[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 120 (Thursday, September 5, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1524-E1526]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     WAY TO GO: PACKAGING OUR CENTURY AS A PARTING GIFT TO THE NEXT

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. BILL BARRETT

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 5, 1996

  Mr. BARRETT of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, I have received the enclosed 
statement made by Retired Colonel Barney Oldfield, a distinguished 
Nebraskan, during his address to the Nebraska American Legion 
Convention. I encourage my colleagues to pay heed to his remarks, which 
reflect his wisdom and experience.

  ``Way To Go: Packaging Our Century as a Parting Gift to the Next!''

       Nebraska Friends: When Commander Bob Zersen's invitation 
     came to join you for this 78th annual convention of the 
     Nebraska Department of the American Legion here in Grand 
     Island, my first thought was whether I should check to see if 
     the statute of limitations for suspicions of misconduct had 
     run out! Still apprehensive, I came in last night under cover 
     of darkness.
       What troubled me was a ``paper trail'' thing. I've just had 
     a letter from Lori Cox-Paul of the Nebraska State Historical 
     Society in Lincoln which refers to a Grand Island 
     ``happening'' away back in 1940 . . . asking for an 
     explanation.
       That letter said:
       ``We are assembling an exhibit we are going to call: 
     Believe it or Not: The Lives and Times of Vada and Col. 
     Barney Oldfield! In our researching finds is a photo of Vada 
     discovering a nightgown in your suitcase on the Grand Island 
     Union Pacific station platform! The note on the picture says 
     `. . . they put a nightgown in my suitcase for Vada to find 
     on my return .  .  .'. Do you remember the circumstances 
     behind it? Can you tell me where you were coming from? Had 
     you been covering a movie premiere?''
       How about that for openers?
       If their researching is surfacing things like that . . . I 
     thought . . . what other things of surprising nature are apt 
     to be in store for me? It seemed to me that only the White 
     House has to contend with things like that.
       My wife Vada's parents lived here then, highly respected 
     pillars in this community. Some of my warmest remembrances I 
     have . . . are holidays and family gatherings here. It was on 
     a Union Pacific train out of here that Vada took to enlist as 
     one of the original WAACs, forerunner of the Women's Army 
     Corps in which she was to serve as a teletype operator in the 
     Communications section of Hq 12th Air Force, crossing North 
     Africa, Sicily and Italy. With two years overseas behind her, 
     here she had come to wait for me at war's end when I returned 
     from Berlin with the 82nd Airborne Division. I'd run the 
     successful campaign to avoid its deactivation and saw it 
     achieve the extra dividend of selection to do the Victory 
     March in New York on January 12, 1946 representing all the 
     16,000,000 men and women who had served in WW II. It was on 
     that same Union Pacific platform at 3 a.m. one morning that 
     we had our ``family reunion.'' She never said anything about 
     that photo in 1940 which was all right with me.
       While I'm not running for office . . . requiring the 
     publishing of my tax returns and other confessions . . . that 
     1940 escapade started with a telegram which came to me as the 
     Lincoln Journal and Star's movie editor and columnist. It 
     said I was invited to the premiere of the latest Errol Flynn 
     movie, Virginia City. It was about that old mining town 
     perched several thousand feet above Reno, Nevada. It said 
     they were running a special Union Pacific train from the 
     east and would pick me up in Grand Island. That eastern 
     train would meet a special train from Hollywood with movie 
     columnists and Warner Brothers stars on board in Reno for 
     the big promotional hoopla. Vada and I drove over from 
     Lincoln and she was going to visit her parents while I was 
     off ``just doing my job'', as they say. She would be there 
     to meet me when I returned and we'd drive back to Lincoln.
       Do you get the picture?
       That 15-car special train . . . loaded with roistering 
     newspaper guys was the locale of endless practical jokes to 
     relieve the boredom of that long train ride. They had seen 
     Vada when I boarded . . . and two days later when we were 
     returning . . . somewhere in Wyoming as I recall . . . they 
     clustered around me asking me if she was going to meet me 
     when we arrived in the middle of the night . . . around 2 
     a.m. the next morning. Dumb guy that I was . . . I told them 
     she would. Several said they would like to meet her. As that 
