Charles E. "Eddie" Clay (1922-2012)

South Dakota has lost one of its outstanding citizens.

Charles "Eddie" Clay of Hot Springs passed away this morning (10/4/12) at the Rapid City Regional Hospital after suffering a stroke yesterday.  He was 90 years old.

And most of those 90 years were dedicated to his family, his country, and his community.

It's sad to see the passing of such a remarkable person, and our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his wife, Clara, his daughter, Bobbi, and the entire Clay family.

Born in Missouri and raised in Iowa, Eddie served with the 8th Air Force in the Pacific during World War II.  Another assignment to Ellsworth Air Force Base allowed him to meet and later marry Clara May Hagen.  Eddie was also called up and served during the Korean War.

Eddie and Clara owned and operated Fall River Abstract in Hot Springs for more than 43 years.  He was devoted to Clara and Bobbi and his grandchildren.

Our sorrow at Eddie's passing  should be quickly tempered by celebration of his numerous and enormous accomplishments during his time on this earth. He was a champion for a wide array of community activities.  The list of his many causes is far too long to enumerate here -- and so we mention only a few.   They each elicited deep passion and commitment from Eddie.  He was not a half-way kind of fellow.  

We wrote the following when Eddie was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2007:

"A tireless worker in civic affairs, Eddie has provided vision and leadership to the Mount Rushmore Society, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, and numerous other organizations.

His service in the legislature and on Boards of Directors for many educational, tourism and arts organizations has been remarkable. A Mason for 50 years, Eddie Clay has been a role model for me and many South Dakotans. In addition to daughter Bobbi, the Clays have four grandchildren and four great children."

Eddie also served on the powerful Appropriations Committee in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 1967 to 1974.

Funeral services for Charles "Eddie" Clay will be at 10:00 a.m., Monday, at the Mueller Center in Hot Springs.  A viewing is scheduled for Sunday evening.  

You'll find additional information in this news story broadcast earlier today (10/4/12) by KOTA-TV, in which they appropriately acknowledged Eddie as a "visionary."   You'll also find a few photos and narratives that we posted in 2007 in this Hall of Fame gallery.

Have we forgotten V-J Day?

V-J Day came and went this year with little fanfare. Perhaps our expectation of finding a story about it tucked below the fold in the world news section of the newspaper – or included as a feature on the evening news – was unrealistic. Time has a way of blurring our memories, and media preoccupation with celebrities and reliving Woodstock only contributes to our collective amnesia about things that really matter.

Too, most people simply don’t remember anything about Victory over Japan Day. Either they were not yet born or too young to recall that historic day, August 14, 1945. It marked the end to one of the bloodiest wars the world has ever known. More than 405,000 Americans were killed and another 671,000 were wounded.

The country rejoiced at the ending of the war. Famed photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured a spontaneous eruption of joy when a sailor kissed a young nurse in Times Square. That famous full-page photograph, which appeared in Life magazine the following week, was the inspiration for a huge sculpture (shown here) near the USS Midway Museum in San Diego.

It’s appropriate that we pay homage to those who served in World War II.

We were particularly pleased earlier this year to learn about Honor Flight, a non-profit organization created solely to honor America’s veterans for all their sacrifices. They transport veterans to Washington, D.C. to “visit and reflect at their memorials.” We’re proud of these war veterans, and proud, too, of those who’ve led the charge to honor the veterans.

Friend and former colleague Larry Rohrer at South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion is among the South Dakotans leading this effort. We thank them all for what they do.

Started in Ohio in 2005, Honor Flight has transported more than 17,000 veterans from all over the country to Washington, D.C. to see their memorials; for 2009, Honor Flight has a lofty goal of transporting some 25,000 men and women on that pilgrimage. With more than one thousand World War II veterans dying each day, it is a priority to fly survivors of that war to the District of Columbia so they can visit the WW II Memorial. It is a fitting tribute for veterans who served their country during a very dangerous and difficult time for our country.

The World War Two Memorial was dedicated in May of 2004. We were living in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, on the outskirts of Harrisburg. It was just three months later -- in August of 2004 -- that we had the great honor of escorting one of our heroes, Guy Davidson, and his wife Marion, down to D.C. to visit the newly-opened memorial.

Good friends Bill and Joan Smith accompanied us on the day trip, and it was a truly moving experience. How fortunate that we have a few photo memories of that special outing!

We first came to know Guy and Marion through workshops at our church in Hummelstown. A retired Pennsylvania rural mail carrier, Guy Davidson is like so many WWII veterans: he seldom ever talks about his wartime experiences as a gunner on a half-track that landed in France after D-Day. His 2nd Armored “Hell on Wheels” division eventually ended up in Berlin via the Battle of Bulge. Guy would sometimes talk about it – but only if asked. He has never considered himself a hero, just a soldier doing his job. Such was the demeanor of so many veterans who were fortunate enough to come home from World War Two.

Now well along in years and afflicted with several health issues, Guy and Marion continue to live quietly and humbly in their small neighborhood on the south edge of Hummelstown. Clearly, they are no longer able to travel, so it gives us pleasure to know that we had a small part in helping Guy visit the memorial that paid tribute to him and other of the “Greatest Generation.”

