Honoring Korean War Veterans

Never forget those who fought in America's Forgotten War!

Schliessman(n) Family Veterans 140 Year History

SCHLIESSMANN, JOHN JOSEPH
PVT CO A 146TH REGIMENT INDIANA INF
CIVIL WAR
DATE OF BIRTH: 1835
DATE OF DEATH: 17 APR 1922

SCHLIESSMANN, PHILIP JOHANN
PVT CO H 21ST INF REGIMENT
1875-1879
DATE OF BIRTH: 09 OCT 1857
DATE OF DEATH: 30 AUG 1917

SCHLIESSMAN: HENRY HUGO
PVT US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 15 SEPT 1898
DATE OF DEATH: 10 JAN 1967

SCHLIESSMAN, JOHN
US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH:

SCHLIESSMAN, LOUIS
PVT US ARMY WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 04 MAR 1895
DATE OF DEATH: 24 JU 1964

SCHLIESSMANN: PETER
US ARMY
WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH:

SCHLIESSMAN, WILLIAM
PVT US ARMY WORLD WAR I
DATE OF BIRTH: 23 AUG 1896
DATE OF DEATH: 23 JAN 1923


SCHLIESSMAN, CHARLES
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMANN, JOHN J. JR
SSGT US ARMY
WORLD WAR II
DATE OF BIRTH: 1914

SCHLIESSMAN, LAWRENCE F. SR
CPL US ARMY AIR CORP
WORLD WAR II
DATE OF BIRTH: 06 NOV 1921

SCHLIESSMAN, MARTIN A JR
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMAN, WALTER H
NATIONAL GUARD
WORLD WAR II

SCHLIESSMANN, DONALD JOSEPH Sr.
CAPT.
WORLD WAR II

CATER, NORMA (NEE SCHLIESSMAN)
LT COL. KOREA, VIETNAM

SCHLIESSMANN, ROBERT MARK
CWO4 US ARMY
WORLD WAR II, KOREA
DATE OF BIRTH: 05/18/1914
DATE OF DEATH: 03/27/1989

SCHLIESSMANN, DONALD JOSEPH Jr
US ARMY
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH: 09/20/1945
DATE OF DEATH: 07/18/2006

SCHLIESMAN, JERROLD J.
SGT US ARMY
B COMPANY 1ST BATTALION 5TH US CALVARY
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH:
DATE OF DEATH: 17 NOV. 1965

SCHLIESSMANN, LAWRENCE F
SGT US ARMY
3/60TH INF 9TH DIV/493 MI
VIETNAM
DATE OF BIRTH: 16 SEPT 1948

David Wetherill - Honoring Veterans Part 2 Poppy Field Found

Poppy Field Found
Dave Wetherill
Copilot, 571st

In the fall 1995 issue of our Newsletter I included an article, entitled “Poppy Field” in which I told about an American soldier discovering, in a poppy field, George Massa’s grave, how the people of Dietersheim had recovered his body and provided a proper burial, after our plane had been shot down. (Pilot, Crew 91, 571st Sqdn.) My story mentioned that I had been unable to locate Dietersheim. In that same issue of the Newsletter we included a letter from A. Verwaal, of the Netherlands, in which he described his work in researching the crash landing of one of our planes. Because Mr. Verwaal’s letter appeared in the paper, we made sure to send him a copy. Of course, then, he got to read both his letter and my story, and he got busy locating the town of Dietersheim and corresponding with me about his efforts. As a consequence, I learned that Dietersheim is a suburb of Bingen.*

One of my desires has been to visit the area of our shoot-down and capture. In March, Jean and I were able to make the trip. We arrived on German soil at Frankfurt Airport, picked up a brand new Opel, and, even though we were feeling the effects of the overnight flight, decided to head for Bingen and possibly Dietersheim.

Jean had studied German in college and has, generally, a good language aptitude and a good ear. Even though I knew all of this, I was still amazed at how well she picked up the language. (Thank goodness, because I’m almost a complete dud when it comes to communicating in a foreign tongue.) And, we soon discovered, the highway signs in Germany are very well planned and displayed. Even I had little trouble navigating. We arrived in Budesheim, another of Bingen’s suburbs, and found a place to have some lunch and sample some German food in an Italian restaurant.

After lunch, we went on to Dietersheim, where, with only a little trouble, we found the Catholic Church. We parked our car and looked around. The church doors were locked, but through a window, we spotted a man working at a desk. We attracted his attention and got him to come talk with us. Outside the church we explained, actually Jean explained, the purpose of our mission and he invited us inside. Father Eberhard Otto then excused himself and went into his office. In a moment, he returned with a file folder. As he opened the folder, I saw a letter, in English that had words in it that I had written. It turned out that he had received a letter from Leo Massa, George’s brother, in which my “Poppy field” was quoted. I opened my envelope of stuff I’d been carrying and pulled out a copy of that piece and handed it to him. He glanced at it and then back at me, with an expression of surprise. From that point on we had no trouble holding his interest in our mission.

