JESSE AND WILMA KIDD

As far back as I can remember I have had a fascination for the country of Burma. Reading Courtney Anderson’s “To the Golden Shore,” the life of Adoniram Judson had a lot to do with this interest.

The year 1812 is famous not only for a second war with Britain and Tchaikovsky’s famous overture, but it was also the year Adoniram Judson began his missionary work in Burma.

When I met Jesse Kidd, a retired missionary to Brazil, my interest in him grew more when I learned he was a World War II veteran in the fight to keep the Burma Road open for our allies in China.

Weeks after Japan’s attack on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor, they stuck at Hong Kong, the Philippines and Burma in their attempt to rule Asia and eventually the world.

Down in the Burma jungles, on the southwest border with China, Jesse Kidd remembered: “January 19, 1945 at 5:30 a.m. we were approaching the Burma Road. We had been working our way on foot through the trackless jungle for 36 sleepless hours to reach our target.

“We were just getting into position when the enemy opened fire on us. The trooper next to me took a direct hit, and I was splashed with his blood. Why the sniper stopped shooting, I do not know.”

Jesse still asks the question of why his buddy was killed and he was spared. The gruesomeness of war stays locked in his mind, causing countless nightmares. “In my mind I am still holding my position, but I am running out of ammunition.”

Jesse asks, “how does one write about something he has tried to forget from sixty years ago?” He was on the burial detail. “Trooper was the first one buried that day. One by one we wrapped our fallen comrades in their GI blankets and buried them just a few hundred yards from the Burma Road.”

He continues, “Those young men were just out of high school. I have tried to find out if their remains were ever brought home, and I got no satisfactory answer.

The long countless nights, hunger and total exhaustion were part of the price for victory. “God alone has been my Rock.” Jesse said.

The Americans, under General Vinegar Bend Stillwell, fought their way from Indian territory (now Bangladesh) through swamps, mountains, monsoons and typhoons to clear the road and Burma of the Japanese.

Until the road was cleared Air Transport Command planes flew from Allied bases in Assam, India to Kunming, China, to supply Chiang’s army and the American Flying Tigers outfit.

The flight over the Hump took them over the Himalayan Mountains. The five-hour, 700-mile trip was considered one of the most dangerous in the war. Not counting the freak winds and unpredictable turbulence, C-47s were not designed to fly at 20,000 feet. Later, larger planes made the run. Supplies were also dropped for the troops in Burma. By the end of the war, the Hump pilots had flown 777,000 tons of supplies to keep China fighting, with the loss of 910 men.

Down in the Burma jungles, Jesse Kidd writes “January 19, 1945 at 5:30 a.m. we were approaching the Burma Road. We had been working our way on foot through the trackless jungle for 36 sleepless hours to reach our target.

“We were just getting into position when the enemy opened fire on us. The trooper next to me took a direct hit, and I was splashed with his blood. Why the sniper stopped shooting, I do not know.”

Jesse still asks the question of why his buddy was killed and he was spared. The gruesomeness of war stays locked in his mind, causing countless nightmares. “In my mind I am still holding my position, but I am running out of ammunition.”

Jesse asks, “how does one write about something he has tried to forget from sixty years ago?” He was on the burial detail. “Trooper was the first one buried that day. One by one we wrapped our fallen comrades in their GI blankets and buried them just a few hundred yards from the Burma Road.”

He continues, “Those young men were just out of high school. I have tried to find out if their remains were ever brought home, and I got no satisfactory answer.

The long countless nights, hunger and total exhaustion were part of the price for victory. “God alone has been my Rock.” Jesse said.

After the war the American soldiers moved into Kunming, Yunnan province, China. From there to Shanghai where, when each soldier had enough points, they returned home by ship. While in Shanghai Jesse attended Christmas services in the Moore Memorial Methodist Church on Tibet Road. (Now the Mu En Church, first in Shanghai to be re-opened in 1979 following the tragic Cultural Revolution.)

The Arkansas youngster, Jesse Lee Kidd, was a 22-year old war veteran by the time he got home. After graduation from Ouachita Baptist University he pastored the Ebenezer Baptist Church in El Dorado, Ark., while in seminary. The church saw him through seminary and supported him as a single missionary in Brazil. He became pastor of the Central Baptist Church of Volta Redonda, in Brazil’s interior.

In Brazil, Jesse met Nebraska farm girl, Wilma Alice Gemmell. She was a former Assistant Dean of Women and graduate of Howard Payne University, later became secretary to Juliet Mather, writing, editing and overseeing Southern Baptists’ Women’s Missionary Union publications. Her first foreign missions experience was in the financial offices of the SBC Brazil Mission in Rio de Janeiro.

