Veterans Day 2013

A Soldier's Story

This story was essentially written by my Dad through his photographs.  Dad served from 1953-54. These are and were his "Brothers in Arms".   These are just some of the slides and photos taken by him.  This is a glimpse of how the Korean Conflict was seen by one soldier - my dad.  

Even through this is a longer video I hope you take the time to watch it.  At about the 4:15 mark there's a picture of my dad and his friend Bill Borman.  This was taken by my godfather Harry Berth; dad and Bill just got back in from the field after being lost behind enemy lines for a couple of days.

On July 14th 1953 my dad's home base was hit by "friendly fire", they lost all of their possessions.   Most of the men escaped major harm, my dad was seriously injured in the face by shrapnel - but returned to duty.  Three men were lost.

The photographs were taken by dad after that attack, he used that camera for most of his life. 

Apple Pie

I am sorry to say that I don't have as many memories of my Grandma Piekarski as I do Grandma Beck. One memory though that always sticks out with her, was her apple pie.

Grandma Piekarski made the best apple pie that I remember. When she and Grandpa lived in Whitefish Bay, they had a small orchard in their backyard, about a half dozen trees. I think they were all a cooking apple, because I can't remember just eating an apple right off the trees.

Anyway back to the pie. She mostly made the pies in the fall with fresh apples. The smell of the cooking pies would fill the whole house with the most wonderful smell of cooking apples and tasty crust. Her pies were the perfect combination of apples, spices and flaky crust. My most prized memory of her was one fall when I was visiting her, I think I was around 8 years old. Grandpa had picked apples for her and brought them into the kitchen for her. I was looking to watch her make the pies and then she surprised me and said she'd show me how to do it. So we mixed the ingredients for the crusts and divided the dough – one for her pie and one for my very own little pie! After the work of making the dough was done we filled the crusts with her filling and and waited for the goodness to come out of the oven.

Sadly a few years later Grandma and Grandpa moved out of Whitefish Bay to Thiensville, away from her trees, and she quit making those delicious pies.

Grandma's crib

Grandma's Crib

One of the oldest traditions I know of in my family is my Grandma Beck's crib set. She got it from my Grandpa back in 1927. The set started out simple as you can see, then grandpa built a landscape out of sheet metal for one side and then the other side another year. He painted both sides to match the original set. Grandma sewed an appliqued shirt for it, I'm not sure when, but I can't remember the crib not having the shirt.

The crib remained the same the over the years with the exception of a lost or broken figure. During one of my visits in the summer, I think about 1971, we went to downtown Milwaukee to go to the museum and shopping at a five and dime store. I was looking for toys , Grandma was waiting for me like usual, and she found a new shepard, a couple of sheep and a camel.

The crib was always setup up in Grandma's living room for as long as she lived, sometimes she didn't have room to put up the whole crib, but the original building has always been a part of our Christmas.

Recently my cousin has restarted the tradition and set the crib up, just like all of us remembered it. He didn't have the first photo to go by, just the shared memories of it. Making a part of Grandma and Grandpa with us still.