Uncle Charles Larson & author (1954)
Men of
Character
memoir
by Gregory E. Larson
Preface: Every year, between Memorial
Day and the Fourth of July, I ponder the sacrifices of those who have served in
the armed forces. It’s a time of year to look at our surroundings, breathe the
summer air, and appreciate what we have.
I’m a
fortunate soul for having grown up around men of character. My role models were
my dad, some uncles and friends of the family, and mentors who answered the
call to serve during World War II. Did I understand the significance of their
service or the harrowing situations they survived? No. I was a carefree kid
from Kansas, spending time with my brothers and friends, with a limited view of
the world. My siblings and I were the typical baby-boomers with a simple
outlook on life: have fun and try not to get into too much trouble. In today’s
American culture, where the idea of tight-knit families and neighborhoods seems
a strange notion, I can look back now with real appreciation, and realize the
impact of the love, nurture and guidance those men gave me. I feel truly
blessed.
Many of the
men that I admired had stared death in the face during the war and they were
literally glad to be alive. Somewhere in their darkest moments of battle, they
held onto dreams of returning home to pursue a life of work and family. During
the ’50s and ’60s they built on those dreams and made them real. The post-World
War II economy was booming and folks were happy — happy the war was over and
happy to be free to raise families in a great country.
Over time, I
saw different qualities in the men that I admired, including my dad. Partly by
osmosis, and partly through conscious decisions, I attempted to emulate what I observed
after spending time with my uncles and other men who were friends of my
parents. In retrospect, I had a basketful of character traits to pick from, and
what a basket it was!
Uncle Charles (Charles
“Shag” Larson, 1924 - 2014), my dad’s older brother, was a significant
role model. He and my dad were very close. They grew up during the depression,
in a family that struggled to stay out of poverty. They excelled in school, and
both served in the war before going to college on the G.I. bill. For the first
ten years of my life, our family and Charles’ family got together three or four
times a year. This was not insignificant, because they lived in Albuquerque and
we lived in Wichita. My dad and Uncle Charles always wanted to spend time
together to fish or play golf.
Charles was
small in stature and soft-spoken. When he talked, people listened. He was a
peaceful man, and happiest when sitting on a riverbank with his fishing pole
propped up before him. Why did Charles and my dad want to be together? Dad was
glad his brother was alive. In my adulthood, I learned of the war stories that
he had kept quiet for so many years.
Charles was an
infantry soldier in the Army. During the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of
1944 he and his fellow soldiers were trapped in a concrete bunker in France.
Cut off from the Allied Forces, they sat in the extreme cold for days, from one
dark hour to the next with dwindling food and water. The Germans advanced and
shelled the bunkers. Charles’ bunker was hit, and several men were killed
instantly. In that moment, at age twenty-one, he became the ranking officer of
the small band of survivors. The Germans shouted for them to open the bunker
and exit. He had a split-second decision to make: Do they resist and die, or do
they surrender and most probably be shot as they exit the bunker? Charles was
the first to exit. Much to his surprise, the Germans didn’t shoot. Over the
next two days they were marched fifty miles in the snow to the German prison
camp Bad Orb. Many of the prisoners
died of starvation or poor medical care during captivity. In April of 1945,
when the allies liberated the camp, Charles weighed 85 lbs. and had to be carried
to an ambulance. After he returned home from WWII, he signed up in the army
reserves, and was sent to the Korean War, where he served as an officer.
As a child, I
always liked being with Uncle Charles. He always had a story or joke to tell,
and he always looked out for me when we were fishing.
Mr. Frazier, (Eugene “Gene” Frazier, 1922 -
present), was another man I admired while growing up. The Frazier
family was part of a large church class which included my parents. It was a
very social group that supported each other as the families grew. There were many camping trips full of swimming, fishing, campfires, and exploring. Mr.
Frazier was always prepared. His family would be first at the campsite, and as
we arrived to set up our camp, he would provide assistance and encouragement,
as well as plenty of fresh popcorn. I admired him for his creativity and
resourcefulness, as well as his positive attitude. The evening campfires were
always next to the Frazier’s campsite because Mr. Frazier had a supply of wood
for the fire, and he refilled everyone’s bowl with popcorn. My brothers and I became close
friends with the Frazier kids. I still keep in touch with Val Frazier, in my
longest-running friendship.
I learned that
Mr. Frazier had been a pilot in the Army Air Corps in the South Pacific during
WWII. At twenty-one years old he was commander of a B-29 crew, in a bomber
that had been designed and built in just a few months. Although it was designed
with a pressurized cabin, the plane had a lot of quirks and flaws that required
constant attention and maintenance. The pilot and the additional ten crew
members had to know how to adjust and adapt the aircraft systems during their flights.
