Some people have expressed interest in my background. My dear husband would like, of course, that I say nothing. But I would like to give some of my background, so that at the least you may understand where I am coming from and perhaps even why I say what I say. But I have had to change details, as I value internet anonymity. Some of this I have actually made public, and if you piece it together, I would be interested in knowing. If for some reason I give my testimony somewhere and you identify something in here, then I will smile and tell you I made that part up. There. I have compressed events and changed some for the sake of drama. Consider this an impressionistic biography. You've been warned. The feelings were real and the facts fuzzy.
Daddy taught me a lot. He taught me compassion. He taught me courage. He taught me how to endure difficulties, and how God is always there no matter what, and how to forgive. One of my earliest memories is being at the beach. A wave swirled around me and began pulling me out to sea. He ran down to me and scooped me up, carried me to Mother and deposited me in her safe, safe arms. I was about three, then.
Daddy proposed to Mother on the night of December 6, 1941. She said she wanted to think about it. They did not get engaged because he did not want her to be a widow. He enlisted on December 8 and apparently was shipped the same day to boot camp, having been the first in line at the recruiting office. He was in combat basically nonstop from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, making every major beach landing the Marines had, including Guam, Tarawa, Iwo Jima. I don't know the names rightly.
After Daddy died Mother showed the kids his citations and medals. "advanced, firing his rifle, and destroyed enemy pillbox. Although wounded, destroyed second fortified emplacement." "Drew fire to himself to allow the wounded to be pulled from the line of fire", "attacked and destroyed.." "while wounded.."
Again and again and again. Not once, not even ten times. On different islands, under different commanders, year round. "Held position during prolonged banzai attack lasting 48 hours without relief and out of ammo".
In 1946 he returned, silent mostly, grim. They married. He got a job sorting letters at the post office in our town, a job he kept for the remainder of his life. Mother and he had ten children: six boys, then four girls. He would sit in his chair sometimes, look off into space and tremble.
We were raised to speak only when spoken to. Daddy pretty much ignored the girls and only talked to his sons. They learned to shoot, they took martial arts (boxing, mainly - this was before Oriental arts came to our town); they were Eagle scouts. Dinner time was totally dominated by Daddy questioning each of his sons, one after another, about what he had done: how is that merit badge coming along? That paper in school? The next achievement? Daddy went to the boys' events and participated in Boy Scouts, but had trouble camping and stopped going on outings.
Daddy went to school events when his sons were involved. My sister had a lead in a school play and he could not be bothered to go see her act. He went to every parent teacher conference for his sons and none for his daughters. Mother said he viewed raising daughters as women's work.
One time he felt he had to have control over how the girls were raised was when Daughter #1 wanted to have a bikini. Request denied. He went and bought a "suitable" swimsuit for her, which she silently accepted, put in a drawer, and never wore.
In a lot of ways it was easier on us girls. We were never targets at dinner, where Daddy was determined to make Marines more than to have an enjoyable meal. He had a DI temper when you did something wrong in front of him, and you would be forced to stand at attention, eyes locked straight ahead, while he obscenely screamed at you for sometimes a long period of time. We girls had the protection of Mother, who would come quietly, and say to him, "Dear, let me handle it." He would instantly stop and tell her to deal with her daughter. But the boys got Parris Island non-stop from the time they were six until they left for boot camp.
One strong memory I have is when Daddy decided to pick me up after a school event at night. He told me to be at such-and-such point (pointing to it) at 8:10 sharp in front of the school, where he would be waiting. The event ended at 8:00 and he figured ten minutes was enough for me to do everything I needed to and get there. I rushed to get there and got there at 8:10:04 by his watch. I had to stand at attention and say "aye aye,sir!" and "no, sir!" and "no excuse,sir!" for forty minutes while he screamed at me. This was in front of all my friends and classmates. I was called every dirty name there is for a female and insulted, as usual, in incredibly imaginative ways. If you have ever seen "Full Metal Jacket" you will have some idea of Daddy when he went DI. Obviously, he thought, I was doing all sorts of deviant things in those four seconds, and I had to account for every second from the time the event ended to where I met him.