He explained that he had no personal knowledge of George’s burial as he had come to that area after the war. He did, however, know of a place that might be what we were looking for. During Hitler’s time, he explained, no enemy could have been buried in a sanctified cemetery. That had been strictly verboten. He told us to look for a bus turn-around, out near the edge of town, where, then, we would see a cemetery. Beyond that cemetery, he told us, is a field. Maybe there.

Father Otto then took us on a tour of his church. Of particular interest to us were the beautiful stained glass windows and a hewn stone altar that dated back more than a thousand years.

We drove the short distance to the cemetery. The main gate was closed so we walked along outside of the stone wall that surrounded the place. At the rear, looking out beyond the wall, we could see a field, probably twenty or thirty acres in size. Beyond the field, we could see the Nahe River and a highway, and beyond the highway, wooded hills. We wondered if the burials had taken place out there somewhere, but jet lag was getting to us and it was late. We decided to postpone further searching.

It took us a week and a half of visiting other points of interest before we got back to our search for George Massa’s gravesite. We went directly to the cemetery and went in. A monument to military heroes and the inscriptions on the head stones told we were in a cemetery for war veterans. While we were admiring the graves, we saw a woman walking a dog. As we watched, she tethered her dog to the gatepost and entered the cemetery. She smiled and walked on past us to one of the graves. After a few moments, we greeted her and learned that she was on one of her regular visits to her husband’s grave. His head stone was inscribed, “Heinz Eckert, 1929-1996”.

To Jean, I said, “Tell her why we’re here; ask if she knows anything about the grave.” Jean, in her recently reborn German, broached the subject. Well, the lady knew something, all right. She brightened right up and began to talk, gesturing, and pointing to the field beyond the wall. “Mein mann hat es gefunden.”

“What did she say?” I wanted to know. Somehow, we had lucked out. She told us her husband had found that grave. She had met her husband after the war. He had told her about having found this grave and shown her where it was. But the grave isn’t still there, of course. No, we said, George’s body has since been moved to a National Cemetery on Long Island, near where he had lived. But, she said, there could have been other graves there, for French, Polish, and American airmen, but not any more. Not for many years. But she could tell us how to find the spot. Our elation was almost palpable. Go back through that field, along that path until you get to the dike. Then turn right and walk along the dike. Over there, near the bridge. That’s where they were buried.

Well, we thanked Frau Eckert for her help and started out. Because we could see a fence between us and our goal, we turned left to get to another path that would take us, on the other side of a new highway bridge, to where we could get to the dike. We looked back, and there was the woman, waving at us. She had taken the dog home and had returned on a bike. Apparently, she wanted to make sure we found the spot. She waved and pointed. She was indicating that we should go over, now, to our right. We walked under and past the bridge, and there she was, now having moved to where she could again follow our progress. She was nodding her head and still pointing.

We walked on and discovered what must have been the poppy field in 1944. We were walking along a low dike. Our guide was still on duty, waving us on. Soon, when we were pretty close to the ruins of a bombed out bridge, I looked back and saw that she was vigorously nodding her head and waving her fist above her head. We had come to the sacred place. She waved goodbye and got on her bike and, as we waved our thanks, she peddled away. We turned toward our find.

We saw a large field between the dike and the Nahe. There may have been graves there once. A lot can happen to a place in fifty-three years. We felt confident that we had found what we’d been looking for. We walked around saying a silent prayer. Mission accomplished!

*A few months later, I received correspondence from Marshall Shore, of our association, who is quite familiar with Dietersheim, telling me more about the place.

David Wetherill and The Poppy Field - Honoring Veterans

David Wetherill's Poppy Field.

I've been fortunate so far in life. Due to my veteran status and past employment, I've known many combat veterans from all branches of service and from several wars. Each one I knew had an inner strength forged during a time in life when he underwent duress the average civilian would never experience. The more severe their ordeal, it seemed, the greater the strength.

Perhaps that's a product of the will to live, or maybe inner strength is the will to live brought to the surface of personal reality. And too, I think a strong spiritual conviction is necessary to keep inner strength from abandoning us when we need it the most.

Whatever it is, Dave Wetherill was a man with an inner strength that drew others to him. He expressed that strength in many ways. You could hear it in his words, his laughter, and read it in his eyes. He spoke of family and friends, of sharing his love of music, and his pride in fellow veterans.

I found him to be a quiet gentle man. A man I liked almost at once. And I'm the kind of combat veteran who shuns crowds, feels most comfortable sitting facing a door when I'm in an unfamiliar place. Normally, I don't warm up to strangers. But oddly, Dave was not a stranger when we first met. Not that I knew him from the past. I didn't.

My wife and I started a small writer's group in Mount Holly, New Jersey, posted a flyer at local libraries, ran a small reader ad in a local paper, and Dave called to join us.

