Remembering Arthur Hardy and the Vietnam War

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memoir

Memories of a man I never met suddenly flooded my mind this morning. Arthur H. Hardy died in Laos during the Vietnam War in 1972. I didn’t know him. But yet I remember him.

All of this began with an extraordinary tribute to Captain Hardy by Ipswich Town Historian Gordon Harris. Please take a moment to read it.

I was in my first year of high school when the plane piloted by Hardy was shot down. For many years he would be listed as a POW, then MIA, before his remains were finally found and returned to his family in 1983. In a small town like ours, everyone felt the weight of his premature demise.

Flash forward to 1992, when I moved to the Washington, D.C. area. One of my first forays into town included a sedated viewing of the imposing Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial. A long line edged along the narrow path, eyes scanning the wall for the names of loved ones lost. A guidebook helped locate the one veteran from my home town I knew to be listed. Like everyone else, I stared in quiet reverence at the name; it likely seemed an eternity to others, but passed in milliseconds to me.

I still have the rubbing I made that day. Half-sized papers with black borders, along with hard graphite pencils, could be placed over the etched names and the impression kept in remembrance. I have a pair in a single frame that have followed me through several relocations. Another rubbing was taken by my parents, and many years later my mother was able to give it to Arthur Hardy’s mother. Tears flow like rivers even still.

So I thank Gordon Harris for writing his tribute and bringing back such vibrant memories. It is only fitting that the photo accompanying this post is of “The Wall” by Norman Rockwell. Like in the painting, the first thing you notice is the grief of the people looking in…but delving deeper you feel the men and women who gave their last full measure of devotion still reaching into our lives today.

David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

[Daily Post]

 

 

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Surrounded by Stacks of Books

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daily post, memoir

It’s my version of the Great Wall. The monitor’s glow casts an eerie shadow over the books encroaching on my writer’s retreat. The room itself is somewhat of a library, one of two in my house. Abraham Lincoln oversees the expanse, almost literally as a nearly two-foot bronze bust keeps watch from the corner cabinet. Six bookcases encase only a third of my Lincoln books (five more are in the upstairs library). And yet, these are not part of the wall.

My Great Wall surrounds me. Books stacked two feet high on the floor to my right and left, another foot bracketing my keyboard on either side of the desk. Behind me the low hills of magazines, file papers, and boxes of information I’m excavating for current and future book projects. At times it feels as imposing as its Ming namesake.

But my wall moves, or at least the individual books move as if bricks to be rearranged like in a game of Jenga. Slowly I pull a book from the middle, careful not to topple the stack as I search for a resource on Lincoln’s patent or his law practice or, not ironically, the books he checked out of the Library of Congress. Satisfied that the stack will remain upright, I extract the needed information and rest the book on the top of the pile. Such is how there is a constant turnover of knowledge, like the tilling of topsoil prior to planting.

Which reminds me; it’s time to buy another bookcase.

David J. Kent is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press). He has also written two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate. His next book on Abraham Lincoln is due out in 2017.

[Daily Post]

A Walk in the Woods

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erotica, nature

She loved walking in the woods. Leading her beloved along the tiny creek, she smiled shrewdly to herself, knowing that he didn’t know what she had planned. He followed naïvely behind her, his mind wandering to the beauty of the flowing water. A dragonfly hovered along the bank, flitting in and out of the growing plants as it traced their trek along the path. Small fish gasped air as they lunged for insects resting on the water’s surface film. The water itself babbled over the shallow cobblestone bottom, gently moving around the occasional turtle sunning himself on an exposed rock or fallen log.

The sun itself was filtered through the summer trees; the sultry warmth of early August bringing a slight wetness to the skin as they walked. That thought made him look up and realize she had stopped ahead of him. Smiling at him in that alluring way that says she has something in mind. Something daring.

(to be continued)

David J. Kent is the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, due out in late July 2017. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) (both Fall River Press) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

 

[Daily Post]

One Way…or The Other

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daily post

Back to the Future? Or Forward to the Past? According to showroom sales guy, there are two models; one travels only to the future, and the other travels only to the past. It’s one way or the other – pick one. So I did.

And now, here I am in the past. I thought I could change the world, do more traveling, make a difference. And I did, at least for a little while. But then it got a little old. After all, my life back in the present; um, future, wasn’t so bad at all. I just wanted to change a few things, then come on back home. The plan was to take the one machine back in time, then take the other back to the future.

But wouldn’t you know it, they lost my luggage. Now I’m stuck here without clean shirts or a way home.

[The above is a response to the daily prompt below]

“Congrats! You’re the owner of a new time machine. The catch? It comes in two models, each traveling one way only: the past OR the future. Which do you choose, and why?”

© David J. Kent 2014

David J. Kent (David K) is the author of Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time.

Reliving a Life Unknown at Croton on 40th

Tags

friends, memoir

Wow, I hadn’t seen my old friend since college, literally the previous century. And yet here we were trying to catch up on all those years, sitting at a too-noisy-table in a restaurant called Croton, on 40^th Street (between 6^th and Broadway), downtown Manhattan. Through the awesome power of Facebook we found ourselves in the same city at the same time. And so here we were.

As it turns out, we had a lot to talk about. While we both were members of the college Biology Society (of which I had been President my senior year), his focus was pre-med and mine was marine biology. After graduation we went our separate ways and lost touch, as unfortunately had happened with virtually everyone I knew in those pre-email and pre-Facebook days. My marine biology career started well, then literally went up in flames (and yes, I mean literally, more on that later). I went on to environmental consulting; getting paid to tell companies what they often didn’t want to hear. In retrospect, all rather pedestrian and relatively uneventful. My friend, on the other hand, had had a very exciting – perhaps too exciting – life.

Initial medical training in Granada, two years in England, then Columbia and eventually his own practice in New Jersey specializing in infectious diseases. An appropriate specialty given his own medical battles – first a liver transplant, then a kidney, and constant hormonal maintenance to avoid future complications. As I listened I was both impressed by the positive attitude he maintained despite his trials and tribulations, and thankful that my life has been as unremarkable as I had always lamented it to have been.

We reminisced for a long time in the restaurant, then continued in the lobby of my hotel next door. Eventually we realized it was getting late and he left to reclaim his car near Bryant Park (appropriately, at Nikola Tesla Corner). It wasn’t until the next day that I found out “reclaim his car” was more than just a convenient turn of phrase. A late season snow had surprised the city overnight, and posted on Facebook was an inside-looking-out photo captioned “Never thought I would ever be in the back of a NYCity police car at 11:00 at night. A first and hopefully it will never happen again.” Seems our extended discussion was just long enough for his car to have been towed for exceeding the parking limit. A tense few hours (and couple of hundred dollars) later, he was on his way home; an unexpected end to an otherwise great reunion.

Hopefully we won’t wait quite as many decades before we get together again. I know we’ll be more careful where we park.

David J. Kent is a science traveler and the author of Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America, in Barnes and Noble stores now. His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity (2013) and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World (2016) and two e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

Check out my Goodreads author page. While you’re at it, “Like” my Facebook author page for more updates!

[Daily Post]