They’re Here Again: Ante-Christmas and Anti-Christmas, Traveling Buddies.

A message for all times.

The “Christmas Shopping Season” that retailers use to entice us is now in full force. Unfortunately, it began in some department stores before summer ended. In the last few years, even radio stations have begun to play Christmas music around the clock, weeks before Thanksgiving. Many people already have Christmas lights on their houses and trees and displays on their lawns. These are manifestations of the ante-Christmas season.

In recent years, people, devout Christians among them, have begun referring to the Advent and Christmas seasons as “the holiday season.” Actually, “the holiday season” includes a pluralistic reference to Chanukah, Ramadan, and Kwanzaa, and New Year’s Day, as well, so as not to offend anyone who does not observe Christmas.

(We are strangely cautious of offending one another these days when we practice our faith in a supposedly pluralistic, democratic society.)

But the term, “The Holiday Season,” often has an anti-Christmas ring to it, rooted in the fear of giving Christmas precedence. Ramadan, I’m told, is a moveable observance that doesn’t always coincide with Advent or Christmas. I have also been told that Chanukah is actually not a major Jewish observance but a consolation to Jewish children who may feel left out of the Christians’ custom of gift-giving. And, I’ve read that Kwanzaa was intended by its creator to oppose the European-American Christmas observance with a celebration of continental African harvest time and social virtues.

Let me be clear: I am opposed to usage of the pluralistic, umbrella term, “the holiday season,” when it seems to diminish or obscure the specialness of each unique holiday. I do not take offense at Ramadan or Chanukah, for they happen when they do in other faiths’ religious calendars and do not interfere with anyone’s observance of Advent or Christmas.

But, Kwanzaa? Come on! It lasts a week, beginning December 26. Out of respect for African American Christians who take their faith in Jesus seriously and observe Christmas from December 25 to Epiphany Sunday, Kwanzaa should be appointed to another time on the calendar, such as October, when in this hemisphere we are in or entering the harvest time.

Remember, December 26, is the second day of Christmas because December 25 is the first day of Christmas.

And, December 24 is the last day of Advent, although to some retailers it is the last day of their four-month long ante-Christmas season.

Another irksome sign of anti-Christmasism that is apparently rooted in moral relativism is the perennial and ubiquitous question that journalists and talk show hosts like to ask the person on the street:

“What does Christmas mean to you?”

I’ve grown to detest that question when I hear it, for it implies that Christmas no longer has a meaning of itself and is meaningless unless I make it relevant to my needs or aspirations. The perennial answers one hears:

“It’s for the children.”

“It’s for the poor.”

“It’s for spending time with family and those we love.”

And so on.

Actually, every day of the year can be devoted to those ends, if we truly love our neighbor. Since I have yet to be asked, “What does Christmas mean to you?,” I’ll give an ante-answer. Christmas means to me what it means of itself–that God has kept his promise (see Genesis 3:15) and sent us a Redeemer. Period. Anything meaningful to me, such as my gratitude and rejoicing, follows from that.

May you wait joyfully during Advent and have a blessed Christmas. And, whichever special holiday you observe, may God bless you with peace, prosperity, light, truth, and love. And lots of yummy things to eat and drink.

Armed Forces: Combat Medical Advances

In the October 12, 2009, online edition of Marine Corps Times, Kelly Kennedy reports on a hopeful use of stem cells for treating some of the worst types of combat wounds.

(See “Labs report progress in regrowing bones: Stem cells could help injured troops” at http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/10/marine_bone_101109w/)

Researchers hope to grow new human tissue and bones in men and women who were wounded in battle. So far, as the article reports, tests on laboratory rats have been promising, but no human testing has been performed yet. If the techniques are successful in humans, it would be a phenomenal step forward, one that could significantly help combat veterans who have suffered the worst kinds of injuries.

How this new research will figure into the ethical and political debate on stem cell research is not mentioned in the article. For prolifers and combat veterans and their families, this is a story worth following.

This possible advancement makes me wonder how wounded American Civil War soldiers would respond to news of this kind of progress.

Politics: The School Address

A Reasonable Objection.

President Obama is scheduled to address the nation’s public schools today. There has been much vocal opposition to and defense of his address. I’m one of the people who oppose the address, for two reasons.

