| Gordon Sharp |
| June 15, 2011 |
| Space Drawings |
| Korea War Drawings |
| KOREA, 1950-2000...THE LONG WALK HOME By Gordon D. Sharp, Jr, of THE COMMON SENSE HERALD Originally Printed August 7, 2000 in the Common Sense Herald A friend called me back in May and said the local paper reported that they were seeking Lehigh Valley Korean-era veterans in connection with a three-year celebration of the 50th anniversary of the beginning (and end) of the Korean conflict. "The Forgotten War" was finally unforgotten, I said to myself. It was to be a three-year celebration, replete with dinners and ceremonies. Korean vets were to receive brand new medals commemorating their part in the conflict. Yeah, I thought to myself, I'll believe it when I see it. This will probably be like any other bureaucratic operation. Little did I know. On Monday, May 22, I called the Lehigh County Veterans Affairs office, and gave my name, address and telephone number to the young lady who answered. I was told the VA was sending out a letter with information "in about two weeks." I waited as May rolled into June but no letter arrived. As the days moved closer to June 25, the day in 1950 when America's bucolic blessedness was interrupted, Pearl Harbor-like, by an unannounced full-scale invasion of South Korea by the Communist forces of North Korea, I again called the county VA office. The lady who answered this time told me the first letter had the wrong information in it, but another letter was going out. Meanwhile, she related, a memorial service was scheduled at a local Korean church. Checking my address, I learned that the VA had me living in Kempton, a town I had passed through briefly a number of times on my way to nearby Hawk Mountain, with the exception of the time back in the 1970s when I took my family for a ride on the WK&S (Wanamakers, Kempton and Southern) Railroad. After making the necessary corrections (I hoped), the lady requested my DD 214 form (service record), and I told her it was on file right there in the Courthouse at the County Recorder's office with my various Discharge papers. Every time someone needed a DD 214. I had to figuratively bite my lip in order to refrain from telling her that I had traveled some 10,000 miles to establish that service record, and the least she could do was to take the elevator down a few floors. Then I thought, "What the heck, it's the same old runaround we got from the VA when we returned from Korea." I told her I'd take care of the DD 214 myself. I flashed back to about ten or fifteen years (maybe 20 or maybe a lifetime) to the night the Public Broadcasting station in the Lehigh Valley ran a marathon Veterans' Day program where the phone number was periodically flashed on the screen with a message urging vets to call for information on rights and benefits. I called the number the next day. The guy who answered said, "This is a graves registration office. That's all we do. I can't help you with anything else." It's nice to know that years later the warm, friendly people at the VA office are just as helpful as ever. As for their alleged medal, I already have the United Nations Medal and the Korean Service ribbon, and that's enough for me, thanks. They can keep their alleged medal. For I treasure something far more genuine than all that, and it came to me via one of my daughters who studied in Washington, D.C. One of her colleagues was a young South Korean man named Teik. One day she happened to mention to Teik by way of conversation that her father had served in the Korean War. Teik replied, "Oh, then he was one of the great men who gave my country its freedom." They can't strike a medal as genuine as that. Ed. Note: Gordon D Sharp, Jr died in 2008... His trouble concerning the South Korean Government War Medal was related to internal politics within the Lehigh County Veteran Affairs Office ... Medals to Lehigh Valley Korean War Veterans were given out in July 2000 at the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Allentown but a mix-up caused controversy. Some veterans were given the wrong medal, others were left with no medals at all. An attempt was made in December 2000 to correct this mix-up when nearly 900 veterans and their survivors accepted Medallions of Appreciation from the Korean-American Cultural Foundation, an exchange group based in Soul. The ceremony was held at the 213th Regiment Armory at 15th and Allen Streets Allentown. MAKING A DIFFERENCE by Gordon D. Sharp, Jr. of The Common Sense Herald Originally Printed March 16, 1993 in the L.V. Common Sense Herald July 26, 1993 will mark the 40th anniversary of the end of hostilities in the undeclared three-year Korean War, politely known as the Korean "Conflict." For those of us who served,it marked a profound change in the future of a generation, and in the history of the modern world. Above all, it marked a watershed in some Americans' willingness to halt communist tyranny in its tracks before it led to World War III or complete communist domination of the Far East and Europe. Finally, it led to the ultimate bankruptcy of communism itself and a relaxation of its grip on its former victims in Eastern Europe. To many Americans, all this remains a mystery, a parade that passed them by. Most mysterious of all, to them (including our present White House incumbent), is why young Americans should have willingly forsaken home and family to fight in foreign lands or, if having gone unwillingly, continued to fight at all. The following essay, written at the time by then CBS newscaster Eric Severeid, tries to probe that mystery. It was reprinted in a "Salute to the Korean War Veterans" supplement in The Citizens' Voice, Wilkes-Barre, PA, July 20, 1992 under the headline, "Why Did They Fight?". Here it is: " To me the greatest mystery in the Korean War was what made American youngsters fight so hard, so long and so well --- in this kind of war. There have been armies that fought well only