The Final Salute
Illinois State Route 37 takes you past America. Nestled in Pulaski county, a few miles northeast of Mounds, it’s a nondescript town, noticeable only by the sign bearing its continent’s name. A turn onto Mounds Road takes you by Meridian High School, a run-of-the-mill rural school where kids roam the halls dreaming of next week’s football game and next year’s possibilities.
Then there is Mounds. A town that you can tell was once something but is no more. Mounds was middle America in the middle of the twentieth century. Now, it seems, as it does in so many other places around the country, the middle has been squeezed like an old tube of toothpaste, just enough life left to make it useful but mostly empty. A small town in a small part of the country overlooked and forgotten. A drive-by town whose passersby have no idea what true greatness lies within.
There in a church on a warm August afternoon in the hellish year that is 2020 is a man in a coffin just shy of his 97th birthday. He used to tell his family, “Remember, you come from strong stock.” He was never talking about himself, but he’s the reason it’s true. Now, that family mills about the sanctuary. His granddaughter tunes her violin in the back room. His great-grandchildren run around like it’s a living room—something he always found such amusement in. Relatives arrive, masked and tear-stained, to pay their respects. A slide show cycles through the years that went by too fast at times and not fast enough at others. Images of the war so long ago, the yellow house down the street, the children born into the world, and the loved-ones already gone. The images appear and disappear, the stuff of life hovering above the man who lived it and who made it not only a life but a life.
AMERICAN SOLDIER
Fred Moyers was many things. We all are, I guess, but he was more. He was a World War II soldier. D-day, the Battle of the Bulge, prisoner of war, hero, the whole bit. He was a husband. Faithful. Kind. Generous. He was a father of two. Loving. Constant. Tender. He was a grandfather to four and great-grandfather to nine. Fun. Energetic. Encouraging. He was a servant of his church. Christian. God-fearing. Available. He was a musician. Self-taught. Countrified. Harmonica-based. He was a county clerk. He was a licensed real estate agent. He was a certified entomologist, a small business owner, ballroom dancer, a life-time learner, skilled at just about everything, and by all accounts, the most joyful person anyone ever met.
I remember his eightieth birthday party. I started dating Fred’s granddaughter, Sarah, that year. We showed up to the “party house,” a house next door to Sarah’s Uncle and Aunt, specifically designated for house parties, equipped with a sound system, stage, and dance floor. Fred took his wife and they swirled around the floor like teenagers, smiling and laughing like it was high school prom. The karaoke machine got hot that night as Fred and his wife, Helen, sang country tune after country tune, mixed with a little gospel and a bit of rock-n-roll. I thought, “If this is 80, it’s not so bad.” Fred made it look good. He had that way about him.
I never called him Fred, though. To me, he was Granddad because that’s who he was to Sarah. He was married to Gammie. They were family from the start. I never, even on that first visit, felt like an outsider.
Sixteen years later, when the dance was finally over, like a country song, I carried his casket.
A MILITARY FUNERAL
A few miles southeast of the church is Mound City National Cemetery. Filled with the bodies of soldiers long gone, another was moving in. Perhaps he was seventy years too late. So many never came home from Europe. But, as we know, God’s never anything but right on time. Granddad had miles to go before he rested.
The casket rolled into the shade. Military personnel stood at attention. The American flag draped over the wood box, the soldier resting inside. I stood to the side, hands folded, back straight, still. How else can you stand before such honor?
The preacher gave us God’s hope from the Bible. Prayers were offered. Tears were shed. Taps played on a harmonica, Granddad’s favorite instrument—the one he always carried with him, just in case. The rifles blasted. Then, the flag was folded, the procedure carefully explained, and handed to the family as his fellow comrades passed by in salute.
My three sons sat with their grandmother, Granddad’s daughter, on the bench before the casket. They’re young: nine, seven, and four. They took it all in, undoubtedly unsure of what all the fuss was about.
If you’ve ever seen a military funeral up close, it’s hard to be unmoved. I’m not an overly patriotic person. I think our country is good but not without deep flaws. I respect the flag but I don’t bow before it. I am grateful for our land of the free but wish it was freer still. I believe in the creation of a more perfect union, and hope one day we’ll get there. So did Granddad. He was a patriotic man who loved the U.S.A. and her flag. I guess that’s what happens when you fight for her.
THE FIRST SALUTE
Granddad’s first salute was sometime in the early 1940s. Heeding the call, he enlisted in the Army, ready and willing to head to Europe to join the great fight. He married Gammie just before leaving, eloping in secrecy after which Gammie went home terrified to tell her parents what they’d done. They found out soon enough, and there was nothing they could do about it. So began a marriage lasting 77 years.
It was a marriage begun under less than ideal circumstances. But what wasn’t less than ideal in those days? A Great Depression. A Great War. Only such things could bind the ties of marriage tighter and tighter. Gammie waited at home while Granddad went off to fight the Germans. He was positioned at the top turret of a B-26 Bomber, flying back and forth to strike the enemy where it hurt. One run, the plane was hit and going down. He climbed out of the turret to find many of his fellow soldiers already dead. He got the living out, ensuring their parachutes were firmly secured. The last one out of the plane, he nearly jumped without his own parachute on when he felt a tap on the shoulder. He says it was God saving him.
He jumped. Falling through the air, he realized he left his gun in the plane. German soldiers were waiting for him. The left-behind gun was now his savior. He wasn’t a threat; only a captive. Now he was stuck, unsure what comes next, knowing the next letter home wouldn’t be a happy one.
But he survived. He came home like so many others and built America. The Greatest Generation.
THE FINAL SALUTE
Granddad’s final salute was August 17, 2020, on a warm summer afternoon under a sunny sky. The honor guard surrounded his casket. What was left of his family was there too, and one old school mate from his childhood.
A life nearly ninety-seven years in the making.
A life that made so many other lives, filling them with a joy that doesn’t come along often enough.
A life that made music wherever he went, always ready with a song and a smile.
A life with encouragement for others, hand in hand with Gammie as they faced the world that, try as it may, couldn’t take their life away until they’d rung it dry.
A life too big and too long and too full to possibly capture in words.
A life fit only for eternity with which he’s now rewarded in Christ his savior.
He loved America. I mean, there’s so much to love, isn’t there? We have our problems. Every country does. We’re more wicked in some ways. Less in others. But men like Fred Moyers make me believe it can one day finally be great. Not because of the laws say so. Not because the flag flies high. Not because we proclaim it such. But because men like Granddad walked this land.
LEGACY
As my boys sit there taking it all in, I wonder if they understand what they see. Do they know the greatness that lies before them? Do they know the honor they witness? Do they know the sacrifice? Do they know the love? Do they know the life? They don’t. They’re too young. They might not remember the day or the folded flag or the rifle salute, or maybe even Granddad himself, but as they grow in this land of the free and home of the brave, I pray that whenever their fellow countrymen need them—of whatever background and whatever story, and whatever the need—that they will answer the call. Not because it’s the popular thing to do; it will never be. Not because it’s the path of least resistance; it’ll always be hard. But because they can’t imagine doing anything else. And when I see it, I’ll think, “he was right.”
They come from strong stock.
For more about Fred Moyers, especially his War stories, click here.
