He was Reginald Lloyd Jackson, called Hot by his mother, a poor Mississippi country boy from Salem Community, near Macon, who left home at the age of twelve to work for wages. During this time he finished his elementary education. He worked his way through his freshman and sophomore years at the Noxubee County Agricultural High School where he also played football. He moved up to Number 9, AR, for a job at the invitation of an older brother. Later his parents moved up to Number 8, MO, a few miles away, and he moved back in with them and enrolled in Cooter High School for his junior year. There he met Dorris Frazier. He dropped out and went to work. She graduated and went to work. After a tumultuous courtship they married and moved to Number 9, where he worked in a company store and she worked as a bookkeeper.
After World War II started he volunteered for the Marines to stay out of the Army. After boot camp he was stationed at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he managed the PX. Dorris came up for a visit and got a job with the Williamsburg Savings Bank--quite a story in itself. Their mothers visited them in Brooklyn--also quite a story in itself. His father was killed in an automobile accident, and the "arrangements" he made to attend his father’s funeral caused him to be reassigned. He wound up as a member of the 31st Replacement Draft, 5th Marine Division, and was involved in the Iwo Jima campaign. He survived the campaign with hardly a scratch, but was scarred psychologically by events there.
At the end of his enlistment, Hot went into partnership with his brother in a hardware store in Morehouse, MO. They were heavily involved with extended family activities. Hot had a serious flashback and Dorris barely survived it. He drank significantly to counter the lingering problems of Iwo Jima. Later he sold his part of the store and worked as a wholesale hardware salesman, first in Macon and later in Tupelo, MS. By this time they had two daughters. Dorris was lured to work as a bookkeeper for his older brother at the Wayside Gin Co. of Morehouse, MO. Hot went along and became the assistant manager. Again they became heavily involved with extended family activities. Her mother kept the daughters while they both worked. Hot’s brother was seriously burned in an office explosion, and he saved his brother’s life by getting him out of the burning building. After recovering from his burns, his brother was in an automobile accident. Although his brother recovered from both of these incidents, the tasks of making Wayside run fell more and more to Hot and Dorris. His brother died in 1962 and Hot and Dorris were retained on a temporary basis to run the operation until permanent arrangements were made--the owner intended to sell the gin.
Hot borrowed enough money to buy Wayside. He and Dorris ran the gin and associated agricultural businesses for almost seventeen years, before selling out, paying off all outstanding loans, and banking the balance. Dorris was the inside individual and Hot was the idea man and decision maker. They worked as a team. Each had a long suit that covered the other one’s short suit. During this time Hot’s drinking slowed, but did not stop. She became more tolerant of his problems. They moved to Springfield, MO, where Dorris cared for her divorced daughter’s children and Hot became involved in several entrepreneurial types of enterprises. All of this time Hot had been carrying the commandment "thou shall not kill" on his back from the Iwo Jima campaign. He was just not able to reach internal peace. Finally, on a boat dock on Table Rock Lake he came to terms with his God and achieved the long sought internal peace. He died of cancer in mid-1995. During the last six months of his life he made the appropriate preparations for his death and for Dorris’ well being thereafter.
It was a story of two ordinary individuals who were swept up in the events of World War II, coped with what came their way, and carried on for a productive and warm family life during the ensuing years.
Over the years my Uncle Hot expressed opinions and told various stories about his Iwo Jima campaign experiences to a few individuals--primarily his wife, a friend hunting and fishing companion, and some of his grandchildren. As I collected his stories and attempted to write the chapter on his Iwo experiences I expected to find a gung ho, macho, "Semper Fidelis" all the way guy. Instead what I found was what I would call a love-hate relationship. The love part concerned his buddies and what they did, with and for each other--their relationship. The hate part had to do with what he considered to be the institutionalized killing, some of it unnecessary from his point of view, for which he must have considered the Marine Corps, if not advocated, condoned. He told a story to illustrate this point.
