Skip to main content

"Grandpa John" on Memorial Day


(picture from the 4 July 1943 Detroit Free Press)

He was always "Grandpa John," even though he wasn't my biological maternal grandfather. He was the third and last husband of my mom's mom, and I would see them on holidays and one week during the summer, when I would stay with them in their small brick house on Outer Drive in Dearborn, MI.

"Grandpa John" wasn't grandfatherly in any sense, but he did have a cluttered basement with a working bar and cool collectible Jim Beam bottles, so being of kid of some imagination, I didn't mind the visits. John mostly sat in the den, chain smoking and drinking, semi-watching television while he fell in and out of sleep. When I was young, I just thought that's what old dudes did. Later, I found out there was more to the story.

From a 1943 citation:

The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to John T. Yaksich (336911), Private, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism and conspicuous devotion to duty while serving as a member of a Rifle Company of the Second Battalion, Second Marines (Reinforced), SECOND Marine Division, during action against enemy Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands, on 12 November 1942. In the front lines west of the Matanikau River, Private Yaksich, approaching an enemy machine gun on his own initiative and under heavy fire, courageously advanced to a point-blank range before opening fire with his rifle and killing the Japanese gunner. Throwing a hand grenade into the emplacement before rushing the position, he was subsequently engaged in desperate hand-to-hand combat wherein he bayoneted two of the enemy. However, when several other Japanese appeared, and he sensed that he might be overpowered, he ran back to his own lines, rearmed himself and brought three men forward to help him capture the hostile machine gun. His relentless fighting spirit and unyielding devotion to duty were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

There's a lot that's not said in that citation, and now that I'm an adult (-ish) with a better understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder, it's pretty clear that John Yaksich dealt with PTSD from his experiences in World War II in ways that he never explicitly expressed with words. Instead, he let his actions -- social isolation, emotional instability, and so on -- tell the tale. 

Today, please keep in mind the fact that many of those who served our country might be silently suffering as a result of their service, and any act of kindness you might extend might be more healing and helpful than you would ever know.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...

The Natural's Not In It

  For nearly seven years on the button, Courtney and I lived on Perch Lake, just outside of Gaylord. Right next to Perch Lake was The Natural Golf Course, eighteen holes that twisted and turned through the best nature that the 45th Parallel could offer. The picture above is the view of the first green, and if you left the wooden bridge to the right and briefly ambled through the woods and over a rusted metal fence, you'd get right to our old driveway. Every now and again, an errant golf ball would appear at the edge of our property, like a single egg laid by an itinerant duck. Of the three major elitist sports -- golf, tennis, skiing -- I golfed because the barrier to entry was pretty low and the interest in golf on my Dad's side of the family was high, from playing the sport to watching it on television on the weekends. As spare clubs were abundant and my growth spurt had yet to overwhelm statistical norms, my grandmother would take prepubescent me to the Roscommon driving ran...