rodent army in the black of night. Each time he faced the stark reality that he would die there, in the prison alone without the comfort of another human being to support him through the hour of his death. So he spent hours awake and alone scheming, planning and hoping to escape. Today he imagined would be no different.

Frank could not remember the last time he had actually seen his own image. It was in a small pool of water when he was traveling through the countryside before he was captured. Then, he was bronzed from an outdoors life. A life on the run, sleeping in fields and sometimes in barns he would spend days running to the peak of exhaustion ducking out of sight at the sound of human commotion trying not to be discovered. He amazed himself in the transition to a combatant, physically fit and weathered in spite of his age. His sense of time was forever distorted in the strange new place where he was trapped.  He never had a watch in this world having lost it in the other world from whence he came. He was not even sure this world had watches, though he faintly recalled seeing a gold chain and fob on Ellison’s belt when the slaves brought him to the plantation house. Nature and his inner clock told him it was morning.

Wooten’s Airboat Tours in the Everglades Prompts a Check of the Human Memory Time Machine

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Alligator alley is easy to find. Just drive South on I75 in Florida past Naples and follow it into the eastern sun as it sweeps broadly left into a tropical no-man’s land. Pay a toll and look for the exit. Number 80 I recall, and go south to Everglades City.

 

You know you are close when you see the Marathon Station with the mini market, post office, town hall and bank clustered on four corners surrounded by tropical wilderness. Here, the decision to pursue the mission involves a left turn on route 41, east again with bravery for the average suburbanite or city dweller, and just a minute or two down the road a bit on the right. You can’t miss it. The sign – 20 feet tall – announces to all weary fun seekers their trip’s end:

 

“Welcome to the WORLD FAMOUS Wooten’s Airboat tours since 1953”

 

The yellow sign with red and black letters screams in sunlit silence at the timid tourist. The parking lot is gravel and at least a dozen cars have beaten me to this place on Monday morning. I have three grandsons, my wife and my son in the SUV with me. We park and run to the gate behind the chain link fence. I look around, remembering riding the very old model airboat on prominent display, while my wife buys tickets for all and snatches me out of my reverie with a shout: “Hurry up! We are on the next boat.”

 

The large 18 seat airboat is tied up at dock B. We climb aboard to the encouragement of the captain of our airboat. He introduces himself as Tony and makes a silly joke about just learning how to drive this monster.

 

Ear protectors now in place, he revs up the engine and we feel the wind in our faces as we accelerate out into the Everglades. Speed is exhilarating as we round a bend in an old American native canoe trail that Tony advises us goes clear to the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The trail narrows and the water shallows. I feel the swamp vegetation scrape the bottom of the aluminum flat-bottom boat. Then captain Tony brings it to a stall. We are surrounded by strange vegetation with trunks that are dense and vertical yet gnarled; they reach down from branches laden with small green leaves into the muddy water.

 

“Mangrove trees,” announces Tony as we take off our ear protectors to listen to his lesson. “The Indians called these walking trees.” he elaborates, tucking his large calloused hands into his overalls as he stands by the tiller balancing on his two feet as if to demonstrate. “See each branch has one yellow leaf?” We all nod in unison then he points out, “They are called sacrificial leaves. Each tree has at least one. They taste salty and they are the way the tree gets rid of impurities taken in from the swamp by concentrating them in the leaf. That way the rest of the plant stays healthy.”

 

I look down at the murky swamp water and immediately appreciate the sheer complexity of nature and the beauty of the concept sacrificial leaf. It brings to mind God’s grandeur of intelligent design but that is a point I will focus on in future reports.

 

Off again with sudden swiftness we go into the wind and out into another grand lake with an abundance of water fowl flying about and cranes strolling close to the edges of the Mangroves. Tony is a born showoff and he conducts a great turning maneuver with the boat using the air propeller and tiller to do a rollercoaster-thrill-360-degree-turn.

 

Silence again. We drift from our prior momentum to a slow motion float by an alligator sunning himself on the bank of the swamp. “Shsssh,” says Tony as we float closer. We are all focused on an 11 foot long gator. Cameras click. The reptile seems unimpressed.

 

We are told by Tony that the alligator is a cold-blooded animal. Given cool or cold temperatures its metabolism slows with its heart beat. Some have recorded heart beats as few as three per minute. When they hibernate they do it in cool places. The beast has a system of specialized notches on his back. These contain blood cavities that fill with blood and are warmed by the sun. The blood is released into the gator’s body to warm him and allow him to speed up metabolism for routine feeding and reproductive activity.

