Reflections on a Blessed and Happy Life No. 27: Off to College

  My17th summer was exciting and full. I graduated from high school, worked full-time at a café (while renting a room near-by) played on a very good softball team and a mediocre baseball team. We celebrated VE Day, were excited and also worried by atom bombs being dropped in Japan, We rejoiced and celebrated_VJ Day and then off to college.

I headed for what was then called Concordia Teachers College-River Forest, IL (now Concordia University Chicago. There was never any consideration for even a minute that I would go anywhere else. My father had graduated from there 25 years earlier-and that is where I was headed.

Mother faithfully helped me get ready. She found a big “steamer trunk” which she could use to send my “stuff.” She saw to it that I go\t my first pair of gloves and even an overcoat. (I hated it then and still don’t like wearing one.)

I contacted four other Texans who were also headed to R.F. and coordinated rail travel The railroad people told us not to travel over Labor Day as the end-of the-war traffic was overwhelming everything. On the day of travel Mother gave me my most important carry-on; namely food for the journey. There was no way on earth we would have the funds to eat in the train diner. Mother fried chicken (having butchered the chicken herself) made lots of homemade bread. Stuffed in a couple dozen cookies and secured it all in a good sturdy bag.

Dad had his last minute instructions, which included a few words that were not characteristic of him at all. He said  “Melvin, when my father put me on the train to go to River Forest when I was 15 years old he said to me ‘If you are expelled, don’t bother coming home’.” He left it at that. I think he wanted me to take this business seriously-but it was just not in his oh so kind nature to threaten me with self-expulsion from the family.

The train was full. The ride long. We changed trains in St. Louis. As we went toward our new coach (of course, we had no reserved seats) I walked outside the train cars and looked in for a few seats. As we went by one car I said to my buddies “Oh. There are a few seats in that car, but we can’t go there. That car is for colored only!” The porter alongside me heard those words and almost roared at me, “Get in that car young man, you are no longer in the South. From here we all ride together!”

Dad had given us detailed instruction on how to get from Chicago’s Union Station to River Forest via the El and then a walk of a couple miles.. But when we got to the train depot some relatives of one of our roommates were there. They drove us to R.F. They were great.

College orientation went smoothly. Of course, I noticed that in contrast to the boys-only student body of my high school there were “girls” on this campus. We did not pay much attention to them nor they to us-, except for a couple of them who took more to my strange Texas cowboy boots than to me and that was okay too.

Our dorm arrangement was that 8 of us shared two rooms, one for study and one for sleeping. The eight of us got along together well. I sadly report that of those 8 I am the sole survivor.

I am absolutely positive I did not telephone my folks that I had safely arrived on campus. That would have been unthinkable. I do hope that as I settled in I said a special prayer of thanks to my whole family as all of them made “Sending Mel off to College“ a family project.

REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE NO 23 WORLD WAR II

As mentioned before, the years of WWII matched almost exactly my years at Concordia Academy for grades 9-12.

Preface: I want to be very clear. World War II was not about me. I did no heroics, performed no great acts, and endured no great personal sacrifice. Compared to so many others my life was easy. Millions suffered and died. Many Americans (and other) families suffered terrible deprivation, pain and loss. Many of my fellows Americans were incredibly brave. They represented me. They saved the USA from enemies. I am the beneficiary of all of this valor, patriotism and sacrifice. So while I reflect upon my life during those days I do so in great humility and clarity of understanding that I had it easy.

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My years in high school very nearly match the years of the USA being officially at war in WWII.  I entered high school September 5,1941 and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941. Germany surrendered to the allies on May7, 1945; I graduated from high school on May 10,1945 and Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945.

I had gone home for the weekend and was “playing catch” out in our back yard with my siblings on that Dec. 7th afternoon. My father came out and in a very serious voice ordered us all into his “study”. There he informed us that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He knew it meant war and that would have incredible consequences for the world. He had us all sit and join him in prayer.

It immediately came close to home. The son of a neighbor was in the Navy and at Pearl Harbor. He was serving on the US Arizona and we knew it was hit by Japanese bombs…and by New Year’s Day the family had received word that he was officially “missing in action:” We feared the worst. He was eventually declared, “Killed in action.”

In a spirit of patriotism many of the young people enlisted. Soon my Father received confidential letters from the military. We lived in a German community and many of the servicemen from that community volunteered or were chosen to do confidential interpretation, code breaking and similar work. My dad had been their grade school principal and knew that many of them never went to high school. He very carefully documented their expertise in their native German language and vouched for their patriotism.

It became a time for us to follow the news with great interest. We listened to the radio. At Concordia Academy we had only one newspaper available to us in the library and we perused it eagerly.

Soon the streets were filled with men (and a few women) in uniform. Then we all experienced rationing. My parents carefully used their sugar-rationing card to get sugar to can fruits and vegetables. Dad had an A classification for his gasoline allotment and he was always determined to use as little gasoline as possible. No new tires. Old ones were recapped.

