Flight to Denver the Medford Oregon

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Getting to The Wild Rivers f Festival in Brookings Oregon was an adventure. I left around noon to drop my car off at the long term parking lot. My flight left about 3pm. I was hoping to bring the backpack on the trip but United Airlines has a policy of only allowing one carry on item per passenger. Although the backpack could easily fit in the overhead bins, I would have to check it. Since I don’t trust the airline to not loose my baggage, I decided to only take by shoulder art bad one change of clothes shoved in around my art supplies. I am on the last day of the trip now and I decided that was the right choice for this trip. I also decided I will never again fly United since this luggage policy was not made obvious before I purchased the tickets.

It was 102 degrees in Denver which could be felt the second we walked off the plane onto the gang plank. The lay over in Denver was short enough that I decided I didn’t need to do another airport sketch. I grabbed a quick bite of a cordon bleu sandwich which was delicious and held me over for the rest of the day.

The second flight was to Medford Oregon which is about a 3 hour drive from the coast. I had booked a hotel in Medford because I decided I didn’t want to make that 3 hour drive in the dark and I knew I would be exhausted. It was a good call. The drive to the coast was absolutely gorgeous driving up through the mountains and down winding roads that were cut into cliffs and meandered along snaking rivers. I passed into California and had to pull off into a produce inspection station. I was asked if I had any fruit in the car, and I let him know that I had 1 apple. the officer said, “Apples are fine” and I was on my way.

I drove through the redwood forest with giant thick redwoods trees right along the roadside. That anyone would ever want to cut one of these glorious giants down, is mind glowing. I read the user’s manual to figure out how to use the cruise control for the highway driving. But for the downhill slaloms, I let my foot off the gas’s and let the car tell me how fast to go through all the curves. It was a fun drive with very little traffic. I hope to stop at a few spots on the way back to sketch.

When I got to the Wild Rivers Film Festival, I was several hours early and could not check into the hotel, so I drove to the theater where COVID Dystopia would screen. The theater was closed. It was raining. I drove next door to a Dollar General and got a cheap poncho for myself thinking I would sketch the theater. I tried to sketch but the page got so wet that I knew a watercolor would be impossible to complete.  I drove back to dollar general and got myself an umbrella as well. The rain had turned into a fine mist. The umbrella would stop and heavy rain, but the mist still coated the page making a sketch impossible. I wanted to start my creative Film Festival experience but didn’t know how to start.

National Military Heritage Museum

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The 75th Division Association had a field trip that went to the National Military Museum in Enid, Oklahoma. The bus stopped at the entrance in what looked like a deserted shopping mall. The sliding glass doors slid open and we were greeted with several naked manakins leaning against a wall. That sight diStracted Many from noticing the much smaller donation bin to the right.

The Military museum occupies a rather large space about the size of a typical mall Macy’s ground floor, but instead of moments clothes there were military dioramas featuring soldiers represented by store manakins in uniform. The 75th Infantry played a part in the Battle of the Bulge so we all posed in front of the Bulge diorama which had an injured manakin stiffly lying on a stretcher on a bed of cotton snow.

The first order of business was lunch. About 8 long folding tables were set up and sandwiches had been ordered by the organizers, along with chips and cookies. I walked around the museum for a bit trying to figure out which WWII diorama I would want to sketch. Once I settled on this WWII truck, I went back to eat lunch.

I used the tiny folding camping chair that I had packed in my bag. It unfolds like a camping tent with thin aluminum poles that snap together. This was my first time assembling it indoors but assembly was quick. I like this chair, it is so much lighter than the usual steel camping chair that I have been using for years. I researched and found it at REI for my trip to Europe. Only time will tell how well it holds up to regular use.

Today is day 2T at the Wild Rivers Film Festival on the coast of Oregon. I plan to spend the day watching films and then going to a cocktail party at Avigail’s Flower and the Awards ceremony at the Elks Lodge. I am hoping the Elks lodge might have some WWII memorabilia. I overheard that my film is the only animated film at the festival. I watched it last night with an audience and was pleased at the applause. The audience didn’t applaud for every film. They were quite selective. Being the only animated film, maybe I will win the best animated film award. That might feel like a shallow victory.

