Remembrance

Seventy years ago, a young man named Louis Tritschler sailed to war in the South Pacific.  Louis' ship Storm King docked for a while in Manila, in the Philippine Islands.  While the ship was there, Louis was befriended by a kind family who had two daughters named Remy and Clara.

(The photos of Remy and Clara have been lost.  My thanks go to Laurinda Alcantara, who posted this photo on Pinterest.  It reminds me of the photos I remember of Remy and Clara.)

Louis told Remy and Clara about his two younger sisters Ruth and Carol back home in St. Louis, and fifteen year old Ruth became their pen pal.

After the war, Louis returned to Missouri and married his sweetheart Billie.  For a while they lived on a farm and raised cattle while Louis studied to be a veterinarian and eventually became head of equine surgery at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Louis never returned to the Philippines and never saw Remy and Clara again, but Ruth remained their faithful pen pal for many years.  As young people do, eventually Louis, Remy and Ruth grew up and had families of their own and finally lost touch with each other.

Yet Ruth saved her treasured letters from her pen pals, along with a beautiful pair of carved Philippine shoes.   (Thank you to Jill Sharp for the photo of Philippine shoes she posted on Pinterest.) Ruth had three daughters, and I was the eldest.  We were fascinated by Remy's and Clara's photos, the graceful shoes, and their letters written in fine script on fragile paper with exotic stamps on the envelopes.  There was something touching in the story of the beautiful sisters who had been so kind to a lonely sailor and were beloved by our mother, although they had never met.  We wished our mother could find the girls again, but it was not to be.  Mom kept their memory alive, and they lived on in our memories, but we never knew what became of them.

Right in the middle of Memorial Day weekend, Siobhan calved on Saturday, May 23.  (This may sound like a complete non sequitur, but it's not.)

It seemed fitting to name our new bull calf in honor of the countless military men and women who gave their lives for our freedom.  (Thank you to our daughter Jenny for this photo and the one below.)

While my Uncle Louis did not lose his life in the war (he lives in a VA retirement home), the sacrifice he made for his country nearly included his life due to a serious tropical disease he contracted in the South Pacific, and I always think of him on Memorial Day.  Looking at our new calf, I remembered Uncle Louis and his service, as well as the years he spent raising cattle and caring for large animals, and I knew the perfect name for Siobhan's calf:  Royal Remembrance--"Remy" for short.  As I milked Siobhan that first evening, I told her and Remy the story of Uncle Louis the sailor, his sister Ruth back home, and the beautiful sisters Remy and Clara who were their friends.  They are all remembered with love.