July 2015 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#1046 – Dick Bernard: 50 years ago today. A personal memory. Remembering a death.

July 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Health, History, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, Quietings /by dickbernard

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At the Busch farm, August 1964. Barbara at right, Dick next to her. Grandma and Grandpa Busch at left.

Yesterday afternoon, enroute to a meeting, I stopped to take a couple of photos:

3315 University Avenue SE, Minneapolis MN July 23, 2015

University of Minnesota Hospital, Minneapolis, July 23, 2015

Fifty years ago today I lived in a rented upstairs room in this house, just a block from KSTP-TV; and my wife, Barbara, was in the University Hospital less than two miles away, my memory says on 8th floor, in intensive care, .
It had been a very long two months since we arrived in Minneapolis in late May, when Barbara was admitted for a hoped for kidney transplant, her only remaining option to live.
This particular Saturday morning, 50 years ago today, she had fallen into a coma, and at 10:50 p.m. she died. The previous day there had been a brief rally, not uncommon for those critically ill.
Among the whisps of memory was my going to the Western Union office in downtown Minneapolis after she died, sending a telegram to relatives.
Communications was not instant, then. Mine was a very succinct message.
While death is never expected, particularly in one only 22 years old, there really was little hope left: three major operations in two months, no kidney transplant.
July 25, alone, I drove west to Valley City, North Dakota, where the funeral was held on July 29.
In a family history I wrote for our son on his 18th birthday in 1982 I remembered the day of the funeral this way: August 1965001
It was a very lonely time, I have never been able to recall many specifics of particularly the first month after her burial, but life went on for 1 1/2 year old son Tom and I.
It was very early in my life too – I was 25 – and I grew up in a hurry. It has informed my life and my attitudes ever since.
I became very aware of how important and how broad “community” is in society.
There were, out there, among family, friends and many others, people who in diverse ways helped us get through the very hard times. By quirk of fate, the funeral was one day before President Lyndon Johnson signed into federal Law the Medicare Act, societies immense gift to the elderly of this country, one of whom is now me. Here’s Grandpa Busch’s first Medicare card, dated July 1, 1966: Medicare card 1966001
Today in our country we debate whether or not everyone should have a right to medical insurance; whether it is a responsibility of the individual, or of society at large.
Medicare was debated then, too.
It was not on Barbara’s or my radar screen. Debate is a luxury when survival is the only issue.
Our married life was very short, only two years, and almost 100% of the time distracted by the progression of a finally fatal illness. We never really got to know what a “normal” marriage might have looked like.
I think we would have done well together, but that is sheer speculation. The inevitable tensions of a normal marriage were something we were never able to experience.
Three weeks ago I made a visit to Barbara’s grave in Valley City. It is in St. Catherine’s Cemetery, high on a hill just east of town.

June 29, 2015, Valley City ND St Catherine’s Cemetery

St. Catherines Cemetery, Valley City ND June 29, 2015

Yesterday I went briefly into the University Hospital, including up to the eighth floor, which is now used for other purposes than 50 years ago.
In the lobby area I lingered for a moment by a plaque recognizing the founding of University Hospital in 1916, near 100 years ago.

University of Minnesota Hospital, July 23, 2015

Elsewhere, in the medical wing of University Hospital, doubtless were patients for whom yesterday was, or today will be, the last day of their lives.
It is the single immutable fact that we all face: at some point we will exit the stage we call “life”.
Take time to enjoy the trip. The Station001
My public thanks, today, to everyone who helped Tom and I, in any way, back then in 1965, before and after, especially the public welfare system and public and private hospitals.

