Betty's Purple Heart

Tonight I found myself in a bit of funk, for the third or fourth time some wet behind the ears know nothing suggested that I should “Get a life.”   I swallowed hard and put the insult behind me, or thought I had, until I decided to go to bed.  Well the insult came back, and I got pretty mad.  I’m sure everyone has done the same kind of thing, started thinking about an ignorant comment that was meant to be hurtful, and being hurt by it.   Sometimes words can sting.

Well, I told myself, I have had a life, and when I think about it I still do.  Yesterday I helped a neighbor and a friend in a pretty big way.  The neighbor is renting his home from a real estate speculator.  The speculator has lost the property to the bank, and my neighbor has to be out by Tuesday.  My friend, is just finishing off a house that he has been refurbishing, and that he owns.  No mortgage, but it is to be a rental property, my friend is caring for his very aged mother and living in her home with her.  Well, long story short, the friend, and the neighbor are now landlord and tenant, and the house next door to me will be on the market, probably at a reduced price, and that might just mean that my property tax bill will go down a little.

That is today, at least this week, and it’s pretty typical for me, and the life I have at the moment.  But, there is another story here, and I want to tell it.

I have been taking up space on this planet for a long time, 3 score and five years in fact.  I was born to a Teacher and his wife, who became a Teacher.  My Teacher father was also a preacher, not a Christian Church Pastor kind of preacher, but a man who taught others to do good works, and mostly by doing good works himself.

My dad had a school.  He owned it, with my mom, and they taught people to be businessmen and accountants and Certified Public Accountants.  My family lived in the school house, or the school was in the family house, sometimes one way sometimes the other.  In any event the two places were in the same building.  School started at seven in the morning, and that session lasted till one in the afternoon, and everybody had lunch, and Dad went off to his other business interests.  He was the treasurer of an Insurance company, and he had an accounting practice.  His office hours were two to five Monday Thru Friday and by appointment on weekends.  Then school was in session from six to ten pm during the week.  Dad worked all the time.  And most of my friends thought he was a bum because he was always home.  One of my playmates thought he was a gangster because he always wore a coat and tie. 

My parents had good reputations as educators, and as a result, the school did well.  Or maybe that was the other way round like the home and the school being in the same place.  Perhaps the school did well so my parents had good reputations.  In any event, there were always enough students, and they did do well, many of them became CPA’s, and Leaders in the Business Community.  Most of them were disabled veterans.  Men who came home from World War Two and Korea with horrible wounds. 

The story I want to write is about one of those students who was not a man.  She was Betty.  Betty was the only adult I was allowed to call by her given name.  The rule at my house was everyone who was grown up was called Mister, Sir, Miss, or Missus.  Even the high school girl who did the filing, and was in the same class as my big brother was Miss Adams, even to my brother while she was at work. 

This is a hard story, because of what had happened to Betty while she was “Getting a life.”  Betty was a student at our school.  She was a disabled World War Two Veteran, she did not become a great success, or even a small failure.   But she had a life.

Betty was an Army Nurse.  She was stationed with General MacArthur’s forces in the Philippines.  During the first evacuation she, and a few other Army nurses refused to be evacuated.  They stayed to take care of wounded civilians and soldiers.  Most of them got out in the second evacuation, the one where MacArthur said “I shall return.”  Betty was not one of them.  The small aid station she was working in got cut off, and she became a prisoner of war.

She had a Purple Heart, when I was very young I thought that meant she had her heart broken by the fighting.  She got the medal after she was liberated from the Japanese, and after she caught a very serious Jungle disease.  We called her Betty for a very good reason.  Everyone called her Betty, if you called her by her last name she froze up, and was deeply troubled for a day or two.  Her captors called her by her last name.  We called her Betty.  Not Miss Betty or Mam, we called her Betty.  And it was for a very good reason.  My big Brother, and my little Sister understood the reason.  I really hope you do too.  Remember her as Betty.  If I tell her story right, you will not forget her, because she is a memorable person.

Betty was white.  She was not white like I am, or you may be, she was WHITE.  Her skin was the color of scars, not most of it, or some of it, all of it.  Her hair was white too, white like the hair of a very old woman who has taken good care of her hair but does not put any color in it.  White, like a Platinum blonde.  WHITE.  Sunlight hurt her skin, so she wore white clothing.  She was a very nice lady, and when I think of her, I still think that angels must look like she did. 

Sometimes one of my Father’s students would die.  It was not an every day thing, but horrible war wounds have a way of becoming infected, or dropping an embolism, or very rarely overwhelming the mind and ending in self destruction.  When I recall some of the men in my dad’s school I wonder why more of them did not take their own lives.  One of the men I remember who went on to be a success and a CPA was left for dead in the middle of winter in Germany or France.  He lost both his legs, his hands had only stubs of fingers, his ears were gone, and his nose too.  He told me, one day when I was helping him put on his artificial legs that he froze to life.  There was an episode of MASH where a soldier lay out in the freezing cold overnight, and lived because his body slowed down so much he did not bleed to death from his wounds.   That is what happened to this man, but the MASH episode was “sanitized.”  The reality would not have gone over well on Television.

