Wordless Wednesday ~ Body Language

Celebrating Veteran's Day 2015 My dad in Europe WWII

52 Ancestors Weeks Week 2 My Dad

Week 2 of Amy Johnson Crow;s challenge to write a story once a week about an ancestor. Her blog is No Story Too Small you can read about her challenge there.   

I have blogged about different aspects of my dad’s life. One was about his propensity for achieving and not giving up. http://branchingoutthroughtheyears.blogspot.com/2009/07/great-example-of-never-give-up.html  His pride in being a World War II veteran.

I have not however, blogged about his role as a father.  My dad, Lester Langley born 28 Aug 1915 in Hughes County, Oklahoma, was a remarkable dad.  He was not perfect, none of us are, but he was a good dad.  I was an only child, by his choice.  He was in attendance when I was born.  I was born breech, my arm came out first.  He liked to say it was because I was shielding my eyes from this world.  (One way to look at it.) My mom had a terrible time recovering. The labor had been long, and the doctor had to push my arm back up inside and turn me so I could come on out. I can imagine it would have been a traumatic thing to my dad who liked to be in control.
When I was little I went everywhere I could with him, and he let me. 

As he was recovering from having lost his leg, I was always there to help him. He would laugh and say I was his leg during that time. The picture below was taken were we lived in Iowa while he was working as an artificial limb technician. Which brings me to the fact, he never missed any of my birthdays, being poor there weren't parties, but it was always a special occasion.

A picture of my dad and me in Des Moines, Iowa when I turned 4

  Any activity I was in, piano recitals, plays, band performances on the football field, parades, and concerts, he was always there. When it was time for me to learn to drive, he was there.  He had an old pickup that had what he called a compound drive.  We go out to the pasture where he would get out and say, "drive".  It moved slower than I could walk. (giggling greatly here) I still took Driver's Ed at school because my dad felt it was best. Wonder why. 

When I married, he had been disabled because of an accident that caused his artificial limb to rip his hip bone apart.  It did not stop him from continuing to do things; he just could not hold up to the demands of working at the College.  That left him free.  If one of my children had an illness, or I had a problem, he was the one who came and helped me.  I am not knocking my mom who was still teaching.  He loved playing with my children, and eventually he moved down next to us.  He taught us about farming the small amount of land that we had, having a cow, how to milk her, goats (that’s a story), chickens, chickens and gardening.

Got help?

My love of people came from watching him interact with others. He never met a stranger, and watching him taught me to be able to strike up a conversation with anyone, anywhere. He encouraged me to consider possibilities, and to make choices for myself and not be a follower.  

He was my dad. He behaved as a dad, and gave an enduring example for the future. 

 Thanks Dad, I miss you.

This picture was taken when I was 15. My dad was the being the poster boy for the Handicap can overcome series of newspaper articles

11-11-11 Happy Veterans Day!

While my dad was living, Veteran's Day was always very important to him. He was proud of having served in the Army Corp of Engineers. I wrote a little about him in a previous blog post.  
I thought I would just post some pictures from when he was in Europe in WWII.  Hope you enjoy.

Newspaper write up in the Pawnee Chief

Marcelle France. The 12 year old girl he always wondered what happened to her. The fellow soldier unnamed

Company 1308 D Army Corp of Engineers

Unknown Soldier and Lester Langley on right in Nice, France.  Maybe some one will recognize.

Lester on the left, T4 Good on the right, Picture says 'the day I got out of hospital in France' (Lester's hand writing)

Lester 1943 Marcelle France

Record of Honorable Discharge. Is not online.

Sentimental Sunday The Hero and Plumbing

We lived in Houston for the first few years of our married life.  The first house we bought was a small 2 bedroom house in the Heights, with an enclosed back porch, and an unattached garage.