     special train roared eastward in the nighttime blackness . . 
     . I noted with some vague relief that most seemed to tire and 
     wander off to their berths and get some sleep.
       The train braked and stopped in Grand Island and I jumped 
     off thinking I was alone. Not so. Off with me came a 
     photographer from Cleveland, a New York columnist and a 
     Boston editor. They said this nightgown had fallen out of my 
     bag! It would have taken three of Vada to fill it. The 
     flashbulbs popped in the night. Afterthat they all re-
     boarded, the train pulled out. As we walked along the 
     platform to our car, Vada said: ``I'm glad they had their 
     little joke . . . but even gladder it was in the middle of 
     the night when my parents and all their friends were asleep 
     in their beds!''
       That practical joke had worked so well on me as the fall 
     guy, they did it to two others enroute to Chicago with the 
     same nightgown. The cameraman got off in Cleveland, developed 
     the pictures and sent them along with the negatives to the 
     butts of the pranks. But as pranksters will . . . just before 
     he got off the train . . . he stuffed the nightgown in the 
     Warner Brothers souvenir presskit of the New York columnist. 
     When the New Yorker got home . . . was regaling his wife with 
     stories of the trip . . . while unpacking . . . out fell the 
     nightgown! How much better could it be? He told her the truth 
     about it, and she didn't believe him!
       Live by the sword--die by the sword, right!
       So much for reflection, what I'd like to chat with you 
     about today is projection! Projection of our part of this 
     remarkable 20th Century . . . the most fantastic century of 
     all time. How lucky we were to have lived in it . . . and 
     even luckier to have lived through it! It's now up to us to 
     hand it off to the looming 21st Century and our inheritors . 
     . . the great examples of courage, sacrifice and inspiration 
     as a tribute to our friends who were lost along the way. 
     They, too, were once wheels under the extraordinary country 
     we've come to be.
       Since awayback when . . . I've been aware of and applauded 
     the many scholarships . . . large and small . . . provided by 
     individuals and posts of the American Legion. As a young 
     newspaperman I often went to Ed Boschult when old and crusty 
     General John J. Pershing used to come to Lincoln to visit his 
     sister, May. Pershing was a formidable and intimidating 
     presence . . . didn't like newspapermen much . . . but Ed 
     eased me in with the required tolerance for snippets of 
     interviews. I don't know what his name on your scholarship 
     means to those who win it, but he was a right guy to be so 
     memorialized . . . for sure. Young people should be nudged 
     beyond the monetary to be curious about what the name piggy-
     backed on it did . . . and why he does an outreach in this 
     form for students of today.
       While I have no quarrel with those who make money writing 
     on military subjects . . . I have been writing on military 
     subjects all my life . . . but have never felt comfortable 
     pocketing the compensations. When your national American 
     Legion magazine decided to do a three-parter on the 20th 
     anniversary of the Battle of the Ardennes and assigned it to 
     me . . . that check went to the University of Nebraska 
     Foundation as part of the endowment for one of our ROTC 
     scholarships. If one is lucky enough to live through wars 
     others do not . . . that's reward enough.
       The scholarship alternative has motivated us for a long 
     time . . . perhaps because Vada and I are both veterans. To 
     us scholarships have been the ``best game in town.'' People 
     often say: ``Why are you so interested in scholarships when 
     you have no kids?'' Our response always is: ``Who says we 
     have no kids . . . you should read our Christmas mail!'' It 
     comes from all over the world . . . and in these bits of 
     correspondence are statements about how crucial the 
     scholarships' arrivals were for continuance of studies which 
     led to careers now being pursued.
       The US Census Bureau projects that by mid-21st Century . . 
     . we will have grown from our 150,000,000 population of today 
     to a nation of 400,000,000! Imagine the whopper problems 
     which will be on their plates . . . and how much in the way 
     of smarts will be required to cope. Accomplishing a more and 
     better educated resources pool will call for a massive and 
     sustained effort. Perhaps from us they can pick up on the 
     merits of endowment over instant gratification if we have 
     such things in place for them to guide on.
       As we hand them our considerable bag of endowments . . . 
     linking our evidences of

