Way back when I was born in 1956, my parents choose to make my mother’s brother my godfather. As I grew up over the years, Uncle Bobby never said much and wasn’t exactly the most social man I ever knew, and I never understood why. Seems that somewhere in the early 1960s, my step-father and Uncle Bobby had a falling out over something, and he was disallowed in our home forever after. I would get invites to Uncle Bobby’s home each year on his son’s birthday and go spend the day with Robert his boy. We did all the things little boys would do, catch frogs and turtles, climb trees and shoot hoops and such. When done Uncle Bobby would take me home and it would be the last I would see of him for a year.
Somewhere along the line about age 12 for me, Uncle Bobby and his family disappeared from my life. I never heard from him until after my mother’s death. He called to say how sorry he was my mother his sister had died of cancer, he was in Florida the year was 1991.
Uncle Bobby had done many things in his life. Some no one ever realized or knew about. I never saw Uncle Bobby ever again after the age of 12 for me. His call at moms death surprised me, I asked where he was he said Florida and cried over his sister’s death. Families are funny for sure and in my parents house very few members of either family ever showed up.
Life went on as I grew older and older graduating Elementary School and then onto High School never once seeing Uncle Bobby again. After my High School days I sort of ran around trying to find myself and not knowing what to do. I went thru many jobs, during the next four years barely keeping alive. But like most, I survived.
In the mid. 1970s I started a military career that for me would last 16 years. The rest of the 1970s, and 1980s flew by quickly, as i married, had kids and owned many different homes and finally ended up in divorce, returning to my parents home in April of 1990. Little did I know I would come home to a cancer riddled family. My Step-Father was dying of cancer, and we found out that July so was my mother. As I lived through their deaths one year and a day apart, I realized life is short.
Shortly after we buried mom in October of 1991, I was sitting in their house alone one night and the phone rang. I answered it and behold the long-lost Uncle called to say he was sorry mom had died and to claim he was the last one left. Again he only gave his condolences for a few minutes and hung up, never to be heard from again.
One day eight years later, I found out Uncle Bobby had died, and was gone too. There was so many things we never knew about this man, and neither did his kids. But we found out at his death, in his Obituary.
It turns out Uncle Bobby as I called him and it was the only name I knew him by, was really Joseph, Bobby was a nickname. He served during the Korean War, in the late 40s and early fifties. He was gone for a good time during that service, missing in action they said for three long years.
He didn’t go A.W.O.L. or hide during those three years, he spent them as a Prisoner of War in Korea, he was captured. Somewhere near the end of the Korean War, he was captured and held somewhere in Korea. When he came home he was quiet and not wanting to be bothered by anyone. I know it was all PTSD now, because I have it myself. His Obituary told the tale of my Uncle Bobby, he hid much information from his wife and his children and family.
Uncle Bobby aka as Joseph, has a Medal of Honor two meritorious Service Medals and two Purple Hearts from Korea. He never spoke of his heroics or his experiences in Korea to anyone. He hid all of this his whole life, at his Death, the Medals and records were brought forth by his best friend and handed over to his family. It all came out in his Obituary in the paper and we were all shocked.
So it goes to show, just because one is quiet, one is strange or different, you may never know what they had done in their life. Uncle Bobby was a true American Hero from the Korean War and a prisoner of war who survived.!.
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