Fame and Heroes

Hero stuff and fame don’t seem to stand out in my family history. Sure, everyone loves to think that one of their ancestors did something that goes down in history as significant, but how many of us really have ancestors like that? After looking at all the old pictures and listening to the tales of our family as told by my parents, grandparents, and some great grandparents, I must admit, my family has no important people on our family tree; not one. Now, according to legend, my grandfather was the first boy to use stilts to harvest hops in the Rainer Valley. Of course, there is absolutely no documentation to that little tidbit. Also, the same grandfather was supposedly the inventor of the electric lawnmower. Of course, that bubble is burst if you look at the patents for the electric lawnmower engineering. Not one word about a Ramstead in any documents, or even footnotes. Heroism suffers the same fate in my family if you examine the record. The only act of heroism recorded in the written or verbal history of my family is attributed to my dad. During World War II he was at the Admiralty Islands as part of his Pacific duty assignment in the Sea Bees. Now, please do not misunderstand, I idolize my father and I also admit that he understates some of the most heroic things in his life. What I’m talking about here is the history book version of heroic actions. He was an electrician in the Sea Bees. The Navy sent the Sea Bees ashore with the assaulting marine troops. The Sea Bees were the land borne fighting construction corps that would build land strips, roads for the supply trucks and ammo wagons. The Sea Bees were immortalized in film by John Wayne’s movie about them. Well, my dad was one of them. He was stationed on one of the Admiralty islands after helping to establish the headquarters and communications stations throughout the specific island he was assigned. The weather is interesting in the South Pacific. It can be a rain storm, complete with high winds, and still be 90 degrees. The Sea Bees, like all soldiers, worked in shifts. When the shift was complete, they would try and relax and rest. The night in question, my dad and his crew of Sea Bees were off their shift of duty. They had eaten and were relaxing by playing poker in one of the several tents in their station. The rain was coming down in buckets and the wind was whipping the island with fury. The call came in by radio that a critical communications line had been severed and had to be repaired. It was also communicated that the line break was very close to the tent in which they were playing poker. My dad and the other Sea Bees cut the cards to see who had to go out in the storm to find and fix the “critical communications line” that apparently linked the entire island. My dad lost the cut of the cards. It was up to him to go out in the rain and fix the wire. He went out, found the line break, and spliced the wire. He told me it took about five minutes for the whole thing and everyone laughed because my dad was the one who had to get all wet just to splice a line four feet off the “deck” of the island. The repair made, dad said he went back to the poker game and lost another four weeks of pay. My dad got the Navy Cross. The heavy rain storm that dad went out into was a hurricane (or Typhoon as they are called in the Pacific). He went out in a typhoon and repaired a critical communication line that helped prevent a counter attack by the Japanese. Now, dad would laugh about all this and remind me that heroism is just circumstances that are judged by others, and not the stuff of reality. Was he a hero? Well, not according to him. To him, it was simply a rain storm and lousy luck. I love my dad, so I believe that the Navy was right in recognizing his actions. Was he a hero? Well, that all depends on who you believe. I have another story about my dad, or at least his memory, but that is another story for another day. I can admit that dad was a hero in my eyes every day…..not for the WWII stuff, but for whom he was and what he was able to overcome in his later life. One can pass over the rough edges when looking at the core of another. Dad’s core was that of a Norse God as far as I’m concerned. As far as the family, dad always joked that our coat of arms of the Ramstead clan was a Viking on the gallows. Mom loved that about dad because she considered it humility. It was humility on his part. “Ramstead” is derived from the term, “Rumsteadahl”, which loosely translated means “Ramstead’s Valley”. Our true core family name is Ellingson. It is that common story of Elis Island. They supposedly asked my landing relative the name for the family and he thought they were asking where he was had lived. The relative supposedly said, “Rumsteadahl”, and Ramstead instantly became the family name. I have no idea who that relative was, nor do I know for a fact that the story is real. I do know that dad was proud of the family name and he never moved from that until the day he died. The McClellan side of the family is pretty much the same. The McClellans are mom’s side of the family. They are fine folks. I once thought they might be related to General McClellan from the Civil War, but no, that is not the case. One of the McClellans did serve in the Civil War because we have his sword as evidence; however, he was an enlisted man. At one point in my life, I built that sword up into something truly grand, but it’s just an enlisted man’s saber. Why all this talk? Well, it’s because I was feeling a bit full of myself and I needed to get my feet back on the ground.