Their courtship was somewhat long distance at first. She lived in Rio and he was a long bus ride away in the interior. Jesse and Wilma Alice were married later in the States. They then served as Southern Baptist missionaries in Brazil until retirement in 1989.

Their autobiography, “The Kidds of Brazil,” Morris Publishing (1999), Kearney, Nebraska, is presently out of print. They now live at Baptist Memorials, San Angelo, Texas. They are still in good health and active in the First Baptist Church, San Angelo, Texas. Their e-mail address: jessewilmakidd@suddenlink.com.

The Curse of Annual Family Form Letters

OPEN LETTER TO FRIENDS WHO SEND FORM LETTERS:

I began today’s column as a personal “form letter” to all those people who send annual letters at Christmas. You know, those that share all the great things happening in their lives during the past year. I decided to write my own. I began it this way:

This is one of those “who in the world cares” letters that usually flood our mailboxes at Christmastime. The kind that is filled with the exploits of kids, grandkids and great-grandkids with whom we have never met; have never corresponded with and have no plans to meet.

Who doesn't love to go to the mailbox and find a newsy letter? The disappointment comes when it is a self-congratulatory opus of someone’s second cousin being promoted at Taco Bell? --- Merry Christmas!

Or to get a long detailed account from this voice out of the dark and distant past detailing that year’s medical record of having survived mind-boggling bouts with gout and hammer toes. – Merry Christmas!

And those family photos included are a mystery. Who is this old couple and the thirty or forty newly acquired descendents standing around?

We are supposed to remember one-time colleagues, co-workers or church and school (even back to grade school) classmates and be enlightened with all the plaudits and fun times they have been blessed with over the previous twelve months.

These form letters do not bother the wife. But I am well into my eighth decade and I have my hands full emptying my mailbox that is stuffed full with fast-food circulars and “save you money” letters trying to con me into buying another credit card, or subscribe to Playboy or the Foreign Affairs Journal.

I have enough trouble remembering the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night, much less reading an annual family newsletter about somebody’s remarkable progeny’s promethean feats and unusual accomplishments?

What I wanted to write has been written and published already by Michael Lent, a Hollywood screenwriter. His 2007 Simon and Schuster book “Christmas Letters from Hell: All the News We Hate to love,” says it all. Michael shares a collection of the best collection of do-gooders and go-getters of the past, present and future.

His tales are not so much of the personal nature and more of the weird realm, for example: “What if my Christmas tree were home to killer bees?” or “What if bin Laden had been a high-school exchange student in Minnesota?”

My favorite of his letters was “What if a child’s letter to Santa crossed paths with that of a Nigerian scam artist?”

Here is one more quote from Michael Lent’s book: "I kid you not" about an actual Christmas letter he received reporting "grandma's bladder problem and the family's Winnebago disaster, all within the first two sentences." Which is a great deal more than one wants to know.

Another factor is the cost of mailing a form letter. I would have to dip into my savings for the postage and envelopes if I mailed such a letter to all those who send me their annual form letters.

Although with some polishing of my prose and laying aside some postage money I still might be ready this Christmas to send this sincere review of my years of opening my mail box toward the end of each year.

Family Trees Now Thing of Past?

TODAY’S COMPLICATED FAMILY TREE

The Towerys originated in Italy? So says some shakey research. The Turraine families in the Principality of Milan became so obnoxious the populace demolished their houses. This helped them decide to migrate to the British Isles.

It is still a matter of conjecture that the Turraines were the forebears of those who spell their name: Towery / Towry.

We do know that John Towery and his two brothers from Scotland, settled in the Carolina Colony. Sometime later John married Miss Betsy Cannon. (Unconfirmed item: Betsy said to be a niece of William Penn, the Quaker who founded Philadelphia.)

The newly weds, John and Betsy, had a son they named Mannering (1778), married Winnie, and they had a son named Wilborn (1805), whose wife Nancy Teague gave birth to my great grandfather, Argyle Campbell Towery (1844). By the middle of the 19th century the clan had spread across the south.

On October 18, 1861, Argyle enlisted in Capt. R. J. Armstrong’s Mississippi Volunteers as an 18 year old private. In his Confederate States of America files they show he was AWOL (absent without leave) more than once.
He was without leave all right, but not intentionally. He was not a deserter nor a disgrace to the CSA. On Nov.25, 1863, Pvt. Argyle Towery was captured by Union forces at Missionary Ridge, Tenn. As a prisoner of war he was first sent to Louisville, Ky., and later Rock Island, Ill. On March 10, 1864, he took the oath of allegiance to the United States and was exchanged two months later in New Orleans.

