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Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair. He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too. War came and he had to go. I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942. He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that were flying the area where Rommel was fighting. He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it. A treasure.
Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head. He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships. In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back. He was a hero nevertheless.
About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people. I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.
So proud of them. Ordinary Americans who did extraordinary things.