by Garrick Moritz, Editor
This year I was asked to speak at the American Legion Post #23 Veterans Day program. I was invited to speak about the paper and why I have been such a strong supporter of the Legion here in Garretson. Like a lot of things in 2020, it did not go as planned.
Because the event was canceled, and our community spent Veteran’s Day in their homes and hearts rather than in a public program, I will use my paper as a medium for what I planned to say at the program.
There are a lot of reasons I support the work of the Post #23 of the American Legion and Auxiliary here in Garretson. First, you might recall that they were supportive of me from day one, when I took over here, first as managing editor and especially when I purchased the business. Also, you might recall the work of Legion member Marty Luebke, which won a South Dakota Newspaper Association award for Best Feature Series, featuring stories of our Legion members and their service.
When Commander Rob Meyer called me to ask that I speak to the veterans, he said, “Clearly you came from a military background, just talking with you has told me that.”
Yes, both my grandpas and my father served.
Let’s start with Grandpa Bert Moritz.
After homesteading in North Dakota, the August Moritz family moved to Canada where grandpa Bert Moritz was born on Sept. 4, 1918 at Vegreville, Alberta. One year later, the family returned to North Dakota. Bert graduated from Cavalier High School in 1935. He then graduated from Mayville State Teacher’s College in 1940 and taught business classes at McIntosh, Minnesota.
Grandpa was drafted into the Army in 1941. He attended radar school at Camp Crowder, Missouri and additional training in Florida. He then served in Gandar, Newfoundland, Canada in the Signal Corps. Gandar's airport was the largest on the planet in 1940 and played a crucial role in the ferrying of aircraft from North America to England during the Second World War. Canadian, American, and British troops all served at Gander, while more than 1,500 Newfoundland civilians found employment there.
Following that duty, he returned to Florida at Boca Raton. He was discharged from active service in 1945 with the rank of Tech Sgt.
From his time in Mayville, he met and then married Helen Claire Condit. After the war, he taught at North Dakota State School of Science in Wahpeton, and then joined the Condit family business, the Clark County Courier in Clark, SD. Bert died in 2001, and I held his hand while he died.
Next, we’ll talk about my dad, James B. Moritz. The way my dad tells it, rather than be drafted, he chose to enlist in the Air Force. It was the summer of 1969 and he went to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas and then inventory management (supply) school at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver, Colorado. He was stationed at Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota for about nine months. Then, for the next 2 1/2 years he was stationed at Bentwaters/Woodbridge RAF Base, Suffolk, England.
Most of the guys he went to basic with went to Vietnam. When he came home, he finished his education at SDSU, and soon afterward he too started working for the family business. He met and married my mom Jody, who had started her teaching career in Clark, SD and well... I was born on his 31st birthday in 1980. The family bought the Faulk County Record in 1977, and he was editor and chief for 38 years. Mom was his right hand for much of that time, but while I was in high school, she got her teaching certification back, and started teaching again at Faulkton High School.
Dad has retired now and he has Parkinson’s. He just had two emergency room visits last week. I’ve talked to him on the phone, but I can’t go see him because of COVID-19.
But by the time this goes out in the paper we’ll have reached the end of the isolation period I need to be able to go see him, so I will be doing so.
Now we get to the other strong man in my family who served. Grandpa Marvin Messer of Rapid City, SD, formerly of Washington state.
Grandpa Marv was born June 19, 1922 near Yakima, Washington, and grew up poor. His father was a bootlegger and drank too much of the family’s money away. This was even worse because he grew up during the Great Depression. When I first started hunting he gave me a single shot bolt action .410 shotgun. He told me that it would teach me patience and trigger discipline because I would only have one shot, so I would have to make it count. He also told me, that I was never, ever to sell it. That I had to give it to my children.
“This gun kept me and my family alive during the Great Depression,” he said. “With it, I was able to put meat on the table when food was scarce.”
He shot those birds whether they were in season or not. He said he wasn’t proud of breaking the law to do it, but that he did what he had to put food on his family table, even though he was just a child.
When WWII broke out, he had a good job as a ship fitter at Bremerton, Wash. The USS Colorado was one of the ships being refitted there. He could have kept that job, and stayed at home and on land for the duration of the war, but instead enlisted in the Navy and served on the USS Colorado. He was a natural marksman, and good enough that he was assigned to an anti-aircraft battery.
He was at the Battle of Midway, and island hopping all over the Pacific on the USS Colorado. He knew, first-hand, what it was like to face down a Japanese kamikaze pilot, and what it was like to kill one. He got an E for Excellent rating for his marksmanship. He knew what it was like to have a kamikaze ram into the side of his ship too.
He described to me and my brother Paul what it was like to fight in the Pacific.
“We’d find an island where the Japanese were, pick off their planes and sink their ships,” he said. “Then the Marines would give us a target on the island, and we’d zero in our big guns, shell the living hell out of the target.”
