---

With Memorial Day being last Monday, I got to really understand what it
was like to be a veteran; to sacrifice everything. My mother received a box
filled with many different items from her relatives in Texas. The box was
filled with stuff from her father, my grandfather. I was never able to meet
him because unfortunately he died before I was born.
In this box there was his high school diploma, certificates from the 1934
and 1935 WIAA Sectional and State track meets where he won the 220 hurdles
and pole vault (he also held the record for the highest pole vault jump
at Gays Mills High School until the 70's), newspaper clipping from his baseball
career and many pictures of his time during WWII.
He graduated from Gays Mills High School in 1935. Other than track and
field, he played baseball, short stop for different teams and he was then accepted
onto the St. Louis Cardinals Minor League Farm Team of Flint,
Michigan in April 4, 1941. But then in July 1941, he was drafted into the
war. Since he was older, being 25, he was one of the first to go over.
There were several pictures of him in uniform before and after the war.
His discharge papers stated he was in the war for 4 years 2 months and 13
days.There were pictures of him and his unit in Germany, France and Belgium.
He stated how in 1943, they landed in Normandy, before it became
infamous with D-Day in 1944, to get to Paris and travel to Belgium. They
were stationed in Cambrai, France for a time. A few pictures showed Nazi
planes in pieces as they were shot down. Another picture was captioned "Belgium,
near bombing miss" and in the picture he is standing next to a pile of
rubble from some building. A picture of him digging a trench and him sitting
next to a 75 mm tank gun on the top of a hill really gave me the sense of
what he saw.
Some of the pictures were hard to see because they were the size of my
thumbnail but I was always able to pick out my grandfather every time. My
mom and her siblings look so much like him, along with one of my brothers
and my sister. I take more after my dad's side but it was so interesting to see
more of my grandfather's life.
He finally came back in September1945 where he started a family. He went
to mortuary school in Milwaukee graduating in 1947. He never did get to
play with the St. Louis Cardinals because by the time he came back, they
said he was too old. He did have a fantastic career playing baseball during
the war for the Camp Grant baseball team based out of Illinois with a batting
average of .350. Several of the newspaper clippings told the tales of his fantastic
plays he made in games.
He did a lot during the war and it showed in the pictures. He sacrificed his
baseball career and his life for this country. If he wasn't drafted, who knows,
he could have been a famous baseball player instead of a funeral home director.
I feel now I have a better sense of who my grandfather was. Along
with him and all the other veterans out there from the many different wars,
thank you for all you have done.