Day 154 - Meridian

We got out of the village late yesterday (saturday) and faced constant traffic on I-59N. Almost all cars had Louisiana plates and they drove as if they were in fear of their lives. At least people are taking this storm seriously.

We ran our people to Meridian in two convoys. The second didn't leave for almost two more hours after us. I called Joyce of Trinity Presbyterian Church about 30 miles out of Meridian and her husband gave us good directions to the church. I pulled my truck and trailer to a near-level spot in the parking lot, parked it and didn't both to set up a generator. I just opened the windows and hit the sack. Our second convoy ran into heavy traffic on I-59 and did not arrive until 4AM.

When I rose this morning, it was sunny and the lot is full of vehicles. I planned to attend the service at 10:30AM. I find that William DePrater, the Mississippi Presbytery exec is preaching and on top of that I find this is Bubba Martin's church! They tell me if he is here he is singing in the choir. Bubba Martin in Joe B Martin IV's uncle. JoeB is the minister at Northside PC in Chattanooga, my home church. Bubba's brother was governor of North Carolina, a very interesting family. Unfortunately Bubba is in South Carolina but they tell me he will be in about 4PM, maybe I'll see him then, there is a big dinner tonight cooked by Kevin, one of our people from Houma.

Kevin and his extended family came along with us. You have to see the faces to appreciate the gratitude they have to us. They live in Houma and the latest forecast indicates Houma will take an almost dead-on hit by Gustav. Kevin is going to fix us shrimp gumbo tonight, and that is enough to lure Bubba and anyone else in within the aromatic vicinity. I'll have more to say about Kevin in a subsequent entry. Kevin is expecting to lose everything to Gustav.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting a bad surge and Pearlington has a mandatory evacuation. One of our staff lives there, she may well lose everything also.

At the moment, there is a mandatory evacuation order by the governor for all people south of I-10 is Mississippi. I-59 is down to 1 lane due to an auto wreck. The governor has declared a 6PM to 6AM curfew for all of Hancock County and the National Guard is going house to house notifying people to evacuate. Tropical force winds are expected in Gulfport by midnight. We expect rain in Meridian later this afternoon. Both cloud cover and wind have picked up here.

I-55 and I-59 are now countercurrent flow (all four lanes moving north, no south traffic allowed.) I-10E was closed early this morning at the Alabama state line due to congestion around Mobile, they are moving people north on surface roads.

The Air Force is flying transports out of New Orleans. Buses drive to passenger pick up points, load people on, drive to the airport and up into the aircraft. The aircraft doors close and the plane takes off for Meridian, Jackson or another location. The planes return to New Orleans and repeat this shuttle.

The NHC reports that Gustav is accelerating, they have moved up the impact to tomorrow mid- to late morning. I just looked at the time-lapse satellite loop on the NHC web site, and its current speed is amazing to me. Although the intensity is fluctuating, they are still predicting a likely category 3 or category 4 storm at landfall and the expectation it may slow down on landfall creating torrential rain.

Pray for Hancock County. The geography of Bay Saint Louis, Waveland and the unincorporated western areas on the Pearl River such as Pearlington make or a dire situation in the face of warnings of a strong surge.

Driving around Meridian I see piles of sandbags stacked in many store fronts. We went to the Walmart for flashlights. The place is packed. The flashlight display is stripped. I hope we went far enough north.


I'm sitting in a Quizno's composing this entry, it is the only wifi hot spot I can find. My next entry may be post landfall.

DAy 153 - Evacuation

I've spent all day at Orange Grove cleaning up - almost alone, while Gustav has spent the day growing ever stronger. Now a category 4 with a possibility of category 5, we have just gotten the order, out of Orange Grove this evening with as many trailers as possible.

It looks really bad for the west part of the state and Louisiana. I-10 and I-55 are probably going to be bad.

I gotta go help with the trailers, until my next internet connection, thanks for your prayers I'll send an update.