#1045 – Dick Bernard: On "Warriors" and "American Heroes". Remembering First Sergeant Strong

July 21, 2015/0 Comments/in Colorado, History, International Relations, Politics, War /by dickbernard

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If one follows national politics at all, one staple is obvious: the cult of American superiority as played out by its military “warriors” and “heroes”. It has most recently erupted in the Republican political debate, largely brandished by candidates and members of the political echo chamber who never served in the military, and conveyed to a public who have also, by and large, never served, and have a John Wayne movie (or, for the youngers, Transformers) view of the fantasy of invincibility of American military prowess.
For those who’ve been there, war is hell, something to be avoided…like the religious concept of Hell: Hell is a place you think you know about, but don’t want to go there to visit.
A few days ago, in this space, I published a photo of North Dakota farm boy and Marine Francis Long. Private Long was killed on Saipan on July 2, 1944, 13 days after the battle began; 7 days before it ended.
Late Sunday afternoon, I turned on public television, and it happened they were rebroadcasting part four of Ken Burns powerful series on WWII. This segment featured the horrors of Normandy, and of Saipan….
Francis Long gave me context for Ken Burns re-creation in images of the Saipan campaign, and about the reality of war…for all sides. About 50,000 dead during the battle of Saipan alone. Saipan was hell for U.S. GI’s and the enemy Japanese combatants; no less, it was hell for the Japanese who lived on Saipan, a great many of whom, civilians for whom Saipan was home, committed suicide by jumping off a cliff rather than surrender to the Americans.
War is hell.
But this post is about another soldier I knew: First Sergeant Fred Marcus Strong.
I was 22 when I met him in Company C, 1st Battalion, 61st Infantry, 5th Infantry Division (Mech) at Ft. Carson Colorado in 1962. For more than a year I was his Company Clerk; and he was top enlisted man in Company C. There were perhaps 150 of us in the Company. I got to know Sergeant Strong pretty well, though he seemed really old at the time (he apparently was 39), and he was my superior. Our desks were adjacent to each other, and our office was “Grand Central Station” for the company; as it was when we were on maneuvers, which was often.
He and I related well, in a quiet sort of working way. Sometimes we conversed about home, and he told me about growing up in the Tennessee/Virgina border area.
Our Division was training, it turned out, for Vietnam.
Time passes, but I never forgot Sergeant Strong. He had a powerful and positive impact on me. He was a gentle man. I made some failed attempts to find out if he was still alive. Search technology had not reached today’s sophistication.
This Memorial Day a friend forwarded a powerful tribute to GIs sponsored by a grocery chain out of Bristol Tennessee. You can view it here, the link is in the first line.
Sergeant Strong came back to my life. I knew from long ago conversations that he was from the general vicinity of this place, and I decided, once again, to look him up.
Sure enough, he had a mailing address, near Fort Carson, so I wrote him a long catch-up letter, not knowing if I’d ever hear back.
Presently came an e-mail, from his daughter: “My Mother wanted me to contact you when she got your letter to let you know that my Dad passed on June 9th 2014. Mother was so happy to get your letter and it made her feel very good to know someone cared enough about Dad to write after all these years…She is so lonely without him. We all miss him.”
A little later, about July 10 came an envelope with a brief note, and Sergeant Strongs obituary, which leads this post, and speaks for itself. Look deeply at the picture: that is the Sergeant Strong I remember.
I was struck by this memory card, stark in its simplicity. This was as perfect a summary of service as I’ve ever seen. The customary biographical sketch is not on this card. But it doesn’t need to be.
Anything more would have been a distraction from the essence of a life of service by Sergeant Strong which most likely included World War II and Korea:
Military Honors. “Army”
The memory card and note from his daughter has joined the goblet made by my Uncle Frank on the USS Arizona before he went down with the ship December 7, 1941.
Thank you, First Sergeant Strong.
POSTNOTE: In my followup letter I included a couple of memories of 1962-63, which you can read here: Ft. Carson 1962-63001
Some years ago, I happened to meet the mail clerk for Company C, just a kid like myself, and we were reminiscing. He recalled, back then, that he really wanted to become a helicopter pilot, but Sergeant Strong quietly counseled him out of that idea.
Doubtless, First Sergeant Strong knew war, and not from the abstract.
We were training for Vietnam. He knew that. He knew the coming reality. We didn’t understand what was ahead.

#1044 – Dick Bernard: The Women in the Yard. Looking for Clara.

July 18, 2015/0 Comments/in Family History, History, North Dakota, Quietings /by dickbernard

Thursday I published a piece that included a family photo taken 72 years ago, in the summer of 1943, in rural North Dakota.
Everyone was in that picture, except for the Mom, and I observed that “[t]he entire family is in the photo, save their mother, Clara, who was probably taking the picture”.
The family was not kin of mine, so I didn’t know of them except by name, but they were near neighbors and fellow church members with my grandparents Rosa and Fred Busch.
I would have been three years old when that picture was taken at the nearby farm.
Overnight it occurred to me that in the same batch of photos I’ve been reviewing for a long while now, might be a photo which includes Clara Long*.
It is here:
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A gathering of women, labelled Berlin (ND) picnic September 7, 1952.

