Matters of Life and Death
Fred Miller, longtime KY3 weatherman passed away yesterday in his home, he was 86. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to know Fred well, he retired shortly after I arrived at KY3, but like many other Ozarkers, I grew up watching Fred and had the pleasure of hearing his co-workers speak in the highest regard for this man. He was loved by all who knew him.
Image courtesy of KY3.
One of the advantages of cremation is the luxury of time. Although many families want immediate closure, memorial services and interment can actually be planned for a later date to allow for family that may have to travel, or even better weather.
Such was the case with the Lee family. When Mary Lou Lee passed away in March, her family honored her wishes: She wanted her services to be held after school was out for the summer as she did not want her school-age grandchildren and great-grandchildren to have to miss school to attend her funeral service. “Have it in the summer,” she said, “and have everyone wear a big hat!”
And they did. Last week, they laid Mary Lou to rest beside her husband. One of Mary’s son’s owns an early SUV (short bus) and the family boarded the bus and drove to the cemetery for the service.
Back in the late ’60’s, with all the turmoil happening throughout the world, Mary Lou’s husband had several thousand of these flower power stickers printed up. According to one of the brothers, “These represent, not just a slogan or catch phrase, but a way of life.” One sticker survived and was displayed in a prominent location on Jim’s bus.
After the service, everyone gathered at Mary’s son, Jim’s place for food and fellowship. Earlier, the brothers went to Sam’s Club and bought their mom’s favorite foods, pimento stuffed olives and summer sausage, drug the tables and chairs out on the lawn, and honored their mother’s memory.
Beautiful.
Thank you Jim, for permission to share your experience with other families looking for memorial ideas.
Been thinking about my old friend Chris Sifford. Back in the early 90’s I had the good fortune to make Chris’ acquaintance when we worked together at a local radio station. Everyone loved Chris, he was smart, funny, and I developed a mild crush on him. Later, our careers took different paths, and we lost touch. I never forgot him though.
Chris wound up taking a job with Missouri Governor Carnahan as a staffer, serving in various capacities. During Carnahan’s 2000 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Chris lost his life along with the Governor and his son in a plane crash. Chris was only 36.
Last Saturday was the annual Chris Sifford Day at the ballpark (Springfield Cardinals) with a 5K walk/run fundraiser scheduled in the morning. It rained hard here (again) Saturday and the event was likely a wash. Next up, is the Sifford Golf Scramble to raise funds for scholarships at his alma-mater.
From the Sifford Memorial site: If you had the pleasure of knowing Chris, you are lucky. He embodied the spirit of someone who actually wanted to serve or help others serve the people. His friends were many and came from a variety of backgrounds — which is why the Sifford Scramble golf tournament is so fun. There will be bootheelians, hillbillies, beer makers, teachers, preachers, athletic personnel, and worst of all lawyers, bankers and consultants (ha ha).
Friends and family established the Chris Sifford Memorial Foundation in 2001 to ensure that his memory lives on by providing scholarships for young people interested in careers in journalism or public service. Approximately $100,000 has been raised to establish endowment funds at Chris’ alma mater Missouri State University and University of Missouri-Columbia.
Establishing a foundation or memorial fund to preserve a loved one’s memory and pass on the legacy is a beautiful way to remember and treasure a special life.
Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division
Jack Lucas was a cadet captain in the military school where his mother had enrolled him after his father’s death when he heard radio reports of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The next day he promised his mother that if she let him enlist, he would come home after the war and finish his education—but he wound up forging her signature on the consent form because she would have to lie for him. Lucas, big for his age, told the Marine recruiters he was seventeen. Shortly before being sent to the training center at Parris Island, South Carolina, he turned fourteen.
Troops were moving out to Hawaii, but because of his experience in military school, Lucas was ordered to stay behind and drill new recruits. He knew his buddies were ultimately headed for combat, so he hopped onto the train with them—in effect going AWOL to get into the war. Once in Hawaii, he managed to convince officers that he was there because of a clerical error.
He was almost drummed out of the Corps when a censor read a letter to his girlfriend that mentioned his real age, fifteen by then. He managed to talk his way out of trouble again and was assigned a job driving a truck on the base.
A year later, when a large number of troops were being ferried out to ships in Pearl Harbor heading into action, Lucas stowed away on the USS Deuel, in effect going AWOL a second time. He slept on deck and scrounged meals from other men. When the ship was well out to sea, he turned himself in for fear of being classified as a deserter, and a sympathetic colonel decided that instead of punishing him, he would finally grant Lucas his wish of being assigned to a combat unit.
Not long after, the Deuel approached Iwo Jima. On February 19, 1945, five days after he turned seventeen, Lucas hit the beach with forty thousand other Marines, five thousand of whom would become casualties that first day of combat. The next morning, his unit destroyed a Japanese pillbox, then took cover in a Japanese escape trench, where eleven Japanese soldiers surprised them. The Marines and Japanese started firing at each other at point-blank range. Lucas shot one soldier in the forehead before his rifle jammed.
As he was trying to get it to work, he saw two Japanese grenades land near the Marine next to him. He dove down into the soft volcanic ash, covering the grenades with his body. One failed to go off, but the explosion of the second one flipped him over on his back and inflicted large wounds on his arm, chest, and thigh.
His chin was sliced open and one eye was forced out of its socket. He had internal injuries and was bleeding heavily from his nose and mouth. A Marine from a following unit, reaching down to take off Lucas’s dog tags, saw Lucas’s hand wiggle.
He was given a shot of morphine, carried back to the beach on a stretcher, and transferred to a hospital ship. At one point he was almost given up for dead, but the doctors kept working on him.
After hospitalizations in Guam and San Francisco, and several of the twenty-two surgeries he would undergo, he was discharged in September 1945. On October 5, at the age of seventeen, he received the Medal of Honor from President Harry Truman, making him the youngest recipient since the Civil War. Then, as he had promised his mother years before, he went back to school—a ninth grader wearing the Medal of Honor around his neck. He later graduated from high school and earned a college degree.
Jack Lucas died today at age 80, in Hattiesburg, MS.
Source: MSNBC