Blue Star Chronicles

I was reading posts yesterday and ran across this post written by Cozy Reader. To some people it might be just another post about someone’s father and what he did in World War II. Yada, yada.

But her tribute to her father really struck me and I found myself thinking about it off and on since I read it yesterday.

Her father was my uncle, my mother’s brother. I knew the man she wrote about. When as a child she asked her father which Soldier he was in a movie, I can hear his voice answering her, ‘I’m the one in green’. I remember his dry humor and I’m absolutely certain that’s exactly what he said.

Her description of her father made me laugh and at the same time, made me terribly sad. The thing is I knew him, but I didn’t really know him.

I didn’t know he fought with Patton’s Army. I didn’t know he had been part of liberating concentration camps. I didn’t know so many things about him. I don’t know so many things about my other uncles who fought in that war. The truth is, I didn’t know many things about my own father.

Those men kept their own council about their war experience. They were stoic and I think they thought they were protecting their families by not talking about their experiences. It was just what they had to do.

It wasn’t just about the war. My mother recently wrote a post about this same uncle’s childhood. I didn’t know he had to run home from school a couple of times every day to move their father.

Their father died when they were very young and their widowed mother had to raise the children alone. That was before welfare. Uncle Tom and my other uncles had to help support the family. Without getting into all the details, Uncle Tom had more than his share of tragedy in his life. He also had many blessings. He seemed to understand that it all came with living life and never seemed embittered.

They were raised before Dr. Spock told us we were supposed to keep our children from ever having to do anything difficult. Who knew that all those generations they’d been raising children wrong?

A few years ago I happened to go on business to the State Patrol office my uncle had worked out of for years. During the course of my conversation with the man there I mentioned that my uncle had once been a State Patrolman out of that very same office. He asked me his name, I told him and he said ‘Smokie? We remember Smokie’. The man went on to tell me about what a wonderful man Smokie was. This was long after he had retired.

To my mind as a child my uncle was larger than life. He was big and intimidating. He often had a cigar shoved in the side of his mouth and would talk around that cigar but he wasn’t the type a child like me would ask to repeat himself. He didn’t say a lot, but when he did speak it was something worth hearing. He and his wife adored each other and they loved their children. His wife still talks about him as the great love of her life. They lived good lives.

I guess what struck me was that a man like that was in my life, my whole life, and I didn’t know so much about him.

It’s wasn’t just that uncle, there were others I have discovered did great things. They not only did great things in the war, they did great things in their lives. They loved their families, they raised their children well, they were loyal, descent and lived honorable lives.

We live in a world in which we call basketball players and actors role models. We idolize people who play heroes in the movies, but who in real life are coddled and pampered beyond anything we can imagine.

Reading Cozy Reader’s post yesterday reminded me that the real heroes are most often the ones who no one really knows about. The real heroes are the ones who do the heavy lifting and then get on with a good and honorable life. The real heroes are the ones who don’t expect to be pampered and coddled, but expect to give more than they take.

We are surrounded by real heroes every day in our lives. We just need to look up and see them.