After the war, Argyle came to Texas. One of his sons was my grandfather, Roland and the other was grandfather of Kenneth Towery, the cousin who won the Pulitzer Prize in the 1950s.

By 1906 Argyle was living in Rockwall County, Texas, applied for his Civil War Pension. He never got it, possibly due to “joining” the Union before the war was over. He was almost blind by this time. He had no property, but he did have one pair of Mississippi mules and a wagon.

Genealogists have long had a blast with this kind of detail. Where they define familial relations according to bloodlines, marriage or war. Today, the composition of families is changing to such a degree that it is almost impossible to know who gets a branch on a family tree.

In the early 20th century some elementary school projects included making family trees according organized traditionally according to genetic information. Today there is hardly a school student or graduate who ever heard of such an exercise.

Such exercises in schools are gone from today’s schools. With at least half of today’s marriages ending up in divorce court and the children scattered back and forth, home to home. (For the last six years, according to United States census data, there have been more unmarried households than married ones. And more same-sex couples are having children using surrogates or sperm donors or by adoption.)

Add to that the use of surrogates, sperm donors and same-sex parents and making a family tree is next to impossible. It looks more like Uncle Remus’ brier patch – common name for a thicket formed by any of a number of unrelated thorny plants.

Learning about out heritage is more than just a hobby. There are medical and legal implications, particularly when it comes to death and inheritance.

For some children, having to explain their family tree can be alienating and discouraging.
The Stepfamily Foundation, a family counseling service based in New York City, gave up on the traditional family tree for a network of circles (females) and squares (males), with dotted and straight lines to connect married and blood relatives. Its complicated any way you look at it.

From Little Red School House to ????

Education in America has a great heritage

Ah, the memory of that little red schoolhouse, sitting on a tiny hill with fields of ripening wheat waving in the background. A stately, tall and wide oak tree sits peacefully near the weathered building. Strung from its strong limb is a swing, made from an old tractor tire, waiting for recess.

Inside, a dozen or so small benches and tables await the arrival of the kids, ages 6 to 16, for another round of learning the basics: the three R’s; readin’, ritin’ and ‘rithmetic.

The teacher, nine times out of ten, would be a young lady not too removed from being one of those pupils. If she could afford it she had a year in a near-by teachers college. The occasional male teacher would come West for other work and teach some months of the year.

There would be as many grades as needed, from wide-eyed beginners, age anywhere from 6 to 10. Then a group that had completed the first year or so would be in another corner taking on more knowledge. Then the advanced ones, looking forward to completing their study and looking toward full-time farm work or seeking their fortunes far away.

The Little Red School House. A classic memory for folks living sort of west or a little east of the Mississippi River. It was not necessarily painted red. It may have only had a red door. It may have been whitewashed. Most had not paint at all. Just rough hewed frontier lumber, finished at a sawmill near the river.

With an increase in farms and ranches, development in a central location, communities took on a town-like appearance. Old timers or early arrivals in the region saw the need for some kind of book learning for the young. Families grew as the numbers of children increased at an amazing rate. The earth was being replenished with gusto with children as well as gardens, livestock and crops.

For most of the pupils the walk to school was a challenge in itself. In bad weather walking through plowed fields or rocky pastures, sometimes a road, assured them of being awake by the time the school bell was rung. Many schools began classes with the Pledge of Allegiance and sometimes a song. If there were any pictures they were usually of President George Washington.

Lunch they brought with them, most often a sandwich, a cookie or piece of cake and an apple. Biscuits, cornbread or even cold pancakes made their way into the lunch basket. Other student’s lunches always looked better, so much trading went on.

After lunch time was spent in recess. The well-fixed school might own a baseball and a bat and glove, or bags of marbles or corncob darts.

McGuffey’s Readers were the mainstay for all age groups. Presbyterian minister William McGuffey of Ohio compiled these readers in 1830. These books began with an introduction to the alphabet and advanced to excerpts from Shakespeare, the Bible and American and English poets.

In most schools the eighth-grade was the last grade. Passing the examination was not a snap even by today’s standards. An 1880 test had this problem: “How much will eight carpenters earn in 6 and 2/3 days at 9 percent.” Or: “Define orthoepy, vowel, dipthong, articulation, accent.” And: “Tell what you now of the following – Charles Dickens, Henry W. Longfellow, Washington Irving, and Benjamin Franklin.” One more: “What are the functions of nerves?”

