All posts by Jim

Sister Nancy

A Pocket of Resistance

It’s taken over a week for me to write this. It has been difficult for me to put down my thoughts about losing a sister.

She wasn’t really a sister. She was two years my older cousin. She lived with her parents about a four-hour drive from our home. But my family was very close. My mother and her older sister Evelyn loved to spend time with their nephews and nieces. When i was an infant, my mother and grandmother would board the train and ride to Paris where Aunt Evelyn, with Nancy and Johnny, were there for her first teaching job. The men of the family were away, occupied with a small disturbance we call World War II. So, from the first thoughts i had in my head, we would spend at least one month a weekend together until we approached the end of high school.

She was the first daughter in my mother’s Prichard generation. Here, she is with our Aunt Bettye Kate Prichard Hall.

She was the leader in the Prichard offspring. Johnny, her younger brother was between Nancy and me. Then there was Martha and Joe, and the Florida Prichards, Butch. Tim, Pam, Mike, Patrice, and Mary Colleen, when they could get to Tennessee or we could get to Florida.

Nancy was always very special to me. She and my sister, Martha had a very special relationship.

Since i learned of her passing last week, memories keep popping up at unexpected moments:

The side yard of our home, probably 1950 or 1951: We played cowboys. My cousin Johnny shot me with his cap pistol. i dropped my six gun and fell to the ground. The other three children stood around me. i recalled the final words of a hero on one of my oaters and emoted with the best of them, finally expiring playtime, closing my eyes, and rolling my head to the side. Dead cowboy.

Nancy was caught up in the moment and began to cry. Even when i jumped up and cavorted to show i was alive, she kept crying. Even when we declared the game was over, Nancy cried at the dead cowboy. It was a good ten to fifteen minutes before we finally got her to wipe her tears and return to being a normal child.

She cried because she cared.

When our grandmother, “Granny,” chopped of the head of a garter snake in our backyard, Nancy cried.

When Granny preparing for supper mid-morning, she twirled a chicken by the neck, snapping the head off. The headless chicken was running frantically around the yard. The other children were laughing at the sight. Nancy cried.

After Thanksgiving in 1954, we took off to Nashville on Saturday for the movie at the Loew’s Theater on Church Street. The area was our most frequented spot in Nashville. We shopped at Harvey’s, Cain-Sloan, and Caster-Knott. This outing was strictly for the movie. The family women all wanted to see “Three Coins in a Fountain.”

After many twists and turns in the romantic comedy drama, the three women (the coins) end up with their men, and Frank Sinatra croons the title song.

Nancy cried all the way home.

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About five years earlier, the two families had gathered on our great uncle’s farm on the corner of Hickory Ridge Road and Blair Lane. “Papa” and Aunt Corrine Wynne had a picnic dinner in the front yard. The adults went into the living room and began to talk about important things. The five children, tired of their usual activities of chasing chickens, playing Red Rover, etc. wandered into the pasture bordering Hickory Ridge Road.

Nancy became enthralled with the abundant prickly pear cacti, which were blooming at the time, amidst the grasses.

Wishing to collect some, she picked them and put them in the back pockets of her jeans. By the time we got back to the farmhouse, the barbs of the prickly pears were sticking through the jeans and lodging into Nancy’s rear end.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the living room. Nancy lay across Aunt Corrine’s lap in the chair by the side window (more light to see). With her mother hovering over the two, Aunt Corrine, with her tweezers poised, was picking each barb from Nancy’s rear end.

She cried then from pain, but we laughed a lot about that incident later.

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Nancy was legendary for wrapping presents, whether it was Christmas, birthday, or other special events. The decorative exterior was not out of the ordinary. But inside, ahh, inside, was a puzzle. Nancy used more scotch tape than most people keep in their household goods. Every seam, every flaw in the packaging, even the tape itself had been covered with scotch tape. It would take extra time just to get inside.

Her scotch tape was a family legend.

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i wish everyone could have seen Nancy and her brother dance. When we visited Red Bank while we were in high school, i went to several of their school sock hops. The two of them could do any dance together. They flowed across the floor. They danced at the hop and were often the center of attention. i wish i could have danced like that.

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i have a special first with Nancy. She had married and moved to St. Augustine, Florida where her husband worked for the telephone company. i was a junior at Castle Heights Military Academy. On spring break, i chose to take a bus to Jacksonville to spend the week with my aunt and uncle. But one day, i went to Cape Canaveral for a day with Nancy and her family.

She cooked her first meal for a guest. Me. It was a six-course extravaganza. She was learning her timing on how to have a meal: first course, the salad; second course, the bread, it had not been ready for the salad, and the rest of the meal wasn’t cooked yet; third course, the potatoes and beans, the meat wasn’t ready yet; dessert was served without a hitch.

It was all delicious. i guess she had grown up. She didn’t cry. But we did laugh that evening and many times afterwards.

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When her mother became ill with Parkinson’s Disease and eventually dementia, Nancy was a saint. She took care of that wonderful woman in spite of many in conveniences to herself. She was with her whenever she was needed. She loved her mother.

There are many other Nancy stories that are part of our family’s lore. i will keep paving those pop into my head at unexpected moments.

Did i mention she was beautiful? She was. Growing up, she resembled a young Elizabeth Taylor.