First, I have read Secretary Arne Duncan’s and the USDE’s suggested lesson plan that is available to teachers through a link at the White House website. The lesson plan leads children to only a positive interpretation of the president’s message but does not, unless I overlooked something, encourage students to express what they think if they were not inspired by the address or if they object to something the president said in it. The lesson plan itself frames the president’s address as a pro-Obama public relations tactic. I haven’t yet read the pre-released speech, but I object to the president’s address primarily because of its accompanying lesson plan suggestions.

Second,  I think that Mr. Obama as president has the privilege–of his office–to address any school, if he desires. But each school (parent, teacher, principal, board member, etc.) has, I believe, a constitutional right to refuse any speech he wants to offer, for the schools are created by the constitutional authority of their respective states and governed locally. The term “public school” is not (yet) synonymous or interchangeable with “federal government school,” even if a particular state or school district may be a recipient of federal money and its subsequent requirements.

The president’s address today is meant to be inspirational, although it is being delivered in the highly political context of his efforts to get health care reform legislation passed. Hence, whether the president intends it or not, I perceive the speech as a public relations tactic, as least for its timing of being delivered so close to his upcoming address to Congress; it gives the address the aura of the mass marketers’ tactic, “Let’s get into the parents’ pockets by advertising to their children.”

Politics: Health Care Reform

Here is one of Aesop’s fables. (See http://www.bartleby.com/17/1/57.html). From one perspective, and to the extent that it works, it may be a fitting allegory for the current national health care reform proposals. The goose represents the private citizen; the countryman represents government; and the unmentioned instruments of death represent the health care reform bill(s).

“The Goose with the Golden Egg.”

“One day a countryman going to the nest of his Goose found there an egg all yellow and glittering. When he took it up it was as heavy as lead and he was going to throw it away, because he thought a trick had been played upon him. But he took it home on second thoughts, and soon found to his delight that it was an egg of pure gold. Every morning the same thing occurred, and he soon became rich by selling his eggs. As he grew rich he grew greedy; and thinking to get at once all the gold the Goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find—nothing.”

From World War II to Vietnam to the Iraq War: Three veterans tell their stories

     Earlier this week I sat down with three members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. We talked about some of their wartime experiences, why they are members of the VFW, and the work of the VFW on the homefront in the current War on Terror. All three men belong to VFW Post NNN in Lake Villa. As a former US Marine who served during the first Persian Gulf War although never in combat, I felt it was at once a welcome, enlightening, and moving conversation. What follows is what they had to say.

     Ward H. Blessing, 86, Bristol, Wis. US Army Air Corps, 1941-1945, former post commander, VFW Memorial Post, Lake Villa, Ill. Blessing enlisted in the Army Air Corps after the attack on Pearl Harbor with three other friends.
     “I went overseas on the Queen Mary, with 33,000 other guys, as a mechanic. I more or less promised my mother I wasn’t going to be a pilot. ‘Oh, no, don’t fly,’ she said. I got overseas and I was there about 6 or 8 months, and they had an opening in the only gunnery school the Air Corps had outside of the United States, it was in Scotland.” Blessing completed the training and began his new job as a waist gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, flying missions over Germany from airbases in Great Britain. He also flew missions over France in support of the Normandy invasion.
     “The white cliffs of Dover, I’ll never forget ‘em. Saw ‘em many times. I stupidly, I say stupidly, had a buddy that I loved. I mean he was a good kid. He was from Tulsa, Oklahoma. And he fell in love with an English girl; he wanted to marry her. So another guy, his name was Don, but everybody called him Tex because he was from Texas. Tex and I volunteered to do missions for him so he could get married. I did two missions for him and the other guy did two missions for him. The second mission that I flew on is when I almost didn’t come back.
    “This pilot they had all…I ever knew of him was Waters was his name, and for some ungodly reason his nickname was Whiskey, Whiskey Waters. He was the pilot. He was a colonel. We were coming back from the mission, two engines out. All shot up. We were losing altitude. The radioman said, ‘Let’s jump out and land in the Channel. They’ll pick us up.’ Waters got on the line and said, ‘Shut up. I’ll tell you when to jump, and you ain’t getting ready to jump.’
     “Well the white cliffs of Dover are about 200 hundred feet high. We’re coming down and we’re losing altitude, and you could see ‘em ahead of us. We got over that, he banked and turned and went in. We had no landing gear, two engines out. We crash-landed. And the guy that was the head of the ground crew came over and said, ‘I want to talk to the pilot.’ We said, ‘That’s him over there.’ He went over and shook his hand and said, ‘Sir, I never thought you were going to be able to land that plane the way you did. That’s the best landing we ever had of a crippled plane.’ One of the ground crew told me, ‘I’ll bet there are at least a thousand bullet holes in your plane.’
     “I told my buddy, ‘Don’t you ever ask me to take one of your missions again!’ He just passed away a couple of years ago. They stayed married.
     “The funny part of it was, you know I wasn’t afraid? I’d go on a mission and I was so mad at the Germans and Hitler and everything. And finally, when we had this experience of damn near crashing, it started waking me up. ‘This was dangerous business!’ I had about 16 missions when I volunteered for his. I did 22 altogether. Then I got sense. ‘What the hell am I so proud of? Damn, it’s scary up there!’ It was. But it’s just like anything else; you’re a young kid, you’re just out of school and you don’t know. 
     “And when we all came home we had the attitude, ‘There won’t be anymore wars. We finished it. They’ll never try it again.’ Now look at us. Korea. Vietnam. It’s one after the other. Can’t believe it. Can’t believe that they do it. And our young people still volunteer just like I did. I never thought that you guys would have to go off to war,” Blessing said to Simons and Lamperth, the two other men in our conversation.