Thank you, Guy Davidson, and all your fellow veterans for your sacrifices for the United States of America.

Lorraine Collins Remembers D-Day

Realizing that President Obama is joining other world leaders to observe the 65th anniversary of the landing of Allied forces in France on D Day on June 6th, I remembered that I had written something about that historic event 15 years ago. That was on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of D Day when I was a commentator for South Dakota Public Radio. Although a decade and a half has passed since I wrote this, nothing has happened since then to change my view. The essay mentions Rwanda, but if I were to write it today, I might mention Darfur, or Gaza, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq….

The view from D-Day beaches - SDPR , June 27, 1994:

It must be a decade ago by now that I stood on the western shore of France on a high bluff overlooking the sea and contemplated the famous beaches of the D-Day invasion of World War II. Since we’ve just observed the 50th anniversary of that tremendous and historic day, I’ve been remembering my visit and the mixture of awe and admiration I felt as I stood there.

Nearby is the great American Cemetery and visiting that brought a terrible sense of loss. The liberation of Europe was made possible only by great sacrifices by ordinary people. War always comes down to this—thousands of graves with names carved in stone. And there the bodies lie, all these years later.

There are a lot of other battlefields and military cemeteries in Europe, from several wars and I happened to visit a few of them during the time I lived in England. I followed the paths of World War I trenches in Belgium, strolled around the site of the Battle of the Bulge, stood on the hill overlooking the Battle of Waterloo, where Napoleon fought Wellington and 20,000 men died in one afternoon.

I spent a night in a big, creepy old hotel in the town of Verdun, a city that seemed to be one vast mausoleum, with a huge war memorial at one end of the Main Street, topped by a glowering, helmeted figure leaning on a sword. Near Verdun, which was the site of the most brutal and continuous shelling of World War I, there is a cemetery containing the remains of 130,000 unidentifiable, unknown soldiers, both German and French.

Visiting battlefields and military cemeteries is a very sobering experience, and it should be. We should never forget what war means, never glamorize it, never romanticize it, never enter into it blindly and carelessly. Visiting military cemeteries helps us remember that.

But what I’m afraid of is that war has now evolved in such brutal new ways that such formal, well-tended, sanctified burial sites have in a sense become obsolete. Even by the end of World War II, the lives of millions of people were ended without honor and bravery on the battlefield but in concentration camps or in the firestorms of bombed cities. The dead were buried not in neat and orderly rows in hallowed ground but under heaps of rubble or in mass graves.

And now, we hear that 500,000 people have been killed in the mindless warfare in Rwanda, just in the last few weeks. It’s not possible to dig 500,000 graves.

If war was ever a sane and manageable activity, it doesn’t seem to be so now. Wars used to be fought in fields, in trenches, in fox holes, on the sea, in the air. Now wars are fought in schools and hospitals and market places and refugee camps. Now there is no distinction between being a soldier and a civilian, between men and women, adults and children. All are slaughtered without conscience or hesitation.

In an era in which whole populations are involved in war, and military cemeteries are becoming obsolete, dare we hope that one day war will be obsolete, too?

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

Roy Jorgensen (1918-2008)

We were saddened this morning (3/26/08) to learn that good friend Roy Jorgensen of Vermillion, South Dakota died on Easter Sunday in Sioux Falls. He was 89.

Among the first to welcome Karen and me to Vermillion when we moved there in 1985 were Roy and Helen Jorgensen. Roy was an engineer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion, where he was pretty much in charge of technical operations for KUSD Radio. He had been with SDPB since the 1960s.

Already in his late 60s when I first came to know him, Roy was an avid ham radio operator (WØMMQ), and he introduced me to “packet radio.” I was amazed at his insatiable curiosity about things and his willingness to try something new. The conversion into digital electronics was a joy for Roy.

Roy and I also worked together on Lion’s projects, so it was a special delight to see him and Helen when Karen and I made an unexpected side trip to Vermillion two years ago. Good friends Vern and Joan Holter had invited us to join them at the Lion’s Pancake Supper, and among the folks we were able to see and visit with again were Roy and Helen. It was sheer delight!

We were also pleasantly surprised to learn, when we moved to the Black Hills, that Roy and Helen’s daughter and son-in-law, Ann and Ken Froelich, also lived in Spearfish.

Roy was born and raised in Yankton. And as I read through his obituary, I thought of how very much Roy Jorgensen typified the ex-GI’s that fellow broadcaster Tom Brokaw -- also also from Yankton -- wrote about in his book The Greatest Generation.

A World War II veteran who saw Signal Corps service in New Guinea, Roy repaired aircraft radios and other equipment as planes returned from combat missions. After the war, he came home, got on with his life, raised a family, and became an active member of his community – helping so many others along the way.

In amateur radio parlance, Roy is now a “Silent Key.” Throughout his life, he conveyed kindness and helpfulness to all – not just in his messages, but in his actions.

73 old friend.