Nancy was one of my closest relatives. i never spent enough time with her.

i miss you, Nancy.

Rest in Peace. You deserve it.

Long Ago and Far Away

A Pocket of Resistance, Sea Stories

i have too much on my hands to get it all done before i leave for another place. i would like to publish posts at least four times a week, if not more. i have six books in various stages of completion (none are completed) i would like to finish. i have established a “kick the bucket” check list and narrative for a guide to whomever is left behind to clean up my mess.

An Aside: My sister was the executor for our parents and aunt, and i was the same for my father-in-law and helped a Navy widow across the street. There are some excellent check lists for such things as funeral, burial, social security, other financial matters, as well as personal matters. The VA provides one that is excellent and also includes information for veterans and military retirees.

Then, there are all of the things i want to do around the house. Hang some outside lights, raise my flagpole a bit, clean up and repair some hardscape, organize the garage mess, put all of my paperwork in order.

This is all to be done while i play golf one or two times a week, would like to practice more, and go to doctors, dentists, optometrists, specialists, not to mention lab tests…aha, i’ve created another checklist.

So in this clean-up-things yesterday, i found some old treasures. Cassette tapes exchanged with dear people while i was deployed going back fifty years. In three boxes, i also found slides. i took about a gazillion when my ships were carrying Koreans to Vietnam and back to Pusan.

It is outright fun to look at them and remember. So another project has been added. Here are a few of the initial results:

The fading is bad on this one, but if you look closely, the ship tied to the Delong pier in Qui Nhon, Vietnam, is the USNS Barrett (T-AP-198). The photo was taken from the bridge of the Barrett’s sister ship, the USNS Geiger (T-AP-197). It is the only time the two were in the same port in my year, 1970, aboard. The two rotated between Pusan, Korea and several ports in Vietnam, carrying Republic of Korea troops back and forth. They were on a 22-day cycle with a six-day respite in Sasebo, Japan for maintenance, resupply, and refueling.

The Geiger was relieved by the third ship of this type, the USNS Upshur (T-AP-196) about half-way through my tour. In the late 1940s, the three were built by American President Lines to be cruise liners, but were bought by the Navy to serve as troop and dependent carriers as the Korean War began. They performed that mission in the Atlantic and the Pacific until 1965 when the mission was to carry the ROK troops and officers. The 1500 troops were berthed in below deck compartments and the officers, including my 18-personnel unit above decks, which retained the configuration of cruise liners. I was a lieutenant junior grade (LTJG) and served as executive officer of the unit. It was a wild and crazy year.

A US Navy swift boat comes alongside as Geiger enters Qui Nhon. The base was an Army base while the swift boats and harbor security was run across the bay at a Navy location with the generic name of “market time.” Several of my unit went across numerous times with the idea of giving the sailors there a bit of a morale booster. Our units, as far as i know, were the only US military in country that wore our regular khaki uniforms and carried US Dollars. We were popular.

Some time in the late spring, early summer, Jim Harding learned i was on the ship. Jim, called “Beetle” by family members and myself, was in charge of the Army’s 101st Calvary medivac helicopters (Jim, correct me if i got the title wrong) based near Qui Nhon. He showed up when we pulled into port and i hosted him with a dinner on board — those meals were exquisite. On the next go-round, he invited me out to the 101st’s base. He took me on a tour of the country side with his driver and armed guard.

A 2,000-year old Buddhist temple (Before you ask, the swaztika is not from Germany. From Wikipedia:

The swastika is also used in other Asian religions, including Buddhism and Jainism.

The swastika is a sacred symbol in Hinduism that has many meanings: 

  • Direction: When facing right, the swastika represents the universe’s evolution, and when facing left, it represents the universe’s involution. 
  • Good fortune: The swastika is also a symbol of prosperity, good luck, and well-being. The word “swastika” comes from the Sanskrit word svastika, which means “conducive to well-being”. 
  • Spiritual purity: The swastika is also a sign of spiritual purity. 
  • The swastika is also used in other Asian religions, including Buddhism and Jainism: 

Here is my Lebanon, Tennessee friend at the temple. He and his driver took me all over the countryside in a day’s outing after i had spent the night in his hutch with five or six other Army officers. After dinner of steak and beer, we went to the hutch and someone pulled out an LP album they had gotten. It was “Woodstock,” the two-record set of all of the music at the renown festival. It was the first time, i had heard the music.

Beetle is the younger brother of my best friend, Henry Harding. i practically lived at their house growing up. The three of us ran around together all of the time. Seeing him in Vietnam was one of the brightest moments of my tour.

To conclude this show and tell time, here is LTJG Jewell, executive officer of Military Sea Transport Service (MSTS, later in the year, renamed Military Sealift Command, or MSC) in fatigues, i thought Beetle got them for me, but he says he didn’t. i remain puzzled as to how i got them. i am on a hill above a Vietnamese village.

This was the only time i was outside of our port areas. The circuit of my two ships began by stopping at Qui Nhon to debark and then embark troops of the ROK Oak Leaf Division, primarily a supply division. The ship’s second stop was Nha Trang where we repeated the troop exchange. These were troops from the Tiger division, the Korean version of marines and known from their fierce fighting. i was told they had learned how to fight from the Turks during the Korean War.

More later.