 

“When he eats he doesn’t discriminate much.” Tony elaborates. “But when they swallow a bird or a fish whole the gator knows enough to be sure it swallows the prey tail end first so the bones or feathers don’t get stuck in its throat” He pauses for effect and adds, “They can swallow most of what they eat whole. Those teeth are for grabbing not chewing.”

 

As the youngsters and the women grimaced with the thought of Tony’s last comment he cranked up the engine and we flew though the rest of the Everglade tour at top speed skimming the flat bottom over mud and water weeds as if it was Tony’s way of making sure we all remembered the ride.  A prominent white sign was posted where know one could miss it that said “Boat captains work for tips.” As the ride ended with us making multiple attempts to dock at dock B and failing we finally were secured to dock A and the all clear signal ended the 40 minute adventure.

 

I got out of the boat and slipped Tony a 20 into his big fist. He smiled a toothless grin and said thanks while tipping his cap. Stuffing the tip into his overalls he advised us not to miss the gift shop and as my grandsons ran ahead in hopes of acquiring an alligator foot or head (they had heard they were available there), I stopped in front of the shop noticing a sand pit under a grove of palm trees.

 

I stared at the pit. It had remnants around it of some stone wall long since removed, and in my reverie I saw into my past. I stood there innocent and impressionable, holding my little brother’s hand. We were fascinated by the demonstration being given. A Seminole Indian man was in the pit wrestling an alligator that was longer than he was tall. He had flipped the alligator over on its back and was rubbing its belly. The big green alligator was drifting into a slumber and the Seminole was grinning at the crowd.

 

“Awesome!” I heard my little brother say as the contest ended. Then the fantasy or dream popped out of my head and my grandsons were displaying their loot from Wooten’s gift shop. I wasn’t sure if the Seminole Indian was real almost 60 years ago or just an exaggeration of a special moment. I decided as we got back on the highway that even though the human memory was the best time machine, I would take a trip in my time machine back to 1955 and double check the reality of that long ago wrestling match.

Gaining Wisdom by Reflecting on History, Love and Romance for Valentine’s Day

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“Many people who have lived life long enough begin to reflect on their past and find the meaning of experience in that look backwards. The Greeks had the notion that you were a man when you could look back, but not stay or go back. Nodal moments in our lives have resilience and inner life of their own which springs up unpredictably. Nowhere is that more in evidence than the list of people we have loved in the rooms of our soul.” – Henry Bender

 

My wife, the Love of my life, has given me permission to write this essay. – Theodore Morrison Homa MD

 

“There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

 

Descartes once said that the ultimate sadness in life is when people look back on the best times in their life while they are in misery. I believe the converse, that the ultimate joy is when people who look back at the best time is their life when they are happy.

 

CHRISTINE

We met in grade school in 1951. For me it was love at first sight! Whatever that could mean then? We had a relationship. I loved her. She never returned the favor. Yet it was she that altered the course of my life by doing two great favors for me, one completely unintentional.

I saw the “apple of my eye” lying unresponsive on the portico floor at school. Nuns circled her. I could barely see her. Motivated to help and rescue her, I stood helpless on the sideline. The urge to help formed me. My love for her became a lifetime friendship. She, in her helplessness, set me on the path toward medicine.  Years later, with the help of Christine, I found myself climbing strange mountains in foreign lands on a quest to rediscover my soul.

Because of her I was born again.

 

KATHLEEN

Kathleen was an Irish lass but Texan at heart. She had a red ponytail. She was all about competition. I had never been challenged for first place in class before. Now first and second place shifted back and forth between us.

June finals were over. We were rehearsing for the end of year musical. I surprised Kathleen with a kiss on the cheek! She surprised me with a slap in the face. Clearly, it was the shortest love affair of my life. We remained platonic friends calling each other on holidays. One day, she dropped off the face of the Earth without so much as a single goodbye. Love’s flame flickered on dimly.

Her gifts to me were insecurity and the spirit of competition.

 

BETSY

We were a band of friends, all freshly aware of one another but old friends as well: Stan and I; Katia, his sister; Betsy and little Babette.