There seem to be 24 women in this picture, plus one youngun’. My Grandma Busch is directly behind the little kid. Aunt Edith, my Aunt and her daughter, is in the back row at far right, it appears. This picture was in the yard of the Busch farmhouse, where pictures were traditionally taken when people came to visit. The photo was unusual size, about 2×2″, so probably taken with someone other than Grandpa’s camera.
Most likely it is the women of St. John’ Catholic Church in Berlin, both social and service, as typical in churches then and still.
Such a photo truly speaks “a thousand words”…indeed many more.
Perhaps Chistina, the sister-in-law of Clara, who e-mailed to comment on the earlier photo, will remember Clara, and see other women of the town she recognizes.
It occurs to me, now many years later, that these women represented the life of that, and every, community in more ways than one.
Grandma, just as a single instance, birthed nine children in the house that you cannot see, just to the photographers left. By September, 1952, she and he husband Fred had been married 47 years, and their youngest child, Vincent, was 27.
Likely all those women are gone now, but what a legacy they no doubt left behind.
Here’s to the ordinary women and men who brought this world to life, one person at a time!
Thank you.
* – I was incorrect. According to a family member, Clara had died when the youngest was two years old. The photographer was likely the second wife.

#1043 – Dick Bernard: Going to Peace. A Reflection on Detente with Iran.

July 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Family History, History, International Relations, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, War /by dickbernard

POSTNOTE, July 18: see “The Women in the Yard. Looking for Clara”, here.
Going through old papers and photos of a deceased relative can be tedious, but occasionally something pops up, as did this photo a few days ago.
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A farm family, the summer of 1943

While not of my town, or my family tree either, I have some knowledge of this farm family in the summer of 1943. Sr. Victorine, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet in St. Paul, was a good friend in her last years. She passed on in October, 2010.
I never knew that her brother was Francis, at right in this family photo taken in the summer, 1943, in rural ND. (The entire family is in the photo, save their mother, Clara, who was probably taking the picture. On the back of the picture are written the names of the Charles Long family. From left, as identified by a family member, they are: Leonard, Clem, Marcella, Charles, Sr. Victorine, John and Francis Long.)
The 1976 town history (Berlin ND) says that Francis was “Killed in Saipan, July 2, 1944“. A short article from, likely, the Fargo Forum, says that Francis dropped out of high school to go in the service. In the Berlin history, he is listed as “deceased” in the class of 1943.
A letter from my Grandma Rosa to her son, my uncle Lt. George W. Busch, officer on the USS Woodworth in the Pacific, dated August 20, 1944, sums it all up well: “[W]e had a Memorial Mass for Francis Long killed July 2 on Saipan in action Sister Victorine was here to come to visit us on Fri afternoon is done with school now has one test to take then she has her Masters Degree in Science she did very well looks so good too but all felt so badly….”
So goes war, willing heroes, full of all of the brash confidence and invulnerability of youth. Francis was probably 19, just starting life, when he died.
I think of Francis and family this day because this week a major agreement was reached between U.S. and Iran negotiators.
The media is full of commentary about this agreement, and people who stop by this blog can find far more than adequate information in other sources, on all sides about the technical details, and dead-certain positions and opinions about it.
President Obama framed this pretty well, yesterday: “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force through war.”
Either we figure out how to get along, or there will be more and more people with names who perish, and not only ours.
This won’t stop the drumbeaters for War, for unconditional surrender of the Enemy, whoever that happens to be at the time.
Peace is a very hard sell in this country.
Peace is, I think I can fairly say, considered by the traditional Power People in our country to be an instrument of terrorism…It threatens their prosperity or their authority.
For the media (and the people who watch or read it) Peace is boring as a generator of revenue (just watch your local and national news and see what is prioritized for coverage.)
Peace is costly – a competitor – for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so correctly identified as a big and looming problem way back in 1961.
For others, an enemy is absolutely essential to retain power and control. It is useful to keep people in fear, and portray yourself as the only safety buffer between “us and them”.
Eisenhower was as military as they come…he knew, however, a reality to which we’ve paid too little attention.
My friend, Tom White, who spent a great deal of time for many years establishing accurate numbers concerning military and other costs in this country always estimated that over half of the U.S. discretionary budget related to military.
He’s out of the card business now, but the general information on his last one is still pretty accurate.
All that military money goes somewhere, and the vast majority not for the peace and general welfare of our or other citizens.
We live or we die by our priorities.
Francis and millions of others have died defending the premise that war is necessary for peace.
*
A postnote from the present:
I’ve been a member of the American Legion for years. I’m a vet. The Minnesota American Legion seems to enroll perhaps 1 1/2% of Minnesota’s population. It is a small, and decreasing in membership (old soldiers do die), but still a powerful entity.
In the most recent American Legion newspaper, announcement was made of the 2015 Minnesota American Legion Convention, including the Resolutions it would be considering, among which was this one.
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Are our (America’s) priorities:
“Constitution
Military Power
Faith
and
Capitalism”
as stated in the Resolution?
The drafter of the resolution seems to think so, and I can predict that this resolution will sail through. Look carefully at the four pillars of the resolution.
If we choose survival, we choose peace: that is my opinion.
And I thank the administration of President Obama for forcing us to begin this conversation, since an alternative to his forced choice is a third way, which he did not mention: to stay the course of our dismal reality of fear of anything and everything but war.

