A GREAT HERITAGE

Each year when Veterans Day rolls around, I see the same pictures pop-up on Facebook. Our friends and relatives post a picture of a close relative who served in the U.S. military, generally in WWII. I feel as though my husband and I take the prize coming from not only large families but from heroes on all sides.

Many years ago, after securing the photographs of our uncles in uniform, I had the pictures framed and hung them on our Wall of Honor. Next to them hang the framed letters my father saved from 1944. One notifies him that he is fit for duty; the one below tells him they canceled his order to report for induction. My father and my father-in-law were each born in 1911. Both of them were married with children when the draft was ongoing during the Second World War.

My father worked for the war effort as a mechanic at Newark airport; his father worked at Picatinny Arsenal during WWI. My father-in-law was what would be considered today as an essential worker, delivering milk to families. He kept a voluminous collection of letters from his four brothers and a couple from friends who wrote in reply to his correspondence to them overseas. I now keep those telltale letters out on display in a large notebook.

This year, I decided to add a Veterans Day Facebook post. It reads “Our wall of honor-our uncles who served in WWII. Four Cohen brothers top. Three Mark brothers bottom left. Four Friedman brothers bottom right. In that frame, my uncle Al, top left, served in the U.S. Army February 1918-July 1919 and U. S. Marines June 5, 1921-June 5, 1924. We have no picture of my mother-in-law’s brother in uniform in WWI.” 

By the way, my mother-in-law had five sisters, as did my mother, with another five aunts total from our fathers. Imagine how many close relatives we would have had in the military if women were included during the earlier 20th-century wars.

I added to my Facebook post that “we both come from very large families. Shout out to our many, many cousins who served in other wars and conflicts and in-between. Too numerous to name.”

When one friend commented on my Facebook post, “A great heritage,” I immediately turned it into a blog post. She opened my eyes to the fact that we do have quite a great heritage that we should not only display on a wall on our staircase landing and reveal to our friends and family on Facebook but show to the world.

I do not know of any other couple who had so many uncles in the military during wartime. Or, for that matter, peacetime. We could probably make the Guinness world records with the number of cousins who served in the military stateside and abroad. Plus, two of my brothers have honorable discharges, one Navy, the other Army.

After writing a lengthy book filled with family stories outlining my quest to find all our relatives and write about their lives, I took the advice to keep writing. When my husband, two of my brothers, and a few of our cousins finished scouring the words of my book for editing errors, it was time for the next step. For their birthdays one year, I gave each of our three children a copy of my manuscript and asked them to read it for my birthday so that I could prepare it for publication.

Although my literary agent submitted my book with the working title Kitchen Talk (the room where I gathered the majority of the stories) to publishers, I started to post some of my similar pieces on my Tuesday blog. These blogs have become my family legacy that no one wrote before and should not be lost. Possibly we’ll turn them into a book. If so, there will be a dedication to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, who passed away on November 7, 2020. I once reported on a presentation he gave in New Jersey. The article is on my website under “articles.”

A quote from the writings of Rabbi Lord Sacks sums up my devotion to my project. Rabbi Lord Sacks wrote, “The dreams and hopes of my ancestors live on in me and I am the guardian of their trust, now and for the future.”

I appreciate all the positive and complimentary comments from my readers. I’ll keep writing if you keep reading.

Official Selective Service System letters to my father Benjamin Mark 1944