Monday editorial: Remembering Curran M. Jones
The obituary appeared on a Sunday in the Post-Dispatch more than 39 years ago. The headline read, “Area Sailor Killed in War.”
The report conveyed the essential facts:
“Curran M. Jones, navy hospitalman second class, son of Mr. and Mrs. Berkley Jones, 549 North Taylor Avenue, Kirkwood, was killed in Vietnam last Monday, the Department of Defense reported to his family.
“Jones, 21 years old, was graduated from Kirkwood High School and enlisted in the Navy in 1967. He had been in Vietnam six weeks, serving with the First Marine Division, when he was killed in action near Da Nang.
“Surviving in addition to his parents are six brothers (Berkley Jr., Maury, Fairfax, Courtney, Danny and Linton) and one sister (Ceci) all of Kirkwood.”
Fairfax Jones sat in his downtown law office last week, searching his memory for details of that time. He was one of Curran’s older brothers, five years his senior.
A young lawyer at the time of Curran’s death, he remembers being at the Division of Workman’s Compensation when his office called and asked that he return immediately.
He remembers being told that his brother Curran was dead, that Curran had been on patrol with a company of Marines and that he was killed when another Marine stepped on a booby trap.
He remembers having to wait 10 days for his brother’s return.
He remembers the funeral Mass at St. Peter Catholic Church in Kirkwood, all the seats taken and people standing. He remembers the Villa Duchesne classmates of Ceci, his younger sister, sitting together.
He remembers the Rev. Francis Guentner telling the assembled mourners that “if we could see where Curran is now, there wouldn’t be any tears.”
“There were plenty of tears that day,” he remembers.
But memories of Curran Jones, the boy and young man, are fleeting and impressionistic for an older brother nearly
four decades later.
“He was a sweet kid. Cheerful. Adventurous,” Fairfax tells us. “He got out of high school and didn’t know what he wanted to do. So, he enlisted in the Navy and trained as a medic. He was excited about the work. He knew the danger he was facing.”
Curran’s older brother wondered what might have been. “You know, it would have all turned out good. But he was cheated.”
Ceci’s memories are concrete. And vivid.
She remembers being picked up from volleyball practice after school that day. Her older brother Courtney was behind the wheel. Of all the other Jones kids, Courtney was closest to Curran. He burst out crying when he told her the news.
Things were difficult at the Jones house after Curran died, Ceci said. She doesn’t remember much about her junior and senior years in high school. She was the only child still at home; all the boys either were away at school or starting their adult lives. All except Curran.
Ceci remembers her brother Curran as strong and handsome — a kid who had been scrawny when he was young, but who was disciplined and exercised and built himself up.
She remembers looking out her bedroom window upstairs, watching him cut the grass, running as he pushed the mower.
She has a little sister’s memory of a resourceful older brother, recalling how she marveled at how he built a headboard for his bed, one with shelves and cubbies for stowing his stuff.
Mostly, Ceci remembers that Curran was such a nice boy. She remembers how considerate he was, how this handsome young man would be equally friendly and engaging and respectful to all the girls, not just the prettiest ones.
She remembers how their mother, a diminutive woman, was struggling in the garden one day to break up some dirt with a shovel. Curran, who was shaving, happened to glance out the window. He raced down the stairs with shaving cream on his face, took the shovel out of his mother’s hands. “He said, ‘Mom, I’ll do that,’ and with his big foot — boom, boom, boom — it was done.”
Ceci tells her son, whose middle name is Curran, about the uncle he never met.
April 1969 was a month of many tears in this community and, over the years since, the source of many what-might-have-beens.
In addition to Curran Jones, it brought news of these combat deaths:
• Army Pfc. Donald L. Nixon, 21, of Pine Lawn.
• Marine Lance Cpl. Charles J. Wilson, 20, of St. Ann.
• Army Spec. 5 Robert L. Rodgers, 20, of Meacham Park.
• Army Sgt. Harold L. Greever, 29, of St. Louis.
• Marine Pfc. Victor J. Cartier, 19, of Webster Groves.
• Army Spec. 4 Joseph J. Spinnicchia, 22, of St. Louis.
• Marine Pfc. John H. McSwine, 22, of St. Louis.
• Marine Pfc. Melvin J. Freise, 19, of Venice.
• Army Spec. 4 Courtney A. Skinner, 21, of St. Louis.
• Army Pfc. Garry L. Hayes of Jennings.
• Army Pfc. Robert J. Goedde, 22, of Maplewood.
• Army Pfc. Wallace J. Mosley, 21, of St. Louis.
• Army Spec. 4 Lawrence J. Budzinski, 23, of St. Ann.
• Marine Lance Cpl. Andrew B. Rankin, 19, of St. Peters.
• Marine Pfc. Vincent Vosylius of East St. Louis.
Today, Memorial Day, we try to remember them. And the men and women like them — most of them young, but not all — before and since.
Thank you, editorial board. There should be no red or blue politics when remembering those who gave their life (or had it taken from them, as Andy Rooney said on 60 Minutes tonight), mourning the sadness of their loss for their families and friends, or the determination to find other ways to address and work out the world’s problems, in Iraq, Israel and Palestine, Darfur, Pakistan, all the world’s countries and continents in trauma.
Lots of needs in this country, but with millions of people, often children, starving and dying of illness around the world, with our richness and greatness, we need to find a way to end that suffering, and hopefully the next administration and congress will find ways to do that. A 10 year plan to end that famine and suffering would be the way to go, and in our own interest to do so, I’m sure. And that also should go a long way to ending the world’s hostilities and the deaths of our young people and old trying to help defend our interests, real or imagined, on those distant shores. Let Iraq be the last. And tho the internecine struggles that we see often have religious or ethic overtones, the reality to me has always seemed that it’s people with not enough to share battling over the anger. As they say, the politics is so vicious because the stakes are so small. The way I sometimes have metaphorically put it is that middle-class people dont go to war because they might dent the SUV. Which leads to my last point that I made in letters to the editors (none published) the day of or after 9-11, that a billion/trillion dollars in economic aid from this country will go farther to end terrorism than a billion/trillion dollars in warfare, and I still believe that. Sure it would be costly, and the needs at home are great, but not only is is the right thing to do, but in our own interest as well. If we have money for tax-cuts for the rich, unneeded farm subsidies, and hosts of other unnecessaries, let’s make helping the world around us a priority too. We had a 10 year plan to put people on the moon and we did. Let’s have a 10 year plan to end world hunger and medical suffering, and maybe memorial days in the future will have the sadness of remembering past losses but no new ones.