Watchic Pond Maine 1964

Watchic Pond 1964

My grandfather and his friends had dammed a stream to create a lake.

A foto of my brothers and sisters reenacting the Titanic sinking.

My grandfather Frank A. Smith graduated from Bowdoin in 1912. A college friend had drowned in the Titanic sinking. My grandfather was older and more mature than his classmates having worked the North Woods as a logger. The family sent him north to St Johns to collect the body. He recognized his friend's body from the school ring on his finger.

During WWII A surgeon in France, where he met my grandmother a nurse.

The Maine native was later Robert E Peary's personal doctor in Westbrook Maine. Admiral Peary founded the Explorers Club to which I now belong thanks to that connection and my travels from Watchic Pond to the beyond. The small world loomed larger through the milleniae back and forth through eternity.

Foto 1964 - Frank A Smith II

11-11-11-11-18

The Great War of 1914-1918 ended on the 11th minute of the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. My grandfather and grandmother were in France, serving as doctor and nurse with the Royal Canadian Medical Expedition. They returned to Maine with German helmets, bayonets, zeppelin debris, and medals as souvenirs of that horrible conflict. My grandfather died shortly after my birth, but my grandmother never spoke of her years tending to the wounded and dying soldiers. She never mentioned how the shooting went on well beyond the ceasefire hour, only how she met my grandfather and how they fell in love.

Today I thank them that I've never had to fire a shot in anger and appreciate the sacrifice of the fallen so that I can remain a pacifist.

Bring the troops home.