Skull Wall

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One wall in the studio is in flux. Color swatches are in place for a bright pink base color which might form a new base for this tableau. A clipboard to do list is in place to keep track of things that need to get done. An articulated manakins hand holds the rope for a bulb which is now encased in an elegant grass paper shade that resembles a blooming flower. The ight casts dark shadows on the ceiling from the skulls giving an ominous and mysterious feeling to that corner of the room.

For the first time I am writing an article on my 8.5 by 11 inch iPad. I usually write on my laptop which has lots of memory and ram to handle any animation I might do. However now that I am packing for a trip to Europe, I realize that all that memory comes with too much weight. With the laptop and iPad packed in my backpack, I feel I might fall backwards with my backpack turtle shell weighing me down. I am traveling to Oregon for the Wild River Film Festival where my film. COVID Dystopia might be having its final screening. People really don’t want to face the brash reality this film portrays. They certainly do not want to consider the premise that COVID is not done with us. I usually mask on airplane flights. But my new N-95 masks have not arrived yet. I might fave this flight naked, while listening to people hack up their lungs around me.

I was considering bringing by European backpack on this Oregon trip but the United Airlines website informed me that I would have to check the backpack although. I decided to scale down and only bring my artist day bag to shove under the seat in fronts of me. I abandoned my large sketchbook for this trip but I am bringing my new artist chair which worked great in Oklahoma City. I guess I will be doing laundry each evening in the hotel sink. Since this policy was hidden until after the ticket was purchased, I will never again fly United Airlines. I will be flying Delta to France.

All my sketchbook and everything I own will soon go into storage, so I am learning how to live with less. I am frightened and thrilled by what might lay ahead. It is up to me to make the most out of every day of this 6 month trip. I will be exploring the history of what played out exactly 80 years ago. I hope to capture hints of what has remains the same and what has not changed. Greed and ruling through fear remain the same. I am curious how Europeans feel about America today as opposed to the America that liberated them from Nazi rule 80 years ago. I was told I should wear a baseball cap with the 75th Infantry insignia. The older generation might treat me different given the history.

A 26B Invader

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The 75th Division Veteran’s Association had a day trip to the Woodring Wall and Museum in Enid, Oklahoma. The museum is in a hanger on an air field. After seeing the museum we were invited to go to another hanger to see the A 26B Invader.

The invader looks a lot like a B52 Bomber but much smaller. The bomb bays on the bottom of the aircraft were open and a few 5 foot tall bombs were standing next to the lecture area. A volunteer stood in front of a table with tall poser boards to give his lecture. The poster boards blocked my view of the aircraft, so I took a chair and sat over near a large fan.

This A 26B Invader is still functional and it’s last flight was in May of this year. The Invader is an an American twin-engined light bomber and ground attack aircraft. Built by Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II. It was a fast aircraft capable of carrying a large bomb load. A range of guns could be fitted to produce a formidable ground-attack aircraft. The A-26B gun-nose could be equipped with a combination of armament, including .50 caliber machine guns, 20 or a 37mm auto cannon.

Alongside the pilot in an A-26B, a crew member served as navigator and gun loader for the pilot-operated nose guns. In Europe, American bombardment groups started using the A 26B starting in November of 1944. The A-26 was well received by pilots and crew alike in European operations, and by 1945, the 9th Air Force had flown 11,567 missions with the planes, dropping 18,054 tons of bombs, recording seven confirmed kills while losing 67 aircraft.

the plane is 18 feet 6 inches tall with a wing span of 70 feet. It can hold a crew of 3.

75th Division Veteran’s Association Dinner

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I had packed by travel backpack full of the clothes I plan to take to Europe. That did not include a suit and tie. Vets I had been palling around with all week showed up to this dinner in full uniform. A first Lieutenant Colonel’s uniform with all its medals and gold buttons is a sight to behold. I felt so under dressed. My long sleeved camping shirt was baggier than I remembered. My whole concern was that it would block the sun and offer some warmth. I felt that having a fold down collar made it “formal.”