One problem with Daddy was that he was invisible. That is, for some reason people simply did not see him. He was hard to spot. It is strange but true and it irritated him immensely. I think that trait saved his life during the war. People would bump into him, just walking along, and he would curse them out after they suddenly discovered he was there. I have had to point him out to people in their wedding picture, because the typical reaction is "where is your father" because unless you know he's there, you may not see him. Mother spent a month looking for his picture in his training platoon at Basic. There are family pictures where he seems to be absent, and when you DO find him, he always has this absent, slack face, looking off in some direction as if he is not really there. Very disconcerting.
He could not handle drive-throughs, telephones more complex than a rotary, and he refused to touch a computer. We girls were not allowed bicycles because they were sexually suggestive and possibly compromising. Our brothers, cousins and friends all had them, but we did not. He had many firm opinions that had only a tenuous basis in fact, but they were the law in his house.
He never touched his daughters. No hugs. No praise. No stories. No kisses. No spankings. It was another matter with his sons, whom he raised to be tough. They had the additional burden of treating their sisters like ladies and defending us. If something happened, they were accountable to Daddy as to why they did not "whup up on the little ---." We girls never really realized how protected we were, with six big, strong, tough older brothers, and Daddy. We still are, with the five brothers who are around ( Robert went MIA in Viet Nam).
Mother was Daddy's oracle to us. She would tell us "your father says," and lay down the divine law which could not be objected to,only obeyed. We had it a lot easier than the boys. He was always unfailingly polite to Mother, he never raised his voice to her, was always perfectly considerate, except once.
That was when his oldest son left for boot camp. Daddy decided it was time for a celebration and fun as a family. He took us all to a nice restaurant, which was unusual and we all thought it was neat, what with china and cloth napkins and everything. Daddy typically never drank. This time he had a beer, and gave his oldest son one. He had another, and then another. He decided he was going to be friendly to everyone in the restaurant, and told the man across from him he had a nice suit. Then he saw the woman he was with, and wanted to know something extremely personal and insulting. The man glowered at him and Daddy wanted to know if he wanted it instead, and said the sorts of things only a Marine can possibly say when he clearly wants a fight. Everyone in the room was quiet. Daddy was saying something about never coming back to New Caledonia when the manager of the establishment came out and told Daddy there was an important call for him. Daddy excused himself and went to get the call rather unsteadily, and cursed the manager out rather loudly when he was told "the caller seems to have hung up". Daddy was helped to our car, where we were all waiting, and we went home, never to go to a restaurant again.
"Dear, you are embarrassing us," Mother had told him quietly. "Let me handle it," he told her back, and that was the closest he ever came to being rude to her. He usually said "please".
I learned a lot from Daddy. I can handle a lot of verbal abuse without it bothering me. I can handle stressful situations. I understand what it means to suffer and feel embarrassed, to be challenged by impossible and unreasonable standards. I learned discipline and right and wrong. The thing, though, that I learned most from Daddy was something I only learned long after he was dead. I had thought that only a shell had come back from war, that the real man had died over there somewhere, but what I realized was that he had the courage to face his problems and situation. He had been willing to die for his country, and indirectly, the wife and children he would someday have, and he did so, although it took him from 1945 to 1992 to do so. Daddy taught me courage and long suffering. He suffered from internal wounds as well as war injuries. Today he probably would have been hospitalized for PTSD, but he toughed it out and held down a job and raised ten children. Mother always said he was a great man, and we would be able to see it some day. In many ways I am still working on that.
Daddy's family was Catholic. He was pressured to get us all baptized, which he did, and then when the oldest child was ready, pressured to put same in the local Catholic school. He said no, and endured a firestorm of criticism. He had gone to parochial school and hated it and wanted his children to go to public school, which we all did. Mother told me all this years later. I did not know Daddy directly, in a lot of ways, as I was never allowed to start a conversation with him and he ignored me except when he thought I was in error, and I usually was, and he would fire questions at me until the matter was exposed, and then he would chew me out, at least until Mother intervened.