Henry

Day 152 – Securing Pearlington

By now the governor of Mississippi has declared mandatory evacuation of all people in FEMA housing and in newly constructed homes in the flood zone in Harrison and Hancock counties (basically all the land south of I-10). The governor of Louisiana declared evacuation of all people with disability or poor health. It is only a matter of time before a full evacuation order comes out and then the highways will be plugged with cars.

The National Hurricane Center is still predicting a blow to the Gulf Coast with the “consensus” prediction pointing to landfall just west of New Orleans early Tuesday morning. The models are still ambiguous but there is a growing fear on a rapid intensification to a level 3 or higher storm as Gustav passes Cuba. The potential for a severe surge is great.

I left Gulfport about 7:15AM in order to meet our Village Coordinator in Pearlington by 8AM. Today we have to complete the job Jeremy and I started yesterday – completely disassemble the Pearlington operation and secure all the equipment.

We boxed up all the paper records and load up several pallets of bottled water to bring to the Hancock County EOC (Emergency operations center) in Bay St. Louis. These people will be operating the center through the storm and they will need all the supplies they can get.

About 9:00AM three of our people came in from Gulfport. They had been securing our village in Luling yesterday and got back last night after 1AM. We set them to work removing the cots and mattresses from the pods.

We find we have one large freezer full of food, and a second one about half full. Our plan is to cut the electricity as a safety precaution and the food is going to go bad. We can’t possibly use it all even if we try to take it with us. We decide to load up the freezer and carry it to the EOC, they were unbelievably thankful. It will help them if the situation gets really bad and we’ll get the freezers back. Although there was some debate about taking the food with us, the good thing is we’ve built a strong relationship with a very important recovery organization in Hancock County, and we’ve stayed true to Matthew 6:25-33.

(At 6AM Saturday Gustav is a category 2, a dramatic increase last night. The tank remains the same. We will get a good idea after the storm passes Cuba. The only glimmer of hope is that there are some shearing winds that may keep the storm from becoming a great storm. Increasingly, it looks bad for Louisiana right now.)

Day 151 – The only worthy sacrifice is a broken spirit

Thursday was a busy day. The National Hurricane Center prediction for Gustav still points towards landfall somewhere along the northern Gulf Coast and the conditions in the Gulf look favorable for a big storm, probably category 3, but on the NHC discussion they said a category 4 or 5 isn’t out of the question. The tracks look like landfall west of us, not good because the west side of the storm is where the surge is worst.

Because we are in the preparation stage for evacuation I called a couple clients I was to visit in Pearlington to delay my visit. They were more than happy since they were in the midst of preparation themselves.

I went to the office to organize the casework and construction schedule for next month and get all the critical papers into a file cabinet. All the while I wondered if this was a futile exercise, how many of he houses in that file were going to be there if this storm is as bad as it looks?

I finished around noon and headed to Pearlington to help take down and secure our village. Jeremy, the work site manager and I took down the walls of the big community tent, boxed up as many meal items, and small appliances as w could.

By mid-afternoon we got the power tools in a trailer for evacuation and I had all the chairs and tables broken down. All the loose goods are boxed and ready to go. I went and filled all the propane tanks. On the way back the radio reported the governor has declared a state of emergency.

About that time one of our clients came by, we had just completed the work on his house. He works for the electrical utility company and he is planning to stay in Pearlington. His new house may be high enough to avoid a Katrina-like surge but the wind is still an issue. I gave him some plastic storage boxes for his wife to use and some of out paper goods. His wife is taking the children north, so I slipped some packaged cookies and candy in a bag for the trip.

He told us, his wife isn’t doing too well under the stress. His daughter who was old enough to remember the storm three years ago keeps saying,

“Daddy, I don’t want another one. Why is this happening?”

I called my friend Jimmy Lamey to see what he and his family are planning. I helped put his metal roof on in May 2007, and spent a lot of time at his home.

