A Veteran�s Thanksgiving
Chicago Tribune, Nov. 17, 2007
After the war, Joe returned to Chicago and to the arms of his tearful but relieved girlfriend, Rose. He had survived but suffered frostbite while on guard duty. Three fingers on his rifle hand had felt as though burned on a stove, and he would always have pain in the winter.
A factory on Western Avenue had kept open Joe�s machinist�s job open. It was blocks from his apartment, so he would often run home for lunch where Rose would meet him.
Monday before Thanksgiving, Rose got there early and fixed liverwurst sandwiches. She went to the mirror and brushed her long brown hair. The telephone rang�probably Joe seeing if she�d arrived�and she answered it on the second ring.
Initially, she had difficulty understanding the woman�s accent. Eventually, she understood that the woman, �Jeanne,� had just moved to the U.S. with her father, who was in the French diplomatic corps, and she wanted to see Joe over the holidays.
When Joe appeared, and Rose gave him the message, he explained that Jeanne was someone he had been seeing while stationed in France. Her family took him in for meals and overnight stays, and took him to church and to social outings, as many European households did for American G.I.�s.
Jeanne and he had gotten close. But before anything serious developed, his outfit was sent to the German front. They lost track of each other�a common occurrence in WWI�and he never heard from her again.
Until this telephone call.
Rose looked as if she had been holding her breath.
�Call this Jeanne on the telephone,� she said. �Go meet her. Take her to a nice restaurant. Buy her some flowers. Tell her our country is grateful���and here Rose stopped, dabbing her eyes��� we are all grateful, that she and her family would show kindness to a young man far from home in an awful war. Tell them�just tell them thank you.�
Halfway back to the factory, Joe paused by the shop window of Mertz�s Jewelers. He calculated how long it would take to save $99, the cost of the gold ring with the white diamond, displayed on a pedestal.
He tried to picture Jeanne--how young and beautiful!
Then he thought of Rose, and her lovely, crooked smile that signaled the world was right again.
And he pictured how her hands would tremble so, when she opened the tiny box.
And then Joe himself trembled, for he felt afraid. Not about a wedding or buying a house or supporting a family. Those were small things, and he had been through the worst war ever.
His fear was whether he�d be a disappointment to Rose. He had no doubt he loved her. But his head spun when imagined the love inside her, so strong and selfless.
This was the woman he would never let go.
Rose and Joe were married in 1919, in a lifelong marriage lasting 55 years.
Their surviving daughter, Gertrude, is my mother, who last month gave me three discolored pieces of paper, upon which she had written the details of this story.
It was a tribute to her mother for that Monday in 1919, when giving thanks was the hardest sacrifice.
And it�s a reminder of the gratitude we owe today, not just to our soldiers, but to those left behind, who must suffer in so many ways, just for loving them.