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Dan Schwartz: We need to record our veterans’ stories
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A few years ago, I mentioned to Dan Keck, a professor of educational administration and an amateur military historian, that my then father-in-law, Norman Kolbusz, was a chief petty officer on the USS Minneapolis.
“The Minneapolis? That’s one of the most decorated ships in the history of the Navy!”
We then discussed how little I knew about the ship. Shamed by ignorance, I got a book on the subject. I thumbed through it until I saw a photo of the cruiser with its entire bow missing. It had limped to an island where the sailors patched the ship with palm trees so it could get to a better port.
The book had lots of maps in it. Usually there were two lines on each map; one was broken and the other solid. Solid lines were the “official” routes. The broken lines were the real routes. The broken-line missions were top secret.
I got a copy of the book for Norman. After he finished it, he looked uncharacteristically shaken. He told me the ship had had a long series of commanding officers. They didn’t stay long, they weren’t friendly and they worked the men too hard, in Norman’s opinion. He also thought they’d taken lots of unnecessary risks.
“Fifty years I’ve hated those guys, and now I find out about all this secret stuff. I feel bad about blaming them and feeling the way I did. I thought they were glory hounds looking for medals and promotions.”
When they started having reunions for the surviving men of the Minneapolis, Norman attended the first one and was worried no one would remember him. When he walked in, everyone yelled, “Chief! It’s the Chief!”
Norman had trained many of them when they first came aboard. In one story I’ve heard, A, C and D Batteries were completely blown out. Some of those who survived in Battery B claimed they owed their lives to him.
For years, when asked about what he did in the war, Norman would smile and tell people he was a cook and that his job was baking cookies. Like many of his generation, Norman didn’t talk much about his war experiences. He was one of those Midwestern boys who joined the Navy to see the world, or at least its oceans. I can’t help thinking his Wisconsin experiences had something to do with using logs to patch the ship.
After the war, Norman worked for Wisconsin Public Service. A while back, he tried to save Admiral Flatley Park from condo developers in Green Bay. He still can’t understand how a veterans park can be taken away like that.
He still attends the reunions, but there are now fewer men left. We are losing World War II vets at the rate of 1,000 per day. France and England recently lost their last World War I vets.
We must follow the lead of Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust project and record our World War II veterans’ stories via audio, video or even good old paper and ink. We also must find time and space in school curricula — curricula suffering from an invalid obsession with test preparation — so teachers will bring these vets into classrooms to tell their stories.
Norman was one of only four guys aboard the Minneapolis before Pearl Harbor who was still with her at war’s end. He stayed on to decommission the ship in the Philadelphia Naval Yard. Whenever I fly over, I think about Norman, the ship and what it must have been like. The Minneapolis was sold for scrap in 1959.
If you’re ever in Green Bay and you see a guy wearing a USS Minneapolis cap, say hi to the Chief and thank him.
Published: November 08, 2009, 12:30 am