Hi Swab-Jockey:
That's how the letter between brothers begins. Lester, pictured above, was just out of boot camp in 1944, 18 years old and a recent high school grad. Eugene was a seasoned sailor, with three years under his belt, and welcomed his little squirt brother into the fold. The letter is salty and sprinkled with jargon and slang, a delicious glimpse of why the brother who "got wild" was later brought up to Captain's Mast. For me, 70 years later, it's a delight.
I've spent the past couple of days reading every single letter and postcard in bundles that were banded together with crumbling rubber bands. It's a one-sided picture, comprised almost entirely of Lester's letters home to Mom and Pop, back in Iowa. Scrubbed though they probably were, to save the sensibility of his mother and maiden aunt, hints of a wider experience come through. But what communicated to me was the first glimpse I've ever had of my father as an emerging young man, years before I was born.
Ida Keuhling and Ralph E. Bundy on their wedding day, 1918
What I knew of my dad was almost entirely on the surface. He wasn't given to talking about his feelings. First and foremost, he was a musician. Everything else was an add-on. That aspect of his life was well in place by the time he joined the war, and gave him considerable anxiety during the two years he served. Nearly every letter laments his lack of a piano, of practice time, his loss of technique and fear that he would never regain his concert career path. When I was growing up, he still sought pianos where ever we were, despite the fact that we had a sweet little baby grand at home. He would duck into churches, bars and restaurants, music stores or hotel lobbies. He could not pass up a chance to sit and play, even if it annoyed his wife and embarrassed his kids.
I never thought of him as a small town guy with small town attitudes, but his letters reveal where he came from. We moved around a great deal when I was young, every year or two, and finally landed in Europe, teaching for the military dependent schools. My experience was one of openness, tolerance, and acceptance, though when I think of it, Dad was far more likely to criticize people than Mom ever was. It came as a shock to me to see the casual racism and jingoistic attitude expressed in my father's World War II letters. It reminds me not only that we are all subject to the cultural and normative prejudices of our times, but that we can be completely unaware of them, as well. And it begs the question I ask myself frequently ---- where are my own blind spots? What do I say or write that is unwittingly offensive?
I feel like I've been on a journey this week. So many questions arise, personal to me and my family, as well as larger speculation about the "Greatest Generation" that has come to be revered in what is undoubtedly an unrealistic haze of nostalgia and forgetfulness. They were boys, many of those who fought the war. Dad spent his two years of service not heroically saving the world, but throwing-up over the side of the "peanut shell" minesweeper he was assigned to. Join the Navy and see the world? All he wanted was to go back to his hometown, go to college, resume the life that had been interrupted to send him off to the bays and harbors of the Pacific. Repeatedly, he told his folks ---- who apparently were urging him to be happy that he could see so many foreign sights ---- that he shared too little space with too many men, the chow was not very good, fresh water was sometimes not available, he had to stand watches at all odd hours and rarely got anything but "spyglass liberty" to see these wonderful foreign sights.
Of course, he always was something of a hypochondriac and loved to let everyone know when he was unhappy.
These letters gave me a peek into his interior life, at least when he was so very young. He was a vividly descriptive writer. He had many dreams and plans for the future. He worried about his invalid mother. He sorely missed his piano and his teacher. He confessed that he didn't fit in because he didn't carouse like his shipmates, because he played classical music, because once he had run through all the westerns and mysteries aboard, he pleaded for someone back home to send him Shakespeare.
I've spent a lifetime thinking that my unexpected arrival in the world derailed my father's life. He had to get married. He had to support a family. If it weren't for me, and my untimely appearance, he could have been a concert pianist. Even after enough therapy and logic to realize that wasn't true, I don't think I got it until now. He had derailed long before I came along, for reasons unrelated to my mother, my siblings, or me.
Happy birthday, Lester William Bundy. 70 years ago you graduated from Teacher's College High School in Cedar Falls on your 18th birthday, and promptly followed so many other young people into the war effort. Tomorrow you would have been 88 years old.
Lester and my son, Andrew after a recital duet
