A wounded Vet, post-war trauma, and up-close experiences with VA hospitals, like the one proposed for the Baylor-Garland site

For my May birthday several years ago, our son and his family presented me with a Seabees flag to fly on Memorial Day as a tribute to my father and uncle, both U.S. Navy Seabees. The flag was destroyed during a storm in Garland.

Among my earliest memories are those of Memorial Days past. Mother got us out of bed early on those holidays, rapidly fed us breakfast, then loaded our car for the annual trip to visit all the family cemeteries around Oklahoma City.

Since all four of my grandparents had died before I was born, Memorial Day was the time to "visit" grandparents. Unlike my friends that had grandparents who wore strange-looking, old-fashioned clothes and drove funny-looking older vehicles, my grandparents were simply tombstone markers that bore only their four names and their birth and death dates.

Later when I was a teen-ager, these special Memorial Day jaunts took on an extra-special meaning, as they included a visit to my father's grave, which was always marked on Memorial Day by a small U.S. flag to note that he was a U.S. Navy veteran.

I've been reminded of Daddy lately as talk continues to circulate—without the official announcement forthcoming yet from the Veterans Administration itself—that the VA will purchase Garland's closed Baylor Scott & White Hospital to convert it in a $30-million or so renovation to a new Veterans Hospital in Garland.

Daddy spent many years in VA Hospitals in San Diego, Houston, and Oklahoma City, Over those years I became very familiar with and appreciative of those types of facilities. With the prospects of having a VA hospital nearby in Garland, I have a very good personal idea what the facility and its clientele will be like.

My wife, Kay, collected various memorabilia of my father's service during World War II and creatively arranged them in two shadow-box displays in my home office.

Last year while watching the marvelous tribute on PBS to the 150th anniversary of Memorial Day, I also was reminded of those long-ago cemetery visits and Daddy's extended stays in VA hospitals. The TV show pointed out how much life has changed for veterans and for their families. No one ever heard of "post-traumatic stress disorder" when I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s—though we grew up witnessing first-hand all the symptoms and subsequently being impacted by them. There's really nothing new about PTSD, except that it's been identified and given a label in the last several decades as a serious problem for veterans of war zones overseas as well as victims of other traumatic events.

"Why was Daddy always in and out of the VA Hospitals?" I wondered so often as a child. "And why VA Hospitals and not other hospitals?" When we were young teens, my brother spent nearly two months in a hospital; my mother had various surgeries in other hospitals. When I was a freshman in college, I had my appendix removed in another hospital. However, Daddy was the only member of our family to stay in a Veterans Hospital. I always knew that VA hospitals were definitely something special but definitely only for a select group of needy and worthy people.

In my book, Witness to the Truth, published in 2008, I tell the story of my father's death from his World War II service-connected disability. I was a teen-ager when he died. That was nearly six decades ago.

No matter where I have lived for the past more than half-century, on this day I always think about those VA hospital visits to see Daddy and later those cemetery visits to his grave so many years ago.

With this Memorial Day observance, I feel compelled to share with my blog readers this excerpt from my book:

"From as early as I remember, my parents talked about my daddy's 'heart condition'. From time to time when Daddy was in the (VA) hospital, Mother would intimate that Daddy probably wouldn't be around when I was grown. That seemed almost as far-fetched as the story my parents told about how Daddy contracted his heart condition.

"Daddy was 34 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and plunged the U.S. into World War II. Like his father and brothers, Daddy often tried his hand at carpentry and was really good at it. As the U.S. geared up for the war, the U.S. Navy pressed forward with forming and staffing the Seabees, otherwise known as the Naval Construction Battalion. Daddy was a natural fit for the Seabees, so he joined them and went off to war. He served in several battles in the South Pacific. His final battle occurred when General Douglas MacArthur made good on his promise to return to the Philippines.

"Daddy was there on the Island of Leyte, where today stands a huge statute in tribute to the great general's return. Daddy, however, suffered a massive heart attack on the beach during the early days of the battle and spent the next 11 months in Naval hospitals, first aboard naval hospital ships in the South Pacific, then back home in America in the San Diego Naval Hospital, later called a Veterans Hospital.

"Until later in life, I was somewhat embarrassed by this story. Other fathers got shot or gave their lives on the battlefield. My daddy had a heart attack in the midst of the war and had to be carried off the battlefield on a stretcher! Good grief! This wasn't exactly something I thought I should brag about.

"Then about five years ago (in 2003) a friend loaned me a copy of a book (Can Do!) about the history of the Seabees. The day I got it, I stayed up all night to read it.  Much to my surprise, the book described the horrible stress under which the poor Seabees worked as they relentlessly followed the advancing soldiers onto the battlefields to build bunkers, airfields, roads, and all the necessary support for our military. Though unarmed, the Seabees were targets for the Japanese as much as the regular soldiers were.

"Then my eyes suddenly fixated on a statistic that instantly changed my thinking. The stress had been so horrible on these men that 10 percent of all Seabees participating in any given battle either suffered heart attacks or suffered mental breakdowns from the stress they were under. The book said these wounded Seabees were considered as heroic as the men who had actually been shot on the battlefield.

My father, Louis A. Moore, Sr., in his Navy uniform

So many symbols of Daddy in this close up of the display Kay created for me.

"Unfortunately, I never was able to tell Daddy what I had learned—that he really was a war hero after all. When I was 16, Daddy suffered a final massive heart attack and died quickly. That left my widowed mother with me and my two younger siblings to support."

The new information also helped me clarify another similar and puzzling historical fact in my family. My Uncle Don (who was married to my mother's sister) also suffered the same fate as Daddy. He had been a Navy Seabee in the European theater. In Sicily, he suffered a massive heart attack on that beach and died 10 years after the war ended but before Daddy did—but the similarities never eluded me.

Fortunately for us, the VA stepped in and provided financial support to help ease the burden for our family. That, of course, never made up for all the pain, sadness, and loss our one family suffered because of that one faraway battle in a much larger worldwide war. 

For me personally, it meant early years spent with a parent battling post-traumatic stress disorder including alcoholism and depression, as well as ever-worsening health—and eventually death. It also meant my father missed my high-school graduation, my college graduation, my graduate school graduation, my wedding, the birth of my children, their college graduations, their weddings, and all my other accomplishments as well as mishaps of life.

Daddy would be 113 years old now. With or without the war, he would be gone today. Life is what it is! Death eventually will claim us all. But for some, the wars of this world take a greater toll earlier.

Watching that PBS Memorial Day special one year ago, I was so very, very pleased that the emphasis is now not only on those who died immediately during a war but also on those with battle injuries from those wars that impact the rest of their lives—as well as on the families of both groups who have suffered much in defense of our country and our ideals of freedom.

I am happy that Garland apparently will get a Veterans Hospital. I hope it will be of great benefit to the veterans themselves as well as their immediate families. Garland will be richer for having it here.

 God bless America! Have a blessed Memorial Day.

My parents' graves Memorial Day 2019. The 57th year for the U.S. flag over my father's grave. My brother remains in Oklahoma City and makes sure these and other family graves are remembered every Memorial Day.

In the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, TX, I saw historical displays about the invasion of Leyte in the Philippines, the landing site for the fulfillment of General Douglas MacArthur's "I Shall Return" promise. This is where my dad served in World War II and sustained his life-threatening disability.

The U.S. Navy flag

The U.S. Navy emblem