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veterans

    PHOTO FEATURE

    Eleventh Hour: Veterans Day 2021 in Provincetown

    A solemn gathering on the pier honors all those who served

    By

    Provincetown marked Veterans Day this year with a solemn gathering on MacMillan Pier, with Jim Keefe serving as master of ceremonies. It was the 103rd anniversary of the signing of the armistice between the Allies and Germany in 1918, a first step toward ending World War I. The commemoration of that event also honors veterans and members of the military who have served since then.

    An honor guard of members of the U.S. Coast Guard Station and the Provincetown Police Dept. marches out on the pier.

    Provincetown’s Morris Light Post 71 American Legion Commander Thomas Steele addresses veterans and friends, with town officials in the background.

    From left, Navy Fireman Ryan Sleeper (USCG), Boatswain’s Mate Ryan Guerra (USCG), Machinery Technician Lillyan Tenney, Lt. Greg Hennick of the Provincetown Police Dept., and Seaman Jared Tromba (USCG).

    John Tinkham throws a wreath into the water as a tribute to those in the seagoing services. Tinkham is jr. vice commander of American Legion Post 71.

    The Rev. Edgar Miranda of the Provincetown United Methodist Church offers a prayer.

    Bugler Michael Coelho Sr., a member of the American Legion, played taps.

    Lt. Greg Hennick of the Provincetown Police Dept.

     

    PEOPLE

    Lilli Osowski Goes All In for Veterans

    Mobilizing a whole school for a cause

    By

    You may not know her by name, but Lilli Osowski is one of Provincetown’s busiest residents.

    A senior studying health technology at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School, she works three jobs — at Cape Tip Seafoods, Sidekicks Travel toy store, and Advinia Care (the long-term care facility at Seashore Point). And, this year, she took on even more responsibility by organizing her classmates to help veterans all across the Cape.

    Cape Cod Tech offers 15 specialized programs called “shops”; Lilli persuaded each one to help. Horticulture students aided a 92-year-old World War II veteran by mowing his lawn, raking his leaves, and cleaning his gutters. Carpentry students made a metal display case for one vet, and plumbing students replaced another’s faucet.

    Cape Tech senior Lilli Osowski honors Provincetown’s veterans in preparation for Memorial Day. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

    On one day, three different shops used their skills to help six female veterans. The women dropped off their cars to be detailed in the auto shop, and meanwhile had a spa day, courtesy of the school’s cosmetology students. Then they headed over to the culinary department for a free lunch.

    “They had a whole day,” says Lynn Fleischer, Lilli’s social studies teacher. “It was awesome.”

    Back in the fall, Fleischer, who lives in Eastham, noticed Lilli’s enthusiasm for helping veterans when all the students were writing thank-you cards for Veterans Day. Lilli’s cards were extra heartfelt, and one day she approached her teacher to offer help in addressing the 275 letters that students had written. Fleischer suggested that Lilli organize a larger project and participate in a community service competition sponsored by SkillsUSA, an organization that promotes leadership for students in career and technical education programs.

    In addition to coordinating all 15 shops at the Tech in service projects for veterans, Lilli was planning to present a memorial placard, made by the school’s engineering shop, to local veterans. The presentation would have been part of the Cape Cod Veterans Center’s annual Welcome Home Ceremony on March 29, dedicated to Vietnam vets.

    That gathering in Bourne was going to be the “cherry on top” of Lilli’s project, says Fleischer. Now it is on hold, as the event was postponed by the coronavirus, which also halted progress on the placard, since students had to switch to online learning. The national SkillsUSA convention, where Lilli was going to present her “ALL In for Our Vets” project, has also been cancelled.

    But the pandemic can’t stop Lilli. Last Saturday, she helped her uncle, Thomas Osowski, commander of the local VFW, put flags next to the graves of every veteran buried in Provincetown — over 600 of them.

    Osowski mobilized her whole school to make veterans’ lives better. (Photo courtesy Lilli Osowski)

    Lilli has several veterans in her family, and she cites this as one reason for her interest in veteran aid. She also says that working at a nursing home, which she’s been doing since August as part of her school’s cooperative learning program, has taught her that veterans can feel neglected and voiceless.

    She says that one wheelchair-bound World War II veteran whom she cares for at Seashore Point once told her the story of losing his leg because of a gunshot wound. “He’s one of the quieter ones,” she says, but he opened up to her. “He tells me stories that he doesn’t tell anyone else. I’m his voice.

    “Veterans don’t get enough acknowledgement,” she says. “It hurts to see.”

