A Beautiful Day for a Homegoing

A beautiful day for a funeral - you might be wondering if you read that wrong. But that's how the preacher started the funeral service for Darrell's aunt today. Annie Pearl needed a few more weeks to reach her 96th birthday. This picture was taken when she was 91 on one of her rare visits to our house. 

She was a wonderful, loving Christian woman. The kind of woman that you know ran into heaven with the biggest smile ever on her face. Her three older sisters moved on up there ahead of her. Her parents and her husband and her son all already made the journey home. Her closest relative was one beloved granddaughter. She had many nieces and nephews that she enjoyed talking to and hearing about the great nieces and nephews and the great-great ones too. Let me think. There were even some great-great-great nieces and nephews. Families have a way of expanding, but we all could look to Annie Pearl and admire her steadfast faith and courage in facing some extremely hard times in her life. 

She had been married a while before World War II came along, and her husband joined the Army and was shipped overseas. She moved into an apartment and got a job at a factory in town the way so many soldiers' wives did. And then she watched the mailbox for letters. Sometimes they came in bunches and sometimes he got her letters the same way. He was in some of the worst fighting where most of the men in his unit did not return home. That stayed with him the rest of his life. 

Annie told the story about him coming home. She was expecting him on a certain day. She'd rolled up her hair and was planning to have the perfect homecoming for him. But he got an earlier train and got to town in the middle of the night. That was back in the days when front doors weren't all locked and so the hallway door that led up to their apartment was open. He ran up the steps to knock on Annie's door. She always laughed when she told about her hair still being in curlers. I doubt he noticed. 

I used hints of that homecoming story in my new Rosey Corner book, Love Comes Home, that releases July 1. Not the same, but the early arrival part. 

Annie Pearl's "going home" service was lovely as we celebrated this good woman's life. She gained much as she entered her eternal reward. We lost much when she suffered a stroke last week. She wasn't able to speak after that, and slowly she continued to drift away until finally she ran on home to her own special homecoming. 

We'll miss hearing all her great stories about the family. We never listen enough. 

Freedom's Price

 Better than honor and glory, and History's iron pen, Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. ~Richard Watson Gilder


Memorial Day weekend - the weekend that launches summer. Schools are out or will be soon. Seniors are graduating and getting ready to grab life by the horns and see what's next. Some young men and women came to that stage of life during a time of war. Their next thing was joining the military and fighting for freedom and their country. Many gave their all. This sign I saw at the traveling exhibit of the Vietnam War Memorial tells it all. The toll of dead and wounded and missing number in the thousands in every war. 

But a picture like this one brings home that truth in gut wrenching fashion. Row after row of crosses mark the graves of our soldiers who stepped up to the line for their country and did not come home. Tomorrow, Memorial Day, our nation pauses to remember and honor those soldiers.


These heroes are dead. They died for liberty - they died for us. They are at rest.  They sleep in the land they made free, under the flag they rendered stainless, under the solemn pines, the sad hemlocks, the tearful willows, and the embracing vines. They sleep beneath the shadows of the clouds, careless alike of sunshine or of storm, each in the windowless Place of Rest.  Earth may run red with other wars - they are at peace. In the midst of battle, in the roar of conflict, they found the serenity of death. I have one sentiment for soldiers living and dead: cheers for the living; tears for the dead.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

My father didn't serve in the army. He was exempted from the military in World War II because he was a farmer, but I've known many men, including two of my uncles and two of my husband's uncles, who did serve our country during that war. Then young men of my generation faced the challenge of the Vietnam War and many served with honor and courage. Still now, men and women are putting themselves in harm's way to defend our way of life and fight for freedom. May we ever keep them in our prayers. 

Do you have family members who have served or who are even now part of the military serving our country? 

A Day to Remember Those Who Gave Their All

"It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle." (Norman Schwarzkopf)

Do you know why we have a long Memorial Day weekend? Some people think of it as a day to decorate the graves of their loved ones who have died. And that does happen at cemeteries across the country. But actually Memorial Day began as Decoration Day back in the 1860s after the Civil War. Wives, mothers, and sisters began decorating the graves of the fallen soldiers. It's thought as many as 700,000 men lost their lives in the Civil War, a lot of graves to decorate. Perhaps the women, who began the tradition, picked a day in late May because they had many blooming flowers for the grave decorations. 

It wasn't until 1967 that Federal law changed the name of the remembrance holiday officially to Memorial Day. The next year the date was changed from May 30 to the last Monday in May. Not everybody was happy with that change because they thought the real significance of the holiday - remembering those who'd been killed in wars - might be lost when the day became part of a three day weekend. 

Most communities have special observances to honor our soldiers. In our town, we have what is called the "healing field" where soldiers from our area who died in wars are honored with a flag. When you think about how that kind of memorial could be repeated in every town all across our country, you begin to realize the sacrifice so many have made to keep our country free and to stand up for the freedom of other countries as well. This weekend, thousands and thousands of flags will be placed on veterans' graves in honor of their service and sacrifices.