[[Page E1525]]

     courage, adversities conquered, victories of the human spirit 
     . . . with aid to education and do it right . . . we can 
     never be dismissed as ancient history. We be in place . . . 
     as current as the next graduating high school class. Who 
     knows . . . maybe an occasional student who thought all life 
     began when he or she was born . . . will think well of the 
     people who lived in . . . and made this century of ours 
     extraordinary!
       This handing off takes surprising forms. On that recent and 
     much written about and talked about 50th anniversary of D-
     Day, I went to France with a cameraman to make a video, 
     Normandy Remembered. It gives the background on the four 
     Nebraskans who were killed in the first hours on June 6, 
     1944, two from Omaha, Paul Scott Rodstrom, and Marcelino 
     Shata; one from Morrill, Lester John Horn, and from 
     Steinauer, Corporal Herbert Leonard Ulrich. Ulrich's 
     citation says he ``greatly aided'' the breakout from the 
     withering gunfire which was spraying Omaha Beach. As a 
     young farm kid, he'd made primitive cat's whisker radio 
     sets. When the Army got him, they made him into an 
     artillery spotter with a walkie talkie radio which he used 
     to call in offshore naval barrages which tore great holes 
     in the German fortifications through which his comrades 
     poured.
       Standing there at his Omaha Beach marker, talking about him 
     on camera, born nine years after I was, nine miles from where 
     I was born, a Detroit Lakes, Minnesota father and his two 
     kids became curious. They tagged along after us when we went 
     to the time capsule which is at the entrance of the Omaha 
     Beach US military Cemetary. It was placed there by the war 
     correspondent who covered D-Day, and contains some of the 
     stories written at invasion time by them, plus old 
     typewriters, and my book, Never a Shot in Anger. I had given 
     rights for it to be reprinted as a Battle of Normandy 
     edition--to be used as a fund raiser for the Nebraska 
     Normandy Scholarship Fund. That time capsule is to be opened 
     in the year 2044 on June 6th--the 100th anniversary of D-Day. 
     For the video, I wanted to make the point that when that time 
     capsule is opened because of that re-cycled old book, 200 
     Nebraska students will have benefitted from scholarships 
     endowed by it, and that's only the beginning as it will go on 
     forever.
       That Detroit Lakes father wrote me recently that they have 
     entered into a ``family pact'', that on that 100th 
     anniversary, he'll be 91 and the kids in their '60s, if still 
     alive, one or all intend to go back to Normandy for the 100th 
     anniversary time capsule opening. They want to tell all 
     present that they knew that guy from Nebraska who wrote that 
     book and wore a red hat and they met him fifty years earlier, 
     and how he turned it into scholarships! Wow! I've been 
     accused of thinking ahead a few times in my life, but it 
     boggles one's mind to think of setting up a story to be 
     retold a half century from now!
       The video itself is to insure that those Nebraskans never 
     get reduced or lost in the statistics of being just part of 
     the 90 Nebraskans and 9,386 Americans to be forever there on 
     Omaha Beach. This video is to be given to scholarship winners 
     throughout time to explain to them who these honored soldiers 
     were and why the awards bear their names.
       There were more than 6,000 media people in Normandy for the 
     50th anniversary of D-Day observances, and all of them were 
     doing ``looking back'' stories. The French were so intrigued, 
     and maybe a little bored, with the endless recountings, that 
     they took pictures of our effort to use the anniversary to 
     launch something not ceremonial but substantial into the 
     future. I'm told they have even placed one copy of 
     Normandy Remembered in the reference archives of the 
     invalides in Paris, so it's side by side with Napoleon!
       The Nebraska Normandy Scholarship Fund in the University of 
     Nebraska foundation will always give awards to students 
     desiring career directions similar to the interests of the 
     four Nebraskans who died that invasion morning. Morrill, 
     Nebraska's Lester J. Horn was the son of a severely disabled 
     World War 1 veteran who died when Lester was three. His 
     mother re-married and she died when he was six. His 
     stepfather took his government allowance to buy booze and fed 
     the youngster on garbage dump scraps. He suffered 
     malnutrition and had great learning difficulties in school. 
     He was rescued and reared by an uncle and aunt and his foster 
     mother lived to be more than 100 years old. She received a 
     monthly check for $90 as long as she lived . . . the result 
     of a government life insurance policy he'd taken out for her 
     . . . a token gesture to her for what she'd meant to him. 
     Just before coming here, I had a letter from a Nebraska 
     student, named Carissa Lindquist who lives in Firth, 
     Nebraska. She is taking Teachers College courses preparing 
     her to instruct those with learning problems, the very kind 
     of thing Lester J. Horn struggled with all his short life. 
     Her letter says:
       ``I would like to thank you for the Lester John Horn 
     scholarship, and also for the wonderful video, Normandy 
     Remembered . . . and the explanatory brochure about the 
     Nebraska Normandy Scholarship fund. It is a valuable resource 
     that I will use all my teaching years to come.''
       If she teaches until normal retirement time, we have 
     enlisted a surrogate who will be standing before classes 
     telling about Lester Horn all the way to the 100th 
     anniversary of D-Day. A young lady in Firth, Nebraska.
       There is a special something about a century ending and a 
     new one beginning. No matter how much has been done in the 
     old one . . . there's always the wonder about whether there 
     is time enough to do the rest. Two things have haunted me 