    Lilli will be starting at the University of New Hampshire in the fall, as a health sciences major. She is not sure she’ll make a career out of helping veterans. What matters to her is helping people, whoever they might be. “I just want to make a difference in people’s lives,” she says.

    Lynn Fleischer echoes the same sentiment. “Helping and honoring people is her passion,” she says. “What a kid.”

    MEMORIAL DAY

    With Poppies, We Remember

    How a wildflower came to evoke lives lost in war

    By

    Even in our current predicament, there’s no stopping nature. The daffodils have come and gone, and now the beach plum is fully abloom. The lilacs have begun to release their fragrance and the lily of the valley will soon follow. All remind us that, no matter what winter piles on, a sturdy and resilient spirit wins the day.

    Watercolor by Traci Harmon Hay
    Watercolor by Traci Harmon-Hay

    Another returnee is the Oriental poppy, Papaver orientale, a hardy perennial whose dazzling, solitary orange-red flower adds an old-fashioned exuberant charm to the garden. Its rebirth begins inconspicuously as a cluster of hairy leaves emerging from the still-cold ground. The leaves thicken, stiffen, and multiply, and from somewhere deep in their midst comes the sturdy stalk that will grow several feet high, supporting a tightly packed nodding bud. As the seams of the calyx begin to separate, the first hints of the tissue-papery petals will show themselves.

    If there is anything disappointing about the full-faced flower and its dark, velvety eye it is its ephemeral nature. Blink and you’ll miss the unfolding of the petals. Blink again and the slightest breeze will have robbed the flower of those petals, leaving only the seed pod. I cut the dry pods every fall, shake the tiny seeds from within, and arrange them in a vase as an elegant winter reminder that warmer days are ahead.

    The poppy is legendary for the narcotic effects of some species, particularly Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, known by the ancient Sumerians as the “joy plant.” Ancient Egyptians buried their dead with the poppy to ensure a peaceful sleep. In Greek mythology, Demeter created the poppy to induce sleep after the abduction of her daughter, Persephone.

    If the scourge of addiction brought attention to the opium poppy, the scourge of war brought attention to another member of the family, Papaver rhoeas, the common red poppy. Also known as a field or corn poppy, the wildflower contains rhoeadine, a nonpoisonous mild narcotic. Greek legend tells of this poppy being created by Somnus, the god of sleep. Its seeds, which can lie dormant for years, germinate in rooted-up soil. Profusions of the graceful flower beautify and transform sunny wastes and old fields, though some regard Papaver rhoeas as little more than a weed and the target of herbicides.

     

    Lt. John McCrae
    Lt. Col. John McCrae, 1872-1918, the author of “In Flanders Fields.”

    To Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade in western Belgium during World War I, the dainty poppy became a symbol of the terrible toll of war. For 17 days, McCrae tended to the injured in the Ypres Salient, an experience he later wrote was “17 days of Hades.” During lulls in the ferocious fighting, the dead were buried where they fell, amid the rubble and blood-soaked soil, their graves marked with wooden crosses, row on row. One death particularly affected McCrae. A young soldier, Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, whom McCrae had befriended, was killed on May 2, 1915. In the absence of a chaplain, McCrae performed the funeral ceremony. The next day, an anguished McCrae composed the poem “In Flanders Fields,” perhaps the most memorable words ever written about war.

    All around him, on the battlefield that had become a cemetery, the little red poppies, whose roots were said to feed on blood, mysteriously blossomed over the graves of the fallen, a phenomenon that had also been noted a century earlier during the Napoleonic Wars. McCrae wrote the poem in 20 minutes, describing the scene before his eyes at Ypres, then tossed the page aside. Retrieved by a fellow officer, the poem was sent to newspapers in England and was eventually published in the magazine Punch.

    Not long afterward, McCrae was transferred to a hospital in France, where he served as chief of medical services. He died there on Jan. 28, 1918, officially of pneumonia and meningitis, but most likely from complications caused by the 1918 flu pandemic.

    Inspired by McCrae’s poem, an American woman, Moina Michael, was the first to wear a poppy in honor of those who had died in the nation’s service. The tradition spread to other countries and in 1922 the Veterans of Foreign Wars became the first organization to adopt the poppy as a symbol of remembrance and Memorial Day. Today, paper poppies, assembled by disabled and aging veterans, are sold to benefit veterans’ services.

    It has been more than a century — and a world of change — since Lt. Col. McCrae wrote his poem, with its haunting evocation of lost lives. But his words remain a lasting legacy of the horrific battle of Ypres and a poignant reminder to those of us who live on that we, now, speak for the dead.

