Sargent Roswell Cornell (Dory) Doremus, U.S. Army Air Force, 1942-1945 died on Friday. He was 2 weeks shy of his 92nd birthday. Dad was truly a member of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation.
Born just after the Influenza epidemic, he survived Scarlett fever as a child, endured the Great Depression and enlisted to serve in WWII. The Army Air Corps, in their wisdom, assigned him, a city kid who had never shot a gun to gunnery school. They then assigned his entire aerial gunnery class to be aerial gunnery instructors, so he never left the country. During the war, married my mother. After the war he traveled west and used his GI Bill to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I suspect he could just as easily become an Electrical Engineer since he tinkered with electrical projects his entire life. He pursued a career as a mechanical engineer and went to work nearly every day for the next 46 years, he was only involuntary unemployed for 6 months the entire time. In that time he raised 2 children and provided college educations for both of them. He leaves behind my mother, my sister and I, five grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
Dad was quiet about accepting the benefits his military service paid him. He knew getting a degree using the GI Bill put him in a better place than he was in 1941. I think the three houses he bought were all done using VA financing, another benefit of his 39 months of military service. When we bury his ashes, it will be in a National Cemetery, a final benefit.
He was proud of his service, but he never made a big deal of it. He might have felt a need to defer to actual combat veterans. He felt that those 39 months of his life were the best investment he ever made. While he accepted the benefits of service, he never adopted the displays of service, I think I ended up with his 'ruptured duck' lapel pin at a young age. He never joined the VFW or any other veteran's group, he never saw a VA physician. I never got the real details of his service until 2009, I shared them here last Memorial Day.
I'm not sure what Dad's politics were before the war, but after the war he was clearly a Roosevelt Democrat. He knew that Democrats were looking out for his interests. The college degree placed him solidly in the middle class, a place he might never had achieved had he followed his father's steps into landscaping. He toyed with attending CUNY and pursuing a chemistry degree before the war, but couldn't afford it. With an above average income, he was able to afford sending his two children to college and get them sent off on their ways.
The anti-war demonstrations at the Chicago Democratic Convention in 1968 didn't set well with him and it might have been the only time he voted for a Republican. After spending a year in Reagan's California, he was back to the Democratic fold for good.
Dad was a quiet man, I really can't recall him raising his voice, even when I went way off of the rails. I'm not a very outgoing person, I tend to keep my mouth shut. But, I'm a real chatter box compared to him.
He also quietly served as in inspiration to me for my whole life. When my 3rd grade teacher told us about President Kennedy's "Go to the Moon" speech, she said we might put a man on Mars by the year 2000. I calculated that 15 was too young to be the first man on the Moon and 45 was way too old to be an astronaut (OK, I missed that one). Right then and there, I decided that I'd be a mechanical engineer, just like my dad. That moment kept me going through the tough times in college.
You do not want to watch a slapstick movie with me around, I start laughing during the set up. I always thought I got that from my mom, but in retrospect I think I got my sense of humor, love of sour puns and sarcastic tongue from my father.
While my parents are card carrying members of the Greatest Generation, they are also part of the quietest generation. They didn't talk much about their lives in the depression, the war or before I was born. They never talked about their illnesses or any issues. And I was too stupid or self centered to ask. I was 50 before I found out that they'd had a stillborn child 5 years before I was born. Mom had a stroke about 5 years ago and has been sliding into the clutches of Alzheimer's since then. She's been at home under 20 hr a day care for several years. Last May, Dad finally admitted to my sister that he hadn't been doing well and wasn't eating, he wouldn't even take his weekly trip to the grocery store. After over a week in the hospital, they diagnosed it as a bone cancer. That's when I also found out that he had prostate cancer, and had had it for 3 years. He switched over to 24 hour care so some one would be watching him and mom till they had depleted enough of his assets till they could place mom in a nursing home under Medicaid.
He passed in his sleep early Friday. We'll have a memorial service for him next month.
Good bye Dad, I'll miss you. RIP
11:20 AM PT: Wow rec list and all! Thanks and blessings to all.
Sorry but I'm traveling and can't tend to this properly. Peace.
11:20 AM PT: Wow rec list and all! Thanks and blessings to all.
Sorry but I'm traveling and can't tend to this properly. Peace.