Somewhere in time, we rode a horse named Golden Treasure, waded in an ice cold stream, pulled the oars on a rowboat and helped the fisherman empty his nets. We called him captain and loaded fish into a salt house to preserve them. We enjoyed the scent of fresh cut hay, milked cows and walked along the rocky bank of the St. Lawrence River.

Stan and I competed with 22 caliber rifles, picked worms to sell to fishermen and climbed high rocky places along the river – all for Betsy’s attention. He was better at that than me, the downside of the gift of insecurity. One afternoon, Stan, without a driver’s license, crashed the rented station wagon with all of us aboard. Betsy’s attention soon went to Yvonne, a French Canadian with a black pickup truck.

During that time, back from Port au Percil, I would ride by Betsy’s house on my bicycle hoping she would notice. In the fashion of adolescents of that time, I inked her name on the back of my hand, never finding the courage to ring her doorbell.

With a high school dance six months away and pressured by another suitor’s plans to ask Betsy to go with him, I, voice trembling and apprehensive, called Betsy on the phone. I asked her to that dance! Joy, when she said yes.

Six months later in time we danced cheek to cheek. I loved her, but she was a year older than me. Time moves one along in life. That was both our last and one and only date.

Betsy had returned my love with the gift of confidence.

 

PEG

“Talk not of wasted affection-affection was never wasted.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sacred Heart Church seemed to be the focal point of my relationship with Peg: C.Y.O dances on Friday night and church on Sunday. We knew each other but accidentally evolved to dating.

One winter night we did have a date or went to the same party – there are several versions of the story. I spent that evening in long discussion with Peg, only to be interrupted by a telephone call from Pop reminding me of the time. It was 2 a.m.!

That night was magical! We fell in love and started to date. Conversations with Peg were endless, always picking up where we left off; A definite sign of a true friend, if not a lover. By April we agreed to go steady.  Age 16 came, and I got my driver‘s license. I was allowed to drive one of the family cars to school. I chose to ride the school bus instead because Peg was on it, and she needed my tutoring in geometry.

Life for “teenagers in love” was a collage of things done together. Picnics at Bear Mountain State Park; dates at a dance hall called The Log Cabin; band practice in Matt’s basement; prime rib dinners at Mickey Mantle’s new restaurant for under 20 dollars; movie dates in White Plains with Pizza at Lamanda’s afterwards were just a few of the memories I have.

High School came to an end.

I had decisions to make. Away at college meant no Peg and no car. Fordham College accepted me, and the choice was easy. A new life started that included Peg, drinks at the Webster Bar, The Mama and the Papas concert at Fordham campus, and proms in New York City. Peg was on my arm at all of those.

Back in Hartsdale there was a social life at Danny’s Bar; beer was fifteen cents a glass.

JFK was assassinated on a Friday. Our date that night was spent weeping at the death of Camelot.

We shared love and affection. We respected one another. We overheard our mothers planning our potential marriage.

Sometimes I was cruel and indifferent; she blamed it on my narcissism and forgave me. I unfortunately found it a hard lesson to learn. I lacked introspection, and she tried hard to give it to me. I worked long hours and it interfered with our social life, and she affectionately forgave me for that too.

The bittersweet lyrics of the Loving Spoonful song from 1966 were; “Did you ever have to make up your mind and say yes to one and leave the other behind”, and they described my predicament: Choose a good job with Carvel and they would pay for me to go to graduate school in Agriculture or go on to medical school. My focus was on St. Louis, Missouri not Farmington, Connecticut. As the song continues, “It’s not often easy and it’s not often kind” I chose medical school and hoped Peg would wait.

Most likely I lost Peg about a year before I knew it. We still shared her affection but not her love. When I finally realized it my heart was broken.

Longfellow wrote, “It’s foolish to pretend that one is fully recovered from a disappointed passion. Such wounds always leave a scar.” This one did!

Peg’s gifts to me were introspection, conditional love, affection, and many hours of conversation for which I am eternally grateful.


EVE

Peg’s rejection drove me to new narcissistic heights – a defense against the gift of insecurity. I was in love with being in love and I decided on a target. She was Eve. She was a trophy: blonde and drop-dead gorgeous with an outgoing personality.

I stole her from her boyfriend. We dated for a few weeks and agreed on an engagement. I worked three jobs that summer to purchase an engagement ring! I was a night watchman listening to my radio when Bobby Kennedy was shot.