     George Simons, 52, of Round Lake Park, was a US Marine from 1971-1978. He was wounded in action and served in Operations Eagle Pull and Frequent Wind.
      “When I enlisted Vietnam was still going on, but I figured it was pretty close to being over and I’d never get there. And I did get there.
      “I was stationed aboard ship. I was on a Pacific cruise, on a troop ship, the USS Juno. We just basically did communications and whatever jobs they assigned us to do. There were probably 40 Marines on the ship. We were on our way to Okinawa. I was actually going to get off the ship; my cruise was actually finished. And we got word that the North Vietnamese were starting to overrun South Vietnam. And we needed to evacuate civilians, military, everybody. So they were asking for volunteers. I said, ‘Okay.’
     “Before that I was a door gunner on a Huey helicopter. Before we did the evacuation [in Operations Eagle Pull and Frequent Wind in April 1975], we flew in and evacuated the P.O.W.s that we could find. The second mission my helicopter crashed. We had to be rescued. Like Ward was saying, you know, you’re all young guys just gung ho, “Kill ‘em all!” but something like that happens and it’s ‘Wow! This is some pretty dangerous stuff here.’
     “We weren’t rescued until three days later. The pilot was killed in the crash. The co-pilot was burned but not real bad. He could still walk. We [four of them] went to a village not knowing what to expect. We found an old man in a hut in village who kept us there and he actually had a radio that belonged to the US military. We communicated through that. Three days later they came in and got us. We hid in the hut the whole time, hoping the North Vietnamese, Khmer Rouge, anybody wouldn’t find us. Three days later I was back out flying.
     Simons said the P.O.W. rescues were classified operations inside Cambodia, based on intelligence reports, and only de-classified in the years after the war. Unfortunately, the rescue attempts were not always successful.
     “A lot of times we’d go in and the place would be completely empty. There would be nobody there. They kept moving them all over the place.
     “After we were rescued I flew three more missions and was wounded, grazed in the side. Eagle Pull and Frequent Wind, in April 1975. Evacuated over 6,000 people “a lot of civilians, civilian government workers.”
     “A lot of the Vietnam veterans didn’t get a very friendly welcome home. I took my share of knocks from people. When I came home, I landed at LA International Airport. I was in uniform. I can’t remember if it was two ladies and a guy or two guys and a lady…I walked by them and they just said, “Baby-killer!” They had no idea what I’d done or where I’d been. They just saw I had the uniform on and knew I’d just come back. I ignored them and went on about my business. But it hurts. In my opinion, it was the reason a lot of those guys had the trouble they had adjusting back to society.
     “I went on from there and went to drill instructor school and became a drill instructor,” Simons said.
     After his tour as a drill instructor, Simons left the service.

