Harry Jackson 1938-2023
There's an old saying that hard times make for hard men. My father was a hard man that took everything the world threw at him and thrived.
Born at the height of the Depression, and his early years were during the war, he came from very hard times. His first and middle names are not family names. My grandparents didn't have much money when my father was born. However, my grandfather's boss was well to do, but couldn't have children. He offered to pay for my father's birth if my grandparents would name him Harry Lee, after grandpa's boss. In order to save shoe leather my father went to school barefoot, as did most kids. He won an award from the principal several years for being the last kid to wear shoes to school.
When he was 17, dad wanted to drop out of school and join the Marine Corps. My grandfather, who only had a third-grade education, refused to let him. So at 17 he joined the Marine Corps Reserve and when he graduated he went on active duty. He did three tours in Vietnam and retired after 23 years.
Between his first and second tour he re-connected with my mother and married her. She had been abandoned by her first husband when she was pregnant with my brother. That didn't bother dad. He just adopted my brother.
After retirement he became a Deputy Sherrif and went to college part time. My father is the first person in our family to have a college education, (we suspect he's the first with a high school education).
He retired a second time, as a corrections officer, after 22 years. He then got a job working security for a Federal Court and retired for good when he couldn't qualify on the range. By this time he was in his late 70s.
My father was a southern nationalist who believed that we would have been much better off if we'd won the Civil War. However, he rejected bigotry and racism in all forms. When my stepsister met, fell in love with, and married a black man, he and dad became very close friends. Dad brought him onto his NSSA team and they shot together until Clarence was taken from us by cancer.
My father had a deep love of history, which he passed on to me, and wrote a regimental history on the "1st Regiment of Engineers, PACS'. He was working on a book on the Beefsteak Raid when he died.
In 1970-something I found his copy of Avalon Hill's 'Midway' and I've been a gamer ever since.
I was very lucky in that I got to spend a lot of time over the last few years with dad. He went with us on family vacations, usually history themed trips, and trips to eastern North Carolina looking for our ancestors.
My father was a remarkable man. In one lifetime he took our family from a little boy walking to school barefoot to save on shoe leather to my nephew attending Loyola College and not having to work part time to pay for it.
I'm going to miss him. Semper Fi
