What might have been...

[salred]

I've been shaking my head over this for about a day, and I thought I'd share...

My late father, Jack Alred (1919 - 1997), was a star high school athlete in the Illinois Valley Conference (played for Roodhouse, IL, from 1935 - 1937). His father kept a small notebook into which he glued press clippings from *every* game plus other ephemera.

My wife found the notebook in our attic this week. I have no recollection on how it got to our place in Maryland unless my folks brought it out during a visit long ago. Anyway, I leafed through the clippings and was enjoying the exploits of "Jumping Jack" Alred, the 140 pound (!!!) quarterback, running back, and linebacker when an envelope fell out.

The letter inside was a rejection from the "Canadian Aviation Bureau" dated September 3, 1941 (three months before Pearl Harbor) saying that my dad was disqualified from pursuing enlistment because of "color confusion". Now, later that year my Dad enlisted and spent the war in the Army Air Force as a mechanic, etc., but this was the first time I knew that he'd tried to get into the war *before* the US declared war!

An internet search reveals that the "Canadian Aviation Bureau" was a front organization that enrolled US pilots in the Canadian Air Force and the Royal Air Force while the US was still officially neutral. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_Knight_Committee)

And here I sit nearly 60 years later wondering "what if?" What if he hadn't been color-blind. Would I even be here? What would his chances have been if he ended up flying Spitfires over England?

I really wish I could have talked to him about this...

-- Steve A.

 

[Patrick620]

That's an amazing story and I am proud of your father, even having never met him.:yes:

 

[Sandy G]

My dad was on track to be in the invasion of the Jap home islands planned for 1946. It was expected that AT LEAST a million-million & a half US servicemen would die in the attempt, which some planners thought could have lasted til 1950, anyway-maybe longer...Basically, the Bomb prolly saved my father's life, & I'd wager a LOT of you all's dad's lives as well. Was The Bomb right, was it wrong ? Doesn't really matter, because it DID happen, & we can't change it now..

 

[BigManAndy]

Wow!! Amazing story!! He sounds like he was a great man! You should be proud of him, I know I am. Just don't beat yourself up on the what if's.

My Grandfather was in the Navy during WW2 on a Destroyer in Pacific Ocean. I have heard some amazing stories over the years.

 

[gearhound]

After my Father died last year, I collected his possessions, including many old (and previously unseen) family pictures.
I was very young when my Grandfather died, and only knew him as a mostly blind old man.
I was amazed to see photos of my Grandfather, as a 17 year-old soldier in WWI France!?
Standing straight and tall in uniform, with a rifle and fixed bayonet, next to a horse-drawn artillery piece.
Here was a young man, many years before my Father was born, with his whole life ahead of him.
I wish he had lived longer, for me to get to know him, and to hear HIS stories...........

Steve

 

[Tarl Of Gor]

My GGgrandfather on my mother's side of the family was one of the few survivors of Andersonville Prison during the Civil War. He didn't have any children prior to the war and I know for a fact I wouldn't be here if he hadn't survived.

 

[TheRed1]

After my father died, I found a small notebook among his possessions that he had taken with him when he ventured out to California as a young man in the early 60s. The early entries contain an entertaining narrative of the train trip including his impressions of the cities he passed through, descriptions of the bars he visited, including lists of the various beers he tried and the what the women there looked like. Later entries detail his search for employment in LA after he had arrived.

What surprised me was the long list of phone numbers for all the major motion picture studio casting offices that he had methodically checked off. I had no idea he had ever entertained such ambitions. I always thought he looked like a movie star in the photographs I've seen of him as a young man - kind of a cross between James Dean and Robert Mitchum. I guess he thought so, too.

Well, Fate had other plans for him which was very fortunate for me because one of the good-looking women he met in LA was my mother.

 

[onepixel]

My dad was on track to be in the invasion of the Jap home islands planned for 1946. It was expected that AT LEAST a million-million & a half US servicemen would die in the attempt, which some planners thought could have lasted til 1950, anyway-maybe longer...Basically, the Bomb prolly saved my father's life, & I'd wager a LOT of you all's dad's lives as well. Was The Bomb right, was it wrong ? Doesn't really matter, because it DID happen, & we can't change it now..

Strange Sandy... I watched the movie Babel last night and how one event changed the lives of many on 3 different continents. Which got me to thinking about the bomb. The one in Hiroshima completely wiped out my mother's school mates. The only reason my mother survived, is that her mom had a premonition and kept the kids home that day. That and they lived on the other side of the hills.

 

[merrylander]

My Dad never got involved in WW I even though he emigated to Canada in 1906. Sometime between then and 1914 he lost his right leg below the knee in an industrial accident so the services would not accept him.

 

[Sandy G]

Strange Sandy... I watched the movie Babel last night and how one event changed the lives of many on 3 different continents. Which got me to thinking about the bomb. The one in Hiroshima completely wiped out my mother's school mates. The only reason my mother survived, is that her mom had a premonition and kept the kids home that day. That and they lived on the other side of the hills.

Yeah...Seems like I remember reading, too, that the planners felt that at least as many Japanese civilians would have died in an attempt to invade the home islands, as it was felt that they would have fought almost to the last person...I think Japan was pretty much finished by the summer of '45, but it went against everything they held near & dear to surrender...The A-bombs gave them a way out w/o loss of "face"....There were apparently quite a few die-hards in the Imperial Army who wanted to keep going even after the 1st bomb, but after the 2nd one, Hirohito basically said "Enough !" and that was that. I always thought highly of Hirohito, from what I've read, he basically was a shy man who wanted nothing more than to be left alone to study marine biology, which was his passion. The bombs were terrible, no doubt about it, I don't think ANYBODY, not even Oppenheimer really understood what they had unleashed. But would it have been any worse to have drug the war out any longer, perhaps another couple of years, & maybe have taken another 2 or 3 million people with it ?