Holding Hands Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Our Nine and Fifty Years and Counting

By Carol Corns

Holding Hands Under the Nuclear Umbrella is the story of a young woman who shares the mid-twentieth century practice of school drills to respond to a nuclear attack on America with a young man who later becomes her husband and, with him as a career army officer, joins the army families committed to protecting their country. From Georgia to California, Alaska to Hawaii, and Germany to Japan, she relates the life of her military family over a thirty-five-year period. It is a life of challenge, difficulties, sorrow, pride, hope, and accomplishment, always mindful of the thousands of miles of separation from the families of their youth. There is always the presence of the danger of nuclear warfare, even into the last decade of the twentieth century as the dissolution of the Soviet Union suggested the threat was lessening.

In retirement, Carol reflects on those days and life after the military, comforted by a sense of presence of people, some by her side, some she remembersall who made the days of holding hands a wonderful experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532039355

Carol Corns

Carol Corns and her husband, John, stepped into the World of Nuclear Uncertainty in 1958 to live for thirty-five years as an Army family, over half of those years with their children Lisa and Michael, in states from Georgia to Washington and Alaska to Hawaii, as well as the countries of Germany and Japan. Her story tells of the dedication that she and her family shared with thousands of other Army families over the years. This is her first book.

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Part I

CHAPTER 1

Carolyn – My Beginning

Milton

In the days of the Civil War, the place was called Mud Bridge, where the road that ran west out of Coalsville on the Kanawha River passed over Mud River on its way to Guyandotte on the Ohio River. Later, Coalsville became St. Albans; Huntington grew up just west of Guyandotte, and Mud Bridge became Milton.

That is where I was born—Milton, West Virginia.

It was the twenty-seventh day of July 1936, and I was about to make my entrance into the world on a warm day in a small, white frame house on Florida Street. My family-to-be consisted of my 24-year-old father, Wilson Clyde Cyrus, and 20-year-old mother, Lora Catherine (Johnson), who were married in this same small town on June 24, 1933.

They were already the proud parents of identical twins, Peggy June and Patsy Jean, born on April 16, 1934. I am told that all seemed normal at midday as I prepared to enter the world and Dr. Pritchard was sent for. I was to be born at home, which was not unusual in those days, and, as my father would say later, it was his first experience with my lack of patience. The doctor arrived at 1:15 PM, but I was in a hurry and was not yet totally aware of the deference due to the men in the white coats. It fell to my father to assist my birth, and, while I would bet he was excited and nervous, his only reference later to the event was how totally in control he was and how typically impatient I was. Well, I take some exception to those words. He can have his day, saying he was calm and cool, but, about the other, I choose to think it was the earliest sign of my eagerness to start the wonderful life I have been privileged to live—the life I now wish to share if you are willing to read on.

I’d like to pretend here that I was a little angel (something that none of my siblings, then or later, would ever be likely to envision) hovering over the town and, with the tap of my wand, could go streaking from one street to another, one house to another, seeing all, hearing all, and understanding all (something I could otherwise not do, considering things I now want to tell you that happened to me as an infant and up to the age of six.) Relax, I’m not going to tell everything I might have seen as the streaking, invisible angel, only the little things you may want to know so I can hurry on to my first days in school, days that are among my first true memories. I suspect I was yearning to go to school even before I was eligible. That desire didn’t have anything to do with my home, which I recall as warm and nurturing, but I seem to have always been looking over to another place—the next school that I would be attending particularly. Each seemed bigger, full of life, and more exciting than the last. But, more about that later.

GRANNY.jpg

Granny

circa 1901

I can’t tell you just how the view of Milton came to be painted in my mind: in soft, earthy tones fading from a honey brown to a light, golden hue. Maybe that is how an angel would view things, through her heavenly lenses, but maybe it is just the tone of the photographs of the time, aged by years, like the one of my Granny in her wedding dress. I don’t think of Milton without thinking of Granny, and with that thought, I always feel some of the most cherished and most important feelings any of us can have about life and living. To say that Granny has served as an inspiration for me, an inspiration to make out of life the very best that you can, is an understatement. Milton was Granny’s town, and it was my mom’s town. It’s the first place I was in life and Granny’s only and last place. In my mother’s family, chance made my Granny the cement that held it all together.

