{"id":75899,"date":"2016-12-08T09:30:03","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T14:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=75899"},"modified":"2016-12-07T22:39:44","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T03:39:44","slug":"column-a-simple-country-man-a-world-war-ii-christmas-love-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/?p=75899","title":{"rendered":"COLUMN: A Simple Country Man – A World War II Christmas Love Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hobie<\/a>
Hobie Morris<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

by Hobie Morris<\/em><\/p>\n

It is the first peacetime American Christmas in nearly four years. The contagious Christmas\u00a0Eve excitement surges like a powerful electric current through the thousands of hourly\u00a0commuters fleeing in all directions through New York City\u2019s massive Grand Central Railroad Station.<\/p>\n

A tall Army officer carrying a heavy duffle bag on his shoulder slowly limps through the milling\u00a0and pushing crowd. He sits down on the temporary wartime wooden bench. Lt. John Barton is\u00a0just home by troop ship from Europe. He nervously looks up at the huge overhead oval clock.<\/p>\n

It is almost 7 p.m. Would she come? He keeps watching for a sign they had agreed on.<\/p>\n

Strange things often totally unexplainable sometimes happen to people. What follows is a\u00a0special story that happens at Christmas time during WW II. Sadly the special people in this\u00a0story have passed on, but their ripples continue.<\/p>\n

It is early December\u00a01944. Twenty-one-year-old Army Lt. John Barton, a handsome, broad-shouldered native Utican, is home on a short furlough. During his furlough, he enjoys the many\u00a0holiday festivities and excitement in downtown Utica. Despite wartime austerity and rationing,\u00a0Utica is brilliantly aglow with colorful Christmas lights. Familiar music serenading the thousands\u00a0of shoppers in the stores. Smiling Utica policemen, along with Boy Scouts with long poles, help\u00a0the packed crowds to safely cross the many busy intersections.<\/p>\n

John enjoys visiting a popular a bookstore at the corner of Court Street and Genesee. It has a\u00a0small section containing used books. One snowy afternoon while browsing he happens to pick\u00a0up a small, blue covered book of verses. Each page contains carefully penned comments in the\u00a0page\u2019s margin. John thought the hand-written comments were unusually thoughtful. Written in\u00a0the fly leaf in the same handwriting is a name, street but no city. A store clerk pulls out a large\u00a0ledger where records are kept. Incredibly, and for no apparent reason, he discovers that the city had been written down. The mysterious writer is a Colleen Jones, who lives in New York\u00a0City. John buys the book and leaves.<\/p>\n

For reasons that in no way could he explain, he decides in a few days to send this Colleen Jones\u00a0a note. It\u2019s a brief thanks, and he tells her a little bit about himself, that he\u2019ll soon be going\u00a0overseas, and would she like to write him some time?<\/p>\n

A week later John, once again in uniform, is on a New York Central train heading downstate to New York City. His camouflaged troop ship is part of a large, well-protected convoy, heading\u00a0into the frigid, always stormy North Atlantic. Barton was part of a huge number of American\u00a0troops being rushed to Europe to help blunt Germany\u2019s final massive offensive of the war.<\/p>\n

Casualties were tremendous on both sides. During the Battle of the Bulge, he\u2019s wounded three\u00a0times by shrapnel\u2014in both legs and his left arm. But he is soon back in combat.<\/p>\n

Colleen Jones did write. Many letters cross the Atlantic both ways in the next 10 months or so.\u00a0Deeper and deeper their hearts began to touch. From a foxhole on the dangerous German\u00a0border, with dirty and bloody hands and a pencil stub, John scribbles a P. S. to Colleen: \u201cPlease\u00a0send me a photo, so I can carry it in my helmet liner.\u201d Her reply on every occasion is the same.<\/p>\n

Her reply on every occasion is the same.\u00a0If he really liked her, what she looked like didn\u2019t matter. But John still only knew her by her\u00a0letters.<\/p>\n

In his last letter to Colleen, before shipping home, John asked her to meet him in the lobby of\u00a0Grand Central Station on a day and time. Her hasty reply said she would and he would know\u00a0her by the large, single, red Christmas rose pinned on her coat.<\/p>\n

It is time: 7 p.m. His eyes anxiously watch. A beautiful, blonde young woman stops in front\u00a0of him. With a smile on her face, she says mirthfully, \u201cHi, Soldier, going my way?\u201d John was\u00a0momentarily mesmerized by her beauty and luminous, sky blue eyes. He has never seen skin\u00a0that looked like white marble. She wore a green coat, but there is no red rose.<\/p>\n

Then John saw her behind the stunning blonde. She wore a red rose on her plain, threadbare\u00a0coat. She is in her late 40s, gray hair showed around her ears under her wool hat. The blonde\u00a0is quickly walking away out the side door. John wants to follow her so badly, but before him in\u00a0the old coat is the woman who won his heart and he hers.<\/p>\n

The woman wearing the red rose has a pale, deeply lined full face. Something is very kindly\u00a0about her face, especially a warm smile and twinkling gray eyes. John stands and approaches\u00a0her. With his hand out holding the blue covered book of verses that was to be his identification\u00a0to Colleen.<\/p>\n

The lady wearing the red rose smiles at John. (Heartbroken, John knows this can\u2019t be the love\u00a0he had dreamed of so long. But it might be even more precious. A special friendship that God\u00a0in His mysterious way planned for him.)<\/p>\n

John raises his right hand in salute and says to her ,\u201cHello, I\u2019m John Barton and you must be Colleen Jones. So very happy to meet you at last. Would like to go with me to have dinner?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, son,\u201d the elderly lady says \u201cI don\u2019t know what this is all about. All I know, a few minutes\u00a0ago, when I was walking through the station, a pretty blonde girl wearing a green coat, asked\u00a0me if I would wear this red rose on my coat. She said if you should ask me out to dinner, she\u2019ll\u00a0be waiting for you in the restaurant across the street. She told me it was ‘some kind of a test.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Colleen Jones\u2019 incredibly insightful wisdom is that the true nature of one\u2019s heart is its response\u00a0to the unattractive. As Houssage has written, \u201ctell me who you love and I will tell you who you\u00a0are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t this the true Christmas message?<\/p>\n

Lt. John Barton takes the red rose in his hand, Colleen Jones is waiting.<\/p>\n

Hobie Morris of Brookfield is a simple country man.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Hobie Morris It is the first peacetime American Christmas in nearly four years. The contagious Christmas\u00a0Eve excitement surges like a powerful electric current through the thousands of hourly\u00a0commuters fleeing in all directions through New York City\u2019s massive Grand Central Railroad Station. A tall Army officer carrying a heavy duffle bag on his shoulder slowly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42368,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-top-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43meu-jKb","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/madisoncountycourier.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Morris-head-new.jpg?fit=226%2C287&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madisoncountycourier.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}