Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

   Jacques Timothe Boucher sieur de Montbreun, or as he is better known in Nashville, Timothy Demonbreun, was born in Boucherville New France on March 23, 1747. Boucherville is now part of the province of Quebec Canada. Timothy was born into French nobility. His great grandfather Pierre Boucher was the founder of Quebec and Boucherville was named after him. Timothy was the 2nd child of Etienne Boucher sieur de Montbreun and Delle Marie Racicot. Etienne was a militia leader who fought under Montcalm against the British General Wolfe on the Plains Of Abraham in the French and Indian War in 1759. He is believed to have been wounded in that battle. Because of Montcalm's defeat the British were forced to relinquish control of New France to the British and we now know it as the country of Canada. He was married to a French Canadian woman named Therese Archange Gibault and she would eventually have 5 children by Timothy. At one point she was captured by the Indians and ten years...

   Maria Restituta Kafka was an Austrian nun who was executed by Hitler for the crime of standing up for religious freedom and free speech. She was born on May 4, 1894. The same year that my grandmother Ella Belle Frogge Brown was born. Sister Maria is honored in the Catholic church as a virgin and martyr. Pope John Paul beatified her in 1998. She was born Helen Kafka into a shoemakers family and grew up in Vienna, Austria. At the age of 20 she became a nun and in 1919 became a surgical nurse. After Hitler rose to power she became an outspoken opponent of his regime. She placed a crucifix in each room of a new hospital wing. The Nazi's ordered her to take them down and she refused. Many on the left claim that Hitler's regime was pro Christian but it really wasn't. It could be more correctly identified as pagan and hostile to Christianity. She was arrested in 1942 and charged with "aiding and abetting the enemy in the betrayal of the fatherland and for plotting high tre...

Tony is the sailor to the right on the front row My nephew Tony Mahon's life was not easy when he was growing up in the greater Nashville area but he has grown into good man who loves his family and is a great American serving his country in the U.S. Navy. He is presently stationed at Arlington serving in conjunction with the U.S. Army;s Old Guard. Tony is to the right  

 Over the last few years we have all heard about Democrat cities removing Confederate statues. The latest was the statue of Stonewall Jackson in Richmond Virginia. During the George Floyd riots Democrat mobs destroyed many of these monuments. I remember one statue in particular that was destroyed. The monument of Edward Ward Carmack that stood on the south side of the Tennessee State capital for the first 70 years of my life. Every time I passed that statue I always wondered who he was. That is until I read his (Pledge To The South) at a small Confederate cemetery at Beech Grove Tennessee which is the site of the battle of Hoovers Gap. I began studying about Carmack and found out that he was a Democrat politician, lawyer and newspaper publisher who incited a deadly race riot in Memphis Tennessee in 1892 that killed a number of innocent blacks. His editorials targeted anti lynching crusader Ida Wells.  Wells was called the "Mother of the Civil Rights movement" and she spoke ou...

 On January 2, 1864 Confederate General Patrick Cleburne brought in the the New Year with a bang. He had the audacity to propose the arming of slaves along with granting them and their family freedom if they would fight for the Confederacy. Although his proposal was only heard by a few Confederate Officers it was enough to shake a few of them to their very core. Arming slaves was a taboo subject in the South. Something that the mere thought of had frightened them for many years. Mainly because of the bloody slave rebellion in Haiti in 1791 and the Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia in 1831. Yet by 1864 the South was clearly losing the war. The year 1863 saw several turning points. In July Robert E. Lee had been beaten at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had fallen to Ulysses S. Grant which split the Confederacy in half. The Confederate Army of Tennessee, the army that Cleburne served in, had been defeated decisively at Chattanooga in November. Now the door to the deep South was wide open to ...

 It was good to be home even if it was just for a few weeks. I love Tennessee in the late Spring and Oregon can't compare in my book. All too soon my leave was over and my departure date of May 31, 1970 arrived. Orders called for me to fly from Nashville to New York on American Airlines, From there I would fly Pan American to Istanbul with layovers in London and Frankfort. At Istanbul I would change to Turkish Airlines and fly into Adana Turkey, with a layover in Ankara. Adana is the home of Incirlik AFB. There I would process into Tuslog Detachment 93, which would be my duty station for the next year. After processing in at Incirlik I would fly military aircraft to Erhac AFB near Malatya Turkey. This all sounded simple enough to me. My heart was heavy as I packed to leave that morning. Debbie drove me to the airport where I kissed her and Robbie goodbye. I boarded the plane and through my tears I could see Debbie waving from the observation deck while Robbie played near her feet, ...