When my London-born son-in-law hears or reads something really impressive or heart breaking or touching, he voices or writes the word, “Respect”. I think it’s a nice response. If he says it to me, simply, and without explanation or embellishment, I feel that…respect.
I’ve noticed in my world, the world of ‘EDUCATION’ that there is a loss of respect these days. Readers, don’t jump on my perceptions…it’s just what it is…my perceptions. I find students are often lacking respect for teachers. I find that professionals are losing respect, in their words and actions, for their peers. I find that people in positions of authority are disrespectful to people ‘beneath’ them. I’m wondering what is going on?
Social media offers us a plethora of disrespectful ‘threads’ day in and day out. We have, as a people, stopped listening to one another. Brief blasts of tweets or posts or images, leave conversations dangling, sometimes making us shiver with their hatred, negativity and stone-walling sensibility.
Recently, I had the opportunity to engage conversation with and learn about one soldier. I had intended to add his photograph to the bottom of a post about my great-grandfather John Moors. Master Corporal Joe Green was the person who took on the task of cleaning my great grandfather’s Memorial Cross, a sterling silver cross that would have been presented to my great grandmother Mary Eleanor Haddow 100 years ago and another to his mother, Grace Rebecca Porter, as a result of John’s death during a German bombing raid in Etaples, France. He had been lying in a hospital tent in Canadian General Hospital #51…a hospital situated with some proximity to a railway line.
Respect?
Often times a person still hears negative comments about the military. There are wide-sweeping generalities made about peace and war and defense and aggression. “They shouldn’t have been over there in the first place!” Oh…to be ye, who judge. Oh, to be ye, who remain safe in your comfortable beds, with your comfortable thoughts, with your perfect opinions of other people, other countries, other politics because having been given the power, you would done everything differently!
I’ve been faulted for ‘living in the past’. But I don’t. See! I live here. I live now. But, I am absolutely NOT going to lose ties with our common past. I am always going to engage the touch stones of history, in order to do better. I am always going to remember.
Maybe it was the fact that I grew up in a military family during the Cold War years…during peace time…that I grew up with respect.
I remember attending high school in Montana. The MIA were still returning home, some of them, after the war in Vietnam. In 1969, the students were participating in fundraisers and wearing bracelets to bring their men home. Many, as my readers know, were never to return.
I picked up the Memorial Cross for John Moors and drove home. The roads were thick with deep snow, but I felt like I was floating. I was so elated to be driving home in 2018 with a 1918 Memorial Cross as my cargo.
I wrote the name Joe Green into my google search. This is what I found…article written by Cassie Riabko titled After the tour: Canadian soldiers reintegrating into society. Among the profiles, I learned about Joe. He made the correction with me, over electronic mail, that he had done two tours, not three, as noted in the article. He had not read the profile until I pointed it out to him through mail.
In 2008, Master Corporal Joe Green started working in the civilian workforce at Flowserve where he pursued drafting design. “From going from carrying a weapon 24 hours a day to sitting at a computer, it takes some adjusting,” says Green on Mar. 24, 2017. Photo by Cassie Riabko
Master Corporal Joe Green
Read more on the reintegration of a Candian veteran by clicking here!
Master Corporal Joe Green
Upon reading this profile, I made the decision to write a post that dealt with this issue of respect. While reading Joe’s profile, I found myself with tears. I took pause and remembered, in prayer, Joe’s peer, Private Rob Costall. Joe’s journey has inspired, in me, a new level or respect. This is the man who all of these decades later, held our family’s Memorial Cross in his hands and with precision and care, brought it to a beautiful sheen. I received his name through the centrally located Royal Canadian Legion Branch 275 in Forest Lawn. I had met a most amazing historian, there.
I received this Memorial Cross (there were two that were sent out, one to John’s wife Mary Eleanor Haddow Moors and the other to his mother, Grace Porter Moors…this is likely the one that I am now holding), kindly, from my father’s cousin JR Moors of Roseville, California. My Dad’s Uncle Bob had kept it safe and in his care and then left it to his son for safe keeping. The day it arrived by mail, I was overcome with emotion.
Pte. John Moors Medal The Great War
And finally, with Joe’s work…the refurbished Sterling silver cross.
As a part of our experience of respect, I think it is essential that we promise care of the objects that represent our soldiers and their service. I highly recommend that you solicit the help of Joe Green, locally, in order to tend to these treasures. Please contact me if you want his information and I will have him respond to your request.
I am blessed. I am grateful. I am filled with respect.
My cousin, James Perry, on my maternal side said it perfectly…
“A good polishing would bring back the shine of that silver too, IMHO tarnished medals are brought back to life with polishing, and are part of “Always remember, never Forget” and the sacrifice our families made to keep our world free from tyranny.”
