High Notes 06-06-2013 – D-Day, WWII
One hundred eighty (180) years ago today, June 6, 1833, President Andrew Jackson boarded a Baltimore & Ohio train for a pleasure trip to Baltimore, Md. Jackson,
who had never been on a train before, was the first president to take a
ride on the “Iron Horse,” as locomotives were known then.
One hundred years later, June 6, 1933, the first “drive-in” theatre, or “Park-In Theater” was opened for business in Camden, New Jersey.
Perhaps the most famous event in the modern history of the world occurred on June 6, 1944, when The Allied Forces began their massive invasion of Europe, known as D-Day.
As a five year, and two month old boy, I was at home at 1227 McConnell Avenue, Portsmouth, when the invasion took place. My brother, Ted Dunham had already landed in Italy, and he, as a member of the 102nd Infantry Regiment of the 94th Brigade was making his way through Italy as a battlefield medic. Ted was 19-years old at the time, born January 6, 1925. His father, Theodore Dunham, had been killed in an accident while working for the electric power company,
before young Ted was born.
Four of my uncles on my mother’s side, Bob Cullen, Floyd Miller, James B. (We called him Barb) McGill, Hescal
Cutlip, and thousands of other Scioto County men and women, were busy
building the bombs and other armament used to defeat the Nazis in
Europe, and the Japs in the Pacific, at the Wheeling Steel Corporation
in New Boston. Another uncle, my Mom’s brother, Charles
Clark, of Lucasville, was fighting in some far off battlefield. My
Lucasville area cousin, Johnny Miller was in the army and his sister,
Charlotte, was a member of the Woman's Army Corps (WAC) during the war.
As
a child I remember the black smoky days of the forties…the days when
most homes were heated with coal, and the mill and other local factories
were busily supporting the war effort. On summer nights the eastern sky would glow bright orange as the steel mill blast furnace would make a pour of red molten ore. The
hot strip rolling mill was going strong, and the smokestacks belched
steam and smoke as the overhead cranes and slag-laden trains bellowed
and clanged their nightly mission toward victory.
Those were heady and deeply emotional times in the world.
Jim Kegley's column for the Scioto Voice
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