20181216.0430

On 11 December 2018, Richard A. Marini's "Missing Ring from American WWII POW in Germany to Be Returned to Kerrville, Texas, Man" appeared in the online San Antonio Express-News. The article offers information on Wayne Gotke, the son of a World War II POW imprisoned in Germany; he is a collector of World War II POW memorabilia, and his father's lost wedding ring was found during excavation efforts by a museum that specializes in such sites. How the ring was found is detailed, and the ring itself is described. The prison in question, Stalag Luft III, is also described, as are escape attempts made from it--including that featured in The Great Escape. Gotke's own father made several such, which Marini reports Gotke describing, along with his father's circumstances of capture. The likely progress of the ring and the circumstances of the Gotke family receive depiction, as well, calling attention to the ongoing efforts to claim and maintain still-recent history.
It is not entirely a surprise that such a story would be told, or that it would be told about a person in Kerrville, Texas; in addition to being noted for such figures as Johnny Manziel, Robert Earl Keen, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz (who graduated from school in the town, as is too little remarked), and for the Kerrville Folk Festival, my hometown is widely regarded as a desirable retirement destination. Throughout my life here, I've known and known about a great many veterans of the Second World War, and their children, the Baby Boomers, are reaching or into retirement age at this point. (I've also met a few Great War veterans who are now gone, as well as Holocaust survivors. I didn't appreciate either as much as I ought to have, and time has dulled even my memory.) There has been and remains a fascination with the most massive conflict of the twentieth century in Kerrville, so if there would be a place that would host a ceremony for a man to regain his divorced, late father's wedding ring, it would be the town where I live and have lived.
That it is not surprising, though, does not mean it is unwelcome. I'm lucky enough to have a pretty good relationship with my father, for which I am grateful, but I know that not everybody is thus fortunate. But even with that close connection, when the day comes that he is gone, I know that I will look for things to help me keep the memory of that connection alive. It is a thing of which I can readily conceive. What the article describes, though, reads to me as a man trying to create a connection with his late father when there was little enough of one in life, trying to fill a hole of which he is surely aware in the time he has left to him--and that is not something I can easily understand, having not faced such a challenge. It reminds me of how fortunate I am to have the connections I do with those I do, and it reminds me that I probably ought to be doing more to nurture them along.