Memorial Day, again--

My slim, tall father would somersault backward out of the tail...

Memorial Day with marching bands on Main Street, and I am thinking of my father, Hubert L. Youmans. A Georgia sharecropper's child, he joined the Army Air Corps (aka our Air Force) at seventeen and flew as tail gunner out of RAF Bassingbourn in the B17 Incendiary Blonde (91st Bombardment Group, 322nd BS) during World War II. The crew lost just one man--on the very last day that the position of mid waist gunner was used in the war, a piece of shrapnel killed mid waist gunner Blaine Corbin. In the picture below, Corbin is missing. Some day I'll make a site for my father and include his notes on the day his friend died.

Later, my father served stateside in Korea, and he retired as a major in the reserves. He attended Emory and LSU and worked as a research chemist and as Professor of Analytical Chemistry. He is an example of how sheer drive and tenacity and the desire to learn and to make something of a life can take a human being far.

Back Row - Left to Right 2nd Lt. Ivar Hendrickson, Bombardier; S/Sgt Bufford Brown, Engineer; 

S/Sgt Paige Paris, Radio Operator; S/Sgt Edward Fitzpatrick, Ball Turret Gunner; 

S/Sgt. Hubert L. Youmans, Tailgunner  Front Row - Left to Right

2nd Lt. Otto Bremer, Navigator; 2nd Lt. Bill Snipes, Pilot; 1st Lt. Glen Crumbliss, Co-Pilot

I also had six uncles who served in World War II, five of them my mother's brothers. (I don't know that much about where each was stationed, though several were in the Pacific theatre. My father's younger brother was in Germany and France, at least part of the time, and married a Frenchwoman.) Many times I was told that my maternal grandmother--Lila Eugenia Arnold Morris, a small-town matriarch, a woman who had faith that she already lived in the Kingdom of God, a woman of strong will--spent hours on her knees every night, praying for their safe return. All five of her boys came marching home.

It would be interesting to know more about the military past of my family. I know the names and something of the history of a few Georgia Confederate soldiers in my mother's family (my eldest, when small, always asked why we were on the wrong side of the war.) Col. James Washington Hance died at Gettysburg, leaving behind a family of little girls. I wonder how they fared in the wretched aftermath in the South--would be curious to know how they grew up in that time. I don't really know much about my father's family during the Civil War.

Probably I know more about my earlier military ancestors. My direct ancestor, Col. John Thomas, came to this country from Wales and founded the Spartan Regiment in upstate South Carolina. He and his wife, Jane Black Thomas, are regarded as notables in the history of the American Revolution, and they produced a mighty clan of children, also notable in Revolutionary history--as were their sons-in-law. (For a colorful account of Jane, see "Three South Carolina Sites Associated With Revolutionary "Feminist" Jane Black Thomas (1720-1811." She also has a Wikipedia page here.)

I wonder how feisty my ancestors were, the ones who lived elsewhere. While I think of myself as a mild and peaceable person, clearly I am a sprig on a militant tree. And that tree is watered by blood.

The body of Colonel Hance is mentioned
in this graphic account.

I made this little post in memory of my father and in honor of my cousin Frank Morris, now retired from a life of service to the Navy. He'll probably tell me if I've made a mistake, at least on the maternal side of things! But of course Memorial Day really belongs to those who died in war. We still have plenty of them to remember, known and unknown.

Miss Lila and Miss Kate's boys on Memorial Day

The Incendiary Blonde.  91st Bomb Group. 322nd Squadron, flying out
of RAF Bassingbourn. My father is the young man all the way to the right. I
believe he had reached the mature age of 19 when this photo was taken. It was
late in the war, and his friend Blaine Corbin, the mid waist gunner, had just been
killed. Life is full of ironies, and he died from shrapnel wounds on the last day
mid waist gunners were used. The crew was headed by 2nd Lt. William K.
Snipes, shown at center front. The navigator, 1st Lt. Otto Bremer, is on his
left, and the co-pilot, 1st Lt. Glen Crumbliss, to his right. Standing: 2nd Lt.
Ivar Hendrickson, Bombardier; Staff Sgt. Bufford Brown, Engineer; Staff Sgt.
 Paige Paris, Radio Operator; Staff Sgt. Edward Fitzpatrick, Ball Turret Gunner.
And then there's my father, hand on hip, the teenage tailgunner...

It's Memorial Day, and my youngest is on the march, drumming in several parades honoring veterans and the day. "Drummer Rigby," hacked on the streets of Woolwich, passes through my mind and moves on into his death.