     particularly. One was what happened here in Grand Island in 
     March of 1944. The intense focus then was on Normandy and one 
     man came here literally un-noticed. He had a crucial mission 
     and had been carefully selected for it. What he started here 
     ended World War II abruptly. After living through the 
     required 25 B-17 missions over Germany, his role here was to 
     lay out the re-training instructions for B-17 bomber pilots 
     who would transfer to the Pacific in longer range B-29s. He 
     was picked to be the unit commander for the atomic bomb drop 
     on Hiroshima.
       For many years afterward . . . anti-nuke and peacenik 
     cocktail commandos . . . flayed him as a villain. When they 
     made me a member of the Board of Nominations of the National 
     Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio . . . I began pushing 
     his candidacy for enshrinement there. On July 20, 1996, Brig. 
     Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr. is to be enshrined in the National 
     Aviation Hall of Fame.
       The other one remains unfinished.
       In 1956 . . . while I was in the Air Force and stationed in 
     Colorado Springs at the Air Defense Command . . . I took 
     leave to cover the Melbourne, Australia Olympic Games for a 
     New York magazine. My book, Never A Shot in Anger, was just 
     coming off the presses, and the publisher thought my being in 
     the pressbox could lead to some promotional references in 
     sportswriter columns. As the Games were nearing the finish, 
     there was a cable for me in the pressbox from Hq Pacific Air 
     Forces in Honolulu. It said on my return to the States, they 
     would like me to lay over in Hawaii and be the 15th 
     anniversary speaker for the annual Pearl Harbor observances. 
     It was both easy and emotional to say YES, and I did it.
       The USS Arizona Memorial has taunted me ever since. The Air 
     Defense mission where I was serving had been created to 
     prevent any future sneak attack. But there were 1,177 killed 
     in action there on December 7, 1941 . . . and 1,102 of them 
     are still there trapped below decks . . . 46 of the then 48 
     states, plus Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii and Canada they 
     came from . . . a silent population reduced to the 
     convenience of a number, an awesome statistic.
       But once they were real people, and sixteen of them are 
     from Nebraska!
       I have waited over time for some later, grander, more 
     powerful speaker to stand there above them and say:
       ``On this day . . . I'm going to establish 1,102 
     scholarships . . . each named in honor and memory . . . of 
     each of those here for all time . . . and remind generations 
     to come through educational assistance . . . what the price 
     was to give us the country we now 
     have . . .''
       It hasn't happened.
       I asked Daniel Martinez, the historian of the National Park 
     Service USS Arizona there in Pearl Harbor to send me the 
     names of the Nebraskans. Perhaps . . . since there are 
     sixteen . . . we . . . together . . . can at least . . . so 
     honor the ones who came from this Nebraska part of the 
     world's geography. I had never seen their names before . . . 
     and apparently a request like mine is not often made. I have 
     apparently done the historian a service . . . as it shows the 
     only officer among them . . . Navy Ensign Frank S. Lomax . . 
     . as having come from Broken Box, Nebraska. I told he'd 
     better change it to Broken Bow . . . and on the roster he's 
     sent me . . . it has been corrected!
       The other fifteen are:
       From OMAHA, there are four--Richard Everett Ellis, James 
     Thomas Hasl, Stanley Kula and Tom Savin.
       From LINCOLN, there are two--Edward J. Clough and Peter 
     John Harris.
       From far western Nebraska, Naaman Chapman of Mitchell, 
     Kenneth Robert Bickel of Potter, and Elmer Ellis Yates of 
     Palisade.
       Working eastward, Gerald Arthur Atkins of Gothenburg, Elmer 
     Pershing Schlund of St. Michael, Neal James Redford of 
     Newark, Lloyd Christensen of Alda, and Warren Allan Jones of 
     Kearney.
       And from Nebraska's northeast, Lester John Hoelscher of 
     Madison.
       Considering the size of some of those towns, it is easy to 
     visualize what a difference a day made--Pearl Harbor so far 
     away on December 6, 1941, and how it came crashing in so 
     close to them a day later with the loss of someone they knew.
       For sure . . . they deserve more than dismissal as a 
     statistic and anonymity given them by distance of both 
     mileage and time. For that reason . . . I propose that . . . 
     since they are within our collective reach and capability . . 
     . that with the three and half years between now and ``lights 
     out'' on this 20th Century that we busy ourselves. And 
     establish within the Nebraska State Historical Society 
     Foundation what we might call the Nebraska Pearl Harbor 
     Remembrance Fund which will link these names to individual 
     scholarships for all of time to come.
       When you have contributions to that endowment at the $5,000 
     level, on such notification my wife, Vada, and I will add 
     another $5,000!
       Personally . . . when it comes to handing off our huge 
     century to our inheritors in the next one, I think it will 
     testify to the supreme tests of what we were made of . . . 
     and intimidate them a little, perhaps. But more importantly . 
     . . it might inspire them to outdo us . . . which is how the 
     human race progresses!
       One of the things worth doing as this century ends is to 
     remind everyone that places in Nebraska as small as Potter, 
     Newark, Alda and St. Michael . . . can produce sons

[[Page E1526]]

     and daughters . . . who can have roles in the greatest 
     milestones in our country's history.
       Think about it!
       And thanks for giving me one more excuse to come back to 
     Nebraska!

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