#1042 – Dick Bernard: Under Renovation: Two Flags, Two National Anthems, Two Nations, 56 years.

July 7, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, History, International Relations, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, War /by dickbernard

Here is the video we all saw at Orchestra Hall on Sunday afternoon (see below)
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Cuba flag at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis MN, July 5, 2015

July 1 found me heading east after a tiring three days in North Dakota. I stopped in Valley City, and decided to refresh by stopping at my alma mater, now Valley City State University, and walk around my campus from 1958-61 before getting back on the freeway. A major renovation of the old auditorium, in progress, which turned out to be accessible to this visitor, caught my eye.

Vangstad Auditorium under renovation, Valley City (ND) State University, July 1, 2015

Workmen happened to be testing lighting on the stage at the time I was there. Everything was a mess, as one would expect. One told me that their objective was to keep the auditorium appearance as it had always been. Back in my day, that auditorium was home for any college cultural event. I took photos, as I usually do, never expecting them to become relevant a few days later.
Then came Sunday morning, July 5.
Friend Bill Haring called and said they had two extra tickets to the performance of the the visiting Cuban group Coro Entrevoces, appearing with the Minnesota Orchestra*. Was I interested? No brainer. My wife couldn’t attend; so I asked if my granddaughter Kelly, who’s in chorus, would be interested. Sure enough, so off we went to what was an historic event, a real cross-cultural exchange between the U.S. and Cuba, brought about by a recent trip to Cuba by the Minnesota Orchestra back in May.

Core Entrevoces at Minnesota Orchestra Hall Minneapolis MN July 5, 2015

The performances, three sets by Coro Entrevoces interspersed with orchestral sets by the Minnesota Orchestra, was phenomenal, electric. During the performance I thought back to that recently visited auditorium in Valley City North Dakota. Back then, nearing the end of my college career in summer, 1961, a program called the Afro-Cuban Review came to the auditorium. It was written up in the college newspaper, the Viking News, on page one, and you can read the release here:
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Viking News, Valley City ND State Teachers College, July 5, 1961 page one