Chief Petty Officer Jon Lamperth, USN, 25, Round Lake, 1999 to present. Lamperth is a recruit division commander, or drill instructor, at Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
     “I joined the Navy in ’99. Chief Petty Officer, After 9/11 happened, I was on the USS Vicksburg, a guided missile cruiser, out of Mayport, Florida. We got underway that day on 9/11 and went off the coast of [Washington] DC for 30 days just protecting our coast. And that was the first point for me and the crew that we felt like we were doing something, other than training missions. We felt, ‘Hey, we’re actually doing something to protect the country.’ That was gratifying.’
     “And then in February ’02 during Operation Enduring Freedom we went over and supported air operations with the USS John F. Kennedy, which is a carrier. We’d cruise around while they conducted air operations in Afghanistan. We were doing a lot of surveillance on ships that could be carrying terrorists out of the country. There were a couple times we found some people that were on the wanted list and we would detain them. That’s gratifying. It’s a small part in the big picture.
     “And that’s the funny part, that’s why I wanted to join the VFW because this is living history that I get to partake in. I could read about this stuff in books but you don’t hear Ward’s stories. You could read about them in books but there’s not a face there. I don’t have any stories. It’s not about so much of what I’ve done. It’s about getting the history from all these other people.
      “There are a lot of Vietnam veterans that really don’t talk about the war; they don’t speak about what happened because it was such a negative time. But here it seems more of the guys are willing to speak about their small experiences. Coming here, I get these stories from the generations before me. I don’t have much to say.  I just sit back and listen, and take the stories to work.
     Lamperth said the Navy has no trouble meeting its recruiting goals, which has been a problem for the US Army. He said that the majority of the young men and women he trains all want to be there.
     “They want to succeed, they want to do something successful. For the most part it’s easy to train the people who are enlisting now. The sailors we’re sending out to serve in the fleet are motivated.”
–danjerjohn (c)2006 by Daniel J. Johnson. This story first appeared in the Daily Herald, November 2006

“Her Last Letter”: Michael Dalton’s True Story of Love and Marriage during World War II

“Her Last Letter”

     Ivan D. Thunder published his first book last year. Thunder is 92 years old. And what kind of book did this Navy veteran of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II write?
     “It’s primarily a love story,” Thunder said.
     Besides being a boy-finally-meets-one-awsome-girl story, “Her Last Letter” is a compelling history lesson.
     “It takes place during World War II and also includes the history of a Seabee battalion from the time it was organized; it travels and everything else,” the Grayslake resident said. “It goes up to the battle of Iwo Jima.”
     The first time Thunder saw his true love, Rosemary Hughes of Chicago, it was literally across a crowded room–the ballroom of the Sovereign Hotel, October 1937. He noticed her and learned her name from a mutual friend. Later that same evening Rosemary learned of his name from her sister. And that was all, no love at first sight. They didn’t meet. And they didn’t even have their first date until five and half years later.
     During those intervening years, Rosemary worked as a secretary and Ivan, an unemployed civil engineer, eventually found work on the Panama Canal Third Locks Project. A former Navy reservist during college, Thunder applied for a commission in the Navy during the summer of 1942. Nine months later he received it and headed home to Chicago for a quick visit with his father. He arrived with only 36 hours to spare before he was due to report for training at Camp Peary, Williamsburg, Va.
     “I was in town for a day and half and I wanted a date. After being in Panama for two years I thought it’d be nice to go out on a date because I never met anybody there that I was interested in,” he said.
     From what little information he had about Hughes, he found her telephone number in the phone book and asked her out to a dance.
     “Well, we certainly hit it off right from the beginning. About six months later to the day we got married,” he said. That was October 23, 1943. “In the meantime I was assigned to a battalion so I got married on our embarkation leave. Didn’t want it that way but that’s the way it worked out.” It was a 10-day leave, “but we only had a five-day honeymoon.”
     Yet, it was the start of a marriage that lasted 61 years and brought them seven children, 26 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Rosemary Thunder died in 2004. Thunder’s book, “Her Last Letter,” is both a tribute to her and his memoirs of the war years.
The book’s title is significant because it was an angry letter and the last one Thunder received from his wife until after the 133rd Naval Construction Battalion landed on Iwo Jima. On February 20, 1945, Lt. (jg) Thunder landed on Yellow Beach 1 not knowing why his wife was upset with him, and he had no more time to think about it.
     Iwo Jima was critically needed as an air base for bombing missions on Japan. Losses among aircrews were becoming unacceptable. It was the Marines’ job to seize the island and the Seabees’ job to build the all-important airfields. But to do either job, they needed a constant supply of fresh water. Getting it was the job of Thunder’s Company B.
     “We set up this desalinization plant right on the beach. We had a canvas tank that held about 9,000 gallons,” he said. “Right on the beach. Right under Mt. Suribachi. Later on we built a big plant right were our camp was. We could produce about 16,000 gallons a day. We had to pump it up from the ocean, 230 feet.”
     Although he was so near to Mt. Suribachi, Thunder didn’t see either of the two flag raisings.
     “Well, we were a mile away and somebody said to me, ‘There’s a flag on top of Mt. Suribachi!’ So you look up, see the flag is there, and you go back to work. That’s what it amounted to. There was no big fuss about it. When you’re a mile away you can hardly see the flag,” he said.
After the island was secured, the Marines moved on and an Army Garrison Force moved in. The Seabees remained and continued building the facilities needed for the airbase. Thunder eventually returned home to Rosemary and their first child.
Currently, Thunder is working on the sequel to his first book. The next one continues from D-Day-plus-1 to the end of the war and contains his essays on the war.
     “Her Last Letter” can be purchased on line at www.trafford.com and is available at the Grayslake Area Library, the U.S. Naval Academy library, and the library at IIT. Thunder published the book under his pen name Michael Dalton. But that’s another story. –danjerjohn. (c)2006 by Daniel J. Johnson. This story first ran in the Daily Herald, February 2006.