He attended weekly, offered kind advice, like the fact that clouds scud across the sky. They don't drift. He shared with us the newsletters he edited for his WWII outfit, the 571st Squadron. He was a co-pilot Crew 91. Their B-17 bomber was shot down over Germany. David was badly injured, and spent many months in Stalag Luft One. He spoke of other members of their organization, and about their dwindling numbers.

Then, one night he gave us a copy of two articles he'd written for the newsletter. It seemed there was one member he missed more than any other. The man who didn't live to join, the hero who was left behind.

His pilot went down with the plane, and David never forgot him, never stopped honoring his friend George Massa.

With his family's permission, I'm posting his articles in two parts. The first is titled: Poppy Field and is below. I'll post the follow-up titled Poppy Field Found tomorrow and let you meet this extraordinary man.

This Veterans Day, let's all honor the silent heroes that live among us, like my friend David Wetherill. And remember that those men and women honor the fallen every day as Dave's articles explain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


NEWSLETTER FALL 1995 Page 19


Poppy Field
by David W. Wetherill


On Memorial Day last year, I was interrupted in my studio by the ringing of my phone. I’d been at work for more than an hour, so the disturbance came as a small relief.

“Hello.”

A man’s voice said, “Is there a David Wetherill there?”

“Yes. Who wants him?”

The voice continued, “I’m looking for a David Wetherill who was a copilot on a B-l7 flying over Germany in World War Two.”

“I am such a person. Who are you?”

“My name is Leo Massa..." My heart fairly leaped. “and I’m looking for the man who was my brother’s copilot. My brother’s name was George, George Massa, and..."

“I guess I’m your man. I was copilot on George Massa’s crew.”

Leo became very enthusiastic. Almost overjoyed. We talked for nearly an hour and ended our conversation after each had promised the other that an early meeting would take place.

The meeting was set for a couple of weeks later, with Jean and me driving to the Massa home in North Jersey. We planned to leave home in time to eat lunch on the way and arrive by 2 PM. Quite naturally, we fell into a discussion of the interesting news we’d picked up from my phone conversations with Leo. It was possible, I decided, that I had met Leo on the occasion of my meeting with George’s parents, at their Brooklyn home, in the summer of 1945. That was my first move after arriving home from my stay in Stalag Luft One.

Although I had realized, from the report I had received from Bill Reulbach, our toggleer, at the time of our first meeting on German soil, at Dulag Luft, that George had to have still been on board our B-17, still carrying its bomb load, when it hit the ground, I knew that no official word of his KIA status had reached the Massas. It, therefore, had become my first duty to meet with them and tell what I knew.

He had been only fifteen at the time, but Leo was sure that he had been present at that meeting, and when I mentioned some of the details, he became more convinced of it. I had reminded him that George’s sweetheart, Lisa, a beautiful Finnish girl, had been present. He remembered Lisa but has long since lost touch with her. I had mentioned to Leo that only after my visit to the American Military Cemetery at Cambridge, England, in 1984, and my subsequent inquiries in Washington, that I had learned that George’s body had been identified and brought home to be buried in the Military Cemetery on Long Island.

Leo had then explained to me that the identification must have taken place after a period of time, because he had information about a grave in Germany that had been George’s first stopping place. I was eagerly looking forward to more details.

We arrived at the Massa’s lovely suburban home at about the appointed time. As we parked our car, Leo appeared in the driveway, followed by his wife, Sinikka. A warm greeting then took place. At first, I saw only slight resemblance in Leo to George, but as the afternoon slipped by, I was able to see certain characteristics that I had come to know in George. And, it occurred to me, George would have looked some different by now, if he were still alive.

I answered many questions from Leo about what kind of a pilot, airplane commander, officer, soldier, and man George had been. My answers were all confirming that he had been the best in each category. Then I wanted to know more about the burial that had taken place in Germany. Leo handed me two sheets of lined paper with a penciled letter written on them. This letter, and its subject, had been mentioned on the phone, earlier.

The letter is quoted, in its entirety, below:

I was a member of Co. K-3rd Inf. 424th Division, which arrived in Dietersheim, Germany in May 1945, as a guard unit to 150,000 German war.

Just outside of Dietersheim, in the Rhine Valley, was a beautiful poppy field. As I walked among the flowers, I came upon a lone grave of an American soldier. It was so beautiful I came back to it each day.

I was curious to know more of this boy who rested alone in the quiet of the hills, and I learned he was buried by the townspeople of Dietersheim with full church services. They made him a large crude cross from the deep forest close by, and each day they came to water the potted plants, which they placed upon his grave.

I wondered about his parents, and how pleased they would be if they could only see this final resting place of their boy. As I had no camera, I decided to make a sketch - perhaps locate his family and give it to them. I had only an old German map, on the back of which I made this drawing.