He says he and his wife are packing up. Robin and the daughters will drive the motor home to Meridian to wait out the storm. That is our deployment destination, so I told him to be sure she has my cell number, assuming the cell phones work. Now I hope people understand why he took what little money he had to get that motor home.

Jimmy says he has to report to the hospital where he works. I told him Friday when I'm back in Pearlington to finish the work, I'll drop by.

I keep thinking how unsettlled he must be. He was at the hospital when Bay St. Louis was inundated by Katrina's surge.

After struggling to move all the surgical patients first from the top floors down because of worries over the roof, and then from the bottom floors up ove worry of the surge, he watched it come in from a window. He told me how the water rose up over the first floor doors and windows. The doors and windows bulged but held for a while. Then one door failed and then everything went and the entire first floor was flooded, leaving them an island in the storm.

Later talking with Jeremy, he related to me a conversation he had with another woman in town that we’ve helped and built a close relationship. Jeremy said it was a hard conversation.

“Jeremy, I hope this storm hits us again, I really do,”

“Why? What on earth do you mean? You can’t really mean that ?”

“I do mean that. Katrina was so bad and we suffered so much. I know what it is going to happen when it hits. I can’t bear the though of another storm like Katrina hitting someone else. That’s why I would rather have to go through it again that them.”

Day 151 - Gustav I

Well, the "tropical depression" I mentioned on Day 148 is now an ominous threat. It looks certain that it will become a full-blown hurricane in a day or so. It's killed 11 people in Haiti. All the tracks point towards the Gulf Coast somewhere in a 300 mile wide spread from New Orleans to Florida.

I have a sinking feeling it is going to zero in on Mississippi/Alabama, perhaps east of the current prediction. Currently, the weathermap has it aimed right at Pearlington. That sends a shudder down everyone's back. Poor Pearlington was ground zero for Katrina.

Everyone is on pins and needles. In an agonizing turn of events last night, Gustav slowed down as it crossed Haiti. The expected arrival into the northern Gulf on Sunday has moved to Monday morning. Its arrival may be my birthday present on Tuesday.

Some models are suggesting it could be a stronger storm than Katrina but the National Hurricane Center say right now it is as probable it will be a category 1 and category 3 storm.

In a long term recovery meeting in Hancock County this morning it came from the Governor's office that a mandatory evacuation announcement might come Saturday. My friend John Jones, working in New Orleans for the state, says the evacuation annoucement may occur there about the same time.

Fortunately we have a well thought out evacuation plan on record. Between now and Saturday we will be packing up and securing property and moving it to designated storage locations. We are preparing roughly 48 hours before predicted landfall to drive our vehicles packed with food, water and extra fuel to Meridian.

That is the problem, where and when is landfall going to occur?

We will get ready to go, watch the NHC and get ready to move. So much for my trip to Chattanooga this weekend.

The positve note: One of my Queen of the Night bloomed last evening and the other plants have several buds. One will bloom tonight or tomorrow. I hope the rest survive this storm.

Pray for the people down here.

Day 148 – The Hurricane That Wasn’t

I’m sitting here early Sunday morning listening to the light rain and gentle wind. It is all that we’ve seen of tropical depression Fay.

I watched the National Hurricane Center/Tropical Prediction Center (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) since last Wednesday when Fay first gave a hint it might hit the US Coast. It looked like it was going to be another Florida storm, if it made it to the coast at all, so it seemed safe to take a long weekend.

Already on my trip, I got a call late Friday from a cohort in Chattanooga about a business matter. He mentioned in passing it looked like they were going to get hit by Fay after it came inland.

That was the first news I’d heard and I wasn’t near an operating television, or the Internet until the following Monday. By then Fay was hanging around battering Florida trying to meander west.

A quick check of the satellite imagery suggested it might roll over into the Gulf. That got me a little concerned. The Gulf water is about 85°F right now and that is plenty hot enough of an engine to rev up a slow moving storm into a dangerous beast.

