Time Marches On, But Not Always Forward

In 1941, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two brothers, related to six US presidents, enlisted in the Army.

In 1944, these brothers, Stanley and Ralph Dunham went ashore at Normandy and served their Nation fighting the Nazi's across France, Italy and Germany. Another young American, Stanley's, brother-in-law, Charles Payne, fought with Patton's Third Army and was among the troops that liberated the prisoners at the Nazi Death camp of Buchenwald.

In 1945, upon return from Europe, Stanley and his wife Madelyn, who had served the nation's war efforts working on a B-29 assembly line, settled down and started a family.

In 1961, a grandson was born to the Dunham's at the Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

In 2008, that grandson won the election for President of the United States by a 9,522,186 plurality in an election noted for the highest voter turnout in 40 years.

In 2009, on the 5th day of the 9th month, a group of Americans gathered at Bureau County's Soldiers and Sailor's Park in Princeton Illinois, a park dedicated to honor the service and sacrifice of all of America's service men and women. On that day, the grandson of Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, on this hallowed ground, was compared to Adolph Hitler, his name was mocked and his citizenship questioned.

Today, Sergeant Stanley Dunham rests in the Punchbowl National Cemetery where he was buried with full military honors. The light from Sergeant Dunham's, and his family's sacrifice, and service, will brighten the shadow that one day darkened Bureau County's place of honor on that regrettable day in 2009, a day that will be not long remembered and an event that will be tossed on the trash pile of history.

mike kohr
Princeton, Illinois