I have also a few poppies, which I picked from the grave when we were ready to leave. It's been a long time ago, but I still keep thinking of MASSA, his grave, the good people of Dietersheim, and his family. I should like to go back some day and visit that grave again.

B. Kruczek, ---- St., Cleveland, Ohio

While I was reading the letter, Leo left the room, and returned in a moment with a framed picture that had been hanging on the wall just inside his front door. I took it and examined it. It was a beautifully drawn pen and ink rendering of the grave described in the letter. After spending some minutes admiring the picture and appreciating the thoughtfulness of the artist/discoverer, we talked about Leo’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts to locate the man who had been so caring and thoughtful and we talked about the town, so far not totally identified, whose people so caringly took George’s body and provided so lovely a resting place for it.

In a little while, Leo produced George’s diary. It seems George had kept a record of his impressions of his daily encounters. I haven’t yet held the diary in my hand, but Leo has promised me he will give me the opportunity to do that on our next meeting. He did read certain pages to me, such as George’s feelings about one particularly frightful mission (11/30/44— “Oh, the prop wash! I was so scared I couldn’t stop shaking.”), and my introduction to him (7/7/44—”I met my copilot today. He’s a swell guy.”)

There were emotional pings and pangs all afternoon, and I guess there will be a few more before this subject is filed away. To quote one observer of our reactions to all of this, “It’s amazing how the need to know survives 50 years later.”

Note: Although Leo Massa has searched, and Bill Reulbach, our crew’s toggleer who lives in the Cleveland area, has more recently searched, B. Kruczek hasn't been located. Nor has the town of Dietersheim.
____________________________________________________________________________

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My Father the Wolf

Halloween along Grove Avenue, Patchogue, New York haunted each small footstep. Cold October night air greeted warm breath with a balloon cloud of dissipating fog. Enough early evening moonlight shivered through the bare branches that we believed our costumes were more real than imagined. I the cowboy, my sister the Indian princess slowly worked the streets calling Trick of Treat, not really understanding the implied consequences of the phrase.

We were young, filled with wonder that so many adults willingly opened their homes and showered us with gifts of candy, coins, and fruit.

Of course, we knew that our father manned the front door to greet the children who would visit our house while we were away. All lights except one table lamp and the porch light were off, and the door remained closed until someone knocked or called out Trick or Treat. He would protect our home.

By the time we walked several blocks--our mother not far behind--with other kids from the neighborhood, our sacks, used pillowcases, were laden with treasure. We were anxious to return home to examine our spoils, and exhaustion brought on by both excitement and exertion, added to our desire.

As we plodded up the front sidewalk, which led to our small stoop overhung with leafless vines, our mother called out, "Let's go in the back door and surprise your father."

The idea lit a spark of excitement that we consumed with glee. My sister led the way, as she often did being the oldest, and we rounded the driveway side of the house. Suddenly the darkness seemed more oppressive, and our steps faltered. We peered into the night and wondered that moonlight failed to illuminate the space between our house and the neighbor's home.

But our mother was not far behind and we had a mission. Sneak up on dad.

Then, as we rounded the house's back corner a tall and menacing figure emerged from the rear yard. Its huge arms lifted to the sky, its claws scrapped the air, and from its long snout, filled with rows of sharp dagger teeth a growl rocked us both. The wolf that ate Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother was about to eat us too.

My legs felt like rubber as my feet scrabbled to grip the driveway, a surface that moments earlier was concrete not Jell-O. The scream that ripped from my sister's throat became mine and together we alerted the entire town that a wolf was on the loose.

We dropped our well-earned loot and bolted back the way we came, past my stunned mother, and into the house, not stopping to realize that the front door was now open, that the lights were now on and didn't slow until we reached the safety of our rooms.

It was decades before I finally realized who wore that mask, and when I confronted my father the delight that filled his eyes, and the laugh he could no longer hold back, told me I was correct.

So dad, Happy Halloween! Now the world knows that my father was the wolf!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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How to keep your car from being robbed

The Night the Car was Robbed and How to Turn Away Thieves

It was a dark and stormy night, well, okay; it wasn’t stormy and not particularly dark with a three quarter moon and no clouds.

Strange noise wakes me during the night. The sound might be as quiet as one of the cats deciding to try out a new box as a hideout, or the slam of a tree limb against the side of the house.

Normally, I roll over after deciding that what I heard was not worth investigation, until one night in early July.

At 3:35am, I woke when I heard something odd. It had sounded like a car door closing. However, my wife was up and heading to the bathroom, so I concluded that she must’ve bumped into something, and went back to sleep.

When I got out of bed after sunrise, I went about my usual chores, which ends with letting our indoor/outdoor cat, who spends the night in, outside. After he is satisfied that no other cats or strange animals have dared to invade his territory during the previous night, he wanders off to do his daily border inspections.

At this point, I retrieve the newspaper, which is never in the driveway (free whine moment here). As I did, I felt stunned to see that the car’s trunk lid was up.

