Ira Hayes, hero
Thank You Clint; Thank You Adam...The Story Behind “Flags of Our Fathers”Very few people have ever heard of Ira Hayes. But he’s a hero. He and millions of other young men who weren’t quite men yet, but boys; underfed, undereducated boys growing up during the Great Depression intolerant and fearful of each other’s ethnic differences.
Despite all that, they were heroes in the purest of the pure sense of the word. They were heroes because they fought and died and prevailed for a cause that really had little to do with their hardscrabble lives whether they had traveled steerage or had roots to the land spanning thousands of years.
Despite all that, they were heroes in the purest of the pure sense of the word. They were heroes because they fought and died and prevailed for a cause that really had little to do with their hardscrabble lives whether they had traveled steerage or had roots to the land spanning thousands of years.
posted by Rob at 1:02 AM
6 Comments:
Writerfella here --
writerfella was 14 when first ever had heard of Ira Hayes when the man had passed away in 1955. His family talked about it for weeks and they always sounded so sad. So, writerfella finally asked, and he was told the story of Iwo Jima (which happened when writerfella was 3) and Hayes' personal life after going back to his reservation, and then his attempt to become a tribal leader, and finally his walking drunk down a dirt road on a January night and passing out and drowning in an inch-deep puddle of water.
Then writerfella also was sad and understood what his parents had felt. But he realized that Ira Hayes represented the fate of Natives at the hands and wills of the rest of society, and that made him both a hero and a commonality at one and the same time. The commonality being that Natives, for reasons they know but do not understand, never are allowed to be much more than their own strengths can endure. The fences go up and, blocked from achieving anything more, they finally go away, as is said in current parlance, to crash and burn.
For Natives, heroes are few and far between, Jim Thorpe, Ira Hayes, Pascal Poolaw, and Russell Means. For Natives, commonality is tonight, tomorrow, and next week...
All Best
Russ Bates
'writerfella'
Pascal Poolaw? I had to look him up. Here's what one website said about him:
"First Sergeant Pascal C. Poolaw was a hero in three wars, WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. He was a full blooded Kiowa Indian who enlisted in the Army during WW2 and was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart fighting the German Army."
If you want modern-day Native American heroes, how about Will Rogers, Vine Deloria Jr., Billy Mills, Elouise Cobell, or the Codetalkers? We could name many more people, such as this list of 10 Native Americans Everyone Should Know.
Then there's the online poll that chose the "Greatest Native American." You can see the dubious results here.
No need to limit this to naming just the 20th century heroes. "Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Chief Joseph." are just a few names from Rob's poll page.
I'm sorry to say that I only knew about half of the names "10 Native Americans Everyone Should Know.". The golfer I knew because he golfed at a local (Native-owned) course last year, and Herrington because of discussion in this blog.
Writerfella seemed to be limiting himself to heroes whose lives overlapped his, so I did too.
I knew nine of the 10 on the list--but then, I spend most of my time doing this. If you know at least three of 10, you're probably doing better than average.
I'm reading "The Memoirs of Chief Red Fox" right now. In it, he called Ira Hayes "Inaan Haysa". That's a name that turns up 0 hits on Google.
Thanks for the comment on my Grandfather. There is alot to more to discover, about my grandpa and his sons. I was once contacted about someone wanting to write a book about him. He never contacted me back and also I have a address of a soldier that served with him and credits his life that he has now on a orderes that my grandpa gave him,
Contact me if you want
at poolawdr@yahoo.com
I also serve in the USMC
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