The prospect of not returning had to rattle the minds of the crews each time
they lifted into the air to fly low-level raids over Tokyo. Those who did survive had to cope with the knowledge
that some of their fellow airmen in the other planes didn’t return from their
missions.
B-29 (public domain image)
The mentoring
I received from men who served in WWII continued on through college and graduation.
For my first architectural job, I was hired in Topeka, Kansas as an intern at
the firm of Kiene and Bradley. Mr. Bradley, (Jack R. Bradley, Jr.), was
a true professional and a born leader. When I first met him, I was shocked at
the appearance of his face, which was disfigured and covered with skin grafts,
but I observed a man whose focus and energy was channeled into running a
high-quality design firm in downtown Topeka. Some employees told me that Mr.
Bradley was a bomber crewman in WWII and had sustained his injuries and burns
in a plane crash. He met client after client and brought in business to the
firm as if his disabilities didn’t exist and the war had never occurred. He
never talked about his war injuries and he went about each day with encouraging
words and a smile on his face.
After
graduation, I was hired by a prominent architect, Sid Platt (Sidney
S. “Sid” Platt, 1916-2012) in Wichita, Kansas. Sid had a commanding
presence when he entered a room, standing over six feet tall, with curly hair, a
Roman nose, jutting jaw and piercing blue eyes. He looked like he could have
been an admiral in the navy, but he was a pilot and a Major in the Army Air
Corps. During morning coffee, he shared some of his adventures in the war as a P-38
fighter pilot, flying sorties out of England and into Germany and continental
Europe.
P-38 (public domain image)
It was hard
for me to picture big Sid squeezing into the small cockpit of a P-38, and I
remember him telling us how cramped it was. He didn’t go into too much detail
about the missions, but he said there was one time when he had to clean out his
cockpit after returning to base from a dogfight and with the Germans. He had to
burn his clothes and the seat cushion because he’d filled his
pants during the heat of the battle.
Sid was
quite a people person, always working
a room to make others feel at ease. He had a balance of creativity, honesty and
work ethic. It seems as if it were yesterday . . . he'd pull into the parking garage in the morning in his tiny ’72 BMW, looking
like a cramped fighter pilot. On our walk to coffee, if he saw my collar or back
pocket unbuttoned, he’d stop to button it for me, then he’d poke me with his
shoulder as we’d start walking and say, “Ya gotta look sharp!”
My dad (Wallace
E. “Wally” Larson, 1926-2007) entered the war in 1944, joining the Navy
to become a signalman. He never saw combat, but he was assigned to a Merchant
Marine ship, to receive and send orders for the captain. He told me his worst
fear during the war occurred in San Francisco harbor when he received the Morse
code message through the flashing beacons with orders for the captain to
proceed the next day in a convoy to the South Pacific. Dad said he figured he
would meet his fate somewhere along the way, because the supply ships were like
floating buckets and were easy targets for the enemy. Lo, and behold, the next
morning he received new information that the atomic bomb had been dropped on
Hiroshima, and they were given orders to sit in the harbor for several days. He
spent his remaining Navy days on the beaches of Hawaii, selling his cigarette
rations and training for bantam-weight boxing matches to earn some additional
cash.
Dad’s middle
name should have been Tough Guy. He
was straight-laced but unafraid in any situation. After receiving an accounting
degree in college, he went through FBI training and became a U.S. Treasury
Agent. He was my A-number-one mentor for learning right from wrong. Early in
our childhood he began to teach me and my siblings how to take care of
ourselves and become productive members of society.
One of the
traits he passed on to me was how much he could see through simple observation.
That must have been his law enforcement training. He also gave me advice on how to
deal with stressful situations with influential people by telling me, “Greg,
you have to remember they get up each morning and put on their pants just like
you and me."
He spent a
lot of his free time taking us fishing, teaching us golf, and volunteering as
our Scoutmaster. He never learned another language, but he knew Morse code
backwards and forwards.
Wally Larson 1962 (author's dad)
While I
watch the Fourth of July fireworks this year, I’ll reflect on what these men
did for me and for our country. I’ll remember growing up around them and
understand they taught me so much without saying a word. It was their actions,
these men of character, that showed me how to live.
This link is to a video of Gene Frazier remembering the dangers of flying over Japan in the B-29 during WWII: http://www.witnesstowar.org/combat_stories/WWII/991