My dad was a frequent visitor as he was disabled (remember he broke his hip on his amputated leg).  We turned the back porch into a guest bedroom for him. There was one problem. He did not like coming through our bedroom to get to the only bathroom, so the Hero decided to fix him a shower and toilet in the workshop in the garage.  He could then just walk out to the bathroom without coming through our room.  This sounds easy enough.  The Hero worked hard and got everything installed in time to proudly show it to my dad the next time he came to visit. 
The next morning the Hero and I left for work. That evening on arriving home, I found my dad in a bit of a tizzy.  Yes, that is a good word for it.  My daughters loved on him and he was better after a bit, so I asked what happened during the day.  "Well," says he, "I went out to my bathroom to go to the potty.  Sat down and not a second later I was being showered by hot water.  I had to 'jump up' and escape."  (I started to smile.) "It wasn't funny.  I couldn't get my pants up very fast and I got soaked!"  (I had tried to keep a straight face, now I giggled.)  "Oh, all right, I know it sounds funny, but it is a good thing the Hero wasn't here or I would have gotten him for sure!"
Of course, you know, that he was lying in wait for the Hero when he got home.  First thing the Hero heard when he walked in the door was "You soaked me in the garage bathroom!"

He was baffled. "What are you all talking about?"  After the story was told, he went out to the garage to investigate what had happened.  He came in with sheepish look on his face and said, "I guess I forgot to glue that joint after I checked to see if it would fit. Sorry."
My dad wasn't a harsh person, but he never let the Hero forget that he had not glued the pipe and when repairing the plumbing on the farm he would say, "and this is how you glue the pipes."  ; )
We would all laugh.
Grandchildren, while your granddadE was not proficient in plumbing, he was able to learn to do the basics and always tried to grow in knowledge.  Never be afraid to learn something new.
Love you.

Sharing a Slice of Life 'JOBS'

I will fall back on my father for this post.  I have pictures of him at work.  Nice to have.
As I have told you many eons ago...(exaggeration for emphasis) in a post on how my did never gave up, I admired him greatly.
In his early life he worked for the railroad(for a different post), farmed, and construction. I will, for this post, concentrate on after his leg was amputated.
He was grateful and to my knowledge never complained about going to work.  When his stump on his amputated limb would "scald", as he called it, he would go to work in pain.  I never saw him  call out sick.

His job started out as a maintenance man over the big boiler that supplied the steam heat to the entire Central State College.  I remember going down to the boiler with sandwiches and drink with my mom for him in the evenings. 


The boiler was huge.  Lots of gauges, the roar of the fire, it was awesome for a girl of 9. At least it was all with natural gas, and  not back when they had to "stoke it with wood".
 
When an opening came as Supervisor in the Air conditioning department, he had the knowledge from his school, and the confidence of his employers because of his work ethic.
He got the position. For nine years he worked in the A/C department of the College. He became friends with most of the professors and kept their home units working too.  He loved his job.  It was of great loss to him when he broke his hip bone of his amputated leg and had to retire as disabled.
Life is good when you love your work.

A Date Which Lives In Infamy...

Sixty-eight years ago today, at about 7:55 a.m., Japanese bombs began falling on the United States military installations Wheeler Field and Hickam Field in Hawaii, signifying the beginning of the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
That attack, which killed 2,390 sailors, airmen, soldiers and civilians, officially brought America into World War II. Until Sept. 11, 2001.  The attack, at the time, was the deadliest on American soil (2,976 died that day). When war was declared on Japan the next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it, “a date which will live in infamy…”
 The picture taken above was  from the brownie camera of a sailor who was on the USS QUAPAW ATF-11O. in Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.  It is a time we need to take note of and pay tribute to those who died in this attack.

My father always remembered each of the WWII days when he was alive.

My father was affected by this act as was many.  He is pictured here with his wife Faye Jenkins Langley in 1941.  When war was declared,  he was a superintendent on the domestic railroad in construction, he was exempt from going off to serve overseas.  His duty was to keep the railways open in the US.  There was trouble in the winds, though, he had a discontented wife.  She hid his papers the government required him to fill out to say he was still working for the railroad.  As a consequence, he was sent a draft notice and went down to enlist in the army corp of engineers.

He served in the European Theater although his ship was diverted to the Phillipine Islands on his way home.

When he got home he was divorced because of things that happened while he was gone.  Not a pleasant time, but it ended in him finding and marrying my mom.