But mistakes happen, so I went over and closed it, only it didn’t close because a box in the trunk sat beneath the hinge and blocked it. That should’ve been an alert. I never leave boxes in the way of the hinge.

I moved the box, shut the trunk lid, and then as I strolled past the car, glanced inside and froze. Everything in the glove box was on the passenger seat, and all the CD’s were scattered around as were various papers and debris we left in the car.

In shock, I opened the car door and then thought about calling the police. After phoning them, I told my wife about the problem and the two of us investigated to learn what was missing.

Well, they didn’t take the insurance card, or the registration card. And, much to my utter surprise, they didn’t want any of our Cds! I was shocked and insulted that our taste in music failed the test of robbery! Why, how dare they ignore Mozart! What kind of idiots don’t want Beethoven? What in God’s name is wrong with the Lord of the Rings, or the Narna soundtracks!?! And those fools don’t listen to Norah Jones? Saywhat!?!

So here’s the lessons we learned. Prop up some classic Cds in plain sight, don’t leave any cash in the car (they did take the single quarter I left in the car, but not the four copper pennies (can you say really stupid thieves?), and never leave keys that open something.

Instead give them a thrill and leave that old key you have for a house you once rented in another state, or an old car key that doesn’t fit in the ignition.

And if you have to leave a package in the car or trunk, leave one filled with last night’s trash, neatly wrapped of course.

After all of the above, they’ll write you off the list and not return to rob you a second time. I mean, really, they didn’t get but 25 cents the first time, right? And the local cops got their prints!

Tales of Swan Lake in East Patchogue

The name Swan Lake represented both mystery and romance when I was a boy. Although the romance part was an unknown concept in my child’s mind, just the name alone evoked a picture of swans swimming and princesses drifting alone gentle currents that guided them to secret rendezvous where they would. . . Well, that was as far as an eight year old boy’s mind knew to travel, which is just as well, I guess.

The mystery was easier to frame. Along the eastern banks of the lake dark shaded alcoves hid their secrets among boulders and rotting logs, and overhanging trees shaded deep pools where any type of monster might lurk to capture and devour a boy if he swam too close, or fell out of a canoe.

The streams that fed the lake twisted off into a distance too far for a boy to fathom, but I knew that back there somewhere pirates had hid treasures, and a lost family like the Swiss Family Robinson lived in a fabulous tree house.

I watched butterflies and dragonflies in the summer, and winter ice slowly solidify and claim the lake’s life as it created a solitude that defied imagination, not unlike Superman‘s Fortress of Solitude but without a super hero, or was it?

My mother was born in a house on Main Street in Center Moriches, grew up in Mastic on Mastic Road. When she was a girl, her family used the hills along the eastern bank of the lake for sleigh riding. They skated on the lake’s thick January ice, and fished its waters after spring thaw.

So it was only logical that I took my two daughters to Swan Lake for an opportunity to share in the experiences of two previous generations. We rented a boat with oars. Since they were too young to row, I put my back into the effort and quickly discovered what I’d forgotten. Rowing a boat is serious labor.

But we had the entire day, so off we went to explore the farthest reaches of the lake’s north side. We discovered small islands, and the overhanging trees I once dreamed about, and finally when exhaustion began to claim my arms, shoulders and back, we spotted a swan family.

This is not always the safest place to be. Swan mothers and fathers are notorious for protecting their young. I had two brothers-in-law who accidentally confronted a swan family while canoeing not far from where the girls and I rowed. Angrily, the male swan flew at them, but went over their heads to warn them away. Several years earlier, a man in a boat died from a broken neck when a male swan’s wing clipped him as the huge bird defended his own.

I stopped rowing and told the girls to be very quiet so we didn’t get the mother and father angry at our intrusion. They remained quiet as we drifted within twenty feet of a line of baby swans paddling feverishly to keep up with mom. They went around the end of the small island where the nest they’d recently left sat now abandoned.

I managed to snap several good photos and then decided that it was time to head off in a different direction, with a feeling inside that told me for one brief moment the boy who once thought of Swan Lake as a mysterious and romantic place now had shared those emotions with a new generation through an experience that happened back where pirates hid treasures and a lost family lived in a fabulous tree house.

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More on Bay Avenue Elementary School

We lived on Grove Avenue. Our neighbors the Westbrooks were good gentle people. My best friend Paul Crabtree and I flipped baseball cards under the fire escape at the school during recess.

My father took me and my oldest sister Louise with him every Friday after he came home from work to buy Cod Fish cakes at the small deli on, I think, the corner of Bay Avenue and Main Street. My mother cooked them in stewed tomatoes, which I then thought was the only way to make them edible.

After every Thanksgiving Day, we walked into town to the Sears Roebuck Store, where as kids, we dreamed and imagined about gifts under the tree at Christmas time.

Our family went to the Robert Hall Clothing store in Coram, New York for our yearly Easter clothing.