At our church this morning, we had two Vietnam War veterans. Men who answered the call when their country asked for their service. They made it home. Many did not. Over 58,000 soldiers were killed in that war. 11,465 of those killed in action were younger than twenty. The Korean War claimed almost 40,000 American casualties. World War II saw at least 60 million people worldwide killed. U.S. Military casualties were 416,800. World War I, the war those who fought it thought would end all wars, resulted in 126,000 American soldiers' death. 

My books often have scenes of war in the stories, and in my research for these scenes I have read many great stories of the men and women who have served our country in time of war. Most of these soldiers were ordinary men, and sometimes women, who responded with extraordinary valor when they stood in the gap to defend their country. Wars throughout history have claimed the lives of some of the finest among us and are still doing so today. Let us pray for peace and for our soldiers to come home safely. May we never forget those who did not. God bless America and our soldiers and their families!

Arlington National Cemetery

A Day to Remember

"The dead soldier's silence sings our national anthem." (Aaron Kilbourn)

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day after the Civil War when the wives, mothers, and sisters began decorating the graves of the fallen soldiers. Slowly as the years passed, Decoration Day, observed on May 30, began to be called Memorial Day, but it wasn't until1967 that Federal law changed the name officially. The year after that the Uniform Holiday Act was passed and the observance of Memorial Day changed to the last Monday in May. Not everybody was happy with changing the date just to give people a three day weekend. Many felt it would take away from the original reason for the day - honoring those who gave their all for our country. 

The picture above is of the Memorial Field in my county. The flags represent soldiers from our area killed in service to their country. The memorial could be repeated in every town - big and small - all across our country. Thousands and thousands of flags were put on veterans' graves this Memorial Day in honor of their sacrifices.

At church this morning, one of the men, who served during the Vietnam War, was wearing a pin showing the number of Americans killed in that war. 58,169. The average age of the soldiers killed was 23. 11,465 of those killed in action were younger than 20.

I looked farther back. The Korean War claimed close to 40,000 American casualties. In World War II, 60 million people worldwide were killed. U.S. Military casualties were 416,800. In World War I, the war that people at that time believed would be the war to end all wars, 126,000 American soldiers perished.

The dead in the Civil War is thought to be around 700,000. So you can see how there were many who were left behind to grieve for loved ones. They didn't want to forget and so they remembered by decorating the graves.

We continue to remember today. Tomorrow, Monday, at 3 p.m., a moment of silence will be observed for all those who died in service to our country. May we never forget the debt we owe to those men and women willing to give their all so our flag can continue to fly over a free country. America, the Beautiful!  

March Madness

Some of you who know me or have been following my blog for a while know I love basketball. I started listening to the UK Wildcat games when I was just a kid and got my first little transistor radio. I don't know why. Nobody in my family had ever attended UK or any college. We were a farm family. College wasn't expected or encouraged for my parents. My mother graduated from high school one day and got married the next. My dad, who was ten years older than her, attended one day of high school, didn't like it, and never went back. It wasn't that he didn't like learning. He worked algebra problems for fun. Very few problems stumped him, but he didn't always get the answers the way our teachers told us to. It was just that school and sitting in a classroom weren't for him. 

I don't remember my parents listening to the Kentucky ballgames. They probably followed the scores. Most Kentuckians embraced Rupp's basketball teams. They were winners and that made Kentuckians proud. And it always gave you a talking connection. A simple "How about those Cats?" could get the conversation ball rolling almost as good as talking about the weather. Still can. Kids grew up bouncing basketballs on their driveways or spots worn bare of grass in their yards and they imagined themselves winners like the Wildcats. To give a little perspective of how much we got used to UK winning, right now the Wildcats have a home court winning streak of 50 (I think) but under Coach Rupp, the Wildcats went 12 years without a home loss. Fans were stunned when that streak was broken. Some of those years must have been when I started following the Cats.

And so, I love March Madness - until my team gets beat anyway. Then I tend to lose interest.  I always fill out one of the brackets - not for a pool, but just for fun - and nearly always have KY winning it all even when I know that's an unlikely scenario. I don't study the teams. I just pick them on whims. My whims weren't too good this year.

I think we need sports. It's good to have teams that we can follow. Players we can cheer on. I've been reading about the World War 2 years. The headlines for those years include a lot of sports stories. It was good to have baseball hitting streaks to think about occasionally instead of all the war news. It also makes me think about how many of those young men of the 1940s who stepped up to the enlistment tables and volunteered to fight were eighteen and nineteen year old kids just like the ballplayers running up and down basketball courts. 

Those kids picked up guns and began fighting. They piloted planes heavy with bombs. They crawled across the African countryside in tanks. They manned anti-aircraft guns on naval ships. They huddled in foxholes. They charged the beachheads. They ended up in prison camps in Japan and Germany. Many of them died too young. Others survived the frontlines of the conflict but were never the same. Without a doubt, as Tom Brokaw says in his book, the greatest generation.

Rising to the challenge. That's what winning basketball teams do and our country knows the freedom we have today because of the men and women who rose to the challenge during those war years.

Thanks for reading. Now to catch up on some scores and see how many more bad picks I made on my brackets.