RoadTrip10 Cities in 14 Days: Days 8-9

Days 8-9: NEW ORLEANS

Paul and I love, love, love this city, and it loves us. We fell in love here in March 1986, I always say, but we had always been in love, and New Orleans gave us the courage to admit it and have our honeymoon there eight months later. We have returned many times and hit up all the old places-- Brennans, The Camillia Grill (and the streetcar ride to get there), the Steamboat Natchez Ride with  photos of us in front of it every trip, St. Louis Cemetery #1-- and we try new places, too: The Columns,  the heartbreaking Katrina tour (it's been 20 years!!). At Thanksgiving, we walk to and eat at the racetrack for opening day. 

But this year, I was taking part in the yearly convention of the 100th Bomb Group, held at the National WWII Museum

so I have a very different experience to report. Paul, not so different. He got to several concerts. You can ask him about those or view his dozens of band photos. 

I am focusing here on my time at the 100th BOMB GROUP CONVENTION, what I took there, what I took home about WWII, my father's war.

But first, we spent most of day 8 driving to NOLA to arrive at the Hilton

Garden Inn then had a big non-convention meet-up that night with one of our former students from Nicaragua in the 1990s, Maria Soledad de Lorio, who has just recently married Marcos, a Nicaraguan living and working (as a U.S. citizen) in New Orleans for a long time. We ate at a wonderful tapas restaurant called PLATES. It had been 30 years since we had seen each other, but she was as beautiful and warm as ever, and it was very good to meet Marcos. Next morning, before the convention, we walked early to the Quarter for coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde, another favorite for many years, and bought a can of their chicory-laced coffee to take home. 

Then we caught a cab to go to the convention instead of walking because I was taking my dad's scrapbook and his jacket to wear for display and for photos, and they are heavy:

Dad's scrapbook was built by my sister Daun before her death in 2002 from the many photos Dad took-- from the air, on base, in London and Paris and Dis, England-- and Dad's oral history Daun took down and typed up, the most moving about his experience of being 20 years old at the end of the war and taken to Buchenwald and Dachau "to see what we were fighting for." That experience really shaped my father, and while many men never talked about the war, Dad shared his experiences with friends and classes and with his family at age-appropriate times. When I first found his photos of the stacked up decomposing bodies of the holocaust camps, he scooped them away from me and said he would tell me about it when I got older. And when I was 11 and reading newspaper accounts of the Eichmann trials, he did tell me, and continued telling people his whole life. Many people viewed the scrapbook in our two days, so I was glad I lugged it, though it is huge. 

I registered, cruised the displays in the room with Dad's scrapbook, looked for Kathy Urice, to no avail, then walked back to the Quarter to split a muffaleta from Central Market with Paul, who went on to this program at the National Park...

...as I went back for my own personal quick tour of the National WWII Museum. I felt lost & overwhelmed there, so concentrated on seeing two sections: 1) The Battle of the Bulge, which my Uncle Les Kendig fought-- and so many more-- and 2) The Road to Berlin, the air part of which was Dad's. 

Then I had an appointment with Toni Kiser, the Assistant Director for Collections Management at The National WWII Museum to talk about dogs. She has written a book titled Loyal Forces about animals in WWII.  Kiser's book features a lot of dogs but other animals, too, including many monkeys and birds with the men on the Pacific Front. If you are interested in animals and in WWII, get this book! 

I met with Toni because I am writing an article about four Scottish terriers who were with soldiers during the war, and she doesn't have any of those in her book, so good for me. Be looking for it in The Bagpiper,  the national magazine of the Scottish Terrier Club of America.

Dad's outfit had at least two dogs at the base. One was named Meatball, and Dad's dog was Rags, who had puppies that Dad gave to some village children. In addition, someone brought back an African donkey, which didn't survive long in England, I've been told. 

Rags, any dog of Dad's
would have its own house

 

Local kids who got the pups

 

That evening was the welcome dinner, where I finally met up with Kathy Urice and her brother Scott. Their father was Joe Urice,  a tailgunner who lived in Dad's barracks and who went on to be a lifetime friend with Dad and with Mom, who regularly sent teabags to him at his home in Texas. (If you know my mom, you know. Tea.) He just died his past year (his obit is here), and I was glad to meet his daughter. Matt Mabe, a Director of the 100th Bomb Group Foundation, also sat at our table with his dad. Matt interviewed Dad while he was alive, and has scanned some of Dad's photos, and developed some recently discovered film footage Dad is in. 

Joe, Dad, & Will Kreamer, 2007

I walked back to our hotel where Paul arrived back from his concert at  Dat Dog. Friday awaited us the next morning.