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Grand Old Flag

6/23/2016

My husband sold this flag to his parents as part of a Cub Scout fundraiser. Seeing as he's now 59, it's likely that this flag has seen half a century of service.

It's not a fancy flag. Its stars and stripes are printed on fabric that is wearing a little thin. Over the years it has become stained from dust and rain-marked when I didn't haul it in fast enough. Some of its edges are fraying.

When I was running with Team RWB some years ago, the flag would come along with me. I started leaving it behind when some of the Veterans hinted that it had seen better days, and perhaps it should be retired.

Last year I bought a replacement flag. It is better in many ways. Its stars and stripes are sewn on, not printed. The fabric is stronger, the colors brighter. I laid it out on the counter, expecting my husband to take the old flag off the pole and put the new one on. He didn't.

Finally, this year for Flag Day I swapped the two flag myself. I folded the old one up and placed it on my husband's dresser. I suggested to him that we should hand it off to the Boy Scouts, so they could retire it.

If you've ever been to a Flag Retirement Ceremony, it is an awesome and dignified event in which old flags are burned. The thought of burning this flag, which my husband had flown for so many Independence Days and Veteran's Days, was too much for him. My husband may be strong, but he is also sentimental.

And so this flag will go into the hope chest. It will rest beside the baptismal gowns and homemade quilts, and someday one of my grandchildren may pull it out and wonder why we were so attached to what has become, after fifty years of service, a grand old rag.

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A Wild Ride

6/11/2016

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James, his wife Sarah and daughter Mabel.

My son James recently graduated from University of Pittsburgh Medical School.
He graduated on a Monday. The last day of school was two days later, on Wednesday. What a perfect excuse to miss the last three days of teaching.

Just before my husband and I left for Pittsburgh, my youngest son, John called. John is in the Army, and will enter Ranger School this month. He needed someone to take care of his cat. Good Army Mom that I am, I said that I would do it.

I called Southwest airlines and explained that I needed to add a stopover in Atlanta into my return flight from Pittsburgh to Albuquerque, for the purpose of picking up my son's cat. I told the customer service agent that my son was in the Army, and his duty was going to change, and that taking care of his cat was the patriotic thing for a mother to do. I was hoping that might inspire some kind of discount or special consideration on the part of the airlines. No such luck.

And so my flight - originally from Pittsburgh to Baltimore to Albuquerque - (don't ask me why I had to go to Baltimore first. Airline routing has never made sense to me.) - became a flight from Pittsburgh to Baltimore to Atlanta to Chicago to Albuquerque. When I logged onto my computer 24 hours in advance to get my boarding passes, only the first two had boarding numbers. The passes for the final two legs of the journey said I needed to go to the customer service station at the gate to get numbers.

My husband, who was going to fly the original Pitts-Balt-Alb route, dropped me off curbside, where I intended to check in one bag, leaving my arms free to slog a cat carrier. The curbside attendant looked at my itinerary, scratched his head, and asked why in the world I had four transfers to get to Albuquerque. I explained once again what a patriotic, supportive, cat-and-son-loving mother I was, but to no avail. The attendant took me in to talk with a manager.

The manager asked the same question and received the same answer. Finally he checked my bag, but only through Atlanta, where I would have to walk out to baggage claim, find my bag, and then check it through for the remainder of the flight. Then he told me not to go through the regular TSA line, but to go up a flight of stairs to a special TSA security check though. As I walked towards the checkpoint, a uniformed man stepped out and asked if I was the woman with four stops. When I confirmed that I was, he took me aside and asked me to explain to him exactly why I was traveling in a big circle around the country. I pulled out my cell phone and showed him pictures: of my son the new doctor, of my son the new lieutenant, and of my son's soon-to-be-vacationing-with-me cat. After 45 minutes I convinced the man that I was not a terrorist and he let me run to catch my flight. I was the last person on the plane, so the one boarding pass I actually had proved to be pretty worthless.

My switch in Baltimore turned out to be pretty routine. Whew. Every story needs at least one boring part.

My son met me, cat in hand, at the baggage claim carousel in Atlanta, and we retrieved my bag. When we went to check it in, the man behind the counter greeted me with "Oh, you're the lady with four flights." They knew me. The man gave my son a pass so that he could go through TSA with me, which was good since we had to take the cat out of the carrier and hold it out to be "wanded." I got on the flight dead last (since I wasn't issued a boarding number), and I thought to myself that the worst was over. I would land in Chicago at 7pm, board a 7:40 flight to Albuquerque, and meet my husband for the car ride home.

I was wrong. TSA may have decided not to torment me anymore, but the weather had other plans.

The plane seemed to be leaning to the right for a very long time before the pilot came on the intercom and explained that there was bad weather in Chicago, so we had been circling Louisville for twenty minutes. He assured us that we'd land as soon as there was a gate, and then we'd all be able to reschedule our connecting flights. We circled for another 20 minutes, and then straightened out and continued to fly. Apparently, there were still no gates and we were getting low on fuel, so we were to continue on to St. Louis, disembark there, and reschedule our flights.

We landed in St. Louis, but there was no gate open there for us, either. A tanker truck came out and filled the plane, and we sat on the tarmac for an hour before lifting off again. Apparently, the weather had cleared in Chicago.

What else had cleared were all our connecting flights. By the time we landed at 10:30, all the shops had closed and there were no flights out.

So here I was, stranded for the night with a cat who'd been locked in a tiny box for five hours. Surely she would need to relieve herself. What was I to do?

