Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 20, 1994 TAG: 9406270171
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By PETIE BRIGHAM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Though not known to the public, the door was always open to the veterans of World War II at this shrine, on Brandon Avenue across from Lakewood Park. My dad, who lived each day with memories of the landing at Omaha Beach, and my mother, who received the Army-Navy ``E'' award for building fire apparatus for the war effort, built a huge addition, by 1950 standards, to an old stucco house as a gathering place for friends, most of whom were somehow connected to the 29th Division.
Above the massive brick fireplace hung a lithograph of Old Glory, in a beautiful frame carved by a blind man. Beneath it, on the mantel, sat the colors, of our nation and the 29th, fringed in gold, in the place of honor. A sign on a wall proclaimed ``29, let's go!'' and another wall held a drumhead with the 29th's famous blue and grey insignia.
On any given weekend, and many weeknights, my dad's friends from the 116th Infantry and their wives might be gathered around the curved bar, chain-smoking Camels and picking up shot glasses from little pools of Four Roses or Cutty Sark, toasting one another (``Charge!'') and tossing back a few moments' relief from memories of fear and death and destruction, relief from wondering why they were spared to sit, in peace, in a house in Roanoke, Va., while so many lay in premature eternal sleep both here and on foreign soil.
They laughed and laughed with memories of their years in England, girlfriends that their wives back home knew about, good scotch smuggled overseas in resealed Listerine cartons; then stories of rotten underwear and digging foxholes with tiny shovels would sneak into the hilarity, and words foreign to a child, like ``goddamhedgerow,'' ``Omaha,'' ``St. Lo,'' would be uttered in dropped voices and grown men wiped their eyes with white handkerchiefs.
Thick T-bones and steaming baked potatoes would be passed from the kitchen to the two huge indoor picnic tables, placed end to end, where 20 could sit. Daddy would bow his head: ``Great Father, be with us this day as we friendship together.'' We knew the tremble in his voice was for those who did not come back whole, or at all. He and his siblings gave up a Quaker heritage to fight for their country, but peace was in their blood, and now, sorrow.
We kids would sneak sips of their drinks, spin until we were dizzy on the barstools, in the winter lace up our skates before the roaring fire to go skate on Lakewood pond, in the summer eat ice chips from the Scotsman ice machine on the sundeck. We would wait for our dads to give the signal to load up the cars and head out on a mission.
They would fill our arms with bundles of 29th Division and American flags and off we would go to ``decorate the graves'' of veterans. First, the big cemeteries in town, and then, the tiny rural family graveyards where widows in flowered dresses would greet us with misty eyes and offer us icy drinks of water ladled from springs beneath mountains of wild roses. At each grave, we would plant a flag, and Daddy, handsome in his white shirt and bowtie, would touch his fingertips to his blue-and-gray hat in salute to his fallen comrade. If a flag placed by tiny young hands fell over, out came the Zippo and it was burned on the spot, for the American flag was not to touch the ground.
There were often ``29ers'' from faraway places like New York and Massachusetts at our bar and our table. In spite of their incredibly funny accents, they were, we knew, part of our family, every bit as much as our blood uncles and aunts, and even more full of hugs and kisses. We often went down to the train station in the middle of the night and bedded down in compartments for an overnight ride to a 29th Division Association convention in some exotic city. The year my dad was national commander and I was in third grade, 1955-56, we were always on the go; we rode fire trucks in parades; we stayed in hotel suites with ``hospitality rooms'' open 24 hours a day; we ate shrimp cocktails and toasted the veterans with 7-Up in Manhattan glasses with cherries; we lived and breathed the 29th Division. We kids learned respect.
As we recently remembered D-Day, I filled three tapes with horrifying never-before-seen war footage, and with images of Bob Slaughter and other ``29ers'' reuniting in Normandy. I wish my dad had lived to make that trip; how I wish I could have gone with him! I remember well his return from the 1964 reunion in France, remember listening many times with him to a record album, ``D-Day Plus 20.''
I have nothing but memories now: my father's 29th Division hat, insignia, colors; photos of him and his buddies at the dedication of the Bedford D-Day Memorial many decades ago; yellowed newspapers; some V-mail; and a mental picture of some moms and dads with very mature faces, sitting around a recreation room-cum-memorial with a bunch of postwar kids - the first batch of ``Boomers'' - trying to get on with their lives, with honor, with humor, with humility.
To Bob Slaughter, who represented us so well in Normandy in June of 1994; to my parents' dear friend Paul Calvert who, in his blue-and-gray hat, handed out programs in Lee Plaza for Roanoke's D-Day ceremony, whose hug was like a hug from my own dad; for the memory of my father, Francis S. Brigham, and of my mother, Dorothy L. Brigham; and for all ``29ers'' and other veterans of the Normandy Invasion, I say, ``I have not forgotten.'' And I hope I never will.
The D-Day ``memorial'' of my childhood grows dim and is real to only a few now. The 29th made my growing-up in a sleepy Southern town a lot more interesting and educational than it would have been otherwise. A permanent and substantial D-Day memorial in Roanoke would honor those who deserve to be honored. It would teach those who do not know. It would show that the Roanoke Valley cares. Maybe it could help future generations prevent war.
So, let's go!
Petie Brigham is an artist who lives in Roanoke.
by CNB