Remembering Sonny on Memorial Day

Sonny was all I ever heard him called, though officially he was George Gilpin, Jr., son of my Great Uncle George. I never met him as he died two years before I was born, but my mother, aunt,  and cousin Ruth used to talk about him a lot, recalling stories of when my mother went to Atlantic City to babysit for him and his sister Alice and the times they enjoyed at the beach. But mostly what they talked about was how First Lieutenant George Gilpin, Jr. was killed, shot down over Africa in World War II. 

As a child I didn’t fully comprehend the grief that they shared. They talked about a lot of other relatives I had never met. They were just names to me then. It wasn’t until I started working on my family tree that I began to understand who he was and the tragedy of his story. 

First I found the pictures of the boy they had known: the laughing boy lifted high as he played

at the beach, the young fisherman standing at attention presaging what was to come not ten years later. Here was a real flesh and blood person who was loved and lovable. Here was a happy boy who became a serious and patriotic man who enlisted in the Army at 19 a month before Pearl Harbor. 

I imagine Uncle George and Aunt Olga were apprehensive as their only son enlisted, but I can't imagine their unbearable grief when they received the awful news about his death--painful news that spread throughout the family.

I had never asked where Sonny was buried, just imagining he was buried in Atlantic City. Then one day as I was perusing military records, I found not only a record of his burial but a picture of his grave. 

There was  his memorial, just one white cross in row upon row of crosses in Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia. He had never made it home. Not only had Sonny and his tragedy become real to me, but then I thought of all the other families who had received the same unbearable news. All those young souls, full of life, silenced too soon. 

So on this weekend when we lift up all those who have given their lives, I remember Sonny and all the others, like college friends who were killed in  Vietnam, and so many others gone too soon.

Angels, etc.

I was just listening to a program about the late Rachel Held Evans who became well known as someone who came from a very conservative Evangelical home, but who began to question the literalism of the Bible and wrote about this in a blog and several books before she died very suddenly in her 30s. While she became very popular nationally, the strict Evangelicals around her were very critical. Much of that criticism fell upon her father who taught, among other things, a course on Angelology at Bryan College, the college named for William Jennings Bryan, famous for helping in the prosecution of John Scopes in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. I had never heard of Angelology before, and I’ve never been a real believer in angels. Now I’m really curious about what the curriculum is.

Disagreements about angels and such are not new. In 1765 poet William Blake saw his first vision of angels while walking on Peckham Rye. "A tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." He returned home to share his thrilling experience with his parents to be met by threats of belt lashings from his furious father, who thought he was lying. His mother interceded, saving William from a whipping. 

My Great Aunt Corinne would tell stories of angels whenever she came to visit. The one I remember best was about the time her granddaughter Bonnie had wandered out into a busy street and was about to be hit by a speeding car when an angel came and whisked her out of the way. I was probably 7 or 8 when I heard this, but even then I had doubts about unseen spirits jumping into traffic to rescue children. It wasn’t until years later that I began to ask about the innocent children who weren’t saved. Did they not have a guardian angel? And if not, why not? Still I am not so cynical that I don’t believe that there are things that defy logical explanation, and I believe there is a greater reality than that which we can see and measure.

My mother has been dead nearly 14 years, and my father 32, yet sometimes just as I am waking up, I sense their presence. Also when I’m working on my family tree, exploring the lives of people who died long before I was born, I feel a connection beyond a date and a name on a page. Like Ruth Forman, I feel surrounded by souls.

Last night I watched a Nova program on the ancient Mayans. I found it fascinating. I imagine those archeologists finding fragments of a 1000-year-old cup covered with Mayan hieroglyphs must have felt something similar. Someone more than a 1000 years ago painted the story of a war on the cup, and now people in the 21^st century were reading it and making a connection to these old, old souls.

While I feel these non-physical connections, there is a surety that Dr. Held and Aunt Corinne have that I envy.

Snowy Morning Wanderer

On this white white morning
not the blue jay, nor the cardinal
have camouflage,
nor the large black cat
who appears from time to time.
I see a faded red collar.
Who would have left her out
in such weather?

Then I remember Patsy
a sturdy feline, a gift on my seventh birthday
who wandered off on a similar winter day.
When he did not return
I knew my first desertion
the pain of offering my love and devotion
to another being
whom I could not control.

A week later
when he ambled back home
appearing well and well-fed,
what had I learned?
That those we love can break our hearts?
or
that cats will do as they please?