The Man I knew

I knew a great big man once, they say he stood at almost 5'8" in his prime and if you weren't careful he'd put that giant size 8 boot to use on you. No one I knew dared to challenge this man, even when he was well past his prime. He didn't walk on the water, or see the future, or claim to talk to the almighty himself. But, he did know the score in life and that seemed to be all that mattered. He knew life and death and what a hard time truly was and the whole time I knew him, he never complained.

Les, Eldora, Ron and Larry (youngest my father) Hayes in front of the house on Elm St. he built.

Well, once after his second open heart surgery he told the doc that the drugs were so good his thumb didn't hurt for the first time in twenty years and it would be great if could get some more or if the doc would just cut his thumb off. This was the man I knew, the one kicked off the family farm at 15 during the depression because they couldn't feed all the kids. He was the eldest and had to make his own way in life from now on. The one that landed in Marseilles in 1944, and lived to come home and run a street crew for the next 30 years.

3rd Platoon, 2nd Regiment CRTC  Cpl. Garner and Cpl. McPherson 5-13-1944. My grandfathers platoon before shipping out to France.

This man was my father's father, Lester Melvin Hayes, Sgt. Hayes, Les, and I'm sure some unflattering names were also used to reference him. I recently visited the Alsace region of France and the battlefields my grandfather and the men above knew all to well, many of them never returned from those fields. Those that had first hand accounts of that event are fading rapidly into history much like photographs. Which posed the question, "Who was the man that I had known?"

Sgt. Hayes on the left, Sgt Katzensky on the right both in the 63rd Division

The man I knew, was Les or Grandpa, and was patient, kind and generous. He did much for us grand kids in the way of teaching us life's lessons and what it meant to pull your weight. It was never a "when I was your age" scolding, he didn't have to, we all knew what he did and didn't need reminding. But who was the man that his kids knew? That his battle buddies like Katzensky knew? The teenager kicked out of his house, who his parents knew?

Sgt. Lester Hayes, unknown village in Europe spring of 1945.

Maybe it's better that the man I knew was the only version I'd known, it is easier that way. We know our hero's have flaws, they are only human after all, but not having to see them first hand is always easier. I was fortunate to have grown up in this giant's shadow and have known the man that learned life's cruel lessons and survived them all. He only strove to make sure his grandchildren never knew his hunger or lack of education that plague his early years.

Gordon Hawks, Sylvia Hawks, Melvin Hawks, Donald Hawks, Lester Hayes circa 1945. All my Family.

I was raised around giants, some gentle, some not, but we all knew what they survived through when many of their compatriots did not. Maybe some were gentle once and life made them hard, or hard once and survival softened their hard edges after all those years. Those in my family heard the guns of war, from the Pacific to Europe and though they survived the war they are mostly gone now. Les heard his final shots in April of 2003 when they folded the flag on his coffin. I know the crowd around him that day all knew a different version of the same man, but the man I knew wasn't buried that day. They couldn't dig a hole big enough to hold him.