Page 9 - letmetellyou

Part I (1940-1959) The Beginning
I was born in Mercy Hospital at Toledo, Ohio to Sally A. and William H. Pemberton II on a cold, wintry morning in December, 1940, almost a year to the day before Japan attacked the United States’ naval fleet at Pearl Harbor triggering the Second World War, the maiming and deaths of millions, the expansion and ultimate defeat of totalitarianism, the spread, containment, and ultimate defeat of communism, and the ascendancy of the United States of America as the greatest military, economic, and cultural power in recorded history. President Roosevelt called that day, December 7, 1941, a day which will live in infamy. He was wrong. With the passing of the World War II generation, that day passes with barely a mention today, a victim of this generation’s preoccupation with political correctness. After all, while this generation of Japanese bear absolutely no responsibility for the actions of their World War II generation, we wouldn’t want to embarrass them even at the cost of ignoring our own history.
My mother’s mother arrived in the United States shortly before the outbreak of World War I from Serbia, coincidentally, the same homeland of the radical young nationalist who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand of Austria precipitating that war shortly thereafter. As with many central Europeans immigrating to the United States at that time to find hard and dangerous work in the factories and mills beginning to populate the towns and cities of the Midwest as northeastern industries expanded westward as well as opportunity for their children, my grandmother preceded her children to this country leaving them with relatives in Europe until she could afford to bring them to America. In my grandmother’s case, the family left behind in Europe consisted of two daughters who remained permanently separated from their American family as the result of the intervening world war. I was to meet their descendants many years later before the outbreak of yet another European war, the Balkan War of 1991.
My mother’s mother settled in Toledo, Ohio after living in several ethnic communities in the Midwest. She made her living
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