I liked Ike. I first found out about him when I was six years old. For some reason, I went out to the mailbox to fetch the mail for my mom. There was this huge picture of a man on the front page. There was some reason I thought this was an unusual about this colorful picture of a man, but for whatever reason I asked my mother who the man was. She told me it was one of the best American men who ever made this country proud, and that his leadership in Europe shortened the World War that had killed many peoples' sons and loved ones and how fortunate that for a family that sent all 3 husbands in our family we were fortunate none of them died, and only one had been severely wounded who was my Dad. He was in hospital twice after he got home, but they never could get to the shrapnel which would have severed arteries vital to life , and in those days, there was no such thing as microsurgies. He suffered a lot of back, neck, shoulder and leg pain till the day he died. When he got home from his teacher's jobs, I always wondered why he plopped himself down in front of the TV set. Pain is a cruel taskmaster that most children have never felt is most certain.
I understand now that teaching children all day can drain those who have no choice to right every wrong that walks into the classrooms, especially if children were starving and even shoeless when gold star war families were poor and even jobless until jobs availed themselves to veterans. Teaching with his kind of pain must have been brutal. I now understand after spending 15 years of having fibromyalgia that is screaming out loud pain 24/ 7/365. I was healed of it 7 years ago when our move back to my native state produced a family doctor who figured out my problem was likely a parathyroid issue, had 2 of them surgically removed and with that. the reduction of too much calcium in the bloodstream. I will adore my physician for figuring out the problem and giving me back freedom from pain. As I recalled all the bad days my dad had when I was growing up, it eventually dawned on me that it was pain that drove him into collapsing in an easy chair upon coming home and having flashbacks to being tortured for 18 months in a Japanese war prison before being sent home on a stretcher. The death rate in one prison camp the Japanese tortured Americans in was 90%. I have always had a sneaking suspicion Dad may have been imprisoned in that one, because of having to stay in a stateside hospital to help him deal with both his success as a sharpshooter and his loss of sane life for 18 months of sheer torture which is now internationally illegal.
Prayers up for the heros of all America's gifts to world repairs and stopping internationally notorious bullies from torturing of soldiers and civillians alike who gave fighting bullies their all to stop the warring madness.
♡♡♡mom♡♡♡dad♡♡♡
