The Well Known Veterans I met through Work

"The Vietnam War" shown on the Public Broadcast Station (PBS) is a ten-part, 18-hour documentary film series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. It was shown on tv in September, and because it was shown over 10 days, I missed a few episodes, but watched them a few days later on another PBS station. The Vietnam War was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 19, 2017 and I believe most large libraries will carry the DVDs.

The early history was very interesting, and from what I heard from friends, we all learned quite a bit. However, the era from about 1962-1975 interested me the most. It was during those years that I watched the battles play out almost every night on the news, marched in protest 1969, and heard on the radio, while I was in the service in Virginia, that Saigon fell.

Later years, I worked in two medical facilities; Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the DeWitt Army Hospital at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Later, I worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters in Washington, DC for about 6 years, I came in contact with many veterans, some as patients and others just working there, like me.

Among the veterans I worked under, one was the Administrator and the other a Deputy Administrator of the Department of Veterans Affairs, both of whom were on the "Vietnam War" show. I was fortunate to meet both of them, and got autographs, as shown below.

Everett Alvarez Jr.

The Wikipedia link (above) states, "Everett Alvarez Jr. (born December 23, 1937) is a former U.S. Navy Commander who endured one of the longest periods as a prisoner of war (POW) in American military history. Alvarez was the second U.S. pilot to be downed and detained during the Vietnam War and spent over eight years in captivity; making him the second longest-held American POW." He was the Deputy Administrator at the Department of Veterans Affairs for six years, from 1982-1988. (I worked there 2 of those years.)

Max Cleland (above and below)

Max was a captain in the Vietnam War, and a month before the end of his tour, he was badly injured, which later resulted in having his legs amputated above the knee and his right forearm. He was 25 years old.

Years later President Carter selected him to be the Administrator of the Department of Veterans Affairs from 1977-1981 (I worked there 3 of those years). He always had a smile, was quite personable, remembered everybody's name, and drove his own car to work!

I believe we were celebrating the day when the 15-cent Veterans Administration commemorative stamp was first placed on sale at Washington, DC, on July 21, 1980.

The third veteran, in The Vietnam War series, I saw in person was John Kerry. He and John McCain were shown in the series, but not interviewed. John Kerry often came to Lowell, his old hometown where he tried to get into politics. It was years later, he ran for both state senator, and then president, and I saw him when he campaigned in Lowell.

In addition to the three above veterans, I was very fortunate to see Omar Nelson Bradley, a former General of the Army and Administrator of the VA. He paid a visit to the VA headquarters, in a wheelchair when he was between age 85 to 88 years old.

Not a veteran, but I did see Mamie Eisenhower in the gift shop at the Walter Reed Hospital. I was luck to get a heads up, when I saw her chauffeured car with 5 stars on the license plate, parked in front of the side entrance. (Between 1977-79, she died in Dec. 1979.)

Another individual in The Vietnam War series was President Lyndon B.  Johnson. He was not a veteran, but I thought I'd show a few photos of his ranch, his tombstone, and me with a statue of him at the ranch (1975). A FindAGrave.com photo of his tombstone is HERE.

The above veterans mention are just a few of the many who served or who are still serving. It is because of them that we honor them on Veterans Day.

Two past posts:
A Prince and a Princess on Veterans Day ( Diana and Charles)

President Carter and Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day

"On Learning To See," and I have David McCullough to Thank for the Poetry Challenge Idea

Church and tombstone of
Dr. Manasseh Cutler

For the past eight years, Bill West of West in New England blog has his Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge. The fun that comes from this challenge is, I need to find a poem that has something to do with genealogy or an ancestor or distant relative with perhaps history or genealogy in the theme.

For my 7th annual poem I chose On learning to See by Jack Metthews. My poem idea was based on the fact that I learned, from a facebook friend, that David McCullough was writing a book with some information about my ancestor, my 5th great-grandfather, Manasseh Cutler! A little magical google searches brought me to this poem!

"McCullough is working on another book, 'The Pioneers,' which is scheduled for a 2019 release. The book will tell the story of the courageous first settlers of the Northwest Territory in the late 1700s and early 1800s, including Ohio University founder Manasseh Cutler."
My 2nd great-grandfather also wrote a book about Dr. Manasseh Cutler:

Poole, William Frederick, The The Ordinance of 1787, and Dr. Manasseh Cutler, Welch, Bigelow, and Co., University Press, Cambridge, Mass. : 1876. (Google book.)  I assume Mr. McCullough will use this book.

ON LEARNING TO SEE

By Jack Matthews

Ohio University's my theme,

An institution intellectuals planned

When Ohio was a wilderness, for they deemed

This to be the time and this the land.

It remained in isolation as it matured,

Silent and remote from most appeals

Of fame and noise, and in this way abjured

The insidious power that relevance conceals.

