Velma Dement Times Correspondent

It seems as if we are observing lots of occasions this time of year. I can’t necessarily say we are celebrating these events because some of them mark dark pages in our history. Going all the way back to when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Sunday, Dec. 7 was Pearl Harbor Day and it was also on a Sunday morning 62 years ago that the surprise attack virtually shook the foundations of our whole nation.

I don’t recall exactly the events leading up to the attack but I think our leaders had been having talks with leaders of other countries who were already involved in the conflict that was spreading across the world. Our nation had been preparing for all-out war but the average person did not really believe the USA was going to become involved directly.

The young men were being called to serve a year of training and then come back home. I think this was one of President Roosevelt’s programs to get our nation back into production and break the strangle hold of the depression. There was a Country Music song that came out about the military service. It said "I’ll be back in a year little darling." Little did we know that year would stretch out to four or five years and so many would never come back at all.

Everyone of the older generation says they recall vividly what they were doing when they heard the news of the attack on our naval base in Pearl Harbor. For us it was a dreary, cold Sunday as we went from Selma, where we were living, to Clanton to take some friends to visit their family. Our son Davy was just three months old and was fretful and cried off and on all the way. I was always anxious about a sick baby and was ready to go back home even before we got there.

When we reached the home where we were to visit, several young people came running to the car to tell us the bad news. They had been listening to the reports on the radio. To make the day even worse, on our way back home we were almost hit by a train which would have been a personal disaster for us all.

In downtown Selma there was so much commotion with the newspaper boys hawking their papers with "Read all about it!" It was surreal and seemed almost like being in a scene out of a movie.

For several weeks afterward I was so naive I just knew bombs would fall on Selma at any time. Especially when Craig Field was training English pilots as well as US soldiers. My husband was a civilian worker there and on one occasion when he was working inside of a chapel he had to stop while an English girl and her "flyboy" got married. I thought it was very romantic while he thought it was just an interruption to his work day.

Little did either of us know then just how widespread the war would soon be. In our own family, Jasper, two of his brothers and one brother-in-law along with two of my brothers would be representing various branches of the service before the war was over. They all traveled the world during those long months and years and thankfully all returned home safely.

The time was not without its anxious days and even weeks when we did not know where our loved ones were and just how much they were in harms way. My brother Horace, who was a Marine, received a Purple Heart when he was blown out of foxhole during the fighting on the Pacific island of Okinawa. Even then he didn’t get to come home. Following his recuperation in a military hospital he was sent back to the front lines. He never fully recovered from his wounds and suffered with back problems for the rest of his life.

There was no television but the theatres showed war news and lots of people saw friends and family members. The war news was of the fighting men and was much like today’s war news.

That war, fought to make the world safe for democracy, has been followed by several others. If our world leaders would sing the song, "Ain’t Gonna’ Study War No More!" and mean it, the terrible attack on our Navy would not be repeated.

Let us hope it never will.