A Memorial Day Tribute

From a Proud Daughter

Memorial Day is a day in which we honor and mourn the military personnel who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. It is a day with flags, ceremonies, and the solemn roll call of names. Fortunately, my parents did not die in service to their country, but they did serve in different ways. They are both gone now, and I find myself wanting to say their names out loud — Charlie and Ellie Grover — and to recall who they were, what they gave, and what they were made of.

They were not famous. They left no monuments. But they were part of that great generation that showed up when the world needed them, did their jobs with quiet determination, and continued to build something lasting.

That’s worth remembering today.

My Dad, Charlie

Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army right out of high school and remained on active duty until 1941. He was honorably discharged while serving in the Panama Canal Zone, where he stayed on and worked for the Army Signal Corps as a civilian laying electrical cable across the Panama Canal. Later, as WW2 went on, he wanted to reenlist and ideally join the Air Force. He passed all the exams, but no branch of the service would take him because he didn’t have a draft card. And why was that? Because the U.S. didn’t register Americans in Panama, where he was stationed.

Undeterred, he joined the merchant marines, was trained in morse code, and was assigned to the SS Vicksberg, a ship that hauled oil to the Navy across the Pacific. It was dangerous work, with enemy ships patrolling the area. U.S. ships had to zig zag every ten minutes and then turn, so the enemy couldn’t “draw a bead on you.”

As 1 of 3 radiomen aboard (they were called “Sparks”), Charlie’s shift was 4 hours on and 8 hours off. He was paid $5 day hazard bonus once the ship crossed a certain meridian – closer to the battle zone.

Charlie was proud of his service; he never talked about it as heroism. He was just answering the call of duty.

My Mom, Ellie

Elinor (Ellie) came to her war service by a different path. A young girl with ambition, she moved from a small Massachusetts town to the “big” city to enter nursing school at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Brighton, MA. In 1943, the country needed nurses badly, so she joined the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps. The Corps was a federal program created specifically to fill the nursing shortage and offer training and a stipend to young women who committed to serve in military or civilian settings. By the end of the war, Cadet Nurses were providing roughly 80 percent of the nursing care in American hospitals. Ellie was one of them, serving here at home.

She was serious about the work. She was also, by all accounts, a young woman who loved to dance.

Charlie and Ellie

It was back in Holliston, MA after the war, that Charlie and Ellie found each other — a former Merchant Marine radioman and a nurse cadet, both still young, both shaped by what they’d seen and done. They married in 1947 and were together for 64 years.

And they both kept working --- well past retirement age. Charlie spent 36 years with Massachusetts Electric Company, working his way from appliance salesman to personnel manager, then retired and went right back to work at a lumber yard. Ellie raised five children and still put on her nurse’s uniform five days a week for the 3-to-11 shift, first as a private duty nurse, then as a floor nurse at the local hospital. She was beautiful in her nurse’s uniform. In retirement, she managed the production floor at a weekly newspaper, then managed the volunteers at a church food pantry. She never really stopped.

That impulse — to show up, to be useful, to not sit still — was the same one that sent them both to serve when they were young. It didn’t turn off when the war ended. It just found other outlets.

Bottom Line

Memorial Day is for remembering those who served. Charlie and Ellie both did. Dad in the Merchant Marines, zigzagging across the Pacific. Mom in her cadet nurse’s uniform, providing care when trained nurses were in desperately short supply. They were not in uniform together. They weren’t even a “we” yet during the war. But they were both doing their part, in different places, shaped by the same moment in history.

And then they went on to build a life — a loud, busy, five-kids life with summer vacations in Moody, Maine, cribbage games, and a bumper crop of tomatoes every year.

I miss them both. Today, and every day.

To Charlie and Ellie Grover and to all who have served: Thank you. We are forever grateful.

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