He took me to the bus station when I left for college. I chose a college a long, long, long way from home. Since I had decided not to join up, he was not going to pay for it, and Mother and I spent a lot of time finding a college with a program that I could afford and was interested in. I had to work and pay back loans, which made it harder. I was allowed four suitcases. He saw that his suitcases made it into the luggage compartment of the bus, told me,"See that you return my luggage," and left without a backward glance. That was it. I later learned that he had gone home and immediately given everything in my half of the room to charity or threw it away. No warning, except the same thing had happened to an older sister. Our town was small enough that people at the charity kept a lot of my stuff until I could get it, I had a box of stuff at a friend's and my sister had some of my stuff on her side of the room. My half of the room was bare when I returned home. Mother let me have some blankets and I slept on the couch. I only had the suitcases and a few things from my childhood. Everything else was given away or trashed. My sister got the sheets on my bed, but the bed was given to charity. For years when I remembered that I felt like my stomach had been torn out. Clothes, books, toys, all of it, gone. I hadn't really believed he would do it, and the precautions had been in case of a remote hypothetical condition that was all too brutally real.
I will say that we never missed a meal, we always had shelter, we knew he would have our back if we were in trouble, and that he believed we could do anything. He made us do it. His sons sailed through Basic and were model Marines. Daddy and Mother went to their Marine graduations, Basic and advanced training. He did not attend my college graduation. He had skipped my high school graduation as well. Mother was there, but he did not want her to fly out to my college graduation due to the expense, and he did not want her on a bus.
When he was about 75 he suddenly developed an interest in World War II. Previously TV shows depicting war were not seen in our house. A friend of mine made the mistake of turning on "Gomer Pyle" in front of him. Said friend got the DI treatment until she fled. Friend's Dad came over, another ex-Marine, and Daddy and he basically shouted each other horse until suddenly they both started laughing, strangely enough. Friend was never allowed back by her family, and others did the same. We became sort of isolated. I never dared turn on the TV in front of him. I repeatedly got chewed out for turning the channel knob too fast when he told me to change channels.
At 75 he went to the library and checked out books on the War. He read about the battles he was in. He even called people he had known. He tracked down his training platoon and learned that only he and one other fellow had survived the first year after Basic. He firmly believed he had been in on the invasion of Taiwan, which did not happen. He opened up, even to his daughters, and told us stories about what he had gone through. He never admitted it, but somehow through that I grew to understand that he really, really loved us, and I went through a long and dark process of learning to forgive him for what he put us through. I believe I am a better person because of it.
I've worked through most if not all of this, some of which I have gone over several times with counselors as I have come to deeper levels of understanding. I am sharing it now to show you that I also have gone through things and have experienced some difficulties in life. None of this was too much for Christ to touch and heal, and He was always with me in all of it, and still is. I will talk about Mother, next, I think, and then how I became a Christian.
Daddy taught me a lot. He taught me compassion. He taught me courage. He taught me how to endure difficulties, and how God is always there no matter what, and how to forgive. One of my earliest memories is being at the beach. A wave swirled around me and began pulling me out to sea. He ran down to me and scooped me up, carried me to Mother and deposited me in her safe, safe arms. I was about three, then.
Daddy proposed to Mother on the night of December 6, 1941. She said she wanted to think about it. They did not get engaged because he did not want her to be a widow. He enlisted on December 8 and apparently was shipped the same day to boot camp, having been the first in line at the recruiting office. He was in combat basically nonstop from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, making every major beach landing the Marines had, including Guam, Tarawa, Iwo Jima. I don't know the names rightly.
After Daddy died Mother showed the kids his citations and medals. "advanced, firing his rifle, and destroyed enemy pillbox. Although wounded, destroyed second fortified emplacement." "Drew fire to himself to allow the wounded to be pulled from the line of fire", "attacked and destroyed.." "while wounded.."
Again and again and again. Not once, not even ten times. On different islands, under different commanders, year round. "Held position during prolonged banzai attack lasting 48 hours without relief and out of ammo".
In 1946 he returned, silent mostly, grim. They married. He got a job sorting letters at the post office in our town, a job he kept for the remainder of his life. Mother and he had ten children: six boys, then four girls. He would sit in his chair sometimes, look off into space and tremble.
We were raised to speak only when spoken to. Daddy pretty much ignored the girls and only talked to his sons. They learned to shoot, they took martial arts (boxing, mainly - this was before Oriental arts came to our town); they were Eagle scouts. Dinner time was totally dominated by Daddy questioning each of his sons, one after another, about what he had done: how is that merit badge coming along? That paper in school? The next achievement? Daddy went to the boys' events and participated in Boy Scouts, but had trouble camping and stopped going on outings.