    To you, from failing hands we throw
    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

     

    MILITARY HONORS

    Harold Hall Awaits His Purple Heart

    The Navy frogman’s WWII brain injury has gone unrecognized

    By

    EASTHAM — Harold Hall Jr., a 95-year-old World War II veteran and Eastham resident, feels he should receive a Purple Heart for the severe concussion he suffered in a reconnaissance mission during the Battle of Saipan in the Pacific. Hall did get a Bronze Star Medal for his heroism in combat but not the Purple Heart, which is given to service members who are wounded or killed in action.

    “I think it would rectify an omission,” said Hall, who was joined by his daughter and close friends in his home last Thursday.

    During the war, Hall was part of a U.S. Navy underwater demolition team known as UDT-5. The swimmers in the team, known as frogmen, were precursors to Navy SEALs.

    On June 14, 1944, the Navy was in the process of bombing Saipan, then a Japanese colony north of Guam, leading up to its invasion. Hall and his team of frogmen, among other teams, were sent in to clear the beach — “to make sure landing craft could get to shore,” Hall said.

    Navy frogmen
    In a family photo album, Hall (lower right) poses with his fellow Navy frogmen. (Photo courtesy Harold Hall)

    The men were dropped into the water about 500 yards out and were swimming toward shore when Japanese forces defending the island hit them with gun and mortar fire.

    Hall said he remembers seeing bullets hit the water and sand while he was swimming. Then, in an instant, a mortar shell blew him out of the water.

    He said he doesn’t remember much about the blast — just that he got back to his ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Gilmer.

    “I was on deck, lying on a cot for about eight or nine days before I could move,” he said. “If I moved, I felt nauseous.”

    The wounded frogman was one day away from being sent to a hospital ship when he rose from his cot and stayed with his team until the end of the war.

    His story has been documented — it’s featured in the History Channel miniseries Complete History of the Navy SEALs and in the book The Naked Warriors: The Story of the U.S. Navy’s Frogmen, by Francis Douglas Fane and Don Moore.

    Hall believes he wasn’t given a Purple Heart because the military didn’t know how to diagnose traumatic brain injuries during World War II.

    “No one knew what the hell was going on,” Hall said. “Right now, I can still feel the buzz from the bomb.”

    Hall grew up in Hingham and spent most of his life after the Navy working for General Electric in Western Mass. He has lived in the same house that he built in Eastham since 1984. Hall is also a craftsman and painter, and some of his paintings hang in the house.

    Harold Hall
    World War II veteran Harold Hall, who hopes to receive a Purple Heart for a combat injury, relaxes in his Eastham home. One of his paintings hangs above the fireplace. (Photo Ryan Fitzgerald)

    “He’s a renaissance man,” said his friend Jerry Cerasale.

    Hall’s daughter, Pam McCarty-Hall, and son, Steve Hall, along with a group of friends, are trying to get the Navy to properly honor his sacrifice.

    The family, working with the Veterans Administration, sent an application for a correction of military records to the Navy that, if approved, would lead to Hall finally getting the Purple Heart.

    The family heard from the Navy on May 21, 2019, that his application had been received. The letter stated that it could take 10 to 18 months before a decision is made. It has been 10 months.

    “They do it in their time,” McCarty-Hall said. “We’re just hoping his time outlives their time.”

    Hall is in generally good health for a man his age, but he went through bouts of pneumonia in the past year and was recently rehabbed for a hip injury he suffered in a fall in December.

    Friends sent letters to U.S. Rep. William Keating, one in April 2019 and a second in January 2020, asking him to expedite Hall’s application.

    Cerasale said that Keating has been working with U.S. senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren on the matter. Lauren McDermott, a spokesperson for Keating, told the Independent that they had established Congressional interest in the application in April and recently wrote another letter. The Navy has not yet responded.

    McCarty-Hall said that, to initiate a correction of records, the Navy needs proof of Hall’s injury. That typically comes as a statement from the commanding officer or a fellow service member who witnessed the event. But Hall has outlived his commanding officer and all the men on his demolition team.

    Shawney Carroll, the veterans’ services officer for the Outer Cape, said that Hall’s discharge papers don’t say that he sustained a concussion.

    “They weren’t great with documenting injuries back then,” Carroll said.

    “If it were anything else other than a concussion, he would have gotten it right then,” McCarty-Hall said of the Purple Heart.

    Hall keeps his sense of humor about it all.

    “If I’d have died, I would have gotten it,” he said with a laugh.