I put that little bit in to regain my composure.  Strange what will give you back your composure when you are thinking about someone special like Betty.  Betty came to school at night, mostly because she was busy with the Veteran’s Hospital almost every day being treated for the Jungle Disease.  Sometimes, not often but sometimes she would come to school with bandages under her clothing.  As the time wore on a stain would appear on her back, or her arm, or where her legs were under her skirt.  She would ask to be excused, and my mother would help her change a dressing where the doctors had taken some of her skin off.   She stopped coming to school one Wednesday, Dad and Mom talked about it at dinner.  She had become resistant to all the medicines and was going to be in the hospital for a while. 

That Saturday Dad, Mom, Me, my Sister and Brother went to Papago Park where the Hospital was.  And each of them went in to see Betty.  One at a time.  Mom went in, and came out after a few minutes with a small box, Dad went in, and came out a few minutes later and my Big Brother went in.  When he came out you could tell he was trying very hard not to cry.  He was twelve at the time, I was six, and my Sister was just 5, I would be seven in a couple of months.  The nurse asked my Mom if it was OK for me and my sister to go in together, since we were so young and Betty was getting tired.  So that is how it was, two little kids, with a nurse between us, standing at the side of a hospital bed, with white sheets and White Betty, and a white table and a white pitcher of water and white walls, and our friend, Betty.  And some Christmas Decorations that gave the room a very sad cheerful look.  The kind of cheeful you get when you are really very sad, but trying to be cheerul.

Betty looked at us from that bed, that strange, hospital bed, very high, and adjusted so she was sitting up.  And she said, very formal, “I am glad you could come see me today, because I am going away, and I will never see you again.”  I don’t remember saying “please stay,” I don’t actually think I did.  I had been taught not to beg or argue with adults, and if they said they were going it was what was going to happen even if I did not like it.   What she said next I do remember, She said, “I know that you two are going to grow up and be happy.  I know that your lives are going to be good because of what we did.  And somehow, seeing the two of you makes it all worth it.”  And she smiled, a sad, but satisfied smile that made her look softer and comfortable.  We were not permitted to touch Betty, she was in constant pain, but she reached over and brushed my Sister’s cheek, and then touched her fingers to her lips and then touche my face.   She said, “Don’t be sad, it really was worth it.”  With that soft, wistful smile.

The next Wednesday the school nurse came and got me out of class before lunch and Mom met me in the office, I put on my good slacks and a new white shirt.  Mom tied a neck tie on me.  I had never worn a necktie before, and I treasured that one for a very long time.  We got in the 1938 Pre War Packard with My Brother and Sister and dad drove us to a Small Church.  There were a lot of people there, all the students, and many people I had never met before.  Some of the people were in Army Uniforms and some were wearing Marine Uniforms, there were even some women in uniforms.  Mom gave the little package Betty had given her on Saturday to a woman who was crying, and to me very old.  It was the box with Betty’s Purple Heart in it.  The lady was Betty’s Mother.  She took the box and said to me, “Have you ever seen a Purple Heart?”  I said "NO,"but I had seen Purple Hearts, or I thought I had, many of the students wore them in their jacket lapels.  Small  heart shaped buttons with a gold rim and a deep purple center.  Some of them had a small gold emblem in the very center of the Heart. 

Betty’s mother stooped down, still standing straight, by bending her knees, and opened the box.  Sister and I looked in.  It was very big, not like the buttons, but bigger than a half dollar for sure.  It was just like the buttons though in color, but it had a short Purple ribbon at the top, and a pin, with a gold bar so that it could be worn on a uniform.  I did not count them, but that day I must have seen 20 or more Purple Hearts pinned to uniforms.  Some of the men in the uniforms were crippled, a few in wheel chairs, but they were all proud, or seemed to be, though even I, was sad.

We went into the chapel and took our seats, and stood up for the invocation and sat down and stood up again, and did the things you do in Church.  There was a long, dark coffin at the front of the room and the minister told Betty’s story.  How she had stayed behind when the other nurses had evacuated, and been captured and held in awful conditions for years before she was liberated and how her life had been constant pain since then.  And how she was a hero.  And how the trials of this life were past for her.  Some of the men in uniforms also said things and told short stories about Betty, and I began to cry.  I was six years old, and I did not know what all this meant, but I knew that Betty had told me she would never see me again, and I cried.  Mom bent down and said for me to hush.  To stop crying I was making a spectacle.  And I could not stop crying.  Then a man, with a Marine uniform turned around at looked at my Mom.  There were tears streaming down his face, his nose was running, he had a Purple Heart on his jacket, and three rows of ribbons, and he was a Captain.  I knew all this, from his uniform.  He said, “Mam.  Let the boy cry.  This is a time for tears.”   My mom started crying too.

And, today, some wet behind the ears know nothing told me to “Get a life.”  What life would he like me to get?