Daddy went to school events when his sons were involved. My sister had a lead in a school play and he could not be bothered to go see her act. He went to every parent teacher conference for his sons and none for his daughters. Mother said he viewed raising daughters as women's work.
One time he felt he had to have control over how the girls were raised was when Daughter #1 wanted to have a bikini. Request denied. He went and bought a "suitable" swimsuit for her, which she silently accepted, put in a drawer, and never wore.
In a lot of ways it was easier on us girls. We were never targets at dinner, where Daddy was determined to make Marines more than to have an enjoyable meal. He had a DI temper when you did something wrong in front of him, and you would be forced to stand at attention, eyes locked straight ahead, while he obscenely screamed at you for sometimes a long period of time. We girls had the protection of Mother, who would come quietly, and say to him, "Dear, let me handle it." He would instantly stop and tell her to deal with her daughter. But the boys got Parris Island non-stop from the time they were six until they left for boot camp.
One strong memory I have is when Daddy decided to pick me up after a school event at night. He told me to be at such-and-such point (pointing to it) at 8:10 sharp in front of the school, where he would be waiting. The event ended at 8:00 and he figured ten minutes was enough for me to do everything I needed to and get there. I rushed to get there and got there at 8:10:04 by his watch. I had to stand at attention and say "aye aye,sir!" and "no, sir!" and "no excuse,sir!" for forty minutes while he screamed at me. This was in front of all my friends and classmates. I was called every dirty name there is for a female and insulted, as usual, in incredibly imaginative ways. If you have ever seen "Full Metal Jacket" you will have some idea of Daddy when he went DI. Obviously, he thought, I was doing all sorts of deviant things in those four seconds, and I had to account for every second from the time the event ended to where I met him.
One problem with Daddy was that he was invisible. That is, for some reason people simply did not see him. He was hard to spot. It is strange but true and it irritated him immensely. I think that trait saved his life during the war. People would bump into him, just walking along, and he would curse them out after they suddenly discovered he was there. I have had to point him out to people in their wedding picture, because the typical reaction is "where is your father" because unless you know he's there, you may not see him. Mother spent a month looking for his picture in his training platoon at Basic. There are family pictures where he seems to be absent, and when you DO find him, he always has this absent, slack face, looking off in some direction as if he is not really there. Very disconcerting.
He could not handle drive-throughs, telephones more complex than a rotary, and he refused to touch a computer. We girls were not allowed bicycles because they were sexually suggestive and possibly compromising. Our brothers, cousins and friends all had them, but we did not. He had many firm opinions that had only a tenuous basis in fact, but they were the law in his house.
He never touched his daughters. No hugs. No praise. No stories. No kisses. No spankings. It was another matter with his sons, whom he raised to be tough. They had the additional burden of treating their sisters like ladies and defending us. If something happened, they were accountable to Daddy as to why they did not "whup up on the little ---." We girls never really realized how protected we were, with six big, strong, tough older brothers, and Daddy. We still are, with the five brothers who are around ( Robert went MIA in Viet Nam).
Mother was Daddy's oracle to us. She would tell us "your father says," and lay down the divine law which could not be objected to,only obeyed. We had it a lot easier than the boys. He was always unfailingly polite to Mother, he never raised his voice to her, was always perfectly considerate, except once.
That was when his oldest son left for boot camp. Daddy decided it was time for a celebration and fun as a family. He took us all to a nice restaurant, which was unusual and we all thought it was neat, what with china and cloth napkins and everything. Daddy typically never drank. This time he had a beer, and gave his oldest son one. He had another, and then another. He decided he was going to be friendly to everyone in the restaurant, and told the man across from him he had a nice suit. Then he saw the woman he was with, and wanted to know something extremely personal and insulting. The man glowered at him and Daddy wanted to know if he wanted it instead, and said the sorts of things only a Marine can possibly say when he clearly wants a fight. Everyone in the room was quiet. Daddy was saying something about never coming back to New Caledonia when the manager of the establishment came out and told Daddy there was an important call for him. Daddy excused himself and went to get the call rather unsteadily, and cursed the manager out rather loudly when he was told "the caller seems to have hung up". Daddy was helped to our car, where we were all waiting, and we went home, never to go to a restaurant again.