Of leaves and leap year: Two fun books for children

 

“The Autumn Marathon”

     Where do those dry leaves go after the autumn gusts whip them across your lawn or swirl them up in tiny tornadoes against a wall?  
     Dawn Desjardins pondered those questions. Then when she drove her two daughters to school in the mornings, she heeded the leaves around them. When she came home, she wrote stories. At other times she took pictures and painted in water colors what she had seen. Finally, Dawn Desjardins wrote and illustrated a book. It is her first. “The Autumn Marathon.” And she published it herself this past November.
     Desjardins’s Libertyville neighborhood inspired the story’s setting, though she says her “Autumn Marathon” actually takes place everywhere. Friends in her native upstate New York see their own towns reflected in the book. And the title itself was inspired by her husband’s running in the Chicago marathon. So, naturally, there is a lot of motion in her book.
      “That was paramount to me, the whole idea of motion,” Desjardins said. “The leaves…how intriguing…they just take on a life of their own. Children are full of motion. How better to relate to them than to just be kinetic? Life is full of motion.”
     From sunrise to sunset, the story follows the travels of different leaves as they go about their business, often interacting with people in surprising ways. Meanwhile, on each page spread, a vivid background color matches the mood of the text or the vignette depicted in the illustration on the opposite page.
     “It was important for me to not have Joe Leaf go from one end of town to the other because it was too connected and life’s not that way. Life is, ‘Heartbreak is happening over here,’ and, ‘Joy is happening over here.’ So I really didn’t want any one leaf being the [main] character. I wanted just life. Anytown, USA. Any leaf. Any person moving. I just wanted that kind of freedom,” Desjardins said.
     The career mom and homemaker wrote the 33-page, hard-back book for children in general. (Her own children are now 18 and 21 and love their mom’s book.) But librarians have told her it would appeal to first- through fourth-graders. And, to her surprise, toddlers (including my two-year-old son) have been enthralled by the story. And why is that?
      “I think because the motion, and I think because of the drawings for some reason,” she said. “I don’t proclaim to be an artist. I think they look at these pictures and it’s something they could see themselves doing.”
     Desjardins is proud of her first foray into authoring and illustrating. But she’s reserved in speaking of herself and her other artistic accomplishments as she followed her curiosity and talents along the paths of singing in cabarets, acting in community theater, teaching acting, and now publishing. She formed Artistic Ventures Publishing in 2005 to protect her vision of the story, guarantee her high quality standards and control her printing costs. After a lengthy search throughout the Chicago area, she settled on a printer in Gurnee, whom she believed understood how important her book was to her and would respect the investment she’d made in it. She also hired a local graphic designer to help prepare the manuscript for printing.
     Dawn Desjardins wrote a book, her first. And while she is marketing that book, she has already started work on her second, a book of poetry for adults—and on her third, another book for children, the details of which she isn’t ready to reveal yet.
      “The Autumn Marathon” is available at bookstores throughout the Chicago area, across the country, and through Artistic Ventures Publishing at www.artistic-ventures.com.

 Copyright ©2006 by Daniel J. Johnson. All rights reserved. This story first appeared in the Daily Herald (Paddock Publications), 2/6/06, No. 115, Section 5, page 1. For reprint information write to danjerjohn@gmail.com.

