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.
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