Editor's note: This is the sixth and final part to a column in honor of former TIMES publisher and editor, Jack Beisner, by his son, E. Calvin Beisner.I Never Knew My Father
Four years later, he taught me how a man dies. After a massive heart attack while at my mother's family reunion in Illinois, he struggled valiantly to recover for months though the doctors initially gave him little hope, and at last he chose the open-heart surgery that went so well that following it his surgeon said, "He'll be teaching your son how to fish before you know it."
He improved greatly, was soon up and around and even back to work a little bit, and during that time became more full of joy and peace and generosity than he'd ever been before -- which is saying a lot.
Then, without explanation, his condition reversed, and within a week -- after a phone call that sent me speeding down twisty Arkansas Hwy. 94 between Pea Ridge and Rogers, where a state trooper pulled me over but recognized my father's name when I said I was rushing to the hospital and told me to go ahead and he'd notify law enforcement all along the way to Fayetteville not to stop me -- I was standing by his hospital bedside in the middle of the night holding my mother in my arms when he died and we both felt suddenly very, very alone.
The Benton County Quorum Court -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- honored him with a plaque signed by all its members, lauding his skill and fairness as a journalist whose work had served the whole county. We had a tall pine tree carved into his gravestone, with a shorter one beside it representing my mother under the shelter of his limbs. And when she died, almost 30 years later, my two surviving (oldest) sisters and I, and my wife, buried her ashes in his grave and had his gravestone updated to include her.
But I never knew my father.
He was a very gentle man.
He'd told me little about his service in World War II -- mostly about how, because of his skill at mental math, he'd been the best poker player on his troop ship, enabling him to send home money to support my mother and their two little daughters, the second born just before he'd shipped out to the Pacific. And he'd told me that, because of his ability to do trigonometry quickly in his head, he'd been assigned to an anti-aircraft battery attached to his Army unit because he could help the crews by calculating azimuth for them, and that because of his experience as a journalist he'd also written his unit's journals. (I so wish I could locate them now -- them, and the letters between him and my mother during the War.) He'd also explained the origin of the Japanese sword he kept in his closet -- the one that gave him his only injury during the War when he was showing fellow soldiers how fast he could draw it but the scabbard broke and he slashed his knee, leaving the scar I'd seen so many times -- "I picked it up on a battlefield on Okinawa."
A couple of years ago I read Bill Sloan's The Ultimate Battle: Okinawa 1945 -- The Last Epic Struggle of World War II. It gave me my first close glimpse at what my father must have gone through. It drove me to tears over and over again. I wrote a brief tribute to my father then on Facebook, which one of my brothers-in-law read. He called and told me that when he'd been dating my sister between tours as a Marine in Vietnam, he and my father had talked at length of their combat experiences. He told me how my father really got that sword. His company was in a firefight, and both sides were nearly out of ammunition. The Japanese mounted a banzai charge, and a captain was rushing at him with sword held high to swing when Dad, with his last bullet, shot him dead. I wanted to learn more but wasn't ready. I felt like I'd trespassed on holy ground.
Two weeks ago I finished watching for the first time Ken Burns's The War, a documentary of seven two-hour-plus episodes about World War II. For a documentary about the world's most horrible war, it is a quiet, even reverential series. But it also contains the most graphic, horrifying footage I've ever witnessed -- all original -- of battle scenes. (If you're a man, watch it. If you're a woman, don't. Sorry, ladies, if that offends you, but you don't belong in those scenes, and you should never see them.) Burns treats the Battle of Okinawa in the last two episodes, and as I watched I kept thinking, "Will I see my father's face in one of these men?" I never did. I saw him in every one of them. I cried like a baby. No, no baby can cry like that.
When it was all over, I walked halfway down the stairs, stopped, sobbed, and told my wife, "I never knew my father."
Now, two weeks later, I think I understand.
My father went through all he did on Okinawa, and throughout World War II, and never showed the slightest hint of it to his son or daughters. He dealt death to others not happily but because it was his duty. He watched his closest friends and comrades die beside him.
He spared me all that knowledge.
He showed me only gentleness.
I never knew my father. Now I do.
•••
Editor's note: This column is the sixth, and final, column in a series by E. Calvin Beisner, son of Jack and Mary-Lou Beisner, who owned and published The Times of Northeast Benton County from 1978-1989. He served at various times as reporter, editor and assistant publisher as well as in other capacities. He is now Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation www.CornwallAlliance.org. He and his wife, Deborah, an artist, live in south Florida.
Editorial on 08/16/2017