The military training activity around us became intensified. When we lived in Walburg we saw tanks rumble by our house on maneuvers from Ft. Hood to Camp Swift. When we moved to San Antonio we were completely amid airmen from all the airbases there. My trips to and from home were all by “hitchhikers thumb.“ The courtesy rule for us non-military was that we would stand at the end of the line so that they would get preference.

Even as there was good news about the Allies advance there was always great anxiety, as we personally knew so many friends and relatives on the front lines. We kept the newspaper maps and articles handy. New names became familiar: Iwo Jima, Anzio, The Dessert Fox, Doolittle, MacArthur, and Eisenhower etc. etc. It was a time of great anxiety always mixed with the hope for an early victory.

REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE  NO.25

  WWII WAR'S END                                                                          

As mentioned previously, the years of WWII matched almost exactly my years at Concordia Academy for grades 9-12. On April 28,1945 Mussolini committed suicide after being captured by our Italian allies. On April 30 Adolph Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered on May 8. While we rejoiced over VE Day as we called the victory in Europe, there was still the very heavy fighting and heavy casualties occurring on the Pacific.

 Immediately upon graduation, May 10, I rented a room and went back to work as a waiter at Wukash Brothers Café in Austin. This was a broadening experience for me-especially as I began to interact with fellow wait staff. Almost all were women married to US servicemen. As such they were of a different (if any) faith and they brought with them values, language, and life styles quite different from what I had experienced in rural, German speaking Lutheran Walburg. They also brought the war in the Pacific closer as their spouses were deployed around the world and together we daily looked at the headlines and wondered if these men were still alive.  

In between all the anxieties (and some rejoicing) about the war, I had a great time playing city league softball.  Mr. Peal, a wonderful business owner of a potato chip factory sponsored a team and I played on it. We were good. (Our ball boy later was a star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.) I made the all-city team and got to play with some experts. The competition was fiercest with teams from the near-by military bases. We were scheduled to play one of them for the city championship on the evening of August 15. But they never showed up. 

They were celebrating VJ Day and the end of World War II. In the second week of August the USA had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on August 15 Japan surrendered. 

There was great and appropriate celebration. We thanked God for what our country had achieved and we were especially mindful of the sacrifices of our service personnel-remembering   their patriotism, valor, courage, dedication- and for many even the giving of their lives. 

Along with the celebrations there was also great sadness and distress. We learned of Auschwitz death camp and the other places were million of Jews had been slaughtered by Germany. As the POWs   came back (especially from the Pacific Theater of Operations), we heard first hand from persons who survived the Bataan Death March and the indescribable torture in Japanese Prisoner of War encampments. Regretfully we also (for me for the first time) heard more about how the USA had "resettled” many thousands of USA citizens who happened to have Japanese ancestry. 

I turned 18 years of age after the end of the war and so did not need to make any decisions around enlistment or being called up for service. However, I was deeply aware of the cost of the war to people all over the world. I thanked God for the victory and noted again the fact that our democracy was safe because of the sacrifice of fellow citizens. I even prayed for our enemies. And joined all those who sought peace on earth midst a fervent plea that there would never again be a world war.

65th Anniversary – Section II: Places

In these day I am recalling my 65 years since I was first commissioned as a teaching minister in the church. The focus of this reflection is the places we have lived. I have actually lived in 14 different apartments or houses during these years. The casual reader would conclude, “Mel was unable to hold a job!.” It is really a bit more complicated. One reason for the different places is because I often lived in “church supplied housing”. So my quarters were determined by church budgets and sometimes even by a committee, which chose an apartment without ever having listened to any of our considerations.

The locations of those houses included California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New York and Hong Kong. Each had much to love and enjoy. Tracy California in the 1950’s had a population of some 10,000. So I got to know many of the residents and when one walked down Main Street one was likely to be called by name. Hong Kong is my favorite place in all the world. I love the Chinese people. The energy of the place carries one along. The food options are unlimited. The streets are safe. If one has air conditioning (which we did not have) and good solid windows (which we mostly had) then one can ignore the heat, the 96 inches or rain per year or the terrible typhoons. New York comes close to Hong Kong as a favorite and if I had lots of money (and a different wife) I could enjoy living in Hong Kong or New York as my place of choice even for today in retirement. Chicago was great. It has excellent public transportation, great art and entertainment and every imaginable type of food. Ann Arbor, Michigan (even in the tumultuous 60”s) is a place of intellectual stimulation, roads cleared of the worst snow imaginable, and not too far from Frankenmuth chicken dinners. And we now live in San Diego county California by choice. The weather, the multi-ethnic communities, the golf courses, the range of political opinions, the beaches and nearby mountains… It is great!

Of course there are “places” other than just our residences or the cities that contain them. My life has been spent in classrooms. I love teaching. 65 years ago that meant 45 kids in one classroom of 4^th –8^th graders. Later on those classrooms were found in colleges and seminaries in Hong Kong and several USA campuses. I have given the keynote address or lead a workshop in each of the Districts of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the Regions of the ELCA.

Work with Effectiveness Training gave me the opportunities to teach or do business or just stop in on places like, Germany, Switzerland, France, Norway, Sweden and best of all Finland. There were plenty challenges (and good people) awaiting me in Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Pakistan.