Remember, this was 1961, 56 years ago, and two years earlier revolution had brought Fidel Castro to power in Cuba. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion had happened a couple of months earlier. The Cuban Missile Crisis was down the road a year or so. We were in a war with our nearby neighbor. So, while the program was Afro-Cuban that day, there were no Cubans to be seen. One can never be too careful.
For 56 years that official animosity has continued. Now a welcome thaw is in progress.
We witnessed Sunday, and back in May, part of the beginning of a new relationship between two proud countries, the U.S. and Cuba. The diplomats: musicians and singers.
I’m a proud American, and have never been to Cuba, but the playing of the Cuban National Anthem with backdrop of the Cuban flag from the stage of Orchestra Hall was an emotional event for me, and I’d guess for others in the hall as well.
Yes, the Star Spangled Banner came first, equally rousing, but there was great symbolism present in Orchestra Hall on this pleasant day. It was good to see flags of peace on Sunday, rather than of war; anthems of pride complimenting, not condemning….
Friendship begins with engagement: you have to get to know a person as a person in person.
The same goes for countries. As a single citizen, I applaud what is happening now between Cuba and our country. And we need to continue similar rapprochements with other countries, Iran, North Korea, and on and on.
We are, after all, citizens of one planet, all of us on a single stage, depending on each other for survival.

U. S. Flag at Orchestra Hall, Minneapolis MN July 5, 2015

* – The program notes can be viewed here: Core Entrevoces 7-5-15001

#1041 – Dick Bernard: "God Bless America"

July 4, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, Quietings, War /by dickbernard

“God bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her,
Thru the night, with a light from above….”
Thus Irving Berlin wrote, in 1918, the song that has become an anthem of the United States.
“…From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home.
God bless America,
My home sweet home.”
Today is the 4th of July, the day of celebrating culminated by “bombs bursting in air”, as we will be reminded this evening by formal fireworks displays, and have already been reminded by early informal fireworks displays in neighborhoods.
“The Fourth” has a very long tradition. Here’s a photo of a baseball game from the 4th of July, 1924, at the Grand Rapids ND Veterans Memorial Park; one of the hundreds of photos found at the North Dakota farm I’ve so often written about in this space.
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Grand Rapids ND July 4, 1924

I wasn’t around in 1924, but I’ve been to several July 4ths since 1940 at that very Grand Rapids park, and my memories are of similar rituals each time we went: the baseball game, fishing in the James River, adult games like horseshoes for the old guys (probably about in their 50s – time changes perceptions!), picnic lunches, lots of visiting…. A simple and nostalgic time, for sure. Elements of the old tradition remain, of course. But celebrating July 4 has changed in a great many ways as we’ve become a mobile and very prosperous society.
For me, the title of this blog comes from a particular use of the phrase “God Bless America” which I saw last Monday afternoon as I checked into a motel in Bismarck ND.

Bismarck ND June 30, 2015

When I saw this truck last Monday, emblazoned also with “Support our Troops” on the back panel, I didn’t pick up gentle vibes.
There was less a “stand beside her and guide her” request, as there was a martial aspect to all of this, a demand: as it were, “God, bless us, as we command a subordinate world”. This ever more a dicey proposition; a fantasy. We still like to think we’re superior, among less than equals….
My perception on Monday was helped along by a large picture I’d seen two days earlier, of an American military man, one of those surreal “Transformer characters”, a less than human appearing being, a collection of technology and weaponry we see every time our contemporary GI’s are shown in a combat setting somewhere. Not really human appearing, as faced by a known enemy human in World War I or World War II, though similarly vulnerable.
Intimidating, but not.
We look tougher than we are.
But we like the omnipotence message conveyed by that truck in Bismarck earlier this week. The day before, a gigantic black Hummer vehicle passed me by, doubtless driven by some prosperous local citizen, perhaps even a lady. I remember when the Hummers became popular for those who could afford them, during the Iraq war. They’re seen less often now than they were then, there never were very many. But to me they always conveyed an in-your-face-message of omnipotence: “Look at me. Don’t mess with me….” A martial, war, message.
1924 was part of a rare interval between wars for the United States. We even tried to outlaw war with the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The time since WWII began for us in 1941 has seen only a single year without some war or another (see America at War001.
Our 4th will be a quiet one today, after a tiring week on the road. Tonights fireworks may wake me up, though usually they don’t.
But I’ll mostly think of that 4th of July I attended once in awhile at the Grand Rapids Memorial Park: catching a bullhead or two, probably some ice cream, some kid games….
A time of enjoyment and rest.
Have a great day.
God bless us all, everywhere.

An in-your-face “American” wears his patriotic jacket in rural Finland, June, 2003, weeks after the Iraq War began, and George W. Busch had just visited St. Petersburg. Photograph by Dick Bernard