  

“Leopold’s Long Awaited Leap Year Birthday”

“Leap Year Birthday’s are Peek-a-boo holidays. They are there, they’re just hiding.” Dawn Desjardins

     Dawn Desjardins has published another beautiful and fun work of art for children. This time she speaks for a special audience–the little ones whose birthdays come only once every four years because they were born on February 29th.
     “Everyone should know the wheres and what-fors of February 29th,” Desjardins said. “I wrote this book because there was a need in the educational market to address this tricky day that is usually missing on the calendar. Also, an assistant principal who had read ‘The Autumn Marathon’ suggested my writing a book on leap year. And how can one better address the difficulty of WAITING for birthdays than our expert…Leopold?!”
     “Come join the wise old doctor, Mr. and Mrs. Leapfrog, and Leopold as they find out why Leopold’s birthday just never seems to come…and join Leopold as he celebrates his very first Leap Year birthday–and four great years of Life!” (from inside the jacket cover)
     “Leopold’s Long Awaited Leap Year Birthday,” by Dawn Desjardins. Illustrated by C.E. Locander. Published 2008 by Artistic Ventures. ISBN 978-0-9771495-2-0.  For more information, visit www.artistic-ventures.com–danjerjohn

Living History Profile: Ken Kadz as Major Albert J. Myer

      As Union Maj. Gen. George G. Meade approaches Federal headquarters on Cemetery Ridge, a signal crewman in the background wig-wags signals to a distant flag crew. Meade enters the headquarters and tells Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock, “It’s so dark out there I can’t see a d— thing.”
     “Only a signalman would notice they’re signaling out there with flags instead of torches. How are they going to see them [the flags] if the guy can’t see his hand in front of his face?” said Ken Kadz about the error in the classic Civil War movie “Gettysburg.”  
     And the Round Lake Beach resident certainly knows when to use flags and when to use torches, for 13 years ago Kadz founded the Midwest’s first group of Civil War Signal Corps reenactors, “The Blackhat Battalion,” U.S. Signal Corps.
     During the war, the Union signal corps communicated messages across the battlefield and even was used for scouting and reconnaissance, Kadz explained. He pointed out that the signal corps occupied Little Round Top near Gettysburg before the fight for it began in July 1863.
     At reenactments, working in three three-man flag crews, Kadz and his men are every where they are needed, whether with artillery batteries or infantry regiments. Spectators can watch them at work during the narrated battles and artillery demonstrations.
     “Any military order that we get we can break it down to its lowest common denominator and send it,” he said. Because wig-wag signaling (or aerial telegraphy) uses only one flag, messages are sent in numerical code.
     “Left is 1, right is 2, down is 3. Three is always used at the end of a word,” Kadz explained.
     However, his crews don’t signal alphabets as they would with the general code–it would take too much time. Instead, they use a pre-concerted code in which the number sequences stand for commands and whole words, such as “Move,” “Need water,” “Begin engagement,” “End engagement,” “Stop,” “infantry,” and “artillery.”
     One of the signal corps’ most important reenactor duties is to help keep the infantry and artillery batteries positioned a safe distance apart. Hence, “Medical emergency,” a code that obviously is not used in war, is used at reenactments, Kadz said. Four years ago he said he had to stop a reenactment when a reenactor was injured when someone fired a pistol too close to his ear.
     Earlier in this reenactment season Capt. Ken Kadz, chief signal officer, accepted his first promotion, to major, a bit reluctantly.
     “I didn’t seek it. I never wanted it. These guys wouldn’t leave me alone,” Kadz said. “It’s amazing how it evolved. But here it is 13 years later and all my new guys are saying, ‘Look, you started this. You earned it. Besides, you’re complacent.’
    “I said, ‘No, I’m happily relaxed in what I got now. I’m confident.’ To go to a bigger rank now it’s a whole can of worms sometimes, but luckily I’ve been in this hobby for 22 years. Just about everybody knows me. I’m not trying to pull rank or anything like that,” Kadz said. And, in a spirit of fair play, he immediately promoted his executive officer from lieutenant to captain.
     By the way, reenacting runs in the family. Kadz’s wife Ann was once a reenactor and their son Joseph, a student at St. Joseph’s, Round Lake, and a military history enthusiast, also joins the unit in the field.
     With the new responsibilities of higher rank also comes a new identity. Kadz is no longer himself, a fictitious officer from the period—he is now a first-person reenactor portraying Maj. Albert J. Myer, the real-life founder of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Fortunately, the 54-year-old postal worker and community theater veteran who once played the title role of “Mr. Roberts” is comfortable with that.
     “I’ve got this wonderful group of guys right now,” he said fondly of his nine-man unit, all but one of whom are members of the American Legion. Kadz himself and his son belong to the Sons of the American Legion.

