To the right is a picture of the Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. The Memorial holds a special place in my heart for one obvious reason and one not so obvious.
The obvious reason is family. I was a middle-aged baby, as they say, common today but uncommon in the sixties. My parents were in their late thirties when they had me so they were always a good fifteen years older than my friends' parents. My aunts and uncles were all born in the teens, twenties or thirties and three of my four grandparents were dead decades before I was even born. One of my uncles was also dead before I was born. He was my dad's oldest brother, Joe, and my dad looked up to him greatly. My dad was the seventh of seven children and Joe was a good ten years older than him. And a hero to him. When the United States entered World War II my Uncle Joe joined the Marines and went abroad in 1942.
But first he came home on leave after training at Parris Island before being shipped overseas. My dad has told me the story a million times. You see, my father's father was a carpenter and worked whatever jobs he could during the depression. There was always woodworking material around the house and yard, including chair posts, like the kind you see at the top of this chair:
My dad told me when his brother came back from training his strength had increased so much that he was able to twist the top off of one of the posts, unassisted, which he demonstrated for my dad. Now he had always been strong because he too had worked manual labor construction jobs in his teens but now he was mighty. My dad never tires of telling me about that time he was home and displayed his strength. And it's important to him.
Because it's the last time he ever saw him.
In 1945, on the island of Iwo Jima, my dad's brother, my Uncle Joe, was shot and killed. He was in the 4th Marine Division and is listed on the 4th Marine Division's Dead in World War II as "DOW" - Died of Wounds. That means he did not die on the battlefield upon being shot but survived long enough to be transported back from the lines and receive medical supervision before finally succumbing to his wounds. As my dad would say, "He was strong."
That's one reason the memorial means something special to me. The other involves a visit from my parents when I was in college at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. It was their first visit to see me and my dad wanted to see the Iwo Jima Memorial. He had been to D.C. before but had never seen it. My older brother, who lives in Virginia, drove us all out to it. I had been to monuments with my dad before and even though I knew of the obvious history behind this one, I wasn't expecting it to be any different. I was a teenager. Insight was not there yet.
We all got out of the car and walked up to the statue making comments like, "It's bigger than I thought" and other such trivialities. My dad didn't say a word which I found curious. Then I noticed his lip start to quiver, and shortly thereafter, I noticed he was crying. I didn't say anything to him. My mother stood by him and we all observed the memorial quietly for a few minutes before leaving. When we got into the car my dad apologized. He said he didn't think it was going to have that much of an effect on him. And then we talked about his brother some more. He told us how he smoked cigars and how his mother hated it. He told us how he would eat all the icing off of cinnamon rolls and never eat the actual rolls themselves. And he told us about that chair post and how he twisted it off. He was a strong man indeed. Like my dad.
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