for loot; There was none of that in Korea. Armies have fought well only for glory and victory; there was little of that in Korea. Armies have fought well only when their homeland was invaded; this was not true for Americans in Korea. And there have been armies that fought as crusaders out of burning moral or religious zeal; but thousands who fought so well in Korea had only the dimmest conception what the war was all about. And they will fight again, automatically and instantly, if the armistice should fail. They did this without the exhortations of political commissars. They bled and died in the mud of that bleak incomprehensible land, in full knowledge that half their countrymen at home were too bored with it all to give the daily casualty lists a second glance. They had full knowledge that, while they were living the worst life they had ever known, millions of their country men were living the best life they had ever known. They gave liberally from their own paychecks to the emaciated Korean children while their prosperous countrymen showed little interest. They knew it was too much effort for many of their countrymen to walk to the nearest blood donation center, so they gave their own blood to their wounded comrades. And they felt no particular bitterness that all this was so. They fought right ahead at the time military authorities were publicly arguing that they were being handled tragically wrong. They fought right ahead knowing that, while Allied nations were cheering them on, Allied soldiers were not coming to help them in any great numbers. Why have these youths behaved so magnificently? The answer lies deep in the heart and tissue of American life, and none among us can unravel all of its threads. It has to do with the sense of belonging to a team, with the honor of upholding it, the shame of letting it down. But it has also to do with their implicit, unreasoned belief in their country, and their natural belief in themselves as individual men upon the earth. Whatever is responsible, these boys' behavior in this unrewarded war outmatches, it seems to me, the behavior of those who fought our wars of certainty and victory. This is something new in the American story. This is something to be recorded with respect and humility." CONCLUDING OBSERVATION: It is more honorable to have marched one day in their bootsteps than to lie four years in the (Clinton) White House. PENN STATE CHRISTMAS by Gordon D. Sharp, Jr. Of the Common Sense Herald In December, 1954, the mud, blood and stink of Korea were two years behind me and I was studying journalism at Penn State University on the G.I. Bill. As one of a handful of veterans in Hamilton Hall, I had been elected vice president of the dorm council. Part of my job was to help come up with ideas for the campus's annual Christmas celebration. So when a couple of our shower singers on the fourth floor suggested we go caroling, it seemed like a good idea. There wasn't much time for rehearsals, so for a week before the chosen date -- just a few days before everyone took off for Christmas vacation -- there was a lot of impromptu humming, whistling and crooning coming from rooms up and down the halls. On the chosen night, right after dinner in Waring Hall, we assembled in the dorm lounge. The night was clear with a definite nip in the air. The turnout numbered no more than about 20men, but that seemed to give us enough tenors, baritones and at least one good bass to Give Mitch Miller a run for his money. Our first target of opportunity lay just across the quadrangle. Hamilton Hall enclosed three sides of the quad; that year Penn State had enrolled an usually high number of freshman women, and they were housed in the far wing of our otherwise all-male hall. What better place to begin our sing? By prior agreement we started out with a rousing rendition of "Joy to the World" as a sort of wakeup to let the dorms know we were there. No sooner was the first phrase out than windows began popping up all over the four-story building and young female heads peeped out to see who was disrupting their study hour. Lo and behold, by the time we finished "Joy"they were applauding. One of the girls recognized us because her brother was in our dormitory and in fact, in our singing group that night. They were both sober, quiet kids from a Quaker family. She called down to us with a request: If we would sing "O Holy Night," the girls would accompany us with the soprano part. The guys all looked at each other; this wasn't long after Percy Faith, his orchestra and chorus had come out with their version of"O Holy Night" with a high soprano descant, eventually to become a Christmas classic. Could we handle that kind of competition? What the heck, by this time we were psyched, and who was going to turn down some 200 freshman sopranos? If we bombed, we could always slink back to the dorm and not show our faces again until Mid-January. So we began: "O Holy night, the stars are brightly shining... The girls picked up immediately on the soprano; when it came to the descant, they cued in perfectly, a veritable angels' chorus. They carried us along effortlessly as if we'd all been rehearsing together for months. It was almost unbelievable. We looked at each other again; was this us? Were we really doing this? What magic had transformed us into Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians? It was beautiful. Applause and cheers broke out from the girls, but we could only stand in silent awe, transfigured by our feat. This would be a tough act to follow, and the rest of the night wouldn't be the same, but as we moved off and arrived at the next dorm we really meant it when we opened again with "Joy to the World." Our group went through a whole repertory of traditional carols as we moved through the campus -- "O come All Ye Faithful," "Silent Night," "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," "The First Noel," and many more. These, however, were