Trips from Scarsdale to Huntington to see Eve were difficult, and the relationship seemed shallow and unsacred. I gave up on it and took the money I made for the engagement ring and went to Bermuda with my buddy for a well-earned break.

Eve’s gift to me was wisdom.

 

KATHY

After 41 years of marriage, the night we met glows like fire in my mind. I was the social director of my fraternity. I answered the phone. A bold nursing student from Barnes School of Nursing asked, ”Are you guys having a party tonight?” My response: ”If you are desperate enough to call for a party, I will arrange one. It starts at 7 p.m.” Once off the phone I triggered the telephone tree and set the party in motion.

At 7 p.m., I was with my date, her name long since forgotten. Bill approached me: “There is a girl here who is on fire to meet you.” Her name was Kathy.

She inquired, ”Are you the arrogant medical student who spoke to me on the phone today?” My response: “Yes, but what are you doing here with a cast on your arm?” In truth, I was fortunate that she did not hit me with the cast.

Her girlfriend advised me that she was a world-class figure skater and she broke her arm practicing a jump. Figure skating never interested me. I could tell this was going nowhere! To my surprise, we talked more and had to move to the storeroom to avoid the noise from the crowd.

Hours later, close to dawn, we were still talking. We drank coffee until her dorm was safely open, and I drove her there. Someone else had arranged for my date to get home.

It was Christmas break starting on Monday after class. She gave me her number. I promised to call. When break was over I called her not once but three times. The third time was the charm. We started dating.

At Christmas break one year later, I was moody and miserable. Mom said, “I can’t wait for you to get back and see Kathy. You are in love. Can’t you tell?” Back in St. Louis after a nightmare drive through an ice storm to keep a date with Kathy, my room mate Les also advised, “You are in love with Kathy. Get it over with, tell her or get a new roommate.”

I gave Kathy a diamond ring that Easter. I found a way to get married and stay in school: I joined the Navy. They gave me full ensign’s pay until graduation. I gave them three years of active duty after internship. The Vietnam War was raging. President Johnson did not run for reelection. Nixon was President.

We married on December 19, 1970. We honeymooned in Bermuda. Kathy graduated from nursing school. Her income also paid the bills.

After internship, we went where the Navy sent us. Marine Corps Air Station in Japan. Thirty months together without interference even from television welded our marriage. We met some life-long friends there. My best friend to this day was our constant guest and Kathy’s doctor for the first eight months of her first pregnancy.  At the end of her pregnancy, she gave birth to Natalie our first child.

“Done” with the Navy we went to New Britain, Connecticut for my residency in Internal Medicine.  My shifts were 36 hours straight and 12 hours of sleep. This continued for a year. During the second year our daughter Priscilla was born on New Years Eve. While at UCONN in Farmington we had heated debates about where to settle. We argued about New York  vs. St. Louis and compromised on Chicago. My third child and first son, Teddy, was born there. There we lived a storybook life, an estate in the woods for 20 years and now in a penthouse in Arlington Heights. There has never been a moment of regret in spite of years of hard work and selfless giving of unconditional love.

When I first found it, I was warmed by it. A fire in a deep chasm burned with fierce flame. Next to it was a reflection pool. The water was disturbed, and I saw no clear image. The fire burned. As time and life proceeded, the chasm was covered and became a mountain that I built over the chasm. I could feel the warmth of the deep fire that burned within. The mountain became larger, bits and pieces of life were tossed into the pile with little thought. The warmth never stopped.

One night I fell into a crack in the mountain. In the middle of the night, soundless peace surrounded me. I went deeper and found loneliness and sadness tossed into a corner. I hurried past them and went deeper down through the years of depth I had made.

I saw the flame. I saw the pool undisturbed. The flame burned like passions burn. I looked into the pool and saw your reflection, Kathy. You were the vision in the pool, the force that burned the never-dying flame. It was you! All else was just a surrogate.

Kathy, you are the Love of my life.

“Most men lead lives of quiet Desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them”
- Henry David Thoreau

I will not be one of them!

To the women in this essay I offer a salutation taught to me by a Franciscan friar who is a close personal friend: “Angels be with you” and Happy Valentine’s Day.