He was by himself and was out of ammunition, under orders to take no prisoners. He encountered a Japanese soldier in a face-to-face situation. The soldier had a rifle pointed at him and he expected to die then and there. Instead the soldier bowed down before him and extended his rifle sideways toward him. He seized the rifle, and found the soldier was also out of ammunition. The soldier turned out to be a Japanese boy of about fourteen or fifteen years of age. He took the soldier prisoner and started back to the company headquarters area. He met a senior sergeant who relieved him of the prisoner with the words that he would deliver him to the company area and sent Hot on to do what he had been originally sent out to do. That evening Hot went to the prisoner area in the company compound to look for the Japanese boy. He was not there. Hot assumed the senior sergeant killed the boy rather than turn him in as a prisoner.
Unknown to his wife, Hot bundled his Marine uniform and all his badges and medals and took them to a friend, Bill Headlee, who had a coal-fired boiler used in his business operation. He asked Bill to burn the bundle. When Bill found out what was in the bundle he tried to talk Hot out of burning the uniform, but Hot insisted he do it. Finally Bill gave in and burned the bundle. In the conversation that passed between them Hot said the uniform reminded him of the killing and he wanted to forget that.
In contrast, he kept a scrapbook of pictures of fellow Marines and his discharge certificate. In his scrapbook there was also a story from Parade Magazine which emphasized the heroic action of the Marines during the Iwo Campaign. There were the fellow comrade visits by Ben Speak and Donnel Stephenson. Some things Hot wanted to remember--some things he did not.
He refused a military funeral when he discussed the subject with his wife prior to his death, and he refused to be buried in the National Cemetery in Springfield, MO, with the comment, "Chur, don't put me down there with them" when he and his wife were selecting his burial site just before his imminent death.
For many years he carried around a guilt feeling for his part in the killing on Iwo. He told a friend that on one day he killed nine Japanese. The commandment, "Thou shall not kill," weighted heavily upon his soul. The explanation by clerics that killing in wartime, when not intended for a specific member of the enemy, is self-defense and not murder did not lighten his burden. He sometime tried to drown his guilt in alcohol to relieve the pressure. Relief was temporary and the guilt always came back. It was only in the latter years of his life after a bout with cancer that he made peace with his God on a boat dock on Table Rock Lake. His only comment to his wife concerning this was something like, "It's OK, Chur, I made it all right. I found peace."
Though he had one flashback that had potentially dangerous consequence to his wife after he returned from Iwo, he developed into a family oriented and warm supportive son, husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather. He worked at being the male influence for his divorced daughter's sons in their mid-to-late formative years.
Thus the man I found underneath the facade he presented for public consumption was far different than what I had expected. He was significantly scarred psychologically by the horrible experience of the Iwo Jima campaign, but he worked through it to become a model, caring, productive citizen.
Now for the unexpected I discovered concerning Aunt Chur. I had always known her as an adoring wife, working mother, and as the caregiver who provided compassioned maintenance of her father, mother and mother-in-law in their later years. She was always an active participant in extended family activities. I did not realize the impact on her daughters of being raised by their Grandmother Frazier. Because their father and mother worked so much and such long hours during their formative years the girls relate more to their Grandmother's influence than their father and mother's--they state they do not know much about their parent's activities (basically related to their work) during their formative years. Dorris seems to understand this, and this understanding was a driving force behind her strong interest in helping Linda take care of her children while Linda was working after her divorce from Mark--Dorris wanted to pay something back.
I was also unaware of the extent of Dorris' activity and influence on Hot's business related actions. She was the behind-the-scenes consultation, record keeping, and financial analysis glue that made things work. The record keeping and financial analysis skills were those not possessed by Hot. She also demonstrated great flexibility and life-long-learning skills by entering the computer literate sphere of activities after Hot's death.
This study of Uncle Hot and Aunt Chur's lives makes me much more appreciative of their activities and accomplishments. There were probably many other such partnerships formed on the basis of innocent love near the end of the Great Depression, were nurtured during World War II, and blossomed forth into full flower in the ensuing years. This is just the one that I know about, and I think it should be shared with the rest of the world. Everyone knows about the horrors of war, but there are few follow-on stories concerning the lives of participants during the ensuing peace. Long shall the human drive live to push from the conflict of war onward to a successful, productive life. Our appreciation should be for those who make it, and our prayers should be for those who are unable to be so fortunate.
