Gene Reece: Army Veteran and Honor Guard (and wife Vicki too!)

 

 

Gene Reece

  Imagine you are standing in an open campsite, far from the familiar roads, stores, churches, and conveniences of home and you witness a helicopter descending and dangling beneath it an ice cream truck!

    Gene Reece, Vietnam service Army veteran does not have to imagine. He remembers quite clearly and with a smile on his face as he told me of the incident during the late 1960s when he was serving in Vietnam.

patches

photos from the camp

Gene, proud volunteer for the Army, August 21, 1966-August 22, 1969, has other service stories, some describing actual combat, but that story about the ice cream truck is far too compelling to allow to be left un-shared. It is one of those images worthy of a scene in a movie. Yes, imagine a movie about the Vietnam War, the opening scene as movie title and production credits role and an Army helicopter lands an ice cream truck on a dry patch of ground, stirring up dust.

    Gene joined the Army to work in electronics. He wanted to serve in the signal corps. But, as happens in the chaos of war, his squad wound up in battle action in the Tet Offensive., with him as sergeant.

Gene was proud to serve and continues to be proud of that service.

I think we all should be proud of Gene for his willingness to be placed in such danger on behalf of America!

Gene continues to be faithful in service as he participates in funeral Honor Guard. He explains that each deceased service member, upon request of the family, gets a 21 gun salute.

Honor Guard

As I sometime officiate the funerals of service folk, I have seen the Honor Guard present, with great dignity, an American flag to the family.

Gene continues to bring honor, not only to himself and deceased service members, but also to the flag he defended during the 1960s!

   But you know, Gene looks good here because Vicki, his wife, does an excellent job of “putting him together!”

Gene and Vicki

   Vicki is very supportive of Gene and his activities.

Vicki serves as a smile-sporting greeter at the Willow Creek United Methodist Church in Mishawaka Indiana. She assists as a Communion steward and as prayer-chain coordinator.

Vicki hopes to greet you!

People like Gene and Vicki make things happen, hold things together, and pull things forward!

Let’s give a round of applause for Gene and Vicki!!!

In closing I would like to report that Gene said he and his whole camp had much fun eating ice cream upon the arrival of the truck in Vietnam during the 1960s!

In Honor of Martin K Speckter, Inventer of the Interrobang

 

Interrobang invented by Martin Speckter

Thanks to retired English Teacher, Ella Reff and software engineer, LaRita Robinson I am aware of the interrobang!

The interrobang is defined by Merriam-Webster:” Definition

: a punctuation mark  designed for use especially at the end of an exclamatory rhetorical question.”

 It was invented in 1962 by Martin K Speckter who passed away on February 14, 1988.

When asked if he was serious about his invention of punctuation, he would reply

 “ Somewhat more seriously than Elizabeth Taylor and slightly less so than Khrushchev.”

   The discovery of his intriguing response was the funnest part of my research about him. I shall contemplate using that sentence as a response when I am asked about my earnestness of statements!

   I wonder if he really intended his interrobang rather than a period following the name of the Soviet Premier?!

Having not the interrobang punctuation key on my keypad, I was confined to the conventional style to indicate punctuation-intent.

  I drew much information for this post from: http://alphabettenthletter.blogspot.com/2012/01/creator-martin-k-speckter.html

The Incidental Inspiration of Barnaby Rudge

 

In February 1971, English class, 9^th grade, Concord, I checked out of the school library “Barnaby Rudge” by Charles Dickens as the book upon which I would write a report. I guess the teacher figured that if it were in the school library, it would be an acceptable read.

    Surely the subject material was appropriate. But the difficulty of read would challenge college level British literature majors, I presumed.

Yet, I continued.

You see, having read the first paragraph, and referring to a dictionary many times to discover meanings of some words such as “wont” and “yeoman”, it occurred to me that the whole of the paragraph was one sentence! And so, purely for fun, I began contemplating the structure of that sentence to see how it held together, developed an idea, and left an image in mind.

This sentence made me a Dickens fan. But more importantly, it made me appreciate and enjoy the English language, grammar, and punctuation.

I offer that first paragraph below in italics…

 

In the year 1775, there stood upon the borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—measuring from the Standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the Standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and at that time a vast number both of travellers and stay-at-homes were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that Maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew."

In my study of that sentence I counted : eight commas, 2 dashes,1 semi colon, one pair of parentheses. And , concluding, one period.

Thus began my career as an English sentence hobbyist.

Of course I have ventured into poetry, short stories, essays, but my most fun has been derived from taking an event, image, or thought and seeing how much narrative detail and device of punctuation I can apply to one sentence in description of that chosen object.

I have been accused of composing run-on sentences. To which I reply, “Thank you”.

My compositions have been met with raised eye brow, thereby affirming my esteem and intent.

I have been erroneously “corrected” wherefore I, in self-defense, offered the legitimacy of my sentence.

I have been legitimately corrected, and, subsequently, and sincerely offered gratitude to my corrector.

    Of course, I do not claim to have the command of language as did Dickens. I merely enjoy composing such silliness as follows…

“Why acquiesce to one perfectly adequate word when a second superfluous synonym can decorate the sentence with a charming grandiosity, however otherwise redundant it may be?"

That sentence describes quite accurately my philosophy of the matter of the conveyance of thought by word and punctuation.

    Well, for class in 1971, I did not finish the book which ran on for more than six hundred pages. And I paid little attention to the plot or its resolution. So I based my report on the structures of chosen sentences and paragraphs.

Here, fifty years later, I have checked out the book once again, this time from the Elkhart Public Library. I think I will read it for plot, finally.