In retirement I was blessed to lead some tours with incredibly wonderful cadres of friends. These tours took us to China, Tibet, Germany, The Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Brazil, Argentina, Israel and Palestine.

 Places I visited (usually with Jane) just for fun and to be with family and friends hold special niches in my heart. Before we were frightened off by drug wars we had wonderful times in Mexico. Visiting son John and his family in Barcelona, Madrid, Taiwan and England were special. Lena and Ruth Galster were wonderful hosts in Bangkok. And since we were careful not to break the law by chewing gum in public we had a great time in Singapore

Just naming these places stirs up masses of differing feelings. There is admiration for those poor kids who attended our rooftop schools in Hong Kong. All they got was rudimentary stuff of the basic three “rs”, but they took that and became wonderful citizens of the world. I think of the children sitting in out-door schools without textbooks in Pakistan and how they are now being challenged by the Taliban et sim. I admire the great work we witnessed at Christmas Lutheran Church and school in Bethlehem and the God-blessed incredible work of Pr. Raheb. I pray that the improvement in wealth distribution is bringing hope to the many, many poor people I saw in those long lines awaiting treatment in small Wheat Ridge supported clinics in south India and I hope that all of them will some day get the opportunity to just visit and admire the Taj Mahal in the heart of their own country.

None of the above places would be so favorably remembered were it not for Jane, family and friends. Jane has made each of our homes places of refuge from stress, centers of beauty, locales of peace and the abode of love. No matter where else I may have been in the world the thing that kept drawing me forward was the anticipation of being safely home. Even today when she is there and also if by chance some or all of the kids come join us I have no desire to be any place else. For as my family always reminds me “Home is where the heart is.”

65th Anniversary - Section ! : People

September 10,2015 marked the 65 anniversary of my commissioning as a "Teaching Minister" in The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. So these have been days of reflection and remembering. I realize that recording some of these will be of absolutely no interest to many who may on occasion look at my blogs. I write them because it feels good to me to do so and there may be a few others of you who may even find them of a bit interesting.

I recall first of all some of the people through whom I was blessed during these 65 years. I begin with Lydia Zielske. She was the woman who opened her house for me as I spent the first year as a single male in Tracy California. She cleaned my room, prepared my meals and did my laundry. In a quiet unassuming way she was always there to support and assist. Two other families which offered special support to this single guy: the Paulsons who farmed sections of tomatoes and other crops and made their house always open for a good meal and secondly, James and Mary Elhard who taught me how to drink black coffee.

Hong Kong, then and now, means masses of people and unbridled energy. Even on the day we arrived the place was being overrun by the tens of thousands fleeing Mao Tze Tung and his take-over of China. They came on boats, on foot, by rail, bus, walking, swimming, in the bottoms of sampams, below deck of steamers. They were everywhere, sleeping on the streets, on the hillsides, the roofs, the stairways. I will never forget one of the persons whom I saw in my first week. I had immediately started teaching an education course for Lutheran teachers and was on my way home at ten at night. I saw a young man lying in the arms of his father. He was starving to death. It was the first time I realized that stomachs might bloat under extreme malnutrition. I gave him some money and to this day recall the look of gratitude from his father.

The Chinese people were incredibly wonderful to me. They were patient with my arrogance, forgiving of my mistakes, open to learning, eager to move forward. Students and staff alike were motivated and deeply appreciative of any opportunity to move ahead. They changed my life forever. Mr. Hung Chiu Sing taught me Cantonese and even more importantly taught me Chinese customs and traditions, warned me of social faux pas, gave me the right words to say, the proper place to sit at meals, the appropriate way to address an elder, the place to put my chop sticks, the way to present a diploma.

A most unexpected Godsend in Hong Kong was a Mr. David Kowalke. He was head of Kodak Far East, a massive enterprise in those days. He and his family traveled over an hour each Sunday, taking a car ferry to attend English/Cantonese worship services held in a storefront. I am tempted to say that even more important was that he had some very close connections to top decision makers at the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club. He got me moved up that long waiting list, helped me pass my inspection by the membership committee and for about $250 I became a member. Weekly golf for ten years kept me sane and gave me some British contacts which helped shape the entire building programs of Lutheran church and schools in Hong Kong.

Back in the States I was blessed to have the best possible Team Ministry trio possible with Don Kell and Roland Boehnke in Michigan and a very diverse and competent staff in St. Louis. The principals of the Lutheran Schools in New York were an incredible group of people who simply did what needed to be done, who accepted and affirmed me and held my feet to the fire. In between I moved in an entirely different world of Parent Effectiveness Training where I met and worked with people from all over the world. They were both my students and my teachers and helped continually to blow open my mind to new adventures, insights, problems and opportunities.

People. They have shaped me, angered me, empowered me, given me joy, despair and hope. And in each of them I saw a glimmer of what was impressed upon me as my lifelong duty when 65 years ago the pastor speaking at my commissioning said simply that my job was to respond to One who called "Feed my sheep. Feed my lambs."