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.

Zam Zam

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After arriving in Oklahoma City, I hiked to downtown to find a restaurant to eat in and sketch. I settled on Zam Zam which is a Mediterranean restaurant. Since I was eating on my own, the hostess asked if I wanted to eat at the bar, but I wanted a table with a view of the room, so I could sketch.

A large table of eight people were seated across from me. It was the birthday of the little girl at the head of the table.

With this sketch, I used a large one inch brush for the first time to block in the watercolor. It was liberating being able too cover the page with just a few brush strokes. I used a pill bottle to hold the water. I need to rig up a way to clip the water container directly to the sketchbook, since holding the water container and the palette is impossible. In this case I could leave both on the table, but in other cases I need to reach rather far to dip the watercolor bush into the water container.

The one horrible thing that happened while doing this sketch is that I lost the 3 fountain pens that I brought for sketching. This sketch was done with the Sailor Demannin Fountain Pen. But when I went to do a sketch the next day all 3 fountain pens were missing. I searched to hotel room extensively and they are simply gone.

I returned to the restaurant the next day in the rare hope that they might have a lost and found. Most people might not consider a fountain pen useful, but to me it is like loosing my Stradivari. Unfortunately the manager didn’t find the blue box that contained my precious pens. My heart sank. I wanted to eat at the restaurant again if the pens surfaced, but now I will never return since the place is like the Bermuda Triangle where art supplies disappear.

Since I will be needing good fountain pens when I head over to Europe, I went ahead and ordered several more and they will hopefully be at the studio after I drive back to Central Florida. I fully packed the backpack that I will be taking to Europe to figure out what I truly need. I am traveling with just a backpack which can be slipped under an airplane seat. For winter supplies I have a down jacked and a shell that is light and compact. I am realizing that I need a light fleece sweater for the times a hotel blasts air conditioning too high. A down jacket seems like overkill, but maybe not.

Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum

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The 75th Infantry Reunion had a trip to the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum planned. After a quick scrambled egg and bacon breakfast in the Founders Room, we all met in the lobby of the hotel to car pool over to the Memorial. For former military, we weren’t exactly keeping a tight schedule. The military pastor was the one to keep us moving along, to get to the entrance by 10am which was the scheduled entry time.  The calendar of events is in military time so I spend some time each night converting the plans to am and pm.

The museum and memorial were quite impressive, it is housed in a former newspaper building. We were taking up to the second floor of the museum and we were told we would work our way downwards. April 19, 1995 began like any other in Oklahoma City. One of the first rooms showed the history of the site where municipal building was constructed. There were several churches just blocks from the building. From there the pastor an I entered into the municipal room, where audio was playing of a mundane water resources meeting. Just as I started to loose interest, a huge explosion was heard and the lights flashed in the room, as panic could be heard from people trying to escape the devastation. This was live audio recorded on the day that the Municipal Building had been bombed. On the wall across from us the faces appeared of all those who had lost their lives on that fateful  day.The faces slowlu faded away and a set of doors opened to the next room.

With the meeting concluded we entered the chaos. The fractured sign of the municipal building was on a wall and across from it were a few letters that had been pulled from the wreckage. Walls were charred and there was the smell of sulfur. in the air. Glass enclosed exhibits in the next room had everyday office supplies that had been crushed of destroyed. I focused on an electronic pencil sharpener which was broken in half and partly crushed. That caught my attention since I use a pencil sharpener often back at the art studio. One display told the story of hearing a survivor buried under the rubble and setting all other concerns aside to try and rescue that one person. Over the course of the day, the numbers of reported dead continued to rise. Anyone who had walked away from the explosion was encouraged to call in since there were so many people who were missing.

The investigation began immediately and evidence began to mount that this was a domestic terrorist explosion. The back axial of a u-Haul rental truck was recovered and it had a serial number on it. That serial number lead to a Miami u-Haul dealership. The truck was supposed to be at a Nebraska site for repair and it had been sold to the perpetrator under an alias. The needless violence had been inspired by the Waco Texas incident where a compound had been burnt to the ground with many inside dying.  Violence begets violence. The perpetrator was getting away in a 1977 Mercury Marquis and he might have gotten out of the state but he was pulled over for not having a license plate on the car. The officer who pulled the vehicle over noticed that there was a concealed weapon so he was arrested on a weapons charge. Only later did they realize that they had the bomber under arrest.

One full room is dedicated to remembering those who were lost. The explosion killed 168 people and injured over 600 others. Rebecca Anderson, was a 37-year-old licensed practical nurse. She showed up at the explosion site and immediately went about trying to save others. She pulled one person out of the building and then went back in to find others. While inside, she sustained a head injury. She managed to get back outside and collapsed in the arms of another rescue worker. She was brought to the hospital where they performed an operation to relieve pressure on the brain. Despite their best efforts, she died three days later. 

There were so man interviews of survivors. One man wondered if he had lost faith in human nature and should isolate himself from humanity. After seeing Oklahoma Cities response to the tragedy, he decided that despite the horror of what he had witnessed, he felt there was so much good to be found in the world. Outside the museum is the Field f Empty chairs with one chair for each victim. The chairs occupy the former sire of the Municipal building that had been bombed. On Harvey Avenue, there is a chin link fence where people still leave mementos for those who have been lost. The fence reminded me of so many others that I have seen a Pulse in Orlando, Las Vegas, and Park land High School in Parkland Florida.

Hate groups were on the rise in the 1990s with the KKK and Militias and anti-government extremism. It would be nice if humanity had moved past hate, but hate groups are on the rise in America now more that every. 168 chairs sit silently in a beautiful empty filed in city center looking towards a tranquil reflecting pool. At the top of a stair stepped rising across the reflecting pool stands the Survivor Tree. It is the highest pint in the Memorial and stands for strength and resilience in the face of hate.