However, I’m moving too fast, and suggesting a lightness about the place and implying, without meaning to, that there were others of little impact on my memories and me. That is not true, it is simply that in a room of all of us, whether standing, sitting or lying down, Granny was somehow above us, out ahead, a beacon even, on how to Live, simply on how to live, and she brightened that light by her own example.

Since I am still this little angel, let me tap my way, and yours, back to an earlier time. To a time before I was born, when Granny did not have to be a fortress of strength, but walked hand in hand down the street of Milton with William Robert Johnson, partner in the main automobile store in town, and the man she married—our grandfather. They were not wealthy, but comfortable, and he provided, and she maintained a home of warmth and laughter. With time, there was no lack of children in that home to make the laughter. My mother, Lora Catherine, was the fifth of nine children in a family of seven girls and two boys. The girls were: Eva, Georgia, Ima, Malina, Lora (my mom), Hulda, and Clara Jo. The boys were, Bill (William) and Jimmy (James.)

I don’t really know, even with all the powers of an angel, how Granny acquired the grit and wisdom, which all who knew her so admired. Like in so many stories of life, you must ask did she have it all before, or did she acquire it suddenly or slowly over her lifetime. The event in her life that would be the benchmark to try to answer that question is the day her husband came home from a hunting trip, one hand reddened and swollen. He had cut the hand in his work in the garage a few days before departing for the hunt. The cut was not deep and had only been treated with a bit of turpentine and a white cloth wrapping. By the time he returned from hunting, the swelling had forced him to abandon the wrapping.

Soon the doctor told them the swelling likely signaled a serious infection. All these years later, as I write, it seems eerie that in a short time, despite continuing attention by the doctor to the blood poisoning, that nothing could reverse the flow of life from such a rugged and healthy-appearing man. Granny was only 42 years old when he died in 1925, suddenly and unexpectedly, and Nora Belle Johnson, my Granny, was alone to raise nine children. Gone was the man who had succeeded in business such that the family’s basic needs were met, and an occasional special treat on a holiday was affordable. Granny’s confidence just after his passing that the half ownership in the garage would take care of them was in a few short months shattered by the surviving partner’s news that the company was not well and would not long provide income to the family.

For Granny, whether she found the strength then or had it before, she showed the moral strength and physical stamina to provide for those children.

As you can see, I am unable to get on with my story without telling you about Granny. No one other than my parents and siblings played such a significant role in my growing up. Yet, Granny and I were not close. I didn’t go for summer visits as I did with my paternal grandmother. I cannot describe just when I began to see how special she was. I just came to know. I knew early that she had raised this large family as a single mother. It was only years later that I appreciated the full implications of this feat. She was a constant, living example of seeing the glass half full; not half empty. She loved baseball and at eighty years of age, she could tell you the batting average of each of her beloved Cincinnati Reds baseball players. She watched the games on television and, while dealing with diminishing eyesight, was quick to question the eyesight of an umpire who was right there on the field. She cheered with glee when her Johnny Bench hit a home run.

When she was younger, she had watched the games of the Milton Greyhounds, the local high school football team. She said the majorettes could use a little more clothing. Like her mother, she liked to fish. She was always interested in others, not in herself. I so value the memory of taking my few-weeks-old son with my mother to visit his great grandmother. At that time, she was about ready to have cataracts removed from both eyes. She could just see shapes and forms. Mom asked if she had eaten her lunch; she answered that she had. My mom asked what she had eaten. One of the things she named was mashed potatoes. I asked how she had managed to peel the potatoes or if someone had helped her to do this. No problem, she answered, and showed me how, if you held the potato in front of the window, the light would make the part not peeled a little darker. She had lots of people available to help her. But if she could do for herself, she would not ask for assistance. This seems a small thing, but I valued this display of self-reliance. I began to understand how she had gone on after she lost her husband, after she lost her son, Bill, killed in World War II, and many years later, after a daughter who had suffered bouts of severe depression for many years took her own life—something most of us cannot even imagine. How do you endure the loss of a child, much less under those circumstances? She did endure, more than endure, and I never saw her even once lose her positive belief in life. One of the last times I visited with her was after I had left my father’s funeral in 1971. My husband and I stopped to check on her. She was eighty-eight years old and had not attended the services. I told her I promised my mother that I would look in on her and see how she was doing. Her answer was perfect. She said for me to tell my mother she was fine, and she would expect to hear the same about her—true to the way she had lived her entire life.