Major General  Michele Link was the guest speaker and she was projected on the big screen via Zoom. She spoke to us from the 75th Battle Command Training Division. I heard several vets say that you need a PHD to get into the 75th these days. My dad who served as a 1st Lieutenant with the 75th in WWII was two years into his NYU Engineering College degree when he felt he had to drop out to train for service overseas.

Michele explained that the younger generation has grown up with technology and AI and other tech tools are changing the face of warfare. Smart guided drones replace manned missions. She said leading these bright minds is helping her keep pace with the fast accelerating pace of technology.

There were four seats open at the table we were sitting at. That meant that there were four extra deserts on the table. We sampled multiple deserts as Michele spoke.  I used every minute I had to block in the sketch.

There was a raffle and the highly polished officer next to me with a bow tie had won a boat load of items at the raffle the previous night. He was given a box to load up all his winnings. Sure enough he won multiple times at this dinner, but then the tide turned, and the people at the table seated across from us kept winning constantly. They had come to honor a father, husband and soldier who had attended the 75th reunions often through the years. Later the president of the 75th association noted that it was like he was reminding the family hat he was still looking over them. His wife was a petite woman in pink with a white shawl. She picked up a metal that was given in honor of her husband who had touched so many.

There was so much laughter that night but also a tinge of sadness for those who had been lost since the last reunion. One vet had posted a picture of himself on a beach with the surf roaring behind him. The next day he was deceased, having been pulled out by a rip tide and drowned. Life is short, seize the day and live loud.

 

75th Infantry Ladies Auxillery

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On the first day of the 79th annual,  75th Infantry Reunion, the Hospitality Room was on the schedule as being open. I had arrived before my room was ready, so I decided to sketch the hospitality room as I waited.

Ralph Steiner, the president of the 75th Division Veteran’s Association and someone from the reunion committee were meeting with the woman from the hotel staff who plans such functions.  Chicken or beef options were on the table for the final gala dinner. I had contacted Heidi via Facebook at the last minute and managed to get the reunion rate on a hotel room for the 4 days I was there. Heidi  said that her father, like mine, had never told stories about his service in WWII.  She has been attending the reunions for years and now is the heart that makes the fun happen each year. My curiosity is leading to my wanting to travel the cities in Europe that my father’s 75th Infantry C-Company had liberated of seized up until the final days of the war.

Today I discovered that WWII reenactments a big in France and I am hoping to sketch a few on my travels. Unfortunately the biggest celebrated 80 years since the D-Day  invasion and that happened June 6th. I can’t regret what is passed, I just need to focus on what lay ahead of me.

While doing research on C-Company at one of these round banquet table, the ladies auxiliary came into the room and held a meeting. The minutes from last years meeting were read, then business was forwarded. I was pleased to hear that they plan to make donations to two of the sites we had visited. The Woodring Wall and Museum in Enid Oklahoma. The wall and a small library and room filled with airplane models were on a small air base. The museum was in an abandoned mall and there was  little to no air circulation. Despite this the limited staff was so helpful to the veterans who visited the site. Their mission to preserve military history would get a boost from any donations. I did notice one mom walking through the museum with her daughter at the military museum.

Some of the women of the auxiliary are the same woman who laugh loud and make the reunion such a blast to attend. I learned so much in the few short days I was there and I met some amazing vets including Charles who is 99 years young and was with the 75th Infantry at the Battle of the Bulge.

Looking through one of the history binders on one of the table I found my father listed as a replacement 1st Lieutenant for the 75th. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. Also during the ladies auxiliary meeting I found the names of the work and POW camps that my father’s C-Company had liberated. All last week I was searching to the camp mentioned in several of the C-Company oral histories. The problem is that there were so many Concentration Camps,  Work Camps and POW camps that there were too many possibilities. Attending the reunion, gave me a first hand account from someone who was there. I wanted to shout for joy, but the meeting was in progress and I didn’t want to disrupt the business at hand.

