In 1950, when Dan was 22 and Frank was 18, they both volunteered to go to Korea to fight the encroachment of communism. Although this was a U.N.-sponsored “police action,” the main part of those participating were Americans on one side, while the other side was principally comprised of Chinese soldiers and their North Korean comrades. By 1953, when the conflict was over and the two remaining Calloway brothers returned home, Dan and Frank had seen more horrendous and hellacious things than they cared to deeply ponder.
23,000 Americans were killed in Korea; between 1.5 and 2 million communist forces died. Millions of Korean civilians on both sides of the 38th parallel had also perished. While American deaths were 23,000 too many, they were a drop in a 55-gallon bucket of blood compared to the other deaths.
Soon after returning home in 1953, Dan and Frank successfully integrated back into society, but they were forever altered by their experiences, in various ways, both predictable and un-, and to different degrees.
In 1959, the United States expanded its size and scope by incorporating Alaska, which had been purchased in 1867 (“Seward’s Folly”), and Hawaii, which had been annexed in 1898. There had been 45 States when Jackson and Crystalina were born. Oklahoma (formerly Indian Territory) became a State in 1907, New Mexico and Arizona in 1912, and now these two furthest-west and most disparate States completed the full complement of 50 States.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated November 22, 1963. It was the second presidential assassination in both Jackson and Crystalina’s lives, although they were both too young at the time, in 1901, to remember William McKinley being shot in Buffalo, New York.
As is so of everyone born in the late 1950s or after, each of the Calloways would always remember where they were when they heard the news of Kennedy’s assassination. As it was a Friday, most were at work or in school. Emily, who by 1963 had been married for nine years, had a 5-year-old son named Patrick, who was nearing the end of his school day and week when the class was informed of the tragic and shocking event. Patrick walked home, crying bitterly. A fellow student mocked him by challenging, “What’s wrong, crybaby?” Patrick answered, “Didn’t you hear the President got killed?” “So what?” was the kid’s reply. For this insensitive and unpatriotic response, Patrick punched him in the nose, ending the conversation.
Two years later, in 1965, the old Calloway homestead burned to the ground while its residents were visiting their children in Fort Bragg. Jackson and Crystalina stayed with their eldest daughter Audra and her husband Boyd while deciding what to do next. In the end, they decided to move into town rather than rebuild. This way the whole family would be co-located in Fort Bragg.
Audra and Boyd’s son Perry Dale (born 1948) shipped off to Vietnam in 1966.
Chapter 1 can be read here.
Chapter 17 can be read here.