Fifty Cents

    My mother's younger brother, Clinton, visited us often when we lived on the farm in Gibsonville, and that is why he claims more than a page in my scrapbook of childhood memories. Another reason is that sometimes before he left to go home, he gave me a shiny fifty-cent piece.

     A framed picture of him used to hang on our living room wall, right next to one of Jesus, and if that is not a place of honor, I don't know what is. A friend of our family once stood gazing at Uncle Clinton's 8x10 and said he looked like a movie star. 

    Through the years from near and far and even after the deaths of my parents, he stayed in touch with us. He was the kind of uncle you could call in the middle of the night, and we almost did on at least one occasion, but thought better of it and waited until morning.

    Eight of us (five adults, two toddlers and a baby) were on a family camping trip when frigid weather hit unexpectedly, and we were caught with barely a jacket among us and only sheets and thin blankets for cover. It just so happened we had set up our camp in the vicinity of Uncle Clinton's house. So at daybreak, we packed our tents, fled our campsite and less than an hour later knocked on his door. We were affectionately welcomed and spent the next night sleeping in warm pallets on the floor of a modest rancher.

    Uncle Clinton did much bigger things than give me fifty cents or rescue shivering campers. He was a corporal in General Patton's Army during World War II and endured the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1944.

    I never heard Uncle Clinton reminisce about his military years, so I turned to our family historian, my oldest brother Charles, for more information. He told me that at a reunion one year, he broached the subject, but Uncle Clinton treaded cautiously into that territory, sharing only a couple of bits and pieces about that time in his life.

    He recounted a harrowing experience while driving at night in a convoy. Headlights and tailights were turned off to avoid detection, and each driver could see only a small light on the rear of the vehicle ahead of him.

    Exactly how all of the events unfolded is unclear, but there was a raid, at which time the drivers slammed on the brakes and everyone bailed out and dove underneath their trucks. A bomb exploded so near to Uncle Clinton's truck that it rocked on its tires, almost to the point of turning over. Amazingly, he avoided shrapnel altogether.

    Four of the infantrymen he trained were casualties of war. He discovered their bodies in a terrible scene. "That's when it got to me," he said to my brother, referring to the calamities of war.

    After disclosing those few episodes, Uncle Clinton became quiet and volunteered no more details about fighting battles of any kind. My brother, a veteran also, understood the reluctance to drift too far into his military past.

    Later on my uncle became a policeman, which further illustrates his nature of looking out for others. He spent his life tending to his family, his community and his country. After living more than eighty years, he moved to his final resting place near a Methodist church in North Carolina, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the sound of the bugle still rings.

Uncle Clinton and his sister, my Aunt Opal.

Published in The Goochland Gazette on November 10, 2022.