REVOLUTIONARY WAR PATRIOT

 

LTC Jacob Reed, Hatfield, PA

Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Reed was the son of Johann Phillip Reed who immigrated from Mannheim, Germany, landing at Philadelphia on the ship Friendship, October 17, 1727.  My nephew Mike Davis discovered during his Ancestry research that my grandmother Ida Ulm-Davis was six generations removed from LTC Reed but only one generation removed from the Reed name of her mother, Nettie Belle Reed-Ulm.  Jacob was an American patriot from the start and had an adventurous life during his lifetime, set during the Revolutionary War of 1776.  He was born in Philadelphia Co., Pa., June 30, 1730 and died in New Britain Township, Bucks Co., Pa., November 2, 1820 at the age of 90.  On May 6, 1777, he was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1^st Battalion of the Philadelphia County Militia.  He saw active service under General George Washington at the battles of Trenton, Germantown and Brandywine.  Three years later he was elected Major of the 5^th Battalion, Pennsylvania Troops, until the end of the war.

One of the significant project teams I was involved with early in my Industrial Engineering career at VF Corp. was developing and installing an automated shopping experience for the original outlet center in the USA at Reading, Pennsylvania, where the corporate offices resided at that time.  We were one of the pioneers in the apparel business to apply printed UPC labels at our plants and efficiently scan them at the checkout stations.  Those trips to Berks County neighboring Philadelphia, Montgomery and Bucks counties stirred a lifelong interest in the early development of this country and the Revolutionary War.  Little did I realize at the time that my grandmother had distant roots in that struggle, understanding that ancestry branches quickly become voluminous with each succeeding generation.  And it’s fortuitous that my son-in-law was born and raised in Montgomery county where his parents still reside and we’ve celebrated holidays at their home while I stayed near and scouted Valley Forge National Park.

LTC Reed was active during the entire war serving under General Washington and participating in the battles of Trenton, Germantown and Brandywine. The British army evacuated Philadelphia on June 18, 1778, moving toward Trenton, N.J.  General Washington broke camp the next day at Valley Forge to intercept them.  He was known for conversing with soldiers that were familiar with the lay-of-the-land before a battle.  This led him and part of his staff to Jacob Reed’s log cabin in the area for a hastily prepared dinner at their old home in Hatfield.

Since Jacob was a notable advocate of the patriotic cause, he was a marked man by the British and Tories.  During the winter of 1777 and 1778 Jacob was surprised and made captive by his Tory enemies.  They first shot him in the leg, then tied him to a tree, tarred and feathered him and began to dig his grave.  Supporters arrived to set him free as the Tories fled the country.  Their property was subsequently confiscated.  On another occasion as Jacob was riding from home a Hessian sniper shot at him and the bullet grazed his head as the horse bolted away to safety before he could reload.

A Great-Great-Granddaughter, Mrs. Findley Braden, composed a poem entitled He Fought with Washington on the occasion of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, Norristown, PA dedicating a monument on October 8, 1901 at Emmanuel (Leidy’s) Church to LTC Jacob Reed.  She wrote this prophetic verse as humanity was entering the twentieth century and two world wars.

It reads in part:

“O wise forefather, still so calmly sleeping!

He cannot hear our eager words today,

Sun, moon, and stars their faithful watch are keeping,

While we can only kneel, and humbly pray,

That out amid the world’s dull whirl and rattle,

We, too, may stand courageous through all strife,

Not heroes on some deadly field of battle,

But on the deadlier field of modern life.”

WWI AMERICAN DOUGHBOY

 

Walt E. Ulm, Fort Riley, KS

I had a wonderful, innocent childhood growing up in America’s Heartland next door to my grandparents.  Those were carefree and innocent years.  That is, they were for a young child born as the second world war was raging not long after “the war to end all wars” had been fought by young men like my grandmother’s brother Walt.  Of course, I was oblivious to all of this and thankfully my parents shielded me from knowing that many of our family members were directly involved in both wars.

