Trail of Tears State Park

Last weekend we traveled down to Trail of Tears State Park which is just north of Cape Girardeau, MO. It was an easy drive from our home in suburban St. Louis. We were pleasantly surprised by this park. The museum was nice and explained the story of the Trail of Tears and how this park was part of the trail where the Cherokee crossed the Mississippi River.
The park grounds comprised a large area and the park had more trails than we had time to take. We took a nice trail to an scenic overlook, where we enjoyed a nice view of the Mississippi and a could easily see all the way over to Anna, IL.

Log of a Cowboy

I actually read this book when I was 14 (a gift from my Uncle Garry) and it was with much pleasure that I have read it again. It is a "fictional" account of a trail drive in 1882 from Mexico to Montana. The author, was an actual cowboy and his accounts and stories from the trail are so authentic that most historians consider this the one most important pieces of literature that would really explain to people of the future what a cattle drive was really like. My guess is that the author put all of his highlights of several cattle drives into one story.
The hero of the story is a teenager who slips into the narrator role and obviously is the author of the story. Most everything you would expect from westerns were in the story, but without the cliche's and exaggerations. There were stampedes, one gunfight, gambling, "dance hall" girls, and an 80 mile dry drive that made you thirsty just reading it. But, the main thing the cowboys dealt with was loneliness and homesickness, in fact, they were so lonely for companionship they would welcome con-men to ride with them for a time, even though most of them lost a lot of money on a horse race one of them set up!
The not so honorable side (when judged by today's standards) of the Texas cowboys, such as racism and shooting a grizzly bear and her two cubs just for sport, was also in plain view. But, overall, especially having grown up in Kansas and being a big fan of westerns as a kid, it made me long to be able to go back in time and go on a cattle drive. A unique time in our history that really only lasted a few decades after the Civil War.
The cowboys after driving the cattle over 3,000 miles weren't at all sorry to see the cows delivered, but they were very sad to sell their horses before their train trip back home. The author put it best as they arrived at the railroad terminus and unsaddled their horses for what they knew would be the last time: But at no time in my life, before or since, have I felt so keenly the parting between man and horse...For on the trail an affection springs up between a man and his mount which is almost human. Every privation which he endures his horse endures with him, --carrying him through falling weather, swimming rivers by day and riding in the lead of stampedes by night, always faithful, always willing, and always patiently enduring every hardship, from exhausting hours under the saddle to the sufferings of a dry drive...Their bones may be bleaching in some coulee by now, but the men who knew them then can never forget them or the part they played in that long drive.

Veteran's Day

Thursday after school I had the privilige of speaking at the Orchid Terrace Retirement Community in South County. It was a long day at school and quite frankly I wasn't really in the mood to speak, but when I started meeting the residents, I had no regrets. I gave my speech about Harold Hetzler, a WWII pilot that lost his life in that war, then gave my slideshow presentation about my research and journey into Harold's life. They were a really great audience and seemed to be really moved by the presentation. They also had lots of good questions. It was a really nice experience for me and I would love to speak to them again. I enjoyed meeting with two veterans, one named Earl (in the hat in front) who was in the Battle of the Bulge and one named Harold (In yellow in the back) who was a tank driver under General Patton. Sarah also spoke with a lady who was from Germany and had quite a conversation about their homeland and Sarah learned a lot about how bad it was in Germany during the war from her. On a side note, I was surprised to see one of the ladies I met, who was 91, going on facebook as we left the common room! This was all a profound experience for me and the residents were so moved by my presentation at the sad points, that I myself teared up a bit during the talk.

Veteran's Day Speaking Event:

On November 11th (Veteran's Day), I will be speaking at the Orchid Terrace Independent Retirement Community, 4474 Butler Hill Rd., St. Louis, MO 63128. I will be presenting, for the first time, a slide show version of my award winning speech More than Just a Name. The presentation will last about 30 minutes and I will be happy to answer questions about my research at the conclusion of the talk. I will be speaking at 4:00 pm.

Kansas City!

Last summer we won 4 free round trip tickets to ride on Amtrak. We finally took advantage of them last weekend and took an overnight trip to downtown Kansas City. It was Teddy's first train trip and he really loved it. He held up amazingly well on each of the 5 hour train rides. He especially liked walking back to the Cafe Car and picking out treats to bring back to his seat. Our host daughter Sarah from Germany went with us and also really enjoyed her first American train trip.
Teddy had been looking forward to Kansas City for a long time. KC is supposed to have more fountains than any other U.S. city and as my readers know, Teddy loves fountains. Luckily, he was not dissapointed. There were fountains everywhere and as many and different types as he could handle. One fountain on the Crown Plaza even danced to music on the hour!
We ended up staying at the Westin right in Crown Plaza and luckily for us, right near all of the fountains. Other highlights of our trip included Fritz's restaurant, which featured burgers loaded with hashbrowns delivered to your table by a small train! The National WWI Museum was surprisingly good and has a really nice tower from which you get an excellent view of downtown. But, speaking of views, the thing that I will always remember was the view of downtown from our 14th story hotel room...it was really spectacular! And one more thing: We also met Sue's cousin Joey and his girlfriend Daria for dinner and a night tour of the Plaza fountains.
--Teddy is really growing up and we managed the trip, had a lot of fun and made some good memories.