Adding to my lay interpretation was the NHC track predictions that showed it moving over the southern edge of the Florida panhandle with a chance to take the southerly route out over the Gulf.

That storm wandered around Florida the rest of the week, toying with its decision to move West - like an anxious teenager trying to call a girl he has a crush on but is too shy to take the plunge and dial the number. Finally after dumping ten’s of inches of rain it started its slow amble westward and last Friday the predictions still were uncertain enough to cause concern.

A steady gentle breeze had picked up in Gulfport. For someone who has been through a hurricane, that is always an ominous sign of an impeding storm.

Looking to the east and southeast, one could periodically see the high clouds that Fay spun off as it churned in the Panhandle. Saturday when I left Gulfport to drive to a home in Pearl River County we may work on, the sky was overcast. By now big, bad Fay had slowed to a 45 mph tropical storm and it was almost a 100% certainty she would burn out over Alabama and Mississippi as a bad rain storm.

In Pearl River, the Sun came out but on the way back on US 90 between I ran through several hard rain squalls on US 90 between Pearlington and Waveland. By the time I got to Gulfport, the breeze had picked up a little and it was overcast but still no rain. The NHC now predicted at best 40 mph winds and maybe 0.5 to a few inches of rain on the southern Mississippi coastline by Sunday.

Nevertheless, the village staff had panicked and everything in sight was moved into sheltered areas or tied down.

Some one had unlocked and barged into my trailer that I was moving from and closed my ceiling vent, even though I’d told everyone I’d be back by late afternoon (and this was not going to be the bad storm). No one was in sight. I guess they were huddled in their trailers. Still smarting from that invasion of my privacy, I closed a few flapping doors and moved most of he rest of my things into my new trailer.

One person, trying to be helpful, moved all my plants and two of my three Queens of the night that have several buds on them. They are really position- sensitive to the light, I hope the buds don't drop. I guess Katrina is still too close but its lessons aren't. My friends panicked this time rather than follow the remarkably accurate Hurricane Center prediction.

So, here I sit, early Sunday morning listening to the light rain and gentle wind. It is all that we are going to have of tropical depression Fay.

However, there is another tropical depression in the southeastern Caribbean I’ll watch closely.

Day 143 – Good-bye Miss Katie

I met Miss Katie on a rainy day late last June. I’d been given her case file to go out and assess what damage Katrina had been done to her home. They got no surge up there, just over 100 mile per hour wind and a lot of rain.

It was a good drive up to the north end of the county. I was racing a nasty-looking thunderstorm coming in from the east off the Gulf. Big wind driven dollops of rain splattered my windshield but the rain held off until I was about a quarter mile from her house.

I drove up into her driveway past her well. The wellhead had a piece of broken white PVC pipe attached and a loose electrical wire sprawled on the ground. About this time the whole bottom started falling out.

I looked over at the brick ranch-style house and saw a spry figure of an elderly woman standing in the doorway. I hopped out, slammed the door of the truck and ran through the rain towards her as a sharp crack of thunder announced the storm’s arrival.

“It’s about time you all came back to fix my house! Where is my mantle? You know, the one that was over my fireplace. You took it almost three years ago and said you’d keep it safe until the work was done. My husband made that mantle and its all I have left to remember him!”

"I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve never been out her and our crews have never worked here.”

"Don’t you tell me that? I would recognize those blue shirts anywhere!”

“Miss Katie, a couple of organizations wear these shirts. I am pretty sure it wasn’t us.”

“They had the same shirts.”

“Miss Katie, whatever happened, I was sent out here to look at your home and figure out what needs to be done.”

“You can look around and see. Look at those ceilings, they came in and tore out the old drywall and put up a new ceiling- and to take the cake, they just covered my attic access. There is a door under that drywall somewhere.”

From my quick look I could tell it was a pretty poor drywall job. There were cakes of joint compound dried to the floor. It has been there since a couple months after Katrina hit. The living room rug hadn’t been pulled up and there were cakes of joint compound on it. They had ripped out the kitchen linoleum but nothing was finished. Water was pouring off the roof, there were no gutters.