The little one one-room school house got this country off to a good start in education. They made do with little more than common sense and the belief that “a learning” can make little boys and girls into great leaders in all fields for our future. Difficult to believe there are those today whose only goal apparently is to abolish public education. If they can’t kill it, they will load it with vouchers and loads of skewered text books with questionable ideologies.

--30—

Britt Towery, a free-lance writer who never attended a one room school house, appreciates comments: bet@suddenlink.net

Michele Bachmann admits to being "kook"

Congress woman Bachmann desires to be more knowledgeable

The minimum wage law is a way to see that employees get at least bus money to work and back. Some one with two minimum wage jobs is still not making a living wage.

Minimum wage is not an answer to all the problems of business and commerce. The basic idea was to get as fair a deal as could be for employees without looking like the old sweat-shop wages.

There are still people around who are opposed to minimum wage workers. Take for example what a U.S. Congressional Representative from the state of Minnesota said recently on national television:

''If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.''

Michele Bachman, the lady who wants now to be president, shared those words of wisdom. Our country could solve the unemployment problem by doing away with minimum wages. Jobs, at every level, would appear as if by magic. If only she had suggested this to the rest of her congress comrades and made such a law, how wonderful it would be for all those without jobs.

But the lady-politician did not stop there with her problem solving. Back on television again she claimed that the former Fox News educator, Glenn Beck, could solve the national debt crisis. She told a South Carolina audience: “I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].” Here again, why doesn’t she get the guys and gals in congress together and turn all these problem-solving statements into action.

I did not make this up. No one, to my knowledge, is putting words into her mouth. She is the one who confused her Concords -- the “shot heard round the world” was in Concord, Mass., not Concord, N.H. as she said in a speech in New Hampshire.

She is the one who said: “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax. … There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.''

All we ask of politicians is a little research, a little reading of the history books and newspapers before that share their wisdom. Bachmann has yet to name even one Nobel Prize winning scientist who believes in intelligent design.

Such talk is scary when coming from a U.S. Representative who wants to be president. What edition of history books has she been reading? What research scientist has she been relying upon? While amusing, it is still frightening anyone could take her seriously.

Intelligent design is held by some church-goers to be how the world came into being. In last week’s funnies Mr. Stiller, a high school biology teacher, helped his class understand the theory. “It goes like this,” he said, “5,700 years ago a male deity created the heavens and earth and all life on it in six days. Unfortunately, He didn’t like his own handiwork so God created genocide and drowned everyone on earth except the family of Noah, a 600-year-old man who was charged with saving animals.”

A student interrupts, but Mr. Stiller continues, “Almost done. So Noah took two of everything including microbes, but forgot the dinosaurs…” [Borrowed from the July 10 episode of Garry Trudeau’s Doonsbury strip. Used here with due respect, but lack of official permission to copy the words. Hope neither side will sue.]

To Bachmann’s credit, she is aware of saying strange things, she lamented once: “I have experienced that throughout my political career, being labeled a kook.”

Once Bachmann also said, I wish I was more knowledgeable…” to which a friend of mine said, “Lady, we all wish you were more knowledgeable.”

PUBLISHED IN SAN ANGELO STANDARD-TIMES, FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2011

Doonsbury explains intelligent design

Congress woman Bachmann desires to be more knowledgeable

The minimum wage law is a way to see that employees get at least bus money to work and back. Some one with two minimum wage jobs is still not making a living wage.

Minimum wage is not an answer to all the problems of business and commerce. The basic idea was to get as fair a deal as could be for employees without looking like the old sweat-shop wages.

There are still people around who are opposed to minimum wage workers. Take for example what a U.S. Congressional Representative from the state of Minnesota said recently on national television:

''If we took away the minimum wage — if conceivably it was gone — we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level.''

Michele Bachman, the lady who wants now to be president, shared those words of wisdom. Our country could solve the unemployment problem by doing away with minimum wages. Jobs, at every level, would appear as if by magic. If only she had suggested this to the rest of her congress comrades and made such a law, how wonderful it would be for all those without jobs.

But the lady-politician did not stop there with her problem solving. Back on television again she claimed that the former Fox News educator, Glenn Beck, could solve the national debt crisis. She told a South Carolina audience: “I think if we give Glenn Beck the numbers, he can solve this [the national debt].” Here again, why doesn’t she get the guys and gals in congress together and turn all these problem-solving statements into action.

I did not make this up. No one, to my knowledge, is putting words into her mouth. She is the one who confused her Concords -- the “shot heard round the world” was in Concord, Mass., not Concord, N.H. as she said in a speech in New Hampshire.