Game Day: Super Bowl XLVI Pranks

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Game Day
The challenge:
My pretty muse and I arrived on Saturday after more than a comfortable first-class ride from O’Hare to Southeast Regional Airport. At our destination, porters loaded the luggage into the Ford Explorer compliments of Avis Rental. It was a quick trip down I-75 to our winter rental home. Close friends left yellow roses on the kitchen counter. Attached was a balloon that immediately laid down the gauntlet for Super Bowl Sunday. The football shaped floating sign shouted “GIANTS” from across the family room.

The response:
Unpacking in our exhaustion, off we ran to do battle with mobs of frenzied grey-haired snowbirds who had similar plans to load up on “cookies and milk” and other munchies for the game day events. My muse grabbed a PATRIOTS balloon floating on a long string and snapped it up just before a contingent of New England retirees could rush the display. The list completed, we navigated the heavy traffic at Publix and found the checkout line, which should have had a warning sign about the 45 minute wait. Once home we planned our counter attack . Much later, under cover of deep night, I dressed like a Navy SEAL in shadowy clothing and a USN baseball cap, drove the patriots balloon to our friends’ house  and affixed it to their mail box at the curb.

Cocktails at 3:
Kathy and I drove to Betsy and Randy’s house and noticed on arrival the Patriots balloon had transmuted into a Giants balloon taunting us from atop their mailbox. We knocked on the door, exchanged hugs and kisses, and shared cocktails and conversation with our dear friends in the pregame hours. Broaching the subject of the balloon, we heard about their Good Samaritan neighbor who spied the sabotage and corrected it in the early hours of that morning. Before leaving we had many enjoyable laughs and placed our bets down, which involved the losers taking winners out for breakfast.

Home for the Game:
We got to our rental home in time for the pregame show, mellow from wine. At 6:30PM Eastern time with the National anthem sang well by Kelly Clarkson before the kickoff, we watched to our amazement the NY Giants dominate the first quarter. Somewhat alarmed and dismayed I sought refuge and took a quick break from the game by turning on my time machine and traveling the time tunnel back to Super Bowl XX.

Off in a whirl of cold fire and green sparks I huddled in the time tunnel and waited. Each trip is like an eternity. I arrived in New Orleans hovering invisible to the crowd. I watched and found myself lugging a back pack and dressed in a coat and tie. Almost at a run beside me was Don, my lawyer, over dressed with a large brown leather case slung over the shoulder of his fur-collared overcoat. Barry, my accountant, was trailing behind searching his pockets for the hotel reservations itinerary which without telling the rest of us he made at the last minute. Someone was missing. Ernie! I watched my younger self spot Ernie curbside in the passenger pick up lane driving the getaway car.

It was dusk. The time vortex sometimes became visible when it stalled in low light creating green sparks that frightened nearby crowds. Fortunately, Ernie at 40 had not lost his zest for speeding and I followed the car, in my time vortex, on a scary ride north over the lake Ponchitraine bridge. From my perspective, the motel was much worse than I remembered, trashy at best. I remember thinking the two rooms for four sweaty guys in shared beds was not my idea of bonding with the boys. But we did live through it and made do. I reminded myself never to leave Barry in charge of motel reservations again. Don did a better job and displayed the four tickets at the 40-yard line while we carefully ate one of the “Alligator Grill” specials in the eatery next to the motel. I, tucked safely in the time vortex, remembered the vile texture of the alligator meat, its tough chicken gristly flavor enhanced by Cajun chemicals that were designed to induce heartburn.

The time tunnel fluctuated a bit as I fast-forwarded to Bozo’s restaurant in New Orleans where all of us chowed down on fried oysters at $6 a dozen. That I recall was the highlight culinary event of the weekend.

From there I watched myself and my friends wander the streets of New Orleans until finding street-side parking in a rundown neighborhood. Remembering the tedious walk, I fast-forwarded to inside the Louisiana Superdome.

Section 641 was nose bleed territory albeit on the 40-yard line. The Super dome was hushed by the audacious Patriots who scored first after Walter Payton fumbled the ball in the second play of the game and the Patriots got to within field goal range. The rest of the game was fast and furious as the Chicago Bears clobbered the Patriots 46 to 10.

Having satisfied my urge to again attend Superbowl XX, I returned to present time XLVI just in time to see a safety called against the Patriots under circumstances that must have resulted from my time machine rippling the current space-time continuum and confusing the referees.