“What about my locks? You took all my locks and said you’d be back to replace them but never came back. We have to screw boards over the door to keep the teenagers out. We caught some of them in here once with their girl friends and beer.”

“Miss Katie, I assure you my group was not involved with the work. We will be sure your house gets back right.”

The more I looked the more disgusted I became. I was going to find out exactly who would have done this. I could not imagine that a group would start in on a job and then walk away and let this poor woman sit or over 2 and one-half years living in a trailer abandoned and forgotten.

I had a good idea who it was. Miss Katie described the leader and his distinctive characteristics pointed to one person in a local church group who had fought viciously over their having a predominant role in rebuilding after Katrina.

“Miss Katie, I’m about done with my measuring. Does your air conditioning work?”

“No, the compressor is shot. You people didn’t even take out all the insulation in the attic. It is all moldy and my son has been pulling it out a little at a time. The ducts in the attic are all moldy too, you know.”

“I’ll make a note of that, and that you need gutters to get the water away from the house.”

After I finished my estimates I gave the file to our case manager liaison. It took her a few weeks but we got Miss Katie funded by the same group who had funded the first construction partner that did the miserable job. This time we are the partner and I’m going to be sure this job gets done right.

This week I had put the case in my work plan for September/October and sent an e-mail to the agency to let Julie, the case manager, know my intent. We exchanged a few words of amazement and regret that Miss Katie had sat for so long waiting for completion of a partly started rehab job. We both will have some satisfaction to see it completed.

Then today I get a new e-mail from Julie.

“Mr. Paris, I had been trying for over a week to contact Miss Katie about her house and to let her know it the repairs were funded. Today I was able to talk to her good friend Gladys who happened to be in Miss Katie’s trailer.”

“Julie, Miss Katie won’t be needing the repair work now.”

“Oh, really? What happened?”

“Miss Katie came down with pneumonia a couple weeks ago. They had her in the hospital all last week and released her Friday.”

“Well I’m glad she is out, is she doing better?”

“Miss Katie died Saturday night in her sleep. The doctor said her lungs filled with fluid and she suffocated, drowned in her own fluids. That old pneumonia finished what Katrina couldn’t. We buried her Monday.”

Since I have to carry the guilt of another person’s error, I would like to find than mantle and bring it back to Miss Katie’s friend. At least she would know that someone cared.

Day 135 - Buddy's Story

I previously mentioned that pre-Katrina time does not seem to exist down in the Gulf. Everyone gauges time after Katrina. It came up again with Buddy this week. (I've changed the names, but it is a true story.)

Last week I went over to Pearlington to go through a “check list” of incomplete items on Buddy’s mother’s house so we will pass the final inspection. Then his eighty-seven year old mother, Janie Lee, can move in to it.

I parked in front of Buddy’s house a hundred yards or so before Annie Lee’s house and made it past the “Beware of Dog” sign and befriended the slightly overweigh brown lab. Buddy had worked most of the night and was ready for bed. He fumbled around fruitlessly looking for his check list until he finally just gave up and we decided to just get in the cars and drive down to his mother's house.

Buddy stayed behind a while still looking for his list, so I asked Miss Janie if she minded riding down with me in my truck. She said no, and sure enough she looked for the handhold and just pulled up into the cab of my old Dodge truck.

As we entered the driveway before I really looked at the house very closely I heard her exclaim,

“Oh no. It looks like someone has broken into my house.”

I looked up at the front door. It was wide open.

“Miss Janie, why don’t you stay in the car while I go up and be sure no one is there.”

The house was clear and while Miss Janie was climbing the steps she had her cell phone in her hand, calling Buddy between sighs and “Oh, dear’s.” She remained remarkably calm as I walked around looking for signs of damage, but her eyes were tinged red as if the tears were welling, just beyond the surface.

