I was born and raised in the Vietnam war era, and that was the only war or soldiers my parents ever talked about. The war was wrong, our soldiers worthy only of pity, our leaders were evil, our country was always wrong (at least since the days of the sainted Roosevelt!) I write today as an adult with eyes wide open, finally SEEING my world as it really is, finally through the long process of ridding myself of all those liberal ideas I was raised to believe (but could never quite sign off on). So here is my Veterans Day tribute
Remember our Veterans today!
I never heard much growing up about my relatives' service in the US military-it wasn't a secret, but somehow for various reasons that I won't go into here, we didn't talk much about these brave men, our blood relatives, who risked their lives for our freedom.
It's a little embarrassing that I don't know more about these men, but I'm not going to let that stop me from paying tribute to them here.
My father was a genealogy buff and in his later years, the collector of old photo albums and conversations on tape with some of his many close relatives. I have inherited all this and have not done much with it as of yet-another embarrassment-sorry dad.
At least I have pictures from my father's side. On my mother's side I have nothing but some stories my mother heard when she was young. Sometimes these stories will just pop out of her without warning, and I always want to take some notes so I remember more, but instead just listen. I hope I can convince her to write it all down, so her grandchildren know a little bit about that part of their heritage.
Geez, I wasn't going to get into all this family shit....
So-the rest of this blog will honor all of my relatives (that I know of) who served their country.
My father's mother was one of ten children, and all six of the boys served in WWII in one capacity or another; exactly how I'm not sure, but here's a page from my great-grandfather Arthur Jacobs' album
and the back of the photo, with my dad's notes at the bottom. Top row-Earl, Arthur, Kenneth, second row Mel, Arthur Sr, and Raymond, and Paul seated on the floor.
The next shot is my dad with his uncle Mel-who was in the Navy, obviously.
The information on my mother's side is even sketchier, but I do know that her father, Abraham Mankoff, came to the US as a teenager sometime in the 1910s and enlisted in the army. He had some experience with horses as a boy in Latvia, so he took care of calvary horses somewhere in the desert southwest.
My mother was the youngest of three children; her brother-in-law Morris Rose served in WWII in the Pacific under Pershing for four years. Her brother Lawrence Mankoff didn't come of age until the last year of the war, but he served in Japan in the aftermath of the war (as far as I know).
I'd also like to pay tribute to my father-in-law, John Rozsa,
seen on the right with his business partner of many years. John was born in 1915, so he was a little older and working as a machinist (the trade of his father before him) when the war broke out. Someone looked at his credentials and pulled him out of the line-he spent the war serving his country working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to put this tribute together. I'm so proud of all the brave men and women who serve our country, past, present, and future, and proud to remember my ancestors who played a small part in that noble fight.
Thank you
Arthur, Earl, Melvin, Raymond, Kenneth and Paul Jacobs.
Abraham and Lawrence Mankoff.
Morris Rose.
John Rozsa.
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