I remember my maternal grandmother, Lila Eugenia Arnold Morris of Collins, Georgia. She was said to have worn holes in her bedside rug, so often was she kneeling, praying her five sons home from World War II. They all came back to her--Louis, Marvin, Hugh, Leonard, and James, although they have now been returned to her in another way, the last Morris brother having died a few years ago. Only my mother, the baby among Miss Lila's children, and her sister Julia remain among the living.

My father, Hubert Lafay Youmans, and his brother Dafford (a version of the Welsh Dafydd, it seems, as I also had an aunt named Dilly, close to Welsh Dilwys) also returned to Georgia and my paternal grandmother, Kate Deriso Youmans. My father joined the Army Air Corp when he was seventeen, and served as a tailgunner in World War II. They are all gone now, passed into the peace of death.

Patriotism is long out of fashion with writers and artists, it appears. And yet I thank the boys and young men they were for risking their sweet lives to bring on what they hoped would be a better world.

The milliner's wedding

Spotted on Twitter: I was amused to see a mention of a post of mine about the wedding (long time ago--my mother turned out to be a belated ninth child) of my Morris grandparents in the 'zine, Wedding Flowers, just below a note on Natalie Portman's vegan-and-wildflower wedding. If you'd like a peek at the young milliner's headdress and magnolia bouquet, go here.

The Magnolia Bouquet

The wedding of my maternal grandparents, William Leicester Morris and Lila Eugenia Arnold, took place in the merry month of May almost a century ago--May 12, 1907.

The gown and veil are marvelous, but take a look at the magnolia blossom bouquet. This is one of my favorite pictures of my grandmother, right up there with the Japanese play and the Bible-and-pompadour photographs. I believe that she made the gown and headdress with veil.

W. L. Morris (January 10, 1869-September 22, 1955) was born in Washington Country, Georgia; he had a store in Collins, and he built public buildings and residences. The house he constructed for my grandmother is a major site in the world of my imagination and has appeared in a number of my stories. Fig trees, grape arbors, a towering persimmon tree, wonderful porches, raised house pillars, Queen Anne towers and porches, a well on a porch, outbuildings, and many other elements of that magical realm still are places to "go" in my mind.

He and my grandmother had nine children, eight of whom survived to adulthood. They could not have been more surprised by the last baby--my mother, the "miracle child." W. L. and Lila were old-fashioned pillars of their community, devout people who added a good deal of beauty to the world. They lived creative lives, my grandfather with his house-building and carpentry, my grandmother with her needlework and household arts. Her pantry was a wondrous thing. Their lives were very "dense" and full with labor, creation, gardening, child-rearing, and strong religious belief that gave shape and meaning to all else.

While the postwar era and depression meant that they lost much financially, what strikes me is that their acts and days were creative and fertile. What they made had usefulness and gave aesthetic pleasure. How much we came down when so many ordinary people gave up making things in the realm of "useful" and domestic arts--and after that came a time when we stripped away the beautiful and were left with the purely intellectual. And now we have the great effort to bring "a return to beauty" in the arts...

Lila Eugenia Arnold has already popped up on the Palace. She was born in Triplett, Georgia, August 17, 1883, and died February 13, 1968. She lived a long life, and although she was away on a visit at the time of her death, she was still living in the lovely house my grandfather built for her. Too many elderly ladies are toted off and stuffed into "homes." My grandparent's house began as a single room, where young Mrs. Morris would rock her first baby with a pistol on her lap. Times were wild in the south Georgia countryside, not so very long after the war.

Twigs on the family tree

Sally Jo Hance

The daughter of Sallie E. Latimer and James Washington Hance, Sally Jo is my maternal great-grandmother. Born in Turin, Georgia on December 27th, 1859, she was the third of four daughters; her sisters were Blanch Corainne, Daisie Eugenia, and Mary Alice Elizabeth (called Mamie).

When Sally Jo was three, her father was killed at the battle of Gettysburg, while serving as Lieutenant Colonel for the 53rd Regiment, Georgia Infantry. He had earlier served with the 19th, and appears to have been made Colonel on the day he died, July 2, 1863. James Washington Hance never saw his youngest daughter, and Sallie was left with four little girls. She applied for a Confederate widow's pension in 1891.

Sally Jo Hance Arnold is buried with her husband in Greenwood Cemetery, Atlanta. In old age, she lived with my grandmother, Lila Eugenia Arnold Morris, and she died at our family home in Collins, Georgia on June 28, 1939. My grandmother is shown next to her mother here. More about her anon, because she appears in other strange and wonderful pictures...