We attended St Paul's church in Patchogue. And I still remember feeling like I entered a jail each time we visited the post office for stamps or to mail packages. The stone building looked huge to me, had bars on the windows, or I imagined that it did, and the ceilings were quite high. Of course, I was quite short.

I vividly recall when the four corner's fire made us think that the safety of our hometown wasn't quite what it had been the day before. But the community came together as so many Long Island communities did back then and encouraged business owners to rebuild. When they did, we all shopped there again.

When I married my wife Ruth, who grew up in NC, I took her upstairs at Sweezy's Department Store so she could experience the wavy floors, the different levels that seemed to have been built in as the building expanded over the years.

Growing up in Patchogue, although my family moved to the North Shore when I was 8, instilled a love of neighbors and friends I've never found elsewhere. Maybe that feeling had to do with my age at the time, the innocence of those postwar decades.

Or perhaps, it was more about the place and the people who lived there. This is what I chose to believe. I have lived in several different states in all corners of America, and never found what I experienced when I lived and grew in my first hometown.

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Mitchell Paul Feinberg

Mitchell Paul Feinberg

I took this picture during a trip Mitch and I took to New England to do a photo essay on covered bridges.

It is possible that on this same trip, we also drove up to Maine first to look at a house that needed a roof. Unfortunately, the concrete block walls wavered like the Great Wall of China, so adding a roof seemed a waste of time and money.

I knew a woman named Jill (she had a cat named Embly) in Burlington, Vermont and we stayed at her house one night. As it happened, the next morning, the headlines announced that Richard Nixon had resigned. Since all of us Leftist Pinko Commies (as the right wing framed our politics back then) worked to see Nixon run out of town, the news was a cause for celebration.

The paper was sold out everywhere we went locally! We needed to search out newsstands in the center of Burlington before we finally found the paper that Mitch holds in the photo while sitting on Jill‘s house’s front steps.

On our return home to New York, we passed a huge field of corn. Mitch suggested we stop and gather up some corn to take with us. I stopped alongside the wire fence and we both ran between rows of corn. Yes, I got lost, but I don’t know if Mitch did. We called to each other until we found the road and the car parked several hundred feet away. After that, we loaded the rear floor of the car with dozens of ears of corn and drove off as we heard a truck approaching from behind.

When we reached the Feinberg home in Port Jefferson, Mitch’s father took one look at the corn and announced, “You can’t eat that, its feed corn.”

It seems that we raided the wrong farm! But we got dozens of terrific covered bridge photos including the one posted here.




(The bridge photo posted is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any manner digital or otherwise without the express written permission of L. Schliessmann).

Bay Avenue Elementary School, Patchogue, New York 1957

This great photo was shot as a class picture in 1957. I'm standing alongside my best friend at the time Paul Crabtree. However, I have not heard from him or any of the rest of the class since then and can only wonder where they are, what they've done and, embarrassingly, what their names might be.

Rodney Rhodes - Korean War Veteran

A man to ride the river with.

Rodney Rhodes hailed from the Louisiana Bayou country where he was born and raised. He worked as an electrician in NYC after serving his nation during the Korean War. Rodney went through some of the toughest fighting of the Forgotten War and like so many other men and women who served with honor doing that conflict deserves recognition for his service.

However, I am including him here because he became a good friend while I worked at the Trenton, New Jersey Vet Center on Jersey Street. He was a quiet good natured guy who always had time to chat, and in fact visited the Vet Center many days for that purpose alone.

We shared coffee and donuts and discussed his war and mine (Vietnam) and what life became for us after returning home to learn that although we had changed beyond self-recognition, everyone else seemed like the same folks we left behind.

I always told people who asked my age that I was 22 --or whatever I was at the time-- going on 90. He not only found this funny, he knew exactly how I felt and what I meant.

When the Vet Center helped set up a tribute to Korean War veterans to honor them and the local Korean population at the Olympic baseball game between the USA and Korea in Trenton, Rodney was a great supporter and helped in every way possible.

At some point within the years he came to the Vet Center, he visited Washington DC and stopped at the Wall to honor Vietnam dead. He took a terrific photo, had it framed and presented it to me at a ceremony at the Vet Center.

I made him sign the back, which he did including the inscription I used to open this post. When I asked him what he meant, Rodney said, "Where I'm from, riding the river is a way of life. A man to ride the river with is a man you can trust your life to."

Then he told me about a friend of his who he rode the river with years ago. They passed under a low hanging live oak tree. As they did, a snake dropped from the tree into the boat. It wasn't the type of snake anyone might want to have that close since it was a water moccasin. His friend pulled out a pistol he always carried and blasted a couple shots at the snake. He missed the snake, but sank the boat. They remained friends because he knew the man shot at the snake to keep them both from getting poisoned many miles away from the nearest hospital.

