Another of our heroes slips away

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July 25, 2009

by Larry L. Frye Pharos-Tribune Sat Jul 25, 2009, 07:27 PM EDT

I am a former marine from the Vietnam War. But this isn’t about me. It’s about the generation before, the World War II generation. On Sunday, July 19, the Father called home James Howard Saylor from Burnettsville.

This is some perspective on the treasure of what the greatest generation’s loss means to America. Mr. Saylor was my neighbor growing up in Burnettsville in the ’50s and ’60s. Burnettsville, as most Loganland people, know is a community of about 500 people 12 miles west of Logansport.

For a long time, I never knew that Howard, as we all called Mr. Saylor, was a World War II veteran or that he was in the Pacific Theater for the entire duration of the war from October 1941 to October 1945. He stayed over there the whole time in the Pacific without a furlough. Now when I was in Vietnam, I only did 13 months in combat in 1968 and 1969.

Just stop and think of four years with no cellphones, no e-mails, just the U.S. mail. It was like that for us from Vietnam also. But four years of living in the jungles of the Pacific are what I would call extraordinary men that America needs to know about.

Howard came home and started his business, the J.H. Saylor Co. I worked for him for almost 10 years. His word was worth more than any legal paper and his dignified mannerisms were a reflection of values of an America that many young people today will never experience.

Howard passed into the pages of history on July 19, but as he passed, so passed also a piece of America that was extraordinary. In America, it was just another day. But to me, it was a loss to my beloved United States of America that leaves another void in what the World War II generation has done for our nation.

It was a time when right was right and wrong was wrong. Nothing like the demise of the American way of life that we now have. The American bald eagle is crying and Americans need to know that these World War II vets like Mr. Saylor from small towns all over this great nation were heroes among us. If only we could, as a country, find that which we had and is now lost.

As Janis Joplin sang in an old song from my generation, “Take just a little piece of my heart.” The passing of all these men from the greatest generation should do that to us all.

Thank you to the Pharos-Tribune for the stories on these great men and women from that time who are dying at a rate of 1,000 a day. Lest we should forget.

Each day we as a nation are losing extraordinary men and women who made America great, and the eagle cries as Americans say “what happened to our nation.”

Political corrections and gray areas, no clear right and wrong. When you see a veteran, thank him or her for they have the blood of what makes America great inside of them. Their spirit from World War II wore off on those vets from other wars.

I live next door to twin brothers who were marines in Iraq and me from Vietnam. The spirit of those World War II vets lives on inside our veterans. As Walter Cronkite said, “and that’s the way it was.” But for many, like Mr. Saylor, the time has past. His story is gone, and so is that living history. So thank you, Pharos-Tribune, for your stories on these great people who are left.

• Larry L. Frye is a resident of Logansport.

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Another of our heroes slips away

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