I thought of her while we were living nearly thirty years later in Japan—the nation of people that had cost her one of her two sons. I was attending a military ceremony. It was a beautiful, early spring day. Comfortably cool with cherry blossoms on the trees surrounding the parade field. I was in Northern Honshu, Japan, and I could see snowcapped mountains in the distance. We sat in front of a building that had been erected in 1941 to look, from the air, like the outline of an American battleship, like those that were bombed and sunk at Pearl Harbor. The pilots of the Japanese dive-bombers had practiced dry-run dives on this building in the weeks before they flew east and then south to attack Pearl Harbor and Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, where my grandmother’s son was then stationed. I felt the irony of sitting there, in northern Honshu, Japan, in 1989. At such events, the national anthems of the United States and of Japan were played with honor guards from each country in splendid uniform. First, I stood and listened to our Star Spangled Banner and viewed the combined formations and flags. The red, white, and blue of our own; theirs, the red, rising sun on the white background that evoked so many images of my early childhood. Then the beautiful Japanese Anthem began. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. I felt Granny’s presence so strongly. I wondered if she would approve of me even being here. This country had cost her dearly. And then I knew. She was so much wiser than most.

She would have simply said, Life goes on, Carolyn, and you can only do your best with today. You cannot change what was. Don’t worry. Things have a way of working out if you take care of all that you can.

She lived ninety-seven years, passing on August 7, 1980. The twinkle in her eyes never left. I count her as one of the wisest and most admirable people I have ever known.

No wonder my mother found it comforting to live in Milton after she and my dad were married. In all, four children were born there: two daughters—twins—before me. And one daughter after me. My father, a construction worker at the time, helped build roads and bridges in the surrounding area. Like many during the Great Depression, which had begun even before the birth of the twins, he found jobs scarce. It was difficult to support his growing family. The fourth child, Mary Louise, was born on July 25, 1938. Jobs as a coal miner existed in West Virginia at the time, but conditions were poor and the pay was even poorer. These miners had only recently been allowed to organize into unions, and the pay trailed far behind that of coal miners in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and states to the west. Dad’s two brothers lived in Smithfield, Ohio, and made him aware of jobs there, where miners had been union workers since before the 1920’s. Conditions were somewhat improved, and the pay much better. Thus, in 1938, I was to make my first move to a new and different home. Even the little angel cannot be mustered up to help me. I was a two-year-old and had no way of knowing that this moving thing was to become the pattern for my life some twenty years later.

We arrived in Bradley, Ohio, that fall. It was little more than a village—only the miners, their families, a doctor, and a few people who operated a grocery store and an elementary school. My parents rented a white, two-story house that sat at the top of the hill just above the mine. Down this hill and to the right you could see the tipple where the coal was brought out, washed clean, and then emptied from the mine cars into railroad cars for shipment. Directly below a high point near our house was the mine’s entrance. We could watch miners riding small, flat cars in and out of the black hole in the side of the mountain. As they finished their day’s work, we saw the men come out of the dark mine opening and enter a square, one story building appropriately called the washhouse. In this building, they showered, changed into clean clothes, and walked to their homes, bringing with them dirty clothes, covered with coal dust. These would be laundered and made ready for the day after tomorrow. Having more than two sets of work clothes was rare.

On May 4, 1940, my brother, Wilson Clyde (Bill) Cyrus, was born. I wanted to name him the Lone Ranger, this being the character in my favorite radio show. Luckily for him, wiser heads prevailed, and he became, Bill. Three years later, on October 30, 1943, at the same hospital in Wheeling, West Virginia, a sixth and last child was born to our family. Our parents, hoping for a brother for Bill, planned to name this new baby Gerald Robert, the middle names of my mother’s two brothers. My fourth sister, Geraldine Roberta, known to us now as Jerri, was born. Thus, Bill did become the Lone Ranger—one boy among five girls.

We lived in what I think was one of the nicer homes in Bradley, but we did not have indoor plumbing. A pump just outside the kitchen door was our water source. The house did, however, have three bedrooms, which at the time was considered large. We had a cellar that we used to keep foods that my mother canned and other stores such as potatoes. My dad always had a garden where he grew potatoes, corn, green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, and lettuce in beds. One year he bought a pig from a near-by farmer. We all helped raise Keano, named for the family of the farmer who sold us the pig. When it came time to butcher in the fall, there was not a dry eye among the Cyrus children.