Rodney had a way of smiling that told more than his words. After that story, I knew a lot more about him and his values than I had before and knew that he too was a man to ride the river with.

Katie Hess

Katie Hess

Katie was an Irish Setter with a human heart and the ability to understand almost empathically, human emotion.

I can’t recall when I first met her. She was part of the Hess family of Poquott, New York. Brad and Kevin Hess were good friends.

Kevin introduced me to the Who. I was sitting down on the beach under an inverted sailboat that belonged to Mimi Rattigan (Mimi died in a car crash several years later). It was a rainy afternoon, so the beach was empty. Kevin showed up, crawled under the boat with Katie, and said he had heard the most amazing new album titled Tommy by the Who.

I fell into a quagmire of Abbott and Costello and asked Tommy the Who? thinking I’d misunderstood him.

Kevin grinned and I should’ve understood, but due to what I’d been inhaling, I failed the test. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s right.”

We went back and forth a few times and I finally figured it out when he started laughing and pointing at me like I was a beached flounder.

Not long after, I went through a bad break-up that drove me into a stupor of self-doubt and misunderstanding.

The rock in the picture was once used by local Native American women to grind corn while watching their men in the harbor fishing.

That boulder, dragged into location by a glacier, became a place for me to retreat when I needed time to think and stare at the blasted movies, which insisted on grinding through my head explaining what-ifs and such.

Every day I sat on the rock, Katie would show up and in her casual way demand attention until she decided to drape herself on the rock alongside me and relax with a possessiveness only an animal like she could get away with. She helped me re-evaluate my opinions and get on with attempting to live a worthwhile life.

She was a good friend and deserves recognition.

Sandra Diane Strassenburg

His loneliness can be found in the tree reaching upward
Touching the sky in dark silence
A naked splendor
His deepest loves remain within the heart
Truth the makings of the soul
A timeless image
His passions are hidden from all but the wind
Who travels the nights
In search of nature’s purity
A simple beauty
His innocent birth reflects upon the aging earth
As the morning explodes in glory
And a proud shadow
Echoes the creation of man

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Winter 1971

What love have you to touch my dawn
With dew moist lips upon my own
The world sleeps
So we may be alone with the parting night
At peace with ourselves . . .
I have given my love to you and the day
What heart have you to turn away?

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Spring 1972

If ever I knew a person whose life was a fragile gift like a thistle’s seed on the wind that person would be Sandy. She lived with personal demons created for her by well meaning adults when she was twelve years old.

She was informed that she would not live to see her thirtieth birthday due to a birth defect received while in her mother’s womb. At the time, the early 1950s the new drug thalidomide (side effects either unknown or kept from patients for obvious reasons) to assist mothers dealing with the extreme discomfort of pregnancy, created severe physical defects in fetuses. Many of our generation were scarred by this, as were their parents emotionally.

She is the one person that fills me with deep regret caused by my inconsistent behavior while she and I were married. We met the year I returned from Vietnam.

I was filled with the nightmares of PTSD brought on by combat experiences impossible to forget without chemical assistance. The aid I chose was alcohol, which kept me in its fog throughout the years she and I lived together and beyond.

This is not an excuse, but a fact. None-the-less the remorse I still feel eleven years after her death is as real now as it was the last time I saw and spoke with her.

That night, Christmas Eve 1981, I had visited my Aunt Betty Titmus at Saint Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, New York. The weather was cold and wet, but not cold enough for snow. As I drove my old 1962 Mercedes Benz along 25A where it runs past Port Jeff harbor, I saw a woman hitch hiking. She wore a short skirt and a light spring jacket. I slowed and stopped to pick her up.

As the car rolled by her, I saw her face and wondered if she would get in. She did and made some kind of comment about how weird it was that I was the person who stopped.

I felt the same way.

I had completed more than two years of sobriety by practicing the 12 step of AA by then. Sandy was drunk and had had a fight with her family, walked out of the house determined to get to The Four Corners Bar in Setauket. My AA sponsor would’ve told me to try to get her sober, which I did by delaying the drive, and parking behind the bar to talk for around three hours.

We discussed what happened with her and her family, and the harder I tried to persuade her stay out of the bar, to go home and spend Christmas night where I thought she should, the more determined she became to do the opposite.

She finally left the car when she had gotten disgusted with my attempts and like a moth drawn to light, entered the bar without a glance back to see if I watched.

Alan W. Walker - Al-V

Some people knew him as Fast Al from his stockcar days in New Hampshire. I met Al-V in High School auto shop class and quickly discovered that we had many things in common. We became best friends.

Over the next few years we founded a Hot Rod club named Vandal Speed Incorporated. VSI grew in membership to about 35 within two years while we built hot rods from Al-V's Burgandy 1957 Chevy to my '62 Ford red and white Sunliner convertible, to Danny Davis' White Whale 1958 Chevy convertible.

