Last week, I took a couple of days to travel and enjoy three Ms: a medal ceremony, the opening of a new historical museum, and sharing memories with my sister and brother-in-law in Knoxville, Tennessee.
First, I traveled to Brevard, North Carolina, a not-so-small "small town" nestled at the entrance to the Pisgah National Forest. (For a small town, traffic was more like that of a mid-sized town that is experiencing the problems of too rapid growth!) What drew me there was the awarding of the Legion of Merit medal to 102-year-old World War II veteran Ed Cottrell by the French consul general. No thanks to traffic delays, we arrived barely in time to find the last available seats along the wall near the speaker's dais before the ceremony began.
Cottrell piloted a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter in the European theater of the war, flying 65 missions. On one mission, his squadron was attacked by Messerschmitt Bf 109s, and 8 of his plane's 18 cylinders were shot up. During Cottrell's attempt to coax his damaged plane back to his base in Belgium, two 109 pilots refused to make the easy kill and instead escorted him back, allowing him to live. A representative of Pratt & Whitney, the manufacturer of the P-47 engines, was in the audience and presented Cottrell with a P-47 piston.
After receiving the Legion of Honor medal from French Consul General Anne-Laure Desjouqueres (second from right in photo), Cottrell (far right in photo) reciprocated by giving her a framed print of an artist's depiction of German pilots' memorable humanitarian gesture to Cottrell. (The object held aloft is the P-47 Pratt & Whitney piston.)
The ceremony was attended by a packed house (I estimated about 300 were there), including five other World War II veterans, one of whom was said to be 107 years old.
Leaving the ceremony, we traveled next to Knoxville, Tennessee, where we spent the night with my sister and brother-in-law, Gina and Allan King. Contrary to my usual routine of going fairly early to bed, I stayed up talking with them until midnight, and going to bed then only because Sis had to get up at 5:45 to go to work. It's always enjoyable to get together and talk and laugh about our growing-up and growing-old days. (Recalling the former alleviates, at least temporarily, the realities of the latter.)
The next day, we attended the "soft opening" (I still haven't figured out what that means) of the Halls Crossroads Historical Museum in the community where I grew up. Not knowing quite what to expect going in, I was blown away by all that the board members and volunteers had done.
In four rooms, they had amassed thousands of photographs (most taken by the museum's founder, the late Hubert LaRue), documents, and artifacts of the people and events of the community's past. Volumes of records were neatly shelved and indexed for research, including two volumes labeled "Peterson Family." (Unfortunately, none of the contents dealt with my immediate branch of the family.)
Three kiosks featured endless video loops of collections of historic photos of individuals, families, schools, and churches, each labeled with the names of the people and places and the dates. I found numerous relatives among the people shown, including several who had served in World War II and whose experiences I'll now have to research.
For example, there was Ross Peterson, who was killed in action during a bombing mission over Germany. The files included the telegram of his being Missing in Action and another confirming that he had been killed in action. And then there was Ross's brother, Charles Peterson, whom I remember from when I was a child, and the citations for medals he was awarded. I'm sure there's more to both of those men's stories than meets the eye. More digging!
Numerous cabinets and display cases also shared artifacts of various types, reminders of the tools, utensils, and toys used by community residents over time. One bookcase and display contained yearbooks from my alma mater, Halls High School, including the first one ever published by the students.
But perhaps the most exciting thing was the opportunity to visit with numerous relatives and friends of my family whom I did not know personally or whom I had not seen in many years.
At one point, my conversation with one such person was interrupted when an elderly man entered the room and announced, "Somebody said I have a relative back here." I was that relative, but I didn't know the man, who had retired from the Tennessee National Guard as a brigadier general. (I'm still trying to determine just how we're related. Once I get past the first-cousin level, I'm lost!)
Then the icing on the cake was the museum's inclusion of me in a display of "Our Local Authors," which included my book "A Goodly Heritage," a book I had self-published and intended only for the benefit of my immediate family, not the general public. Before leaving to return home, I gave the museum a copy of another of my books, Look Unto the Hills, in which I share stories of my growing-up years in Halls. (None of my traditionally published works deals with the local history, so none of those were featured.) I'm deeply honored to be included in the museum this way.
Being worn out as I was from the two days' activities and loss of sleep, the return home seemed long. (We did manage to stir up enough strength to stop at the new Buc-ee's at the Sevierville exit, though.)
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