Patriot Day
Our friend Miss Katherine and her mother walked home from church in Gainesboro, Tennessee, on December 7, 1941. When they got back home, Miss Katherine’s father was glued to the radio, listening to the news about Pearl Harbor. Not long afterwards, Miss Katherine’s brother was drafted. He joined the Navy and eventually sailed for Europe, leaving behind his young wife and young son. His ship went down in the Atlantic before it reached Europe.
My father and his family were visiting Daddy’s Uncle Jack on December 7, 1941, to see the brand new home Uncle Jack and Aunt Stella had just built on Main Street in Ashland City. During that visit, they learned what had happened earlier that day at Pearl Harbor. Daddy was nine years old. Soon both he and my mother would have uncles in Europe. One of my mother’s uncles came home with what we would now call PTSD. When I was a child, we sometimes visited Uncle Raymond and his wife Aunt Pearl. She was a lively woman. He remained quiet and almost a hermit all of his life.
On September 11, 2001, Ray was in the basement office of our then tiny business. Our children, Ray’s dad, and I were in other parts of our house. Ray’s dad was watching the Today Show in his bedroom when I stopped in and saw video of a plane crashing into the first of the Twin Towers in New York City. Suddenly, as news of the 9/11 terrorist attacks spread across the nation, our family’s planned trip to the panhandle of Alaska the following Friday for Mary Evelyn’s senior trip was cancelled.
We never did take that trip, but the next September we took Mary Evelyn on a different senior trip to Plymouth Notch, Vermont, to the birthplace of Calvin Coolidge.
On September 11, 2013, our delightful grandson Wesley was born.
Wesley, September 11, 2013
Our lives can change dramatically in a moment. Sometimes those changes are dramatically difficult; sometimes they are wonderful, such as the birth of Wesley.
Through it all, God remains in charge and we can always put our trust in Him.
He sent from on high, He took me;
He drew me out of many waters.
He delivered me from my strong enemy,
And from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me.
They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
But the Lord was my stay.
Psalm 18:16-18