Proud Daughter of the One of the Greatest Generation, Part One
By Sue Andrews, Inland Empire Branch
Every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Veteran’s Day, I do two things to pay homage to my father. The first thing I do is wear a bracelet he made out of scrap metal in Pearl Harbor in 1945. Secondly, I watch a video on YouTube entitled, August 14, 1945, and post it on Facebook. If you have an interest in watching that clip, you might see my father somewhere in the Oahu parade celebrating the victory of WWII.
I didn’t learn about the existence of either the bracelet or the video until later in my life. The bracelet I found first. My parents had been married for over thirty years and lived in the Chicago suburbs their whole life. They became tired of the cold, icy winters and decided to retire to Florida. I had already moved there so I supported their plan. They would once again live near me.
One day while visiting my parents over my summer break from teaching, I helped them with their packing. Mom asked me if I would begin in their master bedroom.
“Honey, would you please start in the closet? It’s hard for me to reach back there.”
I’m not sure if her plan was for me to find a hidden treasure, but I did. In the very back on the top shelf of the closet sat an old shoebox. I brought it down off the shelf with all the other boxes. I started opening them all while sitting on my parents’ bed. To my surprise the old box from the rear did not hold shoes like all the others. When I opened the lid, I saw tangled and thrown about miscellaneous items of costume jewelry. That’s funny, I thought. I never saw my mother wear any of these before.
I picked up every item, examining them. There were two metal cuff bracelets. One had no writing on it, but the other had designs with letters and words I couldn’t determine at first.
By closer examination, I found a wonderful gem worth more than any diamond in the world. I couldn’t determine the make of the metal, but I knew it wasn’t silver or pewter. But it didn’t matter to me. What I discovered looked like eight islands etched on the bracelet with their names inscribed in the middle. They looked like a map of the Hawaiian Islands!
Read the history of this precious bracelet
in Part Two in next month’s socalwritersshowcase.com.