the sophomore and junior dorms with older, more sophisticated girls lacking the freshman's seasonal ardor. They listened happily for the most part but would batten down their windows before ever joining a soprano descant. Approaching the witching hour, we worked our way into the vicinity of the senior girl's dorms, bare brick high-rises with a barren, windswept lack of landscaping. Our group seemed suddenly diminished by the scale of the buildings, our voices smaller, but we decided to go for broke. Would we even be heard in this expanse of edifices? Apparently someone heard us,because shades were lowered on windows up and down the stark facades; only one window opened, to give vent to a couple catcalls and a "Shut up! And "Go away!" Through a brightly lit ground floor window, a girl emerged from the shower wrapped in a bright blue towel which she promptly whipped off as she passed close to the window. We'd been flashed, not the common occurrence in the 1950's it would become in the decades to follow. Jaws dropped and notes were missed by some of our bugeyed brothers. This was definitely Indian country. Silenced, we headed for home. Was this what four years at Penn State did to American womanhood? Was the cynicism of these older senior girls the way of the world? Had the Grinch stolen Christmas? The shower girl's "gift" was a definite plus, but our spirits were decidedly diminished. Taking a different route on the way back, we spotted a small frame house standing at a distance from the dorms. Lights were still on and for some reason we all spontaneously Halted and joined in one more "Joy to the world." An upstairs window flew open and three women,apparently graduate students, emerged and seated themselves on the flat porch roof. "Sing some more," one of them exhorted. And so we did, our entire repertory; they wouldn't let us quit, finally joining in on "O Holy Night," redeeming our night from the experience of the senior dorms. We sang our hearts out for those three girls. Many years have passed since that night. I dropped out of Penn State the next semester to get some practical journalism experience at a paper in Newark, New Jersey. Eventually I did another hitch in the service after the Air Force reserve called me up on a technicality, but obtained an early release and returned to college to graduate from Grove City in 1961. After another year and half of studies at Princeton I embarked on a journalism career, returning to Pennsylvania in 1976. Life has taken me many places before and since, but I have never forgotten that night at Penn State in the holiday season of 1954 and the lesson it Offered me. As we journeyed across the campus that night, we went from the bright, hopeful experience of youth to the cold, cynical grasp of the jaded world. This grasp often seems to capture most of the human race at one time or another --- the loss of faith, the loss of hope, the loss of self. But then I remember those three girls in their humble little house on a corner of the huge campus and their joy and enthusiasm as we caroled to them. They remind me that no matter what happens, there is always a remnant, however small, who continue to hope, to see and to and to know. They make it all worthwhile. No, I'll never forgot that Christmas at Penn State, and I like to think that, in addition to those three young women, there are about 200 sopranos who have never forgotten that night either. PENN STATE CHRISTMAS II by Gordon D. Sharp, Jr. Of The Common Sense Herald Two years ago, in a Herald piece entitled "A Penn State Christmas," I told of how we went caroling around the campus one cold winter night in December, 1954. On this, the fortieth anniversary of that Christmas at Penn State, it seems appropriate to relate the rest of the story. About the same time we came up with the idea of serenading our coeds with a carol sing, the dorm council announced a Christmas window painting contest. First prize would go to the student or students who did the best job of decorating the window (or windows) of their dorm rooms with a theme befitting the upcoming holiday. Right away this presented those of us students who resided on the fourth floor of Hamilton Dorms, a huge three-sided complex on the western edge of the campus where the carved statue of the famous Nittany Lion stood gazing into every sunset, with a particular problem. The problem was, we were on the fourth floor! What chance would we have? Our windows were up there next to heaven: what contest judge would strain his eyes gazing heavenward at such a minuscule thing as a dorm window? To make matters worse, my window looked west onto the roof of adjoining Waring Hall, completely blocking my view of the ground, the dining hall's lofty roof tower and spire preventing me from enjoying the view that held the Nittany Lion's attention daily at sundown. Worse yet, there had been bars on the window ever since my roomy, a jolly fellow named Fred Heffelfinger, had clambered through it drunk one night a 2 a.m onto the flat roof between Waring and Hamilton, from whence he began exhorting his freshmen colleagues in a loud beery voice to "burn the dinks!" His call to revolution, inspired by an incident the year before when the then freshman class made a huge bonfire of the hated dinky little skullcaps they were forced to wear to mark their lesser status, held nothing for me, since as a veteran I was exempt from wearing it. But for Fred it was an entirely different story; he was six foot tall and weighed in at about 250 pounds, and the idea of being reduced to the "dink" category went against his grain. But all was in vain: by the time we returned from the next morning's classes, Big Brother had reacted to Fred's futile but inspired gambit and barred our window, our room and ourselves literally from the outside world, or at least from the roof. So our window was definitely not in the running for first prize or any other prize in the Christmas