Dear Reader:

Isn’t it strange how a conversation or letter can open up a flood of memories from the past?

With Ben…lately…it has been telephone conversations about memories from Vietnam …some which have been suppressed for far too long. Since the (soon-to-be) televised interview earlier this week…a flood of memories have been re-surfacing.

But before we get to Ben’s story…we need to go back in blog time to a story Mr. Lincoln’s Mystery Cake that I discovered from an old Saturday Evening Post…dated:August 22, 1959. I remember telling the story in two blog posts three or four years ago…

( *Originally I heard about it through a student I taught. The student brought me a copy of the second publication (in the Saturday Evening Post) in 1991, I remember, and I read the story to the class since we were studying the Civil War.

Some generous parents made fruit cakes for the classes to eat following the reading. I don’t know if the students loved the story or the fruit cake more (hopefully both) but it was quite a hit.)

It sets the tone for another true story to follow…Ben’s birthday in Vietnam. But chronologically let’s look at the Civil War cake first…

The Library of Congress offers our first story “free” for download and /or reading….it is a charming story and I have never forgotten it. It will take a few minutes for you to read….but it is time well spent…at least, I think so.

Mr. Lincoln’s mystery cake. – Free Online Library

Here is a short excerpt from the beginning of the story…the first line grabs your attention….

Grandfather and his famous cake passed into memory on the same day. * The cake, like the grandfather, had survived the Civil War and both “died” within an hour of each other…the grandfather was 107.

The story of the famous cake and how it ended up with President Lincoln taking a slice….goes back to the day when the grandfather, then a young Civil War soldier, decided he wanted to bake a cake. He remembered:

…Many of the soldiers had their families send them food to supplement the terrible diet doled out by the Army. But that didn’t always work out so well. Cakes and cookies would be stale by the time the soldiers received them, and the jars of jam and preserves would be cracked and leaking sticky syrup all over the new suit of underwear that might be in the package.

“Even hardtack and salt pork were better than plum preserves mixed with a set of red flannels,” Grandfather once said.

So, just before they went into the Fredericksburg fight, grandfather got a hankering for some cake and wrote his mother about it. He played it smart and asked her to send him the ingredients and he would bake the cake himself.

Grandfather’s mother complied and shipped along the ingredients: flour and sugar, molasses, spices, raisins, dried fruit and various kinds of nuts. Other ingredients grandfather foraged locally, especially eggs, which had to be obtained from unhappy Confederate hens.

The package reached him about a month after the battle and just about the time that grandfather and three friends of his had finished building a log hut to live in until spring. …he now had time to make his fruitcake…Little did he know where the cake would go…

…………………….

Ben’s story about a cake he received in Vietnam is just as miraculous as the “mystery cake.” We both decided that only a mother’s love could have gotten that cake to him on his exact birthday. Those angels sure stay busy. Ben’s most unforgettable birthday. He had just turned 20.

This Sunday is Mother’s Day and this is the best (true) story I can think of… it doesn’t need to wait for a certain date…what a mother does for her “children.”

“July 26,1968 was my 20th birthday. The company was still in the jungle highlands of Vietnam. We were on a company-size operation in some very dense jungle. When we stopped in late afternoon everybody was so very happy to rest for while. About two hours later two helicopters came overhead to re-supply food, water and ammunition.

To this day I do not know how the choppers found us. When the essentials had been handed out my platoon leader ( Lt Toby Greene ) called me over and gave me a heavily taped box. When I opened it –there was a birthday cake with chocolate icing along with a card. The cake tasted like it just came out of the oven.

The address from home was dated 10 days earlier. It was probably my most grateful birthday ever. It was delicious and did not last long!!

Unfortunately, the very next day, my best friend, who had helped me eat the cake, was killed,
not far away from me, under circumstances that still haunt me to this day.

But that is another story for another time….Today I try to recall and focus on the joy of sharing my birthday cake with my best friend… staying forever young in that moment of single delight provided by a mother who believed that it would find its way to me…and it did!

………………………..

So until tomorrow…Help us Father remember that a lifetime can be lived in a moment. Mother’s cake brought such joy to two young men…for one the last cake he ate…our angel mother.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

* Mother made the best chocolate icing in the world…the secret ingredient- coffee.. ( I don’t even drink coffee but in chocolate icing…the taste is unforgettably wonderful!) I can only imagine Ben’s delight is discovering mother had baked and sent him his favorite birthday cake …landing in the jungles of Vietnam.)

“The Barefoot Contessa” (Ina Garten would approve…it is her secret ingredient also when working with chocolate!)

 * Thank all of you for your positive comments in reference to yesterday’s blog…I cut and pasted them to send Ben.

And Sis…I had never thought about a resemblance between daddy and Eva Cate until you saw it (makes me happy to think that a part of him still lives)…since I have such a limited memory of him…(more hearsay and stories than actual visual memories)…

Good morning, Becky!
I loved the chilling story your brother Ben told. I have no doubt that angels are always around us and that would mean they would also be on the battlefields. Also loved the pix you included; I’m thinking that’s your father on the top left? I can see Eva Cate’s smile and eyes when I see that pic! I know I’ve never actually met anybody else in your family, but from the pix you’ve posted with your blog I can definitely see a resemblance. Do you see it?

After reading your observation…I went back and realized that you are right…not just some physical resemblance with the beautiful clear eyes…but his love of life that my relatives said he possessed…and so does Eva Cate.

Honoree Stephen Colbert poses at the Oscar Wilde Awards at director J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot production company in Santa Monica, California February 19, 2015. REUTERS/Kevork Djansezian (UNITED STATES – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) – RTR4QCEY

Kudos and a Shout-out to Stephen Colbert from state educators/teachers…and retired ones! What a lovely thing to do!

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/07/1383114/-Stephen-Colbert-shocks-South-Carolina-schools-by-funding-every-single-teacher-requesting-grants