I totally reworked the listing of towns that I plan to visit when back in the hotel room.I added tons more information about other companies movements so I would have a bigger picture of what was happening.  Now I need to compile a simpler list that is just about the towns and how long C-Company was in each. I also need to finish compiling a Google map that shows the location of each town. Though I am planning a very specific path through Europe, I might stray if there are reenactments of 80 year anniversary celebrations in other towns. I saw some amazing photos of the 75th Infantry walking through the woods and down muddy roads. The quality was much better than any other historical photos I had seen at the time. I didn’t recognize the face of the 1st Lieutenant pictured. I soon realized that I was looking at a reenactment of my fathers infantry unit. History had been brought back to life in these crisp color photos.

The Foundation

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After driving for several thousand miles, too and from Oklahoma City, it felt good to get back to Lake County and relax. The second I arrived however, I had a virtual student online waiting to join the zoom classroom. With the last tank of gas I had been racing against the clock. Google Maps showed my exact arrival time and when I stopped to get gas, that arrival time slipped by 4 minutes. I had to start speeding to be sure I got back in time. Driving 5 or 10 miles per hour over the speed limit slowly gained me a couple of minutes.

I was in charge of taking care of Boo Boo, an adorable grey toy poodle,  for a couple of days. When I got in, he was locked in a bedroom. It turned out that the robot vacuum cleaner had managed to close the bedroom door, locking him inside. He was beside himself frantically barking to let me know how horrible it was to be locked up for several hours. While consoling him, I set up my iPad and tried to join the Zoom meeting. Since I had used the computer in Oklahoma City, Zoom didn’t accept my present location. It took 10 or 15 minutes for me to wrangle the settings and get online.

To say I was stressed starting the lesson is an understatement. However as the student and I started animating that stress melted away. By the end of the class the student had to remind me that the lesson time was over. I could have kept animating for several more hours.

I needed a nap. Sitting still, I still felt like I was in motion. My seat swayed with the imagined bumps in the road. I sat down on the couch but outside the lawn guy had decided it was time to trim and cut the lawn. Despite the racket, and the occasional stone striking the window next to me, i nodded off for a much needed rest. Boo snugged up next to me in his dog bed made from a small wicker basket and a pillow. When I awoke it was past midnight. I wanted to write an article, but decided I had lost the day anyway. I stumbled off to bed.

At 7am the next morning, I awoke the the sound of construction. A cement truck was churning out cement and an M shaped crane was pumping out the slurry next door. One particularly big fellow, that looked like John Henry was smoothing the surface with a trowel. I was wide awake at this point, so Boo and I set up in the shade of a tree in the front yard and sketched the proceedings. The foundation is much higher than the foundations of the houses on either side of the construction site. When the next hurricane blows in there will be no flooding on that property, but all the water will drain down onto the much lower property I was sitting on which will become a lake.

Woodring Wall and Museum

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The 75th Infantry Reunion crowd walked into the Museum after seeing the Vietnam Woodring Wall outside. There was a huge artillery cannon outside the museum. I thought it might have been from WWII but it was built in 1998. I decided not to stop and sketch it. Inside the building was a small museum of WWII to present military memorabilia.

There was a whole wall bookcase full of military books. I picked up one book and immediately found chapters of the Colmar Pocket and Ruhr Industrial Area Battles of WWII. Unfortunately there was not enough time to just sit and read.

The next room had some round tables set up and a podium at the front of the room. Here Bob Ford introduced himself and gave us a brief talk on his military carrier. Bob was particularly proud that there was a living WWII vet in the audience in Charles, who served with the 75th Infantry in WWII at the Battle of the Bulge. Bob said that he wanted to serve to honor the men who fought in WWII.

Bob handed out photos of himself posed in front of the 282 Assault Helicopter he piloted in the Vietnam war. The photo was taken in January of 1968 in Hue, South Vietnam. In the photo Bob was wearing a bulletproof chest protector and he was holding an M16. His command signal was Blackcat 21. Bob praised the accuracy of his machine gun crew. Any time the chopper was getting flack from the ground the gunners would hit the ground guns with absolute accuracy.