She is the one who said: “The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax. … There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design.''

All we ask of politicians is a little research, a little reading of the history books and newspapers before that share their wisdom. Bachmann has yet to name even one Nobel Prize winning scientist who believes in intelligent design.

Such talk is scary when coming from a U.S. Representative who wants to be president. What edition of history books has she been reading? What research scientist has she been relying upon? While amusing, it is still frightening anyone could take her seriously.

Intelligent design is held by some church-goers to be how the world came into being. In last week’s funnies Mr. Stiller, a high school biology teacher, helped his class understand the theory. “It goes like this,” he said, “5,700 years ago a male deity created the heavens and earth and all life on it in six days. Unfortunately, He didn’t like his own handiwork so God created genocide and drowned everyone on earth except the family of Noah, a 600-year-old man who was charged with saving animals.”

A student interrupts, but Mr. Stiller continues, “Almost done. So Noah took two of everything including microbes, but forgot the dinosaurs…” [Borrowed from the July 10 episode of Garry Trudeau’s Doonsbury strip. Used here with due respect, but lack of official permission to copy the words. Hope neither side will sue.]

To Bachmann’s credit, she is aware of saying strange things, she lamented once: “I have experienced that throughout my political career, being labeled a kook.”

Once Bachmann also said, I wish I was more knowledgeable…” to which a friend of mine said, “Lady, we all wish you were more knowledgeable.”

Britt Towery Books

"Saints Alive: Saints Are Sinners Who Keep On Trying" Contains encounters with Mother Teresa in Calcutta; Corrie ten Boom in Keelung, Taiwan and Berlin; Gladys Aylward (the Small Woman) in Taipei, Taiwan; W.A. Criswell in Hong Kong and Macao; Gordon Wood in Brownwood, Texas; Estelle Newman in Brownwood and San Angelo, Texas; J. Alex Herring in Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Richard Morris in Taiwan; and Jody Towery in Texas, Arizona, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mainland China and Singapore, and others.

The moving story of two pioneer Southern Baptist missionaries from Texas to North China's Shandong province over 100 years ago. Carey Daniel, uncle of Texas Governor Price Daniel and Guam Governor Bill Daniel and his bride, Jewell Legett, whose uncle had lot to do with the founding of Hardin-Simmons College, Abilene, Texas. Preface by Governor Bill Daniel. PRESENTLY OUT OF PRINT, BUT IN THE PROCESS OF A NEW EDITION.

Fifth Edition of 1986 book written in Hong Kong and the China Mainland as the Protestant churches were beginning to re-open in major East Coast cities in China. This edition can be purchased from AUTHOR HOUSE c/o Author Solutions. (Formerly 1st Books Library)



"Along The Way" is an anthology of newspaper columns by Britt Towery. Life on the opinion page with this West Texas columnist. Owl in the Oak Tree Books, San Angelo, Texas. Subjects include Bum Phillips didn't wear his hat indoors; Life is like an arithmetic class; Horse Sense and Idioms; Being Stubborn as a mule is not all bad; Afghan hounds and Texas Donkeys; Cousin Ken Towery won a Pulitzer Prize; Cow Pasture football without cheerleaders; Being a celebrity is not all it is cracked up to be; The man who got his hair cut in the wrong barbershop; Finding Corporal Smith; The Day Jim Jerffrey introduced me to Oral Roberts' healing hands; It is time to bring Noah T. Byars' monument home, back to Howard Payne University campus; Easier to preach than practice; Conan the Barbarian is really from Cross Plains and many more.



Chinese around the world have acclaimed Lao She as the greatest of modern Chinese writers. He was born the last year of the 19th century and as a Manchu lived through the fall of the Qing dynasty and the war lord years and the war with Japan. The coming of the Communist was both a blessing and a tragedy. He was not a political writer and in his early years professed Christianity.

This book, at the time of publication, 1999, honoring Lao She's 100th birth anniversary, it was the only book on his life and much of his work. He has been translated into over seven languages and is read in public schools both in Taiwan, Singapore and mainland China. Words of preface for the book are by Lao She's son, Shu Yi, writer and Curator of the Chinese Literary Museum, Beijing and his daughter Shu Ji, writer and Curator of the Lao She Museum in downtown Beijing.

The Towery-Lao She Collection was also dedicated in 1999 at Southern Methodist University, Dallas Texas, and houses the largest selection of his work and Chinese artifacts other than in Beijing and Tokyo, where he was always honored by the Japanese.

The book is ideal for university courses in foreign language literature and is in many libraries around the world. It can be purchased from the author with special discounts for students in classes studying Chinese literature.