Whoever did it just walked up and literally kicked the front door open, splintering the doorjamb. It lay on the living room floor.

When Buddy got to the house he told me he had already called the county police. They said they had a man in the vicinity but it took over forty-five minutes for him to get there. I imagine he drove over from Bay St. Louis, their headquarters. Nobody seems to really care about Pearlington.

Buddy was really mad, he was yelling at me.

“This is all because it has taken all these people so long to help us. They wouldn’t give us help to put on the roof and we’ve had to fight for every bit of help we’ve received.”

He was looking at me and it was almost as if he was chastising me for not helping. He caught himself in obvious embarrassment at breaking under all the stress. All I could think was how much mental trauma has been exacted on the people like Buddy and Miss Janie over the last three years. I actually thought Buddy was handling it fairly well.

Buddy broke into a smile and grasped my arm apologizing for the outburst. While we stood there and waited for the deputy I went ahead and asked the question.

“Buddy, did you wait out Katrina at your house?”

“Yes. I wanted to get out but we had my mother, my sister, a cousin and four of her kids. Early in the morning before Karina hit I got a phone call from an old fellow, name’s Howard, who lives a few blocks away. He is pretty much an invalid. He has to use a walker to move about.”

“Buddy, I’m really scared. The fire department was supposed to come by and evacuate me two hours ago and they haven’t come yet. I’m really scared I’m going to die.”

Buddy paused a few seconds and then continued the story.

“The first thing I did was telephone the fire department. I got someone who told me they had picked up everybody they were going to pick up and were evacuating themselves now.”

“So, Mr. Henry, I couldn’t leave then. I got over to Howard’s house and drove him back over to my house. A lot of trees were already down and it took me close to forty-five minutes to get over and back. We got in the house and just waited it out.”

"When Karina hit it was frightening. The wind was blowing so hard all you could hear was the roar and trees snapping and falling. The big pine in my back yard went over and would have split the house in half but for my old oak that caught it up in its limbs so it just glanced off the edge of the roof.”

“The eye came over us and the sun came out. We all went outside and all we could see was trees and limbs down everywhere. There was no way I could drive out. “

“I walked down the middle of the road towards the river.”

Buddy lives about a mile or less from the Pearl River. That is why the surge was so bad; Pearlington got the first surge from the Pearl River. First Katrina pushed the river up and way over its banks as the water from the gulf entered its mouth. Then the water from the Gulf came upon them.

“I was standing in the road and looked south, down towards the river. I saw this wall of water coming up the road. I turned around towards my house immediately and started running. I yelled at my cousin who was looking in the other direction at all the trees in the road. He didn’t hear me and when I got to him I just bowled him over yelling ‘get to the house!’ I got about fifty or seventy-five yards from the house and the water was up to my mid-calf. By the time I got to my porch the water was waist high. I was yelling to all my family.”

“Get in the boat! Get in the boat!”

"But my mother said no way she was getting in the boat and how could Howard get in? “

By this time the water was up over my head. I managed to get the boat over to the porch and we got all eight people in it, except me. Even though it was under water, I knew my truck was parked in the yard over by the oak so I jumped in and started swimming towards where it ought to be. My family was screaming because they thought I was caught in the current and washing away. I bumped my knee on the truck door that by now was about two feet under water. I managed to grab the doorframe and pull myself part way up onto the roof. I saw the aerial, grabbed it and pulled my body over to the other side. I took a deep breath and went under the water into the bed of my truck where I had a tool chest bolted on. I managed to get it open and fumbled around until I grasped my crow bar. I gave it a big tug and it pulled out of the box and I surfaced. Standing in the bed of the truck, I shoved the bar under my belt and pushed off against the truck rails swimming towards the boat and house.”