    VETERANS DAY 2019

    Veteran of War of 1812 Gets Long Delayed Tribute

    Timothy Parker Johnson is honored 155 years after his death

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — The pride with which this town has always acknowledged the sacrifices of its veterans is evident in the many tributes one sees here.

    Veterans Day Memorial
    Gary Franklin (left) and his son Jay, members of the Wareham Minutemen and Militia Companies, at the ceremony honoring Johnson. (Photo Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    Keeping vigil over Commercial Street at town hall, the Doughboy Monument beckons passersby to reflect on the more than 250 Provincetown residents who served in World War I. The town’s quota was 38. Both the Lewis Armstrong Young V.F.W. Post and the Morris-Light American Legion Post — named for Louis Joseph Morris and Antonio Luiz Da Luz (later Anglicized to “Light”) — honor World War I veterans. Sharing the grounds at town hall are the bronze honor rolls with row upon row of the names of those who answered the call since World War II.

    In the Gifford Cemetery the handsome Civil War Monument — a marble obelisk carved with service symbols that was installed in 1867 when the horrors of the war were still palpable — pays tribute to the 350 men who joined the Army and Navy. Nineteen died from disease or in the line of duty. At the time, the town’s population was barely 3,000.

    From the East End to the West, town squares are named for veterans, and across the harbor a lonely wooden cross stands on the dune next to Long Point Light, a tribute to artist Charles Sinkler Darby, who was killed in action during World War II. In the garden of the Church of St. Mary of the Harbor, a memorial cross and plaque are reminders of the 40 officers and crew of the U.S. Navy submarine S-4 who perished on Dec. 17, 1927 in the waters off Wood End when the sub was accidentally rammed by a Coast Guard cutter.

    And tucked under the shade of a tree in the Alden Old Cemetery, an elaborately carved stone honors the service of a young German-born Navy coxswain, Klaas Djarken Wessels, who accidentally drowned in Provincetown Harbor in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The Josiah C. Freeman G.A.R. Post — named for the Civil War sailor from Provincetown — gave Wessels a military funeral.

    For all of Provincetown’s veterans who have been remembered, until recently a number had been left behind. In 1877, when the original town hall on High Pole Hill burned to the ground, the fire took with it many of Provincetown’s earliest records. As a result, history has been largely silent on 18th-century community life and the town’s response to the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

    The Revolutionary War service of eight Provincetown men, all of whom are buried in the historic Winthrop Street Cemetery, has now been documented and verified. Each of their graves will receive a bronze marker. A moving ceremony was held for the first seven on Patriots Day 2018. The eighth veteran, Seth Nickerson — who served Provincetown during the war as a selectman — will be recognized on Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.

    Private Johnson, Age 15

    A remembrance ceremony and reception at Seashore Point on Oct. 26 paid tribute to another early veteran whose service during the War of 1812 had been overlooked. It has now been documented by the National Society United States Daughters of 1812. A bronze plaque and 1812 medallion were unveiled at the grave of Timothy Parker Johnson in the Provincetown Cemetery. To date, he is the town’s only known War of 1812 veteran.

    Timothy P. Johnson
    A portrait of Johnson. (Courtesy Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum Collections and Archives)

    Johnson’s service took place a decade before he arrived in Provincetown in 1825. Born in Chatham (now East Hampton), Conn. on Oct. 29, 1799, he was the third of 10 children. He was drafted at New Haven on Nov. 11, 1814 at age 15 and served as a private and drummer boy in the Connecticut Militia under the command of Lt. Horace Beach. He was honorably discharged — on account of his youth — on Feb. 10, 1815.

    Timothy married Betsy Hager of Waltham in 1824. The first of their 10 children, Susan, was born in Boston on Aug. 9, 1825. Shortly after her birth the Johnsons arrived in Provincetown, a town of 1,200, where Timothy established himself as a sail maker. In 1827 his younger brother, Joseph Prosper Johnson (1814−1891) arrived in Provincetown and apprenticed himself to Timothy.

    The principal industries in town were cod fishing and salt making. The three-mile beachfront was crowded with windmills pumping salt water into evaporation vats. The land was uncultivated. Simple one-story houses were set on piles so that the driving sand might pass under them. There were no roads, no walkways, and no wharves. Grand Bankers spent the winter months hauled up and nestled into holes on the beach.

    Johnson was among the early entrepreneurs who, during the mid−19th century, transformed Provincetown into a preeminent port. To accommodate the growing whaling, cod, and mackerel fleets as well as the thriving waterfront industries, more than 50 wharves were built between 1838 and 1858, among them Timothy Johnson’s wharf (between Johnson and Arch streets), purchased from the Cook family in the early 1840s and extended in 1846.