The Drillmaster of Valley Forge

This book, written by Paul Lockhart, was recommended and loaned to me by my friend, fellow Toastmaster and history enthusiast Howard Brandt. This book is about Baron von Steuben, a German/Prussian officer who was headed to greatness under Friedrich der Große (Fredrick the Great) and was personally tutored by him in the art of warfare in Prussia's elite military school. Steuben bravely and efficiently had his mettle tested as a leader in battle in European wars, but then something went wrong, his career was ruined by a backstabbing fellow officer and Steuben found himself unemployed and begging for work for several years in Europe. When the American Revolution broke out, Steuben, like so many foreign officers, finagled his way into the Continental Army by lying about his rank and wealth back in Europe. He actually was of noble birth, but his family was very poor. But in America, where one could start over, he actually became the great general that he claimed to be and deep down most have known himself to be. His contribution to winning the American Revolution and setting up the American military to become a future world power can hardly be overstated. When Steuben arrived at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, he found a hungry and ragtag army that had lost all pride in itself. Steuben knew that by teaching them discipline and drill, as only he knew how to do it, would instill pride and efficiency into the Army that would allow them to hold on, gain the respect of the French and eventually win the French over as an ally, which in the end helped us defeat Great Britain. The pride and discipline weren't just for show. The Army after Steuben's drills would not panic on the field of battle, could easily use complicated maneuvers to change positions and could retreat in an orderly, military manner, which inflicted maximum casualties on the Redcoats, even when they won a battle.

Steuben was great with the American troops, he recognized that these weren't Prussian peasants who would do what he asked without question. He used a mixture of harsh, scary discipline along with humor and was known for his efficient use of English curse words, learning them as he went, much to the delight of his men. He also understood that to be a leader and a good officer, you would have to suffer and drill with your men, a practice the British found abhorrent and which the Americans only changed because of Steuben's insistence. Steuben's men in the end did their best for him, because he took good care of them and gave them what they needed.

Steuben wasn't just a good drillmaster, he literally wrote the book on army regulations that taught all American officers how to drill their troops and conduct battle in a uniform manner. He also conceived of the idea for the American military academies and finally it was Steuben who came up with a model for the peacetime army using large numbers of militia to supplement a small standing army (he borrowed this in part from Switzerland).

In the end, Steuben's contributions are overshadowed by other foreign officers such as Lafayette and he is little researched, but in my opinion, it was indeed Steuben who put the backbone, knowledge and pride into the Continental Army at a time when it was desperately needed. I highly recommend this book if you like to read revolutionary war history.

Bee Tree Park

Another favorite park of ours is Bee Tree Park. Bee Tree is nestled in extreme southeast St. Louis County and is therefore not far at all from our home. It features the most amazing views of the Mississippi River in the St. Louis area. You can see the river below and to the right on the photo. Teddy is especially fond of this fountain and will spend all day there if we let him. The mansion in the background was built by a Southwestern Bell founder in 1927 and it is supposed to be haunted.
In addition to the great overlooks there are a couple of nice trails that we take as well as a big fishing pond. I have never had any luck fishing here, but I have heard of others catching large catfish out of it.

To Serve Them All My Days

By R.F. Delderfield was published in 1974. It is the first fiction book that I have read in a while. Fiction can often give us more insights into the world than non-fiction and that is certainly the case with this semi-autobiographical, historical fiction novel. The book starts during the latter years of WWI and follows the life of David Powlett-Jones, a shell shocked WWI veteran who finds work as a history teacher at a private boys school in rural England. The book gives a good picture of post WWI England and mixes in the politics and history of the 1920's and 1930's.

The book gives especially truthful and candid insight into the life of being a teacher. Even as a public high school teacher in America, I found that I had more in common with the problems of early 20th century private boarding school teachers than not. Things just haven't changed so much. Delderfield especially captured the current mood of our country on following the curriculum carefully and basing everything on test scores, as opposed to actual great teaching, which sometimes and most times isn't the same thing. I would recommend this book to every teacher, everyone who might want to teach and anyone who wants to understand schools and teachers better. Obviously, Delderfield had been a teacher himself, his descriptions of the relationships between the teachers, the teachers and the students and the teachers and the administrators was dead on! Finally, for my pure history fanatics, there is plenty of real history in this book to make it worth your time and presented with the background of an interesting story.

Dr. Lloyd R. Boutwell

In stark contrast to Ulysses S. Tebbs, an African-American living in his overcrowded parent's home and working hard, manual labor repairing streets, is Dr. Lloyd R. Boutwell. Dr. Boutwell was a resident physician at Barnes Hospital and had recently married his college sweetheart, a young lady from a politically powerful St. Louis family, with whom he shared a beautiful home in the suburb of Kirkwood. While these two men were leading very different lives, the Great War would be a cruel equalizer and both would share the same fate.