“When I got to the boat, we got it up against the house, the water was up over the top of the windows. I stood on the roof of my porch and forced open a dormer window with my crow bar. We all scrambled up on the roof and helped Howard, my mother and everybody else get into the attic about the time the wind started picking up again. We waited out the storm in the attic. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had listening to the wind and trees cracking and the water up so high. All sorts of things were floating and blowing by on the surface of thw water.

“After the wind died down, it took about five or six hours for the water to go back down.”

He took a breath and continued.

"We all got down out of the attic by the stairs and walked through the muddy sludge in the house out into the yard. The damage was just unbelievable. We had so many beautiful trees. Now everything was thrown about and scattered. You couldn’t even walk on the road for the debris.”

“Howard kept repeating, ‘what about my house? What about my house?’ until finally I said, OK, I’ll walk over and check it out.”

“I set out for his house more or less trying to stay on the road. I climbed up and under big fallen trees, cars, and furniture. It took me almost ninety minutes to cover the quarter mile to Howard’s house. Or, I should say to Howard’s lot. His house was off the foundation and all mangled.”

“Howard would have died if he’s stayed in it. That is when I knew why I stayed. That’s the answer to your question, Mr. Henry. Because I stayed, I saved Howard’s life.”

Through out his story I jut stood listening to Buddy and watching his face. Tears welled in the reddened edges of his eyes but didn’t flow out. He was at the same state of losing it as Miss Janie was when we got up to the house. He held on.

Buddy finished his story about Katrina.

“A few days later after we had started cleaning out all the filth, my neighbor, Joe, came over to talk. He came up in the house to compare mine with his, I guess.”

“The water went up six and one-half feet in the first floor. My house sits up on the foundation about four feet and my lot is on a little rise. They say we got about fifteen feet of water here, so that seems about right.”

“My neighbor was looking at my wall. I had a crucifix on the wall and the high waterline just crossed it at the arms of the cross. I thought that was something.”

“Buddy, are you going to put that crucifix back on the wall after you are done cleaning up?”

“Yep, I sure am.”

“Well, Buddy, how about putting it a little closer to the floor this time.”

Day 125 - Happy Birthday Daddy

Today is Grady Vaughan Paris’ birthday. He is my father and would be 91 years old had he not succumbed to complications of pulmonary fibrosis in 2001.

He was a great man. He worked hard as a forward observer in Europe as the US Army fought through Holland, Belgium, France and Germany tightening the noose around the Nazi armies to end that war.

He was a second lieutenant. Assigned to the Infantry, he was a forward observer for the artillery. He amassed quite a few decorations including a Bronze Star for some midnight crossing of a German river and moving up behind the German lines to direct fire. He said the battlefield ribbon he cherished the most was the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. I might add the life expectancy of a forward observer was something on the order of two weeks, he made it six months and managed to write his mother almost every week if not more often through out that struggle.

I don't really stand for killing because I can't reconcile it to Matthew 22:34-40 but it is a decision we each have to make for ourselves. No one can deny the sacrifice of my dad's generation in Europe and the Pacific.

We butted heads an awful lot about war during the Viet Nam debacle. I never thought I’d see a repeat performance as we have today in Iraq. It seems we are all prone, if not fated to repeat our past mistakes and not learn from them.

Anyway, he cheated death quit a few times in Hitler’s war, and then again afterwards and that's why I'm here writing.

Bo, as his mother and wife affectionately called him, was a deacon in his church, a Sunday school teacher for most of his adult life, a loving husband to my mother, Doris, showered love ceaselessly on my brother Mark and me; and on his two grandsons Thomas and Russell.

One could never imagine what he had to do in that war because his entire demeanor projected intrinsic kindness, trust and strength. People would walk up in a store as if they had known him for years and ask him for advice on a question about something. Children gravitated to him naturally. I doubt I’ll be half the man he was, but he did shape me in so many ways by these things.

My son Russell spoke for all of us in his senior notes of his high school farewell when he said:

“I miss you granddad.”

The world is a lesser and somewhat empty place without Bo in it.

Until we met again, happy birthday Daddy.