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TIME MARCHES ON
A week ago Sunday, Joe died. Joe was 80, about ten months older than I am. I met Joe in January 1941, a month after the war started, a month after Pearl Harbor, a month in which the U.S. was getting its butt kicked by the Japs and by the German subs. My family had moved up from New Jersey to Connecticut, because Dad was working at High Standard, turning out machine guns for the Armed Forces. Joe and I entered Hillhouse High School the same day, just five months short of graduation, so we were in any groups, cliques, fraternities, on any teams, didn't know a soul but each other, and a very attractive brunette named Jan, who also joined the Class that day. Jan was popular right away, but we weren't.

Well, we graduated and Joe soon signed up with the Army and was trained to be a fighter plane mechanic. I had to wait until December 8th, when I was 18, to go back in the Merchant Marine. We kept in touch. In fact, we kept in touch for 63 years and I talked to Joe just a week before he died in the Veteran's Hospital in Hamden, Connecticut.

He never married. He took care of his father until he died at 92 and then lived alone. Never really scik, never a recluse but not socially active either, and always a sort of impish type of humor, slight, ever so slight digs, but not malicious.

He was working at an airfield as close to Japan as any at the end of the war. Drop the bomb? Hell, yes. On one airfield the mechanics had to grab rifles and beat off a Jap banzai attack, and after that Joe and the others called themselves, "The Fighting Mechanics". Drop the Bomb? Hell yes, Joe and the guys knew that there could be half a million casualties taking the Japanese homeland. He didn't want to lose his pilot in that final assault, or die at the hands of a Kamikazi pilot either. Drop the Bomb? Of course, with no regrets. He'd have pulled the lever himself, given the chance.

Joe decided to go, as he did not want any more pills, plugs, wires or tubes. He was only in the hospital a couple of weeks and he left me. A life-time friend, a real friend. I wrote a poem in tribute to Joe and I sent out four or five copies, but forgot to mail one to Joe. His sister wrote me to say they used it at the Funeral Service,and she was sure that he heard it. I am too, and I will tell you why in a later Blog.

Here it is:

THE GARDEN OF FRIENDSHIP
Howard E. Morseburg

I telephoned a friend the other day,
But the ‘phone rang and rang and rang away.
He often takes time to answer the ‘phone,
For he is aged and slow and lives alone.
But yet…something strange was bothering me,
A subconscious thought that wouldn’t let me be.
For somehow I sensed that all was not right,
That friendship’s long day was fading to night.

Our Garden of Friendship we’d tended with care,
So the flowers of trust would always bloom there.
We’d cultivated that Garden, the two of us,
By letter and ‘phone, by things we’d discuss
A friendship that’s lasted o’er sixty years,
Sharing our lives and sorrows, our joys and fears.
We’d walked in that Garden, ‘twas ours to share,
There friendship had flowered and sweetened the air.

The rose petals are now falling to the ground,
And they’ve covered the pathways all around
I found out last night his life might soon end,
When I called him…we talked, just friend to friend,
It wasn’t in sorrow, we let no tears fall,
During our long lives we’d covered it all.
We’d walked in that Garden each golden year,
Moving Onward, we know, there’s nothing to fear.

That Garden of Friendship requires your care,
It grows like a tree, strong and high in the air.
You till the soil, then plant seeds in the spring,
In summer you’ll find friendships flowering.
With kind words you’ll nourish the heart of a friend,
And like a tree…in a storm it will bend.
Where one friendship dies, another one grows,
It’s the story of life, a blossom, a rose.

Copyright 4/16/04 Howard E. Morseburg Dedicated to W.J.G.

Fess Parker's (Daniel Boone) wife, Marcie, called tonight and she was crying. I thought something was wrong. It wasn't. She had just finished reading my poem for my friend, Joe, Woodrow Joseph Gaudet, who died the last week of April, 2004, a patriotic American.