Your Man in Service

Remember that box of photographs your parents had?
You know, the one on the top shelf in your father’s closet?
Or the one on top of the wardrobe in the hall.
Maybe in your house it was a cardboard box shoved under the bed.
In my house, it was a box that coat hangers had previously occupied. (My father and his brother owned a dry cleaning business.) Inside it was several shoe boxes.
More than half of the photos were black and white.
The ones in color were faded. Color film technology in the sixties wasn’t the best, but it was “Fox,” from San Antonio, TX.

I still remember the running Fox logo on the outside of the envelope in which the photos arrived from the drugstore -- Harper’s Pharmacy, Mangham, Louisiana.

If you’re a baby boomer, this memory probably hits close to home.
If your parents were boomers, most likely you remember stories about the “picture box.”

Wouldn’t it be cool if those photos could talk?

Somewhere in our box of photos we found several “V-mail” letters.  Remember those one page form letters that folded into an envelope?  

Wouldn’t it be cool if those letters could talk?

Art Hoffman and his wife, Martha, found a way to hear them.  

Really.

That's right -- actually talk.

The talking was coming from Martha’s father, who had passed in 2005. Art and Martha had to clean out a closet so that workers could update and paint the room. They found a box of old records. Not letters. Not vinyl. Older than that. These were records that would break if dropped. The fact that these discs had survived over fifty years of storage was significant enough for interest.

What Art and Martha found in the record box was stunning.

During World War II, the Pepsi Cola company sponsored a program with which service people could record a message on a 78 rpm record. Many of them did just that and sent them to loved ones.

Walter Eddy, her father, had availed himself of Pepsi’s “Your Man in Service” program and recorded a message to the woman whom he would later marry. We can all hear what he sounded like when he asked, “ How's everything at home? Write more often if you can,” thanks to Art’s video. Have you heard what your father sounded like when he was twenty-something?

Mr. Eddy survived a tour of duty in the South Pacific and lived until March 2005. Not only does he live in the memories of those who knew and loved him, we can all appreciate and learn from his thoughtfulness.

Check your closets, under the beds, and in the attic. If you have a relative who served in World War II, you may be able to hear them again. Don’t wait.  After all,  WWII vets are dying - 10,000 a day.

Voices forever lost to history.

Look for an envelope or record with the “Your Man in Service” label -- then listen closely.

You’ll hear real history.

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Listen to the history Art and Martha heard in this video:

Our regular readers know how much we value comments.  However today, we request that in lieu of comments here, please offer your feedback to Art on YouTube. 

Did Che Guevara channel John Paul Jones?

Guest blogger is Jack Durish. A Baltimore native with a passion for history that began in high school when he studied the American Civil War. After consuming virtually everything written on the subject, he began haunting the National Archives in Washington as well as any other place where he could get his hands on source material. Durish earned a degree in law and served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army in the Mekong Delta of Viet Nam.  

We recently reviewed his first novel, Rebels On The Mountain, in which a significant character was Che Guevara.  In this blog article, Durish reveals some interesting (and perhaps little known) facts about the man whose image has become an icon for revolution.  Herewith are his thoughts on Che Guevara:
==============================================================

I don't get it. The man was by all accounts of those who knew him, a fanatic, totally intolerant of all who disagreed with him, and unfortunately, he used his power to punish them inhumanely. Yet, there are many who brandish his iconic image as a symbol of hope and change for the better.

Consider the testimony of  Humberto Fontova who describes Che's crimes against humanity in lurid detail, using Che's own words: “'We send (to these prison-camps) people who have committed crimes against revolutionary morals,' warned the KGB-tutored Che Guevara, who definition of such 'offenses' proved pretty sweeping.” Apparently, Che's “revolutionary morals” prohibited drinking and gambling, and regulated sexual relations, as he demonstrated after his rebel column captured the town of Sancti Spiritus in Central Cuba. Fortunately for those citizens, Fidel made him rescind the orders.

As I watched union activists carrying banners with Che's image recently in major cities across the United States, I wondered how well they would relate to a man who wrote in his diary, “I have no home, no woman, no parents, no brothers and no friends. My friends are friends only so long as they think as I do politically.” Would Che applaud their efforts or would he censure them, as he wrote, “We punish individuals who refuse to participate in collective effort and who lead an antisocial and parasitic life.”

Watching youth flaunting Che's image as they rebel against all those in authority, I wonder if they ever heard or read Che's denunciation of revolution, “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of government mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work, and military service.”

And woe to those youth who ignored Che. His secret police (yes, Che headed up the Cuban Secret Police) rounded up thousands of youth for being “guilty” of the “rocker lifestyle” or being effeminate, and dumped them in prison camps proclaiming “Work will make men out of you!”

I also would love an opportunity to speak with a famous actress, known as a caring and attentive mother, and reputed to have worn a tattoo of Che's iconic image, and ask her how she feels about her hero abandoning his wife in Mexico, and at least five known children in various countries without any signs of remorse.
Even Castro grew tired of his “hero's” antics. A retired CIA officer reported how Fidel, via the Bolivian Communist party, constantly fed the CIA info on Che’s whereabouts in Bolivia. “Not even an aspirin,” instructed Cuba’s Maximum Leader to his Bolivian comrades, meaning that Bolivia’s Communists were not to assist Che in any way — 'not even with an aspirin,' if Che complained of a headache."

A commentary on Che re-posted on Womanist-Musings from Broad Snark describes him with slightly more vitriol. "...as I watch some of the people who love Che, I am beginning to see that they probably like him for exactly the reasons that I don’t. Because I keep seeing people in our communities emulate all of Che’s most problematic characteristics."

The author of this article goes on to describe how Che, "...a privileged, white kid from Argentina... joined Castro's revolutionary movement...the only thing Che was involved with that wasn’t a total failure." The author goes on to describe Che's many failures such as ruining the economy in Cuba, sending homosexuals and dissidents to forced labor camps, attempting to lead black soldiers in a failed revolution in Angola like an imitation Tarzan, and failing to incite a continent-wide revolution in South America, beginning in Bolivia where his own followers ratted him out to the authorities.

I suppose that, for me, the most fascinating aspect of Che's history is it's similarities to John Paul Jones. Both Che and John Paul fought for revolutions to which they did not belong. They both considered themselves “citizens of the world.” Both were dissatisfied at the ends of their respective revolutions, and revolutionary leaders found it expedient to send them abroad on “missions.” John Paul was sent to Russia to lead Catherine the Great's Black Sea Fleet, “to better prepare him to be admiral of an American fleet.” Of course, they found many other “missions” to keep him away from America until he died.

It appears that “true revolutionaries” become something of an annoyance after the revolution is won. It may be that leaders worry that they will foment revolution against the very causes that they once supported.

MCMXII

Watch for my new series of articles at Examiner.com!

Subjects will include the births and deaths of famous people, centennials of famous events, businesses, books and inventions.  In fact, anything of interest that happened in 1912 will be fodder for my column.  

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National History Examiner

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Clarence Darrow's Landmark Cases

How many lawyers can boast of having been involved in a "landmark" case -- or one haled as "the trial of the century"? Clarence Darrow could and did. How about THREE? Clarence Darrow did!

I recently reviewed a new book about those cases. An interesting bit of history (which I discuss in my review) involved three other trials without which, none of the three big cases would have seen Darrow's participation.

For some reason, books with long titles seem to appeal to me and this is no exception. The Great Trials of Clarence Darrow: The Landmark Cases of Leopold and Loeb, John T. Scopes, and Ossian Sweet is a, but wait. Just click HERE and read my review. It would be great if you could leave a comment over there or here. I'd appreciate the feedback.