I started the first grade in Bradley. My classmates would please the proponents of diversity today. I had Polish, Italian, and a good number of black classmates. Ohio was not at that time segregated as many states still were.

I recall walking to school and passing a large water tank. In the winter, frozen water puddles surrounded the base, and the older kids once told us that a hand was frozen in one of the puddles. I gave that tank a wide berth, never wanting to venture too close. It was on one of those trips to school that I was swinging my metal lunch pail with much gusto. I brought it up with such force that I chipped my front tooth. The nearest dentist was forty miles away. A year earlier, after I’d complained of a toothache, my dad had taken me on a Greyhound bus to the dentist in Steubenville, Ohio. We arrived and the dentist began his examination by placing the small tool-like mirror in my mouth. I decided I did not have a problem. At least, not with the tooth. After trying to reassure, threaten, and finally to bribe me with a promise to buy me a pair of roller skates that I had dreamed of, my dad gave up. He threatened me with things I dare not mention and warned me never to hint about a toothache again. I never did. My chipped tooth did not receive much attention. I lived with it for 12 more years. Only after graduating from high school and working at my first job, did I decide to have it capped.

Our lives during those years were much like those of most other families living in Bradley. I began a practice that shaped my relationship with my dad for the rest of my life. I shared some activities with him that a son might have. Bill was still young; so, I tagged along to football games beginning when I was only five. He would carry me on his shoulders to the high school games in Smithfield. I later learned to like fishing and camping. I found exciting the discussions of politics and government that were not so much a part of the lives of most girls of my generation. I would listen with him in later years to the political party conventions on the radio. I’m not sure when, or even if, I figured that this was one way to have him all to myself. With the passing of the years, though, I am convinced this was at least part of the explanation. During this time, I received from him a great gift. I was a tomboy, and that seemed to be okay with him. Unconditional love and acceptance is priceless. It was one of the most important things that he gave to me and taught me. Being a girl, woman, wife, mother, and grandmother would all come in time, and I have found joy in them all. Each role benefited from traits I developed in those days as a tomboy. Because of his acceptance and support in those early years, I found strength at times as an adult when challenges to my family and to me were unusual, different, and placed us somewhat apart. It is easier to be different when you are accepted and loved by one, special person who enjoys your utmost love and respect.

Much was happening in the world outside our little town of Bradley. A five-year-old could not fully understand the events of December 7, 1941, but I do recall my mother crying. It had something to do with her brother William (Bill) Johnson, a soldier in the Army, serving in a place called Honolulu, Hawaii. My uncle served throughout the war in the Pacific Theater: Hawaii, Australia, and New Guinea. He was killed in November of 1944 with the American forces landing at Leyte Gulf in the Philippine Islands.

Early in the spring of 1944, an event occurred that would change the course of the lives of all members of our little Cyrus family. One day we heard the sound that caused concern for all in our mining community. A siren signaled an accident in the mine. We walked to the top of the hill overlooking the mouth of the mine and saw the flat cars coming out, the black dust following and lifting into the air. The flat cars carried miners, most of whom looked unhurt. But on one car, a blanket appeared to be totally covering someone. None of us knew who it was. My mother and other women were crying, but exchanging no words. They waited. Then we saw him—our dad. Mom watched him walk up the steep hill toward us, still wearing his coal dust-covered clothes, a miner’s cap, the light still bright in the light of day, him looking at mom all the time as he came close. He answered her unspoken question. Lora, it’s Clauston. His voice was strange. I know now what I did not know then: those were among the few truly sad words I ever heard my dad speak. This man was one of his best friends and the father of nine children. One of Mr. Clauston’s daughters, Rita, was my older sister’s closest friend. Both my sisters were devastated. My mother simply told our dad if he ever went back in a mine she would not be there when he came out.

It was the most courageous decision our parents would ever make. Our father decided to return, alone, to South Charleston, West Virginia, where, he was told, the chemical companies were hiring and he might find work. A few months later, my mother followed on the train with the six children. I remember the many soldiers on that train, some of whom helped her with the young ones. I was not yet eight years old, and Jerri was only six months old.

South Charleston was a great change. It was a big place to me, spread out. We did not own a car and would not for many years. There was a serious housing shortage, and our father had taken a sizeable pay cut moving from the coal to the chemical industry. Things were not going to be easy. He and mom found an apartment on the third floor in a government housing development called Kenna Homes. It was small, but had three bedrooms, central heating, and inside plumbing with a bathroom. Best of all there were scores of other young families, all trying to cope with shortages brought on by the war. The change was great for both our parents and the children. We would no longer walk to school. We would ride, but to schools much farther away.