Ken Kadz's Signal Corps

     “The neat thing about it, they have the enthusiasm of 18- and 19-year-olds but they have the wallets of 50-year-olds, where they can afford to get this stuff. And they just said, ‘You know, Ken, you really should portray Myer. You started this all on your own,’ which I did. There was no signal corps in the Midwest. I was actually artillery. I was artillery for eight years. I had to fight with the captain then to get more authentic all the time. His idea of having fun was to have a bunch of empty beer cans in the tent and empty powder cans. It was time to move. So alright. Communications was always one of my better things in school. So, let’s start this out,” he recalled. “And at one time I even had a real army major who was in the signal corps reserve, in the army reserve. And he said, ‘I can’t believe this. You never went into the military and you started this out all on your own?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’
     “It’s something that has always been in my blood,” Kadz said.
     Kadz has been passionate about military history since he was boy, inspired by a Disney movie about the life of Maj. Gen. John L. Clem (“Johnny Shiloh”). He said after that it was very easy for him to wonder what life was like in 1863 instead of in 1963. He also has a deep pride in his family’s service in World War II. Throughout his house abound wartime photos of his Navy father and his three uncles who served in the Army and Army Air Corps. One of his uncles was for a time, at 17 years old, the youngest soldier in the army.
     “I think of myself sometimes, ‘How did I get this way? Why? Am I a military groupie? I don’t think it’s that way. I just respect my family and what they did,” he said. “I do believe that the World War II generation is America’s greatest generation. They never bragged about it; they never talked about it. They just wanted to go on with their lives and raise families. We had the greatest family gatherings for the holidays and they never said a word about it ever [the war], until when I got older and I did my homework and I inquired about it and got military records to my uncles and discharge papers. I’ve been a longhair since 1969, so I’m the least person they’d ever figure to be a military historian.”

Copyright (c) 2007 by Daniel J. Johnson. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint this article or any of my stories on this blog, please write to me at danjerjohn@gmail.com

Living History Profiles: Katharine Pettigrew Coleman, Jason Krausz

Reenactor Profile: Katharine Pettigrew Coleman

Real-life occupation: Medical illustrator and instructional designer.

Coleman is a relative of Brig. Gen. James Johnston Pettigrew,  a Confederate officer who participated in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. (Gen. Pettigrew was the brother of Coleman’s great-, great-grandfather.)

Her impression: Portrayed a Southern civilian. This is Coleman’s first year participating as a re-enactor. For the past six years, she has worked behind the scenes helping her father Thomas Pettigrew prepare for re-enactment events.

“History is such a rich and surprising, living, ongoing thing — it’s not dead. The experiences we have today are directly connected to things that happened a long time ago, if you really look hard at the threads. And it’s very relevant to human experience economically, socially, artistically, militarily now. I think we’ve lost a lot of the appreciation of it.

There’s so much to learn that is relevant to daily life and a vision for the future by analyzing what happened in the past and understanding that everybody had a different experience of history within their own context. And there can’t be any gross simplifications. You have to study it up close, in detail. We live in a drive-through culture, and you can’t really pick up everybody’s true story in a drive-through blur.”

* * *
Reenactor Profile: Jason Krausz

Real-life occupation: Student at Blackburn College in Carlinville, Ill.

Impression: Soldier, 36th Illinois Infantry Regiment. Krausz has been a re-enactor for seven years with his twin brother and classmate, Mark.

“We had read a lot of historical fiction stories when we were in middle school and junior high. Then we decided we wanted to do a little more than just read about history. We wanted to dress up and relive what they went through.

So in our freshman year, we contacted this group and went out to drill and a re-enactment, and have been doing this ever since. We’ve been to Michigan, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia.”

Author’s Note: This story is one of a series of articles I wrote for the Daily Herald, Lake County, Illinois, in 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Daniel J. Johnson. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint this article or any of my stories on this blog, please write to me at danjerjohn@gmail.com

Living History: First Battlefield Letter

Report from the front: A correspondent’s story

July 8, 2006, Saturday

I awoke a little after 6 a.m. I turned onto my stomach. Mike Champion was starting the fire, about 10 paces in front of me. To my right, under the fly of the home tent, Rob Cetner was starting his morning routine. I looked to my left from my pup tent. Pools of sunlight bathed the tops of the white canvas tents that were set up in the open fields. I caught the smell of horses and sweet hay on the breeze. About 15 yards away a Union cavalryman was going through his morning routine, as an unsaddled horse stood nearby, its tail wafting.