Dr. Boutwell was born on October 26, 1889 in the small city of Hamilton, Missouri, northeast of Kansas City, which also happens to be the birthplace of James Cash Penney, the J.C. Penney founder, just 14 years earlier.

Boutwell's father was a farmer and he was the 3rd of 4 children. Undboudtedly, the keystone moment of Boutwell's life, the event that made him who he was, was the death of his mother. According to the 1900 census, his father was a widow, but his little sister was 2 years old. One can assume that his mother was lost in childbirth, but of course, it could have been any number of illnesses, diseases or just an accident. Either, way young Boutwell lost his mother before he was 11 years old. It isn't hard to imagine that this event would motivate him to become a doctor, a doctor who put service to others above all other considerations.

Boutwell was incredibly driven and apparently very sharp as well. He first got his bachelor's degree at Park College near Kansas City, then earned a master's degree at the University of Missouri and finally he graduated from Washington University Medical School, President of his class in 1916. After graduating, he began working at the General Hospital in Kansas City. While at the University of Missouri, he fell in love with Elizabeth Kiskadden, who was from St. Louis. They must have continued their courtship during medical school here in St. Louis and soon he moved back to St. Louis and they were married in August of 1917.

While he was a serious man, he also had an easygoing social side, he was a member of the Phi Beta Pi Fraternity and was known as "Bowser" to his friends.

Already his story was amazing, the son of a widowed farmer with 4 children to feed, going to medical school and marrying the daughter of St. Louis lawyer, but Dr. Boutwell was determined to make an extraordinary difference in the world as a doctor. The Rockefeller Foundation named Dr. Boutwell to be chief of staff of the Man Tung Cho Hospital in China. Dr. Boutwell and Elizabeth were planning on moving to China to serve others when America's entry into WWI changed their plans. The Army Medical Corp inducted him on Jan 6 of 1918 and in May of 1918 he sailed for France, his wife about to give birth to a son he would never see.

The Lady Be Good

by Dennis E. McClendon, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), was first published in 1962, just a few years after the discovery, in the Libyan desert, of a an American B-24 bomber, named the Lady Be Good. The Lady disappeared on April 4, 1943 during the first combat mission for the William Hatton Crew of the 376th Bomb Group based in North Africa. Until the Lady was discovered in the desert, 440 miles south of its original base in 1959, by a crew of oil workers, it was thought that she was shot down over the Mediterranean sea by German night fighters on her return from a bombing mission to Naples, Italy.

The Lady became separated from the rest of her squadron on a pitch dark night and flew right over their base on the Mediterranean coast. When they realized that they might be lost, they radioed for assistance and got a bearing with their Automatic Direction Finder, unfortunately they had already passed the base and their ADF was reading off the backside of the loop, making them think they were still on course, so they continued on. Running out of fuel an hour later and several hundred miles deep into the desert, they bailed out. 8 of the 9 crew members met up on the desert floor, feeling lucky to be alive and surprised to find temperatures around 35 degrees. The 9th crew member never met up with the crew, having died when he impacted the ground. The Crew had little food and they were allowed only one canteen cap full of water each day (at the most) by their pilot as they began their journey northwards, thinking that search planes would find them in a day or two. The environment couldn't have been worse, almost freezing at night and reaching almost 130 degrees by day, coupled with the fine blowing sand that scratched their eyes and parched throats. The men, amazingly, made it 8 or 9 days under these conditions before their superhuman efforts at survival were overcome. Before dying, one of the men had walked 90 miles! In the early 1960's this story intrigued the American public and a massive search for the bodies of the missing crewmen turned up 8 of them, almost perfectly preserved (mummified) by the dry desert conditions. The parachute marker arrows (showing their direction of travel for the search planes that never came) the crew made were still intact as they left them, plus many other items. One item that spoke volumes about their predicament was a piece of parachute, made into a face shield with two slits cut out for eye holes. Two diaries kept during the ordeal were also found. Some of the entries are unbearably, hopelessly sad. A week into the ordeal and at least 2 days without any water at all, the co-pilot, Robert Toner wrote:

Saturday, Apr. 10, 1943. Still having prayer meetings for help. No signs of anything, a couple of birds; good wind from N. Really weak now, can't walk, pains all over, still all want to die. Nites very cold, no sleep.

He would make his last entry two days later. The Lady, except for a few parts that were salvaged and displayed in museums, still remains in the Libyan desert where she crash landed by herself. A haunted ghost ship.

The Hatton Crew, after their initial navigating errors (which may have been exacerbated by the German night fighter attack she survived on that crews first mission) put on a clinic of human endurance and desert survival that is still studied today.

The author concludes the book with a bible verse that in this case was particularly fitting about the role that luck, in this case bad luck, can play in our lives:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor riches to the men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all. --Ecclesiastes, 9:11