By nature universities aspire

To that which some in part achieve by chance;

But we far more than most this end acquire--

Being an institution of irrelevance.

What perspective is better from which to see

The world than from some vantage point apart?--

For this remoteness in itself will free

The mind and with it liberate the heart.

Without some distance, nothing can be known;

There is no fixedness without some motion;

Knowledge derives from antithesis alone--

No fish could ever understand the ocean.

Great numbers of distinguished men and women

Have studied in these halls; but I will summon

Only one who did not study here at all,

Yet left his mark indelibly, withal.

I speak of Manasseh Cutler, eponym

Of Cutler Hall, that still remains a hymn

Of architectural elegance, one Jefferson 

Himself would have put his name upon.

For Manasseh Cutler was a man

Much like Jefferson in his great command

Of knowledge--of philosophy and plants,

Of engineering, theology and dance,

Of physics, poetry and classic drama,

Of grammar, syntax, the function of the comma.

He was, in short, un Uomo Universale,

And as much as any human exempt from folly.

He understood the complexity of things

And how much satisfaction knowledge brings.

He understood the molecule and atom

And sensed those elements too deep to fathom.

So how do you open a university?

Manasseh Cutler did it with a key--

To wit, he consulted and studied the college charter

Of several, including Yale, his Alma Mater;

So our "Harvard on the Hocking"--as some have hailed it--

He patterned on its nemesis, he yaled it.

It was in his encyclopaedic brain

That a university was born, to gain

Its true and plenary self beyond his knowing--

As always the richest seed transcends its sowing.

This impulse in his mind became the brick

Of buildings in which debate, arithmetic

And botany were passionately instilled

In the young, ambitious to be skilled

In eastern sophistication, while retaining

Some frontier innocence and remaining

Idealistic in the firm belief

That in knowledge, and that alone, is our relief--

visionary in their firm conviction

That wisdom is the ultimate benediction.

For learning of this sort to be completed

a passionate attentiveness is needed.

We need the world of things to love and study

As surely as the mind requires a body.

To fervidly attend to what's provided

By a teeming world of things is to be guided

By the instinct of the mind, the signal feature

Of that thinking reed, the human creature.

How much there is we see but do not see;

How often things are instruments that we

Fail to honor with that rapt attention

The world deserves--I speak of deep absorption,

Of profound allegiance to the morality

Of understanding; I speak of responsibility;

Of how it is through learning that we seek

To better understand the world; I speak

Of Manasseh Cutler, whose son reported that

"He learned to see what he was looking at."

I obtained permission from reference librarian, Julia Robinson, to use this poem from Ohio University. I only wish the author, Jack Matthews could have been thanked personally.  Credit: https://www.ohio.edu/bicentennial/history/tributes/poem.cfm

"The following poem was commissioned by Dean Leslie Flemming of the College of Arts and Sciences to be read on the occasion of the Distinguished Alumni Ceremony on September 19, 2003 in the Baker Center Ballroom. The poem and preface were published in the program for the evening. 

Preface

A preface to a short poem can betray fecklessness or self-infatuation. And yet, prefaces can also be charitable acts, calculated to prepare audiences for what's in store for them, which is merciful insofar as poems are often perplexing when they are heard rather than read. So it's this I have in mind in providing the following introduction:

How can one pack the life of a 200-year-old university into a poem? Best not try, is the prudent answer; but, here, prudence is of limited usefulness; so that, when I was asked to do precisely this, I was happy to throw myself into the task. The result is a 2-page poem (if I had striven for historical balance, that would be one page a century) of closely rhymed pentameters.

Why rhymed? Because it is focused upon that gifted renaissance man who, in effect, started it all--Manasseh Cutler; and the verse most appropriate to him is that which he would most likely understand and appreciate if he were to hear it. More than that, however, such closely rhymed verse announces itself defiantly as artifice, rejecting the latent imposture of unrhymed, unmetered verse as a simulacrum of living speech, for poetry is not speech, but an elaboration upon the artifice of speech.

In addition to all this, however, to the modern ear there's always something faintly playful, frolicsome--even hilarious--about closed rhymes. It's hard to take them altogether seriously. Laughter is in their echoes, as surely as in the syllables, "Ha ha!" But no intellectual worthy of the name would ever deny the importance of laughter, for more often than not, laughter is nothing but a response to irony, and irony is intrinsic to language itself; and language defines our world."

Tributes

https://www.ohio.edu/ohiotoday/voices/tributes-winter-2015.cfm

"Just learned in the spring 2014 obituaries of the passing of John “Jack” Matthews, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at OHIO."

Two posts of mine, with photos, previously written:
Dr. Manasseh Cutler - A minister, doctor, statesman, botanist and ancestor

Hamilton Cemetery and Manasseh Cutler, the most accomplished of all my ancestors

If Only All Cemeteries Would Do This

For several years, I have been going to the Old Burying Ground in Lexington, Massachusetts to try and locate a few cemetery stones of individuals related to me. It has always been a challenge to find them because no updated map with a listing of names was available. The FindAGrave.com was of no help either.

