Voting and veterans
I have been voting and covering politics for decades.
My first voting experience was in my home town. We voted in our elementary school cafeteria/gyms there and it was a day off of classes. I remember being intimidated by the giant machines with their levers and how the only way to get the curtain to open was to pull the lever finalizing your vote.
I was in college during the 1992 presidential election. I stood in a crowded banquet hall for hours to meet candidate Paul Tsongas and skipped classes to go see Bill Clinton speak at an outdoor rally downtown.
As a reporter I have covered the local angles on eight different presidential elections, 16 different congressional contests, a dozen different senate rates not to mention the dozens of state and local contests, encompassing municipal politics to school referendums.
Over the years you get harder to politics. Promises of change, but delivering more of the same. Despite that cynicism, there is still something that chokes me up inside when I am standing outside the polling place on the morning of election day and a poll worker rings a battered old bell and formally announces the polls are open.
It is in that moment I remember that every citizen’s duty and privilege to vote came through work and sacrifice.
This thought stewed around in the back of my mind Tuesday as I went about my tasks and anticipated the long night ahead of me and the work I would need to do in order to meet out print deadline.
Then I got a call from a reader wanting to share a story and making sure he could get to the office before we closed. Don Hoefferle of Rib Lake braved Tuesday afternoon’s misty and cold weather to make sure he was able to share his pride in the veterans in his family who served during Word War 2.
He wanted to make sure their story was not forgotten come Veterans Day on November 11. He shared an image of the front page of the Park Falls Herald from Friday, May 8, 1942 that had the pictures of five men on it, all brothers and all in the service.
The caption on the photo reads: Mr. and Mrs. John Hoefferle of Park Falls, have five sons in the United States army, besides two married sons and five daughters. The father was born in Germany and he and his family lived on a farm four miles east of Park Falls until last year, when they moved to the city to operate a restaurant and tavern. The soldier sons are (left to right) Pvt. Arnold J. 1 28, Fort Clayton, C. Z., enlisted in October, 1941; Leonard P., 22, air corps mechanic, January, 1942; Flying Cadet Ferdinand N., 24, Victorville, Calif., December 1941; Pvt. John A., 251 Iceland, March, 1941, and Pvt. Donald 0., 20, desert training center, Indio, Calif., August, 1940.
He also shared the speech made by his grandmother Rosa (Schaper) Hoefferle that she made for the Bond drive in 1942 during World War 2.
“Friends you all wonder and I am many times asked how it feels to be the mother of five sons in the service of the United States. I want to tell you that I am proud to be the mother of five sons in the service. That is one feeling, but as a mother I think all of you mothers will agree with me that there never is a minute that I am not worried as to my sons.
The thought of their being well: the thought of the dangers they are meeting never leaves me. My pride in being the mother of five sons in the service is always accompanied with a mother's fear for her child, but I want to say to all of you that I am glad to be able to do my bit for this great country of ours. We all have a job to do and the job for everyone is going to be hard, but to save this United States, the Land of Freedom, is worth working hard for and I know that every mother who has sons in the service is as willing as I am, and I also know that there are daily prayers by all mothers, praying not only for the safety of their sons in the service but for every other mother's sons and for final Victory for the United States.”
No matter how jaded or disgusted we become with politics we must never forget the service of veterans who guaranteed those rights and liberties for all of us.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.