We spent many late nights and weekends in his parents garage in the house on the hill across from smoker's corner outside E.L Vendermeulen High School in Port Jefferson, NY. His parents were terrific, feeding us and allowing us to enjoy a few cold ones as we reconstructed his '57.

Al died about 12 years ago. I admit that we grew apart after my tour of duty in Vietnam, but I believe our feeling of brotherhood remained with us both until he died, with me still. My wife Ruth and I visited his grave site around 6 years ago and was pleased to see the wolve's cut into his marker.

His father Edgar (a quiet, patient and funny man), died within a few weeks of Al's dying and is buried alongside him.

Some people go through life touching others in positive ways that they never understand while doing so. Al was one of them as were his parents, Emily and Ed.

Hope you found peace, Al.

More later.

Photographed August 20, 2006 at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC
by Larry Schliessmann

Anna Hyatt Huntington's Don Quixote at Brookgreen Gardens in Murrells Inlet, SC. Photographed August 20, 2006 by Larry Schliessmann

Ward Clarke Campbell

Yesterday, I received a letter from an old friend Helen Belnick. She informed me that a good friend, Ward Clarke Campbell had died.

I had not spoken to him in a year or two, but only because I'm in South Carolina and he was in New York, and life has a way of pressing ahead, filling days and weeks quickly enough that time slips into a rhythm that blurs everything but the immediate.

Back in 1980, at the age of 31, I was struggling to rebuild a life that alcohol abuse had ruined. I had been sober through AA for less than 6 months, but was determined to make it. The first step I needed to make beyond not drinking, was finding a job.

After reading the want ads in The Village Times, for several weeks, I spotted an ad for Delano Studios. They needed someone to run kilns and assist with shipping. Nervously, I applied, was interviewed and waited.

A few days passed before I received a call from Laurene Sama. She told me that the job had been filled by an earlier applicant, but that they would file my application for future openings.

Yeah, right, I thought, and resumed my search.

However, two weeks later, Mrs Sama called and said that Mr. Campbell (everybody called him Mr Campbell (to his amusement it turned out)) wanted to interview me again.

The interview went better than expected, and I got the job.

Working at Delano Studios was like being adopted into a new family of people who all cared about each other, celebrated life and its events.

My supervisor was Linda Speiser from Stony Brook. Through her and Ward Campbell, I learned about the business, and about life.

Ward had a way of nurturing a person, treating them with respect and kindness. He never tried to dominate or control his employees, but did befriend most of us.

Years later, after I had left Delano Studios, lived in Oregon where I attempted to build Geodesic homes (did get one up and sold in a bad mid-80s real estate market), I returned to New York to live. I visited Delano Studios and learned that Ward was selling, retiring.

I suppose that when I worked with him earlier, that the idea of him retiring seemed unlikely. How naive are we when we are young?

I wanted to buy the company, but could not. Instead, he recommended to the new buyer, G Stuart Smith of Low Country Guild, Bluffton, South Carolina, that I go down and help them set-up Delano Studios in its new location. I went and stayed.

Once again, Ward Campbell set into motion events that changed my life in ways inconceivable at the time, creating an opportunity for me to make a lot of new friends, live in a place that really is God's country, and work doing one thing I loved.

I owe Ward Campbell a lot of thanks, and am pleased to have known him, to have called him a friend.

More later.

A Visit With Mickey Spillane

The first time I spoke with Mickey Spillane was the day after his 86th birthday party held here in Murrells Inlet, SC. We provided a movie poster to be displayed in the banquet hall.

Ruth and I had been invited to share in the celebration. During the evening, we invited Mickey to stop by our bookstore in town.

I admit I did not think he would. After all, we had opened the store nearly a year earlier, displayed some of his movie posters in the front windows, and knew he drove by a time or two every day.

However, Mickey walked through the front door around 11am and wandered around looking at displays of books and toy cars, something he collected, and finally stopped at the counter.

I had an original I, The Jury movie poster under the counter, which I took out and showed him. He broke into a grin, shook his head and said, "Biff." He clearly didn't think that Biff Elliott was a great Mike Hammer (he played the part in the original movie). After a moment of hesitation, I asked him to sign the poster. He looked at me and I read his reluctance, and watched him sign despite how he might've felt. I promised him then that I would not ask him to sign anything else, and never did.

As a long time fan of Mike Hammer, I had collected many items related to his career, including some books written by other authors who he had helped promote by sending their work to his agent.

We talked about a man named Garrety who wrote some hardboiled cop books. When I asked him what happened to this writer, he told me he had died young, and by his tone, I surmised that Garrety died due to behavior Mickey did not agree with.

After walking around the store with him, showing him collections writers that few people read anymore, both mysteries and science fiction, he turned to me and said, "So many of them are gone now. Death just doesn't make sense."

I'd never thought about death in that way, but had to agree and still do.

By the time he left, around an hour later, he had invited Ruth and me to visit him at home, which we did and started a brief but good friendship.

More on Mickey later.