Two years ago, this month, I was told by a cemetery clerk that a listing of names and maps was in the works, so I called about every six months, for an update. (You can read about that in one of the posts below.) Today was the day I was going to call again, but before I did, I fortunately did a little checking around on the internet. Wow, what a wonderful surprise...Lexington has done a great job putting together an  Old Burying Ground brochure with annotated map (pdf, prints on 11"x 17" paper)! The document is very large print rather small, but I've no complaints.

After reviewing the list of names and looking at the cemetery map, I called my contact at the cemetery and thanked her, since she worked on the project, along with others. Their cemetery site, with other information, will be very useful to the many who want to find out if their ancestors were buried there.

The Home Page for The Old Burying Ground  includes the following topics with links:

• Google map of cemetery location
• Old Burying Ground brochure with annotated map (pdf, prints on 11"x17" paper)
• Documents related to Lexington's cemeteries, including old maps and deeds.
• Findagrave.com information on the Old Burying Ground, including photographs of many of the gravestones
• Lexington epitaphs, a copy of epitaphs of the Old Burying-Grounds of Lexington, Massachusetts, by Francis H. Brown, M.D., published by the Lexington Historical Society in 1903. (viewable online)
• Images of the Old Burying Ground

My two previous posts about the cemetery, included many fall photos of the cemetery, my Google map, and an old hand-drawn map, with a short listing of names of those interred there.

How to Find a Tombstone in the Old Cemetery (Burying Ground) in Lexington, MA, My Stearns / Stone for Tombstone Tuesday (Nov. 2015)

Is This About Six Deaths of the Children, My New Relatives OR Research  Problems? (Oct. 2016)

You might be interested in this post, written two years ago. The memorial monument is missed by many people.
Lexington, Massachusetts -- One monument with 77 Names

Celebrating 8 years of Blogging, The Past and the Future

Lowell, MA, along the Merrimack River

I was reminded recently, that my 8th anniversary, (or blogiversary) of blogging was upon me. My readers know I haven't been writing lately, but I thought I'd share a few stats, and perhaps these would prompt me to write again.

Currently, I have 813 email subscribers and 266 followers. To me, those numbers are pretty impressive, especially since I only wrote seven posts in 2017 versus 262 in 2011. However, in these past years, amazingly I have over 540,000 page views.

I began writing genealogy-related posts, mostly about my ancestors, then went to cemetery reports, library visits to report about their genealogy collections, old houses, historical societies, a lot of posts about Lowell, Massachusetts, and then to things to see and do in New England. I thought the Travel and Tourism posts would be more popular, but in looking at my daily top 10 hits, I think genealogy topics still reign (the list of my top 10 is below).

What's coming? To begin with, I'll start with my trips during the past year, they include a castle, two athenaeums, a library or two, three Shaker villages, several historical houses, an old fort, a historical society, a historical village, a few cemetery visits, and perhaps other sites I have forgotten about. Please remember, I am not a scholar nor a writer, so most posts are what I consider light.

I have gotten interested in DNA research, and plan on contacting more people either through Ancestry or GEDmatch.  I have over 27,000 4th cousins or closer, my closest is a first cousin, (I know her); a second cousin, (no tree) I wrote to but no response; a third cousin (no tree), we communicated, but she doesn't know the names of her grandparents; a 4th cousin (5th one listed), has shared information with me since 2000.

In closing, there are two things I want to say. First, I'm thanking all 1,000 or so people who hoped I would have something to share with them via my blog. I appreciate your interest in what I have to say, or just want to see photos of New England. Second, because I don't know what you would like to read about, please let me know. I would love it if you could give me insight into what you want, and I'll try my best to write about it, or point you in the right direction. Many, many thanks to all of you.

My tip 10 blogs, as determined by Google (may be seen on the right sidebar). The links are active.
          

Surname Saturday -- LAY (From Connecticut to Ver... May 22, 2010, 4 comments	3875
Lexington, Massachusetts -- One monument with 77... Oct 10, 2014, 13 comments	2469
First Settlers of Newbury, Massachusetts Aug 26, 2013, 21 comments	2238
Founder's Monument -- Watertown, Massachusetts Sep 20, 2013, 2 comments	1157
Each Example is Different, and None Were Done on C... Sep 8, 2016, 10 comments	913
Grandmother and Me-See Below Jul 25, 2010, 12 comments (See photo below)	888
Brick Walls of Mine, If You Solve, I Pay Feb 22, 2014, 5 comments	876
10 Things I Wished I Knew When I Started My Blog Sep 29, 2016, 25 comments	847
An Athenaeum -- A great combination of Art, Book... Sep 6, 2017