Outside I was speaking with a 1st Lieutenant Colonel who said that there were not enough troupes sent into Vietnam. Even so, he felt that the battle could have been won.However the media went in and started to claim that the was was not winnable. That message gave the enemy hope and a conviction that they should hold out and keep fighting. He felt the media had committed treason.

Bob Ford got choked up as he spoke about loosing an entire crew in Vietnam. When an audience member asked if he ever had to deal with napalm, he said that the photo he had handed out showed barrels of napalm in the background. He instructed his crew to stay clear of the stuff. Bob is incredibly fit. It wasn’t until the next day that someone from the reunion told me that Bob is 88 years old. He was wearing the uniform that he was wearing when he was 23 in the photo. He works out every day. He wrote a book about his Vietnam war experiences called Blackcat 21: The True Story of a Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and his Crew.

Apple Store

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In preparing to go to Oklahoma City for the 75th Infantry Reunion, and Oregon to screen my short animated film, COVID Dystopia, I felt I needed to replace the faulty chord on my iPad. Apple sells chords that are made to fall apart in a year’s time.  The chord Apple included with the purchase of the iPad was only about a foot long and some hotels and motels don’t have outlets conveniently located. I needed a longer and more robust chord.

 The Apple Store at the Millennia Mall was insanely crowded. Apparently everyone had faulty power chords. Tourists were coming in and buying chords using their foreign currency cards. I went up to the iBar and waited. Someone asked what I needed and pointed me towards a table covered with boxes of power chords. I wasn’t sure which plug s were needed. I should have brought my iPad, but I came in on a whim while shopping for clothes for my Europe trip.

The sales person was able to scan my iPhone to figure out exactly which chord I needed. I was impressed with his digital detective work. All my devices seem to communicate to one another and are shouting out when they need better power chords.

After I purchased my chord. I decided to stay and get a sketch of the digital chaos. Some people took more than an hour to buy a digital device wile others were in an out quickly. My purchases was pretty easy, but others must have been considering life altering purchases.

The lady in front of me was agonizing over her purchase of an Apple computer. She wore a Lady and the Tramp tee shirt. The Tramp would have made a decision quickly but Lady needed to weigh every option. She did make a decision before my sketch was complete.

Bus Ride to The Woodring Wall and Museum

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Mt father was a 1st Lieutenant of the 75th Infantry Division. The 2025 reunion for the 75th was being held in Oklahoma City, so I had to go to see what I could find out that might help as I make plans to follow in my fathers footsteps through Europe.

There were several day trips planned. One to the Oklahoma National Memorial & Museum and the other to the Woodring Wall & Museum. The bus ride was a solid one and a half hours, so I had plenty of time to get a sketch done. I was also given a paperback book that was a history of the 75th Infantry so I read that on the bus ride back.

The bus driver gave us all one important warning. He said that there was a bathroom at the back of the bus but he advised against against any number twos. I’m guessing the thing doesn’t flush very well. He also advised that men sit down since he didn’t want anyone falling down with all the side to side movement of the bus.

What I recall most about the bus trip was all the gorgeous wide open countryside and and endless line of wind mills. Like an airline, there was a safety video on the multiple screens hanging over the seats.

When the buss pulled into the air field, I could see the Vietnam memorial wall. There were few name to start and then each panel filled up to it’s full height. At the far end of the long wall the names compressed once again as the wall angles down in a triangular fashion. This wall is a miniature replica of the Memorial in Washington, DC designed by then undergraduate,  Maya Ying Lin. To find the name of a loved one it is best to use the index which tells youo what panel to look at. Names on the wall are arranged chronologically, so it might take a long time to search the 58,318 names of Americans who had been killed in action. The printed index allows you to search fr the name alphabetically.

On the bus ride back to Oklahoma City, I read the 75th Infantry history ind underlined sections to double check against the list of cities and engagements I was compiling for my trip through, France, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany. Many accounts of what happened in the later days of WWII don’t pin point the actual days or even the cities, so I have to cross reference everything to come p with a unified plan of attack.