The rest of the game was a serious match between the best offense in professional football and the best defense. Unfortunately, this time I was rooting for the Patriots because my beloved Bears failed to make the playoffs. In the end the Final Drive by Brady consisted of eight Hail Mary passes in 58 seconds. Alas, with all that pressure he failed to get the football into the end zone. Had it not been for that safety (most likely caused by my time machine), Brady, in the same situation would have easily danced that football within field goal range and had a victory.

Anyway to quote a dear friend, “It is what it is.”

Betsy and Randy called this morning wondering when we were going out for breakfast.

Where are they now? Honoring our soldiers past and present.

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The troops have come home from the war.

Nov. 11, 1918 at 11 a.m. in Paris, World War 1 came to an end. At the front line there was no celebration, and many fell wounded after the official cease fire. That is because those who understand and pay the price by fighting know war is hell.

All over the world, however, people were celebrating the end by toasting the armistice and dancing in the streets.

Germany surrendered to the Western allies on May 7, 1945 and to the Soviet Union on May 8, 1945. Japan hung on, and it took the persuasion of two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima (Aug 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9, 1945) to convince Japan to surrender. On the morning of Sept. 2, 1945 General Yoshijiro Umezu signed a formal surrender of Japan aboard the USS Missouri.

From coast to coast in America, it was the greatest celebration this country has ever seen.

Then in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, which resulted in a million and a half men in American uniforms fighting side by side with the South Koreans until the armistice was signed in 1953, dividing North and South Korea at the 38th parallel. American soldiers came home to a country at peace. There were parades, and they were respected but not honored with a memorial for four decades while politics shifted to the Cold War.

The Viet Nam War became a focal point of unrest and tension in the USA, youthful rebellion forced President Johnson to decline another term, Nixon to find a way of saving face. The last remnants of refugees were seen coast to coast and around the world fleeing the US embassy roof by helicopter. Our last few troops left with defeat but not surrender. The American people took it out on the soldiers coming home, and the majority who served with honor and dignity were treated like war criminals by the likes of Senator Kerry. The reception the soldiers got was chilly.

This war was politicized by open rebellion, and the press took the side of the rebellious younger generation.

Finally, we as a nation were taunted by the Iranians. Hostages were held for a year only to be released when the USA changed politically to stand up against tyranny and terrorists. Ronald Reagan was elected and the world again paid attention to the United States of America. We stopped bowing and raised our head and showed our determination to use our might to end the hostage situation. They partied in the streets when Reagan won the release of the hostages with an iron-fisted foreign policy.

The Cold War ended next. The fifty year battle of philosophies opposed to one another ended when Reagan, Pope Jon Paul 2, with the aid of Lech Walesa , brought down the symbolic wall that separated two worlds since WW2. Again, there was dancing in the streets.

It was now expected that years of peace would follow. Unfortunately, this did not happen as tyrants from terrorist Middle East countries sought to prove in their religious fanaticism that the USA was a paper tiger.

Events followed in dizzying succession, the World Trade Center was brought down by an enemy assault killing thousands of innocent people. Then we went to war in Afghanistan.

Following that we went to war in Iraq after our resources proved there was just enough evidence that Saddam Hussein was hording weapons of mass destruction. There were sane arguments each way for the value of these decisions for war. Pope John 2 told George Bush it would be a mistake.

Now in 2012 President Obama has silently declared victory in the back rooms of power. His administration wanted to play down the end of the Iraq war and discouraged parades to honor the men who served. Again, like Viet Nam, his erroneous thinking was disrespectful to the men in uniform who served their country well.

So they came home and hardly anyone noticed. But in St. Louis, the capital of the heartland, the part of our nation the elitists on both coasts and in Washington refer to as fly over country, something good happened this past week. They held a parade and a celebration honoring the loyal men and women who wore the uniform with dignity in Iraq.

Patriotism made its return. The city and state were the right choice. Thank you, St. Louis.

I am not for war, but for strength. I believe in freedom and liberty and not politicization of conflict for domestic power. That in  itself is reprehensible. The party line should be America first. Sedition should be identified and the seditious routed out. We the people suffer the cost and spill the blood and die for American values. These values should be the highest of standards and morals. The free press should be responsible enough to stay out of the business of politics and international conflict and not be a propaganda machine for the side they choose.

Americans should always honor their soldiers – even when it doesn’t conveniently fit the regime’s talking point. And we should never bow to our enemies.

Theodore Morrison Homa MD