    Timothy’s business interests included salt works, ships’ ballast, and the ownership of Ocean Hall (later known as the Central House and now the Crown & Anchor), built for public entertainments. Between 1841 and 1848 he was the managing owner of the 162-ton brig Gem, one of Provincetown’s early whaling vessels. Civic-minded, in 1847 Timothy served on the committee to build a new Universalist meeting house and in 1849 began a two-year term as selectman.

    Timothy P. Johnson Grave
    The gravestone with markers of Timothy Johnson in Provincetown Cemetery. (Photo Amy Whorf McGuiggan)

    Johnson died in Provincetown on July 15, 1864. He had previously received a bounty land warrant from the U.S. government as a reward for his war service, and in 1879 a widow’s pension was provided to his wife, Betsy. She lived at 341 Commercial St. (now 368) until her death in January 1892. Seven children survived her, five of whom had moved to Waseca, Minn.

    #

    Hilde Oleson, who is 96 and a resident at Seashore Point, wrote the following commemorative poem for the ceremony on Oct. 26.

    Timothy

    We are the fortunate ones.
    We are standing in an exceptional town
    Of renowned beauty and acceptance.
    The man we honor here today
    Came to a hamlet with only one or two trees
    A few houses, truly a one-horse town.
    His memory takes him back to a night
    When he was a soldier.

    They are gathered around the fire,
    A circle of stones crudely formed into a fire-place
    It is Timothy’s last night as a soldier.
    He has been marching in formation, drumming a rhythm
    For the soldiers for several months.
    They are fighting the War of 1812.
    It is a war he does not totally understand
    But at 15 he knows the need to be free, to make your own decisions
    He loves his country and was proud to be drafted and serve.
    Now he is glad to be going home.
    In a few years he will find his own freedom,
    March to his internal drummer
    And move to Provincetown.
    He married the sweetest girl he knew, began a family
    And a career as a sail-maker.
    Once more he put forth all his effort
    And became an early entrepreneur
    Even as Provincetown grew as a town,
    Becoming an important asset to the shipping world,
    So he grew as a man,
    Diverging into many areas we still know
    That his skill and perseverance helped to build.
    We worship in the UU, accept the wharves, the paved roads,
    The many trees, the bustling businesses.
    All part of his dream of Provincetown.

    Still many of us feel the magic of Provincetown,
    Thank him for his life and honor him with our own love for Provincetown.

    VETERANS DAY 2019

    Provincetown to Honor Its Veterans

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Veterans and volunteers have organized a number of activities to commemorate Veterans Day on Monday, Nov. 11. The first event honors those who served in seagoing services and will be held at MacMillan Pier at 10 a.m. At 11 a.m., a ceremony paying tribute to all veterans takes place at the Veterans Memorial Wall at Provincetown Town Hall.

    Veterans Day, a federal holiday since 1938, honors American veterans of all wars, especially living veterans who have served their country honorably during war or peacetime. The Nov. 11 date memorializes the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the allied nations and Germany in World War I.

    Veterans Day flag
    Veterans Day Salute. Drawing by Traci Harmon-Hay

    The MacMillan Pier event will commence with an honor guard representing the U.S. Coast Guard, Station Provincetown and the Provincetown Police Dept.

    Jim Keefe, master of ceremonies, will deliver the introduction. The Rev. Henry Dahl, retired pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Church in Provincetown, will deliver an opening prayer. The crowd will participate in the Pledge of Allegiance followed by a performance of the national anthem by Denise Russell.

    Carl Sawyer, past cmdr., American Legion, and Thomas Osowski, cmdr., Veterans of Foreign Wars, will cast a memorial wreath upon the sea.

    The service will end with a ceremonial volley from the Provincetown Police Dept. honor guard.

    At the Veterans Memorial Wall ceremony, starting at 11 a.m., the U.S. Coast Guard, Station Provincetown and the Provincetown Police Dept. will herald the start, with an introduction by Jim Keefe.

    The Rev. Dahl will offer a prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

    Denise Russell will perform the national anthem, and later “America the Beautiful.”

    The guest speaker is Brig. Gen. Jimmy G. Dishner, a retired veteran of the U.S. Air Force.

    Thomas Steele, cmdr., American Legion, and Thomas Osowski, cmdr., Veterans of Foreign Wars, will place the memorial wreath.

    Members of the Provincetown Police Dept. honor guard will execute a ceremonial volley. The event will conclude with taps performed by Daniel Latta and a closing prayer from the Rev. Mr. Dahl.

    Following the service, all are welcome for light refreshments at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 227 Commercial St.

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