“These re-enactors are great people,” I thought. They went to this extent on their own to re-create military and civilian life in the 1860s. Except for the advancements in technology, living in the field in the 1860s wasn’t much different from living in the field during the 1980s and 1990s when I was a Marine.

I washed my face and brushed my teeth in the metal basin on the small table at the home tent. Cold water from the pitcher. Hot water from the covered, blue enameled pot warming on the single-burner, cast iron stove. Coffee from the percolator, and a tin cup to drink it from. All luxuries, for I was accustomed to using only a canteen of outdoor-temperature water and a one-pint metal cup for my morning ablutions and powdered coffee. First eye-squinting experience: I sampled the period-correct soap, used for ambience, and found that it burns just as much as 21st-century soap does.

Changed into my period clothing — black felt gambler’s hat; long-sleeved, striped blue and brown cotton shirt; black cotton trousers; burgundy suspenders; green vest — and my contemporary black dress socks and boot camp-issue black leather dress shoes. (One builds a wardrobe slowly in this hobby.) Put my sleeping gear away. Slung my canvas haversack over my shoulder, put my pencils in my shirt pocket, tucked my folded sheets of newsprint into the waist of my trousers and set off … with my 35mm SLR camera … to take pictures of the camps before the sunlight became harsher.

I was an anachronism. My impression, as re-enactor’s call it, was of a special correspondent for an African-American newspaper of the 1860s.

“Good morning” to the ladies, as I pass through the fly of the home tent. Penny Cetner, Dawn Adams, and Lisa Champion, our cook, were up now.

When I returned, breakfast—eggs, bacon, hash browns, and cheese—was on the fire. But I couldn’t wait; shoved an apple and an orange into my haversack. It was about 7:40, according to my pocket watch. The tactical battle was to start at eight. Where was it? Got directions from the Discovery Museum staffer at the registration tent. Not far away, about a quarter of a mile south.

Met up with nine Union soldiers on the slope above a cornfield — Battery G, 2nd Illinois Light Artillery. I told 1st Lt. Tim Tedrick, about my impression and my assignment and he invited me to embed with them — and Mary, their 12-pound Napoleon cannon. Mary was a real-live combat veteran of the Civil War. Her sister Molly was down the road a ways, out of our view. The Confederates were in front of us to the west, somewhere, within two miles. Battery G was the Union right flank.

Introductions, pictures, interviews taped on my radio reporter’s tape recorder. At some point during that first hour, our lone picket was summoned away, leaving us without infantry support. History lessons, biographical exchanges, lots of jokes.

Cannon fire to our left, some distance away. About 8:40 a messenger arrives. The Confederates are turning the Union left flank and trying to hit us from behind. Be ready. 

Soon, one of the men spots a flag at the forest on the opposite end of the cornfield. Lt. Tedrick faces Mary right to meet the assault. Load up with canister. Nine Confederate cavalrymen ride hard along the edge of the cornfield. They turn the corner, form a line abreast, and open up with rifles and pistols. Mary belches. The Confederates fire back. Three riders break off, charge across the yard to our right, trying to hit the crew from behind. I change position twice to stay out of the line of fire; the tall grass isn’t tall enough. Load more canister. Mary roars at the six now grouped in front of her. One of the three has worked his way up the slope behind us. A thin tree between me and him now. The three soldiers with the limber and munitions are unarmed and exposed.

“I’m dead!” calls out one of the crew.

“I’m dead!” calls out the bold cavalryman. Lt. Tedrick shot him.

“Spike the gun!” orders Lt. Tedrick.

The horse soldiers stop their attack.

“Where’s the umpire?”

None.

Both sides assess: Union, one killed; two or three Confederates killed. It’s 8:50. Both sides must sit out for 20 minutes. The Confederates ride back to their lines the way they came. Some of the crew naps; the others talk, clean the gun, and watch for another attack. No more action for us. Exercise ends about 10:15. The men attach the limber and roll Mary back to camp, by hand. I return to the Wool, Warp, and Wheel camp on Sutlers Row. Missed Lisa’s breakfast. I eat my orange. Oh, well. I’m a vegetarian anyway.

Authors Note: This story is one of a series of articles I wrote for the Daily Herald, Lake County, Illinois, in 2006. Copyright (c) 2006 by Daniel J. Johnson. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint this article or any of my stories on this blog, please write to me at danjerjohn@gmail.com