"Dear, you are embarrassing us," Mother had told him quietly. "Let me handle it," he told her back, and that was the closest he ever came to being rude to her. He usually said "please".
I learned a lot from Daddy. I can handle a lot of verbal abuse without it bothering me. I can handle stressful situations. I understand what it means to suffer and feel embarrassed, to be challenged by impossible and unreasonable standards. I learned discipline and right and wrong. The thing, though, that I learned most from Daddy was something I only learned long after he was dead. I had thought that only a shell had come back from war, that the real man had died over there somewhere, but what I realized was that he had the courage to face his problems and situation. He had been willing to die for his country, and indirectly, the wife and children he would someday have, and he did so, although it took him from 1945 to 1992 to do so. Daddy taught me courage and long suffering. He suffered from internal wounds as well as war injuries. Today he probably would have been hospitalized for PTSD, but he toughed it out and held down a job and raised ten children. Mother always said he was a great man, and we would be able to see it some day. In many ways I am still working on that.
Daddy's family was Catholic. He was pressured to get us all baptized, which he did, and then when the oldest child was ready, pressured to put same in the local Catholic school. He said no, and endured a firestorm of criticism. He had gone to parochial school and hated it and wanted his children to go to public school, which we all did. Mother told me all this years later. I did not know Daddy directly, in a lot of ways, as I was never allowed to start a conversation with him and he ignored me except when he thought I was in error, and I usually was, and he would fire questions at me until the matter was exposed, and then he would chew me out, at least until Mother intervened.
He took me to the bus station when I left for college. I chose a college a long, long, long way from home. Since I had decided not to join up, he was not going to pay for it, and Mother and I spent a lot of time finding a college with a program that I could afford and was interested in. I had to work and pay back loans, which made it harder. I was allowed four suitcases. He saw that his suitcases made it into the luggage compartment of the bus, told me,"See that you return my luggage," and left without a backward glance. That was it. I later learned that he had gone home and immediately given everything in my half of the room to charity or threw it away. No warning, except the same thing had happened to an older sister. Our town was small enough that people at the charity kept a lot of my stuff until I could get it, I had a box of stuff at a friend's and my sister had some of my stuff on her side of the room. My half of the room was bare when I returned home. Mother let me have some blankets and I slept on the couch. I only had the suitcases and a few things from my childhood. Everything else was given away or trashed. My sister got the sheets on my bed, but the bed was given to charity. For years when I remembered that I felt like my stomach had been torn out. Clothes, books, toys, all of it, gone. I hadn't really believed he would do it, and the precautions had been in case of a remote hypothetical condition that was all too brutally real.
I will say that we never missed a meal, we always had shelter, we knew he would have our back if we were in trouble, and that he believed we could do anything. He made us do it. His sons sailed through Basic and were model Marines. Daddy and Mother went to their Marine graduations, Basic and advanced training. He did not attend my college graduation. He had skipped my high school graduation as well. Mother was there, but he did not want her to fly out to my college graduation due to the expense, and he did not want her on a bus.
When he was about 75 he suddenly developed an interest in World War II. Previously TV shows depicting war were not seen in our house. A friend of mine made the mistake of turning on "Gomer Pyle" in front of him. Said friend got the DI treatment until she fled. Friend's Dad came over, another ex-Marine, and Daddy and he basically shouted each other horse until suddenly they both started laughing, strangely enough. Friend was never allowed back by her family, and others did the same. We became sort of isolated. I never dared turn on the TV in front of him. I repeatedly got chewed out for turning the channel knob too fast when he told me to change channels.
At 75 he went to the library and checked out books on the War. He read about the battles he was in. He even called people he had known. He tracked down his training platoon and learned that only he and one other fellow had survived the first year after Basic. He firmly believed he had been in on the invasion of Taiwan, which did not happen. He opened up, even to his daughters, and told us stories about what he had gone through. He never admitted it, but somehow through that I grew to understand that he really, really loved us, and I went through a long and dark process of learning to forgive him for what he put us through. I believe I am a better person because of it.
I've worked through most if not all of this, some of which I have gone over several times with counselors as I have come to deeper levels of understanding. I am sharing it now to show you that I also have gone through things and have experienced some difficulties in life. None of this was too much for Christ to touch and heal, and He was always with me in all of it, and still is. I will talk about Mother, next, I think, and then how I became a Christian.
