The Pecan Park Eagle

Reprinted here from the blog article I wrote on ChronCom.Com last Memorial Day, May 23, 2009.

Uncle Carroll & Aunt Florence on Lake Hamilton outside Hot Springs, Arkansas from 1946-1955.

Major Carroll Houston Teas (1917-1964) was a man of his time. When World War II came to the USA, he joined the service in San Antonio and went straight into training at Kelly Field with the Army Air Corps. Before shipping out to the Pacific theater as a military cargo pilot, he married his high school sweetheart, the forever lovely Florence MacPherson.

Uncle Carroll Teas & Aunt Florence married during world War II, before he shopped out to the South Pacific with the US Army Air Corps..

Uncle Carroll was my mother’s little brother. He and Aunt Florence were special to me during my young life in ways I’ll never be able to put into adequate words.

During World War II, Uncle Carroll flew logistic flghts of supplies all up and down the various South Pacific island chains. After the war, he used to regale me with stories of all the things they learned to do to keep from getting shot down by Japanese Zeroes over the open seas. One time, he told me, they were so badly outnumbered by Japanese figter planes that they had to fly blind within the clouds for many miles, just to keep from being taken down as an easy target. Many other times, they had to fly above or below the cloud banks to disguise themselves from Japanese fighter planes flying in the opposite direction.

“Off we go – into the wild blue yonder, flying high – into the sun.”

The Japanese also hid in blind cloudbank flight. The dangers of so doing on both sides are obvious, but that option beat the near certainty of getting shot down by faster aircraft in open skies.

I used to have a pair of pilot wings that Uncle Carroll sent me during World War II. Wish I had been a more careful saver of something that is now even more important to me, but I wasn’t. I used to pin those wings on my tee shirt before going out to play sandlot baseball and, somewhere on the playing fields of Houston, that’s where I gave it up.

After safely serving nearly the entire war in combat, Uncle Carroll finally ran into something that stopped him in ways that rapid-fire ammunition failed to do. He contracted polio while stationed in New Guinea. Oh, he came home to America alive in 1945, but he came home paralyzed for life. The only question was: Would he regain any use of his body – or would he be forced to live out his life in an iron lung?

Uncle Carroll and a buddy on the streets of San Antonio – right after coming home from World War II.

Coming home, I didn’t really see Uncle Carroll at all during the early months of his struggle with polio. The army sent him up to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they treated a lot of polio cases back then with the aid of hot springs baths and swimming. Prior to his illness, Uncle Carroll was always a powerful, athletic person. He was a hard-hitting third baseman for the Brackenridge High School Eagles in San Antonio back in the mid-1930s and he wasn’t the kind of guy to give up in the face of adversity. That core value, in fact, is the lesson he always tried to instill in me at every chance he was yet to have. I can see him even now doing his most to make the best of a bad situation in his time of greatest personal crisis.

With Aunt Florence always by his side, Uncle Carroll fought back and regained full use of his body from the waist up. With special attachments to his car, he was able to drive again. Although still wheelchair bound for life, Uncle Carroll and Aunt Florence bought a home on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, where he resumed his life as a fisherman and hunter. His Chris Craft lake boat was his other kind of new mechanical mobility – but he also could still swim like a fish in the water with the use of his legs in spite of their failure to him on shore.

Uncle Carroll continued working for the Army in Hot Springs as an accountant after the war, but he also started his own freshwater fishing lure company, selling lures that he designed himself. During the winter months, he added “avid duck hunter” to his resume.

We lost Uncle Carroll to a coronary in 1964. It was one of the three saddest days in my life, along with those two crushing others, when I said goodbye to Mom and and then Dad.

The two things I’ve always tried to remember from Uncle Carroll will only die for me when I do: (1) Do the things in life you are willing to put your whole heart into; and (2) Never give up on what is really important to you.

It’s Memorial Day again and my thoughts go immediately to my Uncle Carroll Teas. He didn’t die in World War II, as is the group intended for core honor on Memoral Day, but he gave up his life, his health, and his future there for the sake of his country, as did millions of others. There’s simply no way this holiday ever passes without me thinking of him with love and gratitude. My hope here today too is that your thoughts also turn to the special American veteran in your own lives who once, or currently, have placed his or her life on the line for the defense of us all. Let’s do it again each day, and especially on our next Veterans Day!

“We’ll fly on – in fame – or down – in flame – Nothing can stop the Army Air Corps!”

Have a peaceful and blessed Memorial Day, everybody – and let’s all try to remember all the men and women of American military service who gave up their lives and health for the sake of this wonderful place we call the USA!.