contest of 1954. But lo, a glimmer of light arose from the East --- the east side of our dorm, to be exact. In the middle of the fourth floor, on the east side facing the quad, was an oversized room with a large three-paneled window, the largest in the dormitory, the only window capable of attracting attention from the ground. Still, our floor would need a theme to catch the judge's attention that high up. It would need an artist to do that. I had maxed the entering exam in English given all freshman at Penn State and was exempt from taking freshman English, so I utilized the resultant free time in the course schedule to enroll in a junior journalism and literature course, plus the only art class I could squeeze in, which happened to be a drawing class in the School of Landscape Architecture. Word got around, and since most of the others on the floor were engineering students, a delegation arrived at my door. If they would buy the paints and brushes, would I decorate the windows in Dorm Center? Would I! Maybe it was the fact that we went carolling that year, or maybe it was just the season, or the fact that at last we had a window, an honest - to - God window, but picking the theme was easy: a life size choir boy in each window singing "Joy to the World!" The windows in adjoining rooms were enlisted to expand the theme with painted candles, bells and rich green wreaths of holly. I was forced to paint everything backwards, facing out, including the words "Joy to the World." An artist has to step back and check his progress ( and not merely admire his work) from time to time; for me this meant racing down four flights of steps and looking upward four stories to see if I was getting it right, then racing back up four flights taking the steps two or three at a time to put the next brush strokes in place. I kept thinking of Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, and how nice it would be to lie on my back. No Olympic athlete in training pumped harder than I did that night, racing (mostly jumping) down those steps every few minutes, then back up again. It seemed like hours. It had grown dark, and students returning from the library shot questioning glances at this madman in their midst, appearing in the quad momentarily, then to disappear back inside the dorm as quickly as he came. Perhaps they questioned the paint brush in my hand, or the way I held my head in a perpetual upward angle, as if watching someone on a ledge preparing to jump. Perhaps they merely questioned my sanity. I was starting to question it too, and found myself wondering whether I shouldn't have heeded the G.I. dictum to "never volunteer." However, I put such reservations aside and literally dove into my work with renewed inspiration. Somewhere during the twentieth (or maybe the thirtieth --- I had long since lost counts of my orbits down or up the staircase) descent I came down hard on my right foot, splitting the side seam on my only pair of loafers. It would be back to my G.I. low quarters the next day, a small price to pay for giving my all to art. Besides, there was the Prize! And thus I labored far into the night, joined at times in my ups and downs by two or three other students anxious to view the progress of my work. Faster than Donner and Blitzen we flew through the stairwells, like some mad troika bound by the smell of victory just beyond our fevered grasp. Students elbowed their way into the room to gaze in awe at the paint-streaked vision taking form. Others gathered in the quad not so much to view the artwork, but to marvel at the vertical footrace it took to create it. Something of a cheering section clung to the railings along the stairs, a veritable bucket brigade passing encouragement from man-to-man. On into the night I raced like some crazed Flying Dutchman, feeling the prize if not quite in my grasp, at least within the realm of possibility. Somewhere past midnight, the series of windows completed, I staggered to my barred room and fell into bed exhausted, drained to the dregs by my muse. The next day I dragged myself to class wearing my old G.I low quarter Class A dress shoes, my legs made of rubber. Returning from class, I slung my books onto my desk and just sat there. A student burst into the room and asked me why I hadn't come to the party, "Party? What party? Nobody said anything about a party." I asked, quizzically. Then it hit me! In my fatigue, induced by the marathon of the previous night, I had completely forgotten about the contest, and above all the prize. That must be it! I had won first prize and the whole floor was holding a victory party! Hastening to Dorm Center, the oversize room I had vaulted in and out of the night before using my paint brush as a pole, I found a room packed with underclassmen munching on goodies. "We used the prize money, all 25 dollars of it, to throw this party," someone said as they handed the last to me of what used to be a full bag of potato chips. Then it dawned on me: the judges had awarded the prize money, so quickly gobble up in what those days amounted to a Roman food orgy, more properly referred to as a Bacchanalia, to the room and not to any single person. The room had won the prize; I was just the creator who had made it possible. Scarcely had I time to absorb the scene when another thought nearly bowled me over. This prize wasn't mine to win in the first place. This gift that had been given me, the ability to create something for others, was not for the purpose of winning prizes or even of gaining riches or fame. It was meant to be shared with others. It was my gift to them. For this I was racing up and down the stairs, and it had been this that impelled me --- it was done as gift to others. I turned and left the room, a little humbler than when I entered. This was the Gift of the Magi. It was all mine to give, as the Creator Spiritus gave it to me, Perhaps I was one of them. Perhaps, if we but knew, we all are. |