Those early childhood memories are beginning to become a very faint part of my life at this stage.  But as I finished reading about my great uncle’s time spent in Europe during WWI that my nephew Mike had assembled, I did have one primary memory that surfaced.  My grandparents had the traditional detached garage with access to a dirt alley behind their home.  And just about every Saturday morning, it was always a treat to greet Walt and his wife Edna when they would drive into town and deliver live baking chickens and eggs to my grandmother.  I remember Walt was always smiling and happy to see all the family and he must have been the world’s expert on raising chickens on the farm.  In fact, that’s about all I can remember him talking about in an uncharacteristically, melodic fast pace.  He was the only person that I knew that talked that way and when I questioned my mother, she told me that he was in the war.  So, that sufficed at my young age and I only pondered this again today, many years later.

I learned that Walt was a member of General “Black Jack” Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), 353rd Regiment, 89th Division, Company F.  He entered service at Fort Riley, Kansas on April 27,1918, just one month after the first report of the Spanish influenza was detected there on March 8.  The WWI museum in Kansas City, Missouri reports that the Spanish flu spread overseas to the Western front and 20 million people worldwide would perish in the next year.  Walt escaped that pandemic of 1918, but not the “hell on earth” in the trenches of WWI which contained cold rain, mud, lice, rats, maggots, hunger and fear.  And the enemy by that time was also using vaporous mustard gas to seep into the trenches.  Gas masks were standard issue and the cry of “GAS” instilled traumatic, psychological fear in the trenches.  Exposure to chemical weapons resulted in a higher prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders for the survivors compared to war related violence alone.

 Walt also wrote home about the prevalent machine gun nests and sniper fire that were a constant threat.  The story might have been humorous if it wasn’t so dead serious.  “I must tell you about picking plums.  I was in a tree and Bert Coffey was on the ground.  The first thing I knew someone was shooting at me and I dropped quickly to the ground.  We lay flat on the ground for a while but the sniper must have thought he got me.  My helmet was up in the tree full of plums.  We poked it down with a stick and gathered up the plums from the ground, but no more tree for me.”

Company F was involved in two major operations in France against the Germans—St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne.  A record of the division includes over 1,000 killed and 6,000 wounded and gassed.  They captured over 5,000 prisoners.  In one of his last letters home from the war, Walt wrote “We sure had some march all over Germany and carried heavy packs all the time.  It was about 195 miles so you see it was not any easy task.  I was all in when night came.”  His company was present in Stenay, France for the armistice signing on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918 (Hence, Veterans Day).

Walt spent eight months in a Tennessee VA hospital when he returned to America and then finally made his way back to a Kansas farm where the odyssey began.

P.S.

The irony has not been lost on me as I realized that my American grandmother Ida Ulm-Davis, who has a German ancestry, had a brother in a world war with Germany and sons in the next world war with Germany.

WHAT IS HAPPINESS?

 

Joy of New Life, Jamestown, NC

We will face difficult circumstances in the course of a life that are beyond our control with one exception—how we respond.  

And we should be careful not to confuse temporary, external circumstance, happiness with eternal, internal, joy that reveals which gods we worship in life.  We were created to be forever joyful, not forever happy.  

Circumstances may contribute to happiness, but joy is a mindset.

Perhaps that is the elusive lesson of the story in the book of Job.  The use of hyperbole always makes an impression and this story may be just that regarding things of this life that bring happiness.  We live in a broken world where suffering is not always a penalty for wrongdoing and prosperity is not always a reward for goodness.  The rain falls on all fields.  But as long as we keep the good things of this world in perspective that bring us happiness and recognize that they are only a heartbeat away from being lost, we won’t miss out on the joy that can sustain us. 

 “What is happiness?  

It’s the moment before we need more happiness.”

—Don Draper, Mad Men

SINGLE-TASKING

Support Group

I learned early on that one of the keys to surviving in a very competitive business world is to master and practice multi-tasking.  And to remain flexible enough to also change directions on a dime when the situation demanded a change in priorities.  But now that I’ve entered the golden years, I’ve determined that a focus on single-tasking is best!