I stood in line and listened to people shout at the poor, harried woman behind the desk. They wanted hotel rooms. They wanted flights the next day. We were told we wouldn't get either. When it was finally my turn, the lady took pity on me and my poor cat-in-a-box. She issued me a boarding pass for an 11:15 flight the next morning, gave me a sheet of paper listing nearby hotels that I could call, and told me that there was a pet relief station near baggage claim. But she wouldn't give me my checked bag, which had my phone's charging cord in it. With the little juice I had left in my phone I called my husband and told him not to wait for me at the Albuquerque airport. I then called every hotel on the sheet. None of them accepted cats.

I took the cat in the box out through security only to discover that the alleged pet relief station was nothing more than a square of dirt by the side of the road. While this might be some relief to a dog, I wasn't willing to free the cat long enough to try it. Of course, I had some difficulty explaining to the TSA agent why I had walked through security and why I now wanted back in.

A sudden inspiration came to me: this cat was owned by a soldier! Surely the USO would help me! I am sure they would have, had they not closed at 10.

But right next to the USO was a little sign that said "Nursing Mother's Station." I opened the door and found a small room. It had a counter (which I assume was meant as a changing table), a sink, and an upholstered chair. Most importantly, it had a lock on the door and no way for a cat to escape the room.

I let the cat out of the box, filled the bottom of the sink with water for her to drink, and put a handful of cat treats on a paper napkin. I also tried to make an impromptu litter box by ripping up some paper towels and putting them in the darkest corner of the room. She appreciated the food, water, and chance to stretch. The litter box stymied her.

I spent the night worrying what would

Smoke, the cat who accompanied me on my wild ride.

happen if TSA discovered that I had commandeered the mother's nursing station. Surely there's something illegal about taking control of a room at an airport.

At 5am I left my safe hidey-hole and went in search of an open Southwest Airlines Counter. There was an 8 am flight, and I hoped for a chance to fly stand-by on it. What I discovered was that, although I had a boarding pass for the 11:15 flight, I had never been entered into the computer. The attendant said I would be in Chicago another 24 hours.

At that point I dissolved into tears, which set the cat in the box to yowling piteously enough that the attendant got me on a 9 o'clock flight. It wasn't to Albuquerque; it went to Kansas City. I'm sure she just wanted me far away from her, and I was willing to go anyplace. In Kansas City I pulled the same weeping woman stunt and finagled myself onto a flight to Dallas, where I again wept myself onto a flight to Albuquerque. Each time I was the last person on the plane, and each time I took the last seat.

On one of that day's flights, the woman who would have sat next to me announced that she was allergic to cats, and I absolutely could not sit next to her. I think the stewardess had been in this situation before. She looked around, picked the largest person on the plane, a rather unwashed, scary-looking man, and announced that he needed to sit next to Ms. allergic-to-cats, who then backpedaled and announced that she wasn't THAT allergic. I sat down quickly, before she could change her mind.

And that is how I managed to have a 22 hour, nine city (if you count Louisville) plane ride. It was a wild ride I hope to never repeat.

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Roosevelt, D-Day Hero

6/6/2016

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June 6th marks the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, the day when America and its allies invaded the beaches of Normandy, France, and began to push Hitler’s forces out of Western Europe.
Four men earned the Medal of Honor during the D-Day invasion. Many people feel that one of them, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

The eldest son of President Theodore Roosevelt and First Lady Edith Roosevelt, Theodore Jr. was 57 years old and disabled at the time of D-Day. He walked with a cane because he had been shot in the kneecap during World War I, and his heart and lungs had been weakened from a poison gas attack. A Brigadier General, Roosevelt’s two requests to accompany the leading assault elements, were denied. His third request, a written one, was approved, allowing him to be the only general who landed in the first wave of troops. Roosevelt asserted that his presence within the 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division would encourage the troops, who would be emboldened and comforted by seeing an older man who walked with the assistance of a cane among them. He said: “They’ll figure that if a general is going in, it can’t be that rough.”

When he discovered that the landing craft had drifted and his troops were a mile from the planned site of the invasion on Utah Beach, Roosevelt Jr. is said to have said, "We'll start the war from right here."

General Omar Bradley described Roosevelt’s actions as the “single greatest act of courage” he witnessed in the entire war.

His citation, for gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, states “He repeatedly led groups from the beach, over the seawall and established them inland. His valor, courage, and presence in the very front of the attack and his complete unconcern at being under heavy fire inspired the troops to heights of enthusiasm and self-sacrifice. Although the enemy had the beach under constant direct fire, Brig. Gen. Roosevelt moved from one locality to another, rallying men around him, directed and personally led them against the enemy. Under his seasoned, precise, calm, and unfaltering leadership, assault troops reduced beach strong points and rapidly moved inland with minimum casualties. He thus contributed substantially to the successful establishment of the beachhead in France.”

Roosevelt Jr. died of a heart attack on July 12, 1944, shortly after the D-Day invasion. He was buried in Sainte-Laurent-sur-Mer, near Normandy. In the 1962 movie The Longest Day he is portrayed by the actor Henry Fonda.

To read more about General Roosevelt and the other three medal of honor recipients, click here.

Jennifer Bohnhoff has written several historical novels suitable for ages 11 and up. For more about Code: Elephants on the Moon, her novel about a French girl’s involvement in D-Day, click here.

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Grand Old Flag

A Wild Ride

Roosevelt, D-Day Hero

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