To his death he was proud of serving his country and stood up for the men who served.  I would need to do the same.

Thanks to all who did and do serve this wonderful country.

A Great Example of Never Give UP

Smile for the Camera has an event for "A Noble Life".

When I was 3 years old, my father was a starving farmer. My mother had pushed him to quit his job as a railroad superintendent, because she wanted him home more. After a year of trying his hand at farming it was quite evident that we would not survive. He heard of a job in Des Moines, Iowa as a Building Superintendent and decided that was a good alternative. He would go to Iowa, get stable and then send for us. He made friends with a local farmer, and one week end he went out to the farm with some other men to cut down a tree. It was in the winter. The equipment was an old two man chainsaw. It did not have a safety switch on it. They started sawing the large tree and soon it became evident the tree was not going to go where they wanted it to. They saw it start to topple in their direction and ran for cover not thinking to cut the saw off. My dad chose a smaller tree to get behind thinking it would shield him. He was not a professional logger. He saw the trunk slip, then with a loud thud as it cracked then it slid before beginning to fall. My dad said it was like a terrible disaster picture in slow motion. As the tree fell, its branches bent the tree my father was behind to catch him in the upper limbs. When it dropped, the tree he was behind acted as a sling shot, as its branches bounced back up slinging my father up into the air. When he realized what had happened to him, he looked down to see that he was headed straight for the running two man chain saw. It was going to cut him in half. Partly on self preservation and partly on instinct, he stretched his hand in front of him allowing the saw to amputate his finger so he could turn himself to save himself. It amputated his left leg at the mid thigh. The other men were in shock, so my father once again had to come to his own aid. He took off his belt and made a tourniquet and directed the other men to get the car and take him to the hospital. In a daze, they acted on his command. At the hospital, he assisted the doctor in cleaning the wound for surgery.

 After the long road of recovery in the hospital, he obtained a job in an artificial limb shop while going through therapy. He loved the work, and fashioned his own leg which he wore for 15 years. However, the job had its down side in that it depressed him to see those that would not try to walk with their artificial limbs. He decided to return to Oklahoma and work in a hotel washing dishes to put my mother through College to become a teacher. While working there, a local hardware shop had become interested in air conditioners. The man and my father were great friends and soon, my father was spending hours in the back of the shop learning how to repair the air conditioners. Earl, the shop owner, heard of a program the state had for disabled persons for becoming an Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineer. My father was accepted and once again washed dishes in a College cafeteria while he and my mother went to school. We were dirt poor.

I never knew it until I looked back. He earned his Engineering Certification in Air Conditioning and Refrigeration and was accepted as head of the department in Maintenance of the the College he had washed dishes for.

Unknown, Bobby Cotton, Lester Langley

Lester Langley by an air conditioner on the college campus.

 I grew up friends with professors, and the College was my playground, because he always had me stay with him at work until he got off. He taught me perseverance, stamina, faith, and a belief you can become what you want to if you just try.

Summer Visits and Poignant Memories

When I was little, my father loved living in Pawnee, Oklahoma. We lived there until I was 8 years old, then we moved half a state away. We would go back to visit every holiday or family event. I would often spent several weeks with my cousins during the summer. We would go to the Indian Pow Wow's and fish, and go to the movies. It was always fun.
On the left you see my son, when he was 18, we went back to visit the old town again.


One of the sights to see was Pawnee Bill's Museum. My dad told me he knew Pawnee Bill and that when he was about 8, he would play with Billy, Pawnee Bill's son. He said they would play cowboys. He had lots of fun with him. It was after one of his visits that Billy accidentally hung himself from an old windmill. My dad always remembered the fun with Billy and the sadness of Pawnee Bill and May, who closed up Billy's room and never reopened it while May was alive. I checked out the dates recently and I know that my father was there at the time of Billy's death and that they were of the same age.

The old theater is still there. My father worked next door washing dishes after his lost his leg in a logging accident. He worked to put my mother through college. I can remember going to the movies here. I particularly remember a movie about werewolves and that I got so scared my dad had to take me home.
This was a neat place to take my children back to visit because there are so many historic ties of their family to this place with wonderful stories.