My dad would continue to work shift work for the next 27 years for Union Carbide Corporation. Work in the chemical plant presented dangers, but was a safer place than the coal mines. He rode public transportation to and from work for at least five of those years until he was able to buy his first car. His working shifts would rotate. Days from 6 AM to 3 PM. Evenings from 3 PM to 11 PM. Then he would have what was called a long change. He would have Saturday, Sunday, and Monday off. On Tuesday night, he would go to work at 11 PM and work midnights until 6 AM the next morning.

We would live in the Kenna Homes apartment for the next four and a half years. By this time, the children were of course older and bigger, and my parents were trying to find a larger place to rent. They could not afford to buy or to rent a larger house in the city and decided to move to the country. They found a house on Coal River in Lincoln County, about twenty miles from South Charleston but a million miles away in what it could not offer. The house we moved into was owned by Jack and Clara Ramsey, who lived next door. Somewhat older than my parents, they lived alone and were wonderful people. The house was much larger, but did not have indoor plumbing or central heating. The schools in Lincoln County were light years behind those we had been attending for the past four years. I was entering the seventh grade in Midway Elementary. This was nothing like what my experience would have been at South Charleston Jr. High School. I had one teacher instead of all the different teachers I would have learned from in South Charleston. It was particularly hard for my older sisters. They were entering the ninth grade at Duval High School. They had been very involved, popular, good students, with lots of friends, and had anticipated high school in South Charleston with all the normal hopes and plans. It was a lot to ask, and I know they did their best, but they were not happy. Our parents tried to make things better by enrolling us the next year—my eighth—in another school, Washington District Junior and Senior High School, which was just inside Kanawha County. As my ninth year of school approached, I was aware that my older sisters wanted to go back to South Charleston High School and, since they wanted that so badly, I thought it would be a good idea too.

In that fall of 1950, my father and mother rented a house on D Street in South Charleston. It was on the bank of the Kanawha River, facing the Westvaco Chemical Plant. We were all thrilled. It was a large house, had indoor plumbing, central heating, three large bedrooms, and a small utility type room that became what Bill would come to describe as the first of many closets, as he would call his bedrooms. Two bedrooms upstairs were normal size, and another was large and ran across the front of the house. The twins had one of the smaller rooms and our parents had the other. Jerri, Mary, and I shared the large room. It was great.

I’m not sure how my parents managed it all. My dad had to sell his car, the only one he had ever owned, and he agreed to do much work on the house for the owner. In return, the owner lowered the rent. What more they sacrificed, I don’t know, but I have come to understand it had to be more than any of their children would have imagined. It was a priceless gift to all of us. The school system was better, and our lives were fuller. I again could walk to school, and at South Charleston High School, I renewed old friendships from my days in Kenna Homes.

In the fall of my freshman year, I met a young man when our class was electing class officers for the coming year. I opposed him for class president. I lost by eight votes. I recall being a little disappointed with my first venture into politics. He, however, would lead our class each year and become our student body president in our senior year. We knew each other through those times, but were never close friends. We had one class together, as sophomores, and it was my favorite subject and teacher—World History and Mrs. Nellie Melton. I don’t recall having a conversation with the young man other than saying hello in the hallway as we waited for the vote. After that, I recall no conversations even though we were seated next to one another in the history class. His last name started with a C, like mine. In a high school class of over two hundred, you didn’t get well acquainted with everyone, but I still find that fact of such limited conversation a bit of a mystery. It is hard to attribute to shyness—his or mine.

In the fall of my senior year, the students, along with help from the Lions Club, were trying to raise money to pay for putting lights up on Oaks Field. This field was where our football games were played, and I spent time watching the game I had so long ago learned to love sitting on my dad’s shoulders in that small Ohio town. Now I watched the games and cheered on the crowd in my third year as a cheerleader for our Black Eagles. Following a fund-raising meeting one evening, I ended up in the car with a young man who had been kind enough to give a few girls rides home. This was the same opponent I had lost to in the election three years earlier, the C in the history class, and the person who I could not have then imagined in my wildest dreams would become my very best friend ever, my soul mate, husband, father of our children, grandfather of our grandchildren and