This brings us to the atomic bomb. Grandpa Marv said that he hated it, that the A-bomb was an evil thing. The most horrible weapon man has ever known. But though he hated it, he said it saved his life.
“The Japanese wouldn’t quit; it wasn’t in their nature. Look at their history, they don’t give up, they would never have given up, it’s just their culture. The war would have gone on for years and it probably would have killed me. We were always right in the middle of it, and it was only a matter of time before a bullet, torpedo, a shell or a plane got us and our ship. It’s just what would have happened. So as much as I hate the A-Bomb, it saved my life and you wouldn’t exist without it.”
His ship was moored right beside the USS Missouri as the ceasefire was signed and he watched it from the deck.
Afterwards he and his crewmates were given shore leave in Tokyo. Before then, the “Japs” had been the enemy and he hated them. But when he saw Tokyo with his own eyes, saw the destruction and poor living conditions of the women and children of that city, he felt something different. He felt pity, and realized that these people weren’t the “enemy” anymore.
With the war over, he came home. He went to work at Hanford Atomic Energy site near Richland, Wash., where he met and married my grandmother, Blanche Floden. He went to work as a police officer during the day and attended night school to get his barber’s license. He came with his wife back to her home state of South Dakota, settled in Rapid City, and opened a barbershop in a downtown building. He and his wife Blanche had only one daughter, my mom Jody. When his two grandsons were born, he was probably the happiest man alive, and he made it a point to spend as much time with us as he could, spoiling us rotten.
And though the war was horrible, he truly did find it in his heart to forgive his “enemy”. He bought a Japanese Nintendo to play with his two grandsons, he and grandma bought a Toyota Prius, which he said was a real modern marvel of engineering and technology, and said he was proud that Japan had changed from one of our greatest foes, to one of our strongest allies, and became a great modern society. He died in 2017 at age 93.
Marv is also the one you should thank for bringing me to Garretson for the first time. Always the outdoorsman, he and Grandma saw a KELO News report about Split Rock Park and the Jesse James Pontoon. He’ d just bought a new Dodge RAM pickup (which I still own) and camper, and he scooped up his grandsons for big summer adventures several years in a row. We traveled all across the West. The first stop was right here in Garretson at Split Rock Park.
The three men whom I’ve described were all and still are patriots. Dad took me to each Veterans Day and Memorial Day program as I was growing up. If I wasn’t there with him, I went with Bert in Clark or Marv and Blanche in Rapid. I was the little boy chasing after shell casings in the cemetery grass after taps was played and everyone was heading home.
I was and still am proud of my dad and my grandfathers. They served, and because they’ve served I’ve been able to live my life and raise my own children in peace and safety.
When I read the preamble of the Legion Constitution, I believe it... every word. I don’t have to quote it to a Legion or Auxiliary member, but I will put it here for all to see.
FOR GOD AND COUNTRY WE ASSOCIATE OURSELVES TOGETHER
FOR THE FOLLOWING PURPOSES:
To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America;
To maintain law and order;
To foster and perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism;
To preserve the memories and incidents of our associations in all wars;
To inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation;
To combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses;
To make right the master of might;
To promote peace and goodwill on earth;
To safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy;
To consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion to mutual helpfulness.
If you had any questions as to why I, and by extension this newspaper, supports the American Legion in everything it does in our community, now you know why. Its principals are everything I believe in. Truth, Justice and the American way. Yes, it’s Superman’s slogan, but it’s mine, too. Superman could save the city, but he believed, as do I that the most important work he did was for the Daily Planet.
The year 2020 has been utterly horrible. It’s been horrible for many reasons and in many ways. But I still believe. I will always believe. I will live, work, and believe in America, and I will never stop fighting to make it better than before.
I would rather have given this talk in person (it would have been shorter certainly). I would rather have attended the program. I’ve missed pancakes on Sundays, and the warm hello from my friends and neighbors at the dugout. But for the safety of my neighbors and community, I’m glad I’m not doing that.
Things may look bleak. You might be sick of hearing about COVID-19. You might be upset about how the election went. You might be afraid of a whole world of troubles that have come to us this year. But don’t be. Our mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers have seen it all before. From war, famine and disease, they got through it with hard work and perseverance. They got through it with grit and grace. So too, will we all. They say times are tough, but times are always tough in every age of mankind. It’s how we meet the challenges we face that matters. I see courage and tenacity in the face of evil, an example America has learned from its Veterans.
Our Veterans built America, a land where the people rule themselves in freedom, peace and safety. They bought us the chance to make all the world a better place for all people, regardless of race, creed or religion. That foundation is strong, even when tested by all the world can throw at it. We will continue to build on it, until one day, that bright future dawns when there is peace and brotherhood across the whole circle of the world. And we will know who to thank, because it will be our veterans who built it.