Probably the single biggest lie most seniors tell themselves is that “I don’t need to write down a grocery list.”  Then of course, if we don’t take a list to the store, we will inevitably arrive home and remember too late that the main ingredient in the recipe we were going to fix for dinner is not in the bag.  And if someone asks what I did over the weekend, the best response is “What did you hear?”

The classic situation that confirms your senior status is when you start walking into rooms and stopping dead in your tracks to decide why you are here.  Thankfully the one exception to this is when you’re standing in the bathroom.

And then in this digital world, practically all means of communication and business are executed on the internet.  EVERYONE in the universe wants to know your password for their site!  I’ve finally resorted to another digital device named the Password Safe where my eight hundred passwords are safe and within reach as long as I have the Password Safe close at hand and I can remember the password to open the Password Safe!

My doctor’s office knows my state of mind the best, which is why they charge my credit card the minute I sign in for a visit, so that I don’t forget to pay them on my way out.  But in spite of it all, growing older is a blessing that is denied to many, as long as we transition peacefully to single-tasking.  And there are positives to being a senior, like hiding our own Easter eggs and planning our own surprise parties! 

ANOTHER FACE OF A HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

 

Face of Crisis, Rio Grande City, Texas

My life experience as a ten-year-old boy is now likened to looking through a window dimly.  But I now have the perspective of looking through the eyes of a four-year-old grandson.  I’ve read that we humans can be rather impassionate about seeing headlines of thousands of other beings in desperate circumstances.  But when we're confronted with an image of just one of these unfortunates, it becomes much more personal.  So it was when I first viewed a widely circulated internet video of a young ten-year-old Nicaraguan boy who had been abandoned by a group attempting to cross the US border without going through the lengthy legal process numerous others had already started.  At last estimate, they numbered around 20,000 unaccompanied children and counting! 

Countless people have now watched this video and in reading many of their reactions the predominant operative word used is “heartbreaking”.  What unimaginable and desperate circumstances would prompt parents to subject their children to be turned over to “coyotes” and cartels at a ransom cost to expose them to human traffickers and sexual assault without their presence?  And as our overwhelmed homeland security officers attempt to control this onslaught, our own children in this country are in need of the same assistance these children’s parents are seeking at great risk.

This young South American boy was abandoned by the migrant group as he slept.  An off-duty border agent found him sobbing and wandering in the desert alone, afraid of being kidnapped or worse.  The thousands like him become statistics in the news for all of us living apart from the border, but this boy gives the crisis a tragic face to remember.  If the intent of opening our borders was sincere, there must have been little thought of “unintended consequences.”  If political positions were put ahead of well-considered humanitarian solutions that can be passed by all parties, then God must certainly be crying with both the boy and all of us.

MONDAY MORNING AFTER EASTER SUNDAY

Low Country, Wrightsville Beach, NC

We are an Easter people living in a Black Friday world.  

May calm waters, warm sunlight, blue skies and hope prevail today while God enables all of us to see His kingdom to come and His will to be done, through us, among us, on earth as it is in heaven!

 

WASHING FEET

Washing Feet, Internet

IT MAY BE FRIDAY, BUT SUNDAY’S COMING!

Just before the Passover Feast on Thursday, Jesus got up from the table and “he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet.” (John 13:5) to demonstrate his love for them and their future roles as servant leaders. 

And he was forgiving them in advance because he had foreseen their human frailty demonstrated by their desertion, betrayal and denials early the next day, Black Friday.  Then the land turned dark from noon to three in the afternoon when he breathed his last on that cruel Roman cross, securing grace for even those who would not be born for over 2,000 years later.

“Darkness fell, His friends scattered, hope seemed lost - But heaven just started counting to three”. —Bob Goff

“We are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

The real miracle of the Easter resurrection isn’t that God could do it.  It’s that God would do it.” —Pastor David Greene

The resurrection of Easter validates that “the worst thing is never the last thing”.