Remembering ...On a Day Once Known as 'Decoration Day'

Remembering ... On a Day Once Known as 'Decoration Day'

Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, DC; Wikimedia Commons

I never heard whether or not he came home safely, after the War, but not long after he shipped out, he sent my grandmother and Aunt Martha a captured Japanese parachute. Given America's lack of silk during those days (pre-nylon!), my two grandmothers and Aunt Martha had a fine time making lovely underwear for the women of the family.

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My big cousin Hugh lived across San Francisco Bay, in Berkeley. An exceptionally apt student, he was, I believe, working his way through college with a job U. of California’s Radiation Lab. I had known him and his two brothers and three sisters all my young life, and was smitten by the lot — so big, so smart, and they actually seemed to enjoy seeing me. When I was just a little girl, Hugh and his brothers used to play catch with me, and I mean play catch with me as the ball, throwing me from one to the other, as my grandmother watched and tried not to fuss at them. I, of course, loved it.

The Army looked at Hugh's college grades, and noting his facility for language, assigned him to learn Japanese. He was sent to Tokyo, during the immediate post-war years, and served there with distinction. He also met the love of his life, a bright and charming Japanese woman named Kimi, whom he married and eventually brought home to America. In his later years, Hugh became an officer of the USIS, and spent many years at posts in Japan and other places.

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And then there was my mother’s cousin, Allan Willard Burleson. My parents were both only children, so I was not lucky enough to have any aunts or uncles, but Allan Willard fit the bill just fine. He was a young bachelor, full of good-natured teasing, devoted to his extended family. He was also a lover of horrible puns. My brother and I groaned over the latter, but envied his ability to think them up.

The army drafted him just as he had received his MA in English from Cornell. They shipped him off to England, where troops were gathering in order to prepare for the Normandy invasion (though of course no one yet knew that Normandy would be the target), and he took advantage of his location to do a good bit of research into our family’s English roots, following his love of history and genealogy.

I remember the day he came back to us, some months after the War ended. We had heard that he was back in the country, and visiting assorted relatives as he worked his way West (his father lived in Idaho), but he had never been one you could pin down to dates and times. He had a way of just showing up, from time to time, and he was the kind of guest who was always welcome.

The morning he finally made it to our house, I discovered him, sitting quietly on the wooden slat-chair on our back patio, right outside the kitchen door. I flew out the door, screaming "Allllan Willlllllaaaard! You're back!" He grinned from ear to ear and scooped me up and planted a solid kiss right on my mouth, and said: "Do you think there's a bit of breakfast to be had around here?"

Well, he received a good breakfast, all right, as well as the attentions of his two aged aunts (my grandmother and her sister) and his cousin, my mother, and my brother and me, all of us hovering and over-the-moon happy to see him.

But he had gone off to war with a head full of blonde hair, and he came back mostly bald. His mouth sometimes quivered (he chewed a toothpick, I think to hide it), and he never spoke about his wartime experiences. He lived with us for several years, and for the first few he had to travel up to the Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco once a month. He had problems with his liver, which my mother said came from a short time spent in a prison camp in Germany, she thought, although he never spoke to us of it, and we were strictly forbidden to ask him about it.

He was extremely helpful to my mother, taking on all sorts of chores like trimming back the live oak trees that blocked the view from our hill, or re-shingling the roof over the living room, or driving his aunts to church.

He stayed with us for about four years, before he went back to Idaho to teach school. I expect that our multigenerational home and our palpable love for one another went a long way to help in healing him from the experience of World War II.

Allan Willard was a brilliant, fun-loving rascal. I thought then, and think now, that he was one of the best men I have ever known.

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Remembering ... On a Day Once Known as 'Decoration Day'

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