Everything else
on the 27th day of January in 1945 paled (as it should) next to the Russian
troops throwing open the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau while radio stations in
this country were playing “Don’t Fence Me In” by Bing Crosby and the Andrews
Sisters. While the troops were finding 468 dead inmates, folks in New York were
catching Martha Graham and Dance Company at Jordon Hall performing “Appalachian
Spring” at the Saturday matinee. While the troops were liberating 2800 people
abandoned by the SS without any provisions to survive, William “Willie” J.
Glunk was being born in Astoria, New York, about the time Noah Berry, Jr. was
preparing for an opening and run of 504 performances in Up In Central Park at
the Century Theatre with book and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. While Lois Ada
Comfort was being born in Doniphan, Maryland, Raymond Cothern in Baton Rouge,
David Hermes in Baraboo, Wisconsin, while these and countless others were being
born, hopefully with joyous cries at new life, the Soviets were inventorying
the storage buildings and finding 836,255 women’s coats and dresses, over
368,000 men’s suits, and human hair totaling seven tons. While Oscar Schindler
was saving 85 Jews from a train in Brunnlitz that had been locked for a week,
in Bound Brook, New Jersey, William Hennessy was being born and would live 67
years to the day, the 27th of January, both his birth and death date.
In Baton Rouge
and other places in Louisiana that day, there were no ironic newspaper
headlines, only straight-forward reporting during war-weary times and the
seemingly necessary one-sided reporting of race. Harold Joseph, Negro, died
that Friday in New Orleans Charity Hospital of an abdominal gunshot wound
received while resisting arrest during a jewelry store robbery Thursday night.
His partner, Robert Guidry, Negro, was also shot while escaping with the goods
and was in serious condition. No doubt Patrolmen Jay Sedgebeer and Paul
Oestricker were busy filling out reports about Joseph and Guidry refusing to
halt while fleeing and how many shots were fired and by whom. Also in New
Orleans, Rock P. Scallan was sentenced to 60 days in jail by Judge George Platt
for driving a truck while drunk earlier on December 23rd. In Baton Rouge,
despite objections from the Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals, the sale would go forward of 22 horses and mules no longer fit for
duty at Angola, the state penitentiary. The Society cited a law prohibiting the
sale of “debilitated, diseased and lame horses and mules in cities of 10,000 or
more.”
On that winter
day in January, while Robert Guidry, Negro, struggled to survive his gunshot
wound and the family of his partner prepared for a funeral, while Patton’s
Third Army was crossing the Our River and capturing Oberhausen and while the
6th Ranger Battalion and the 6th Army Special Reconnaissance Unit began a
rescue behind enemy lines of 500 American, British, and Dutch prisoners-of-war
in the Philippines, Onetia Mae Wilson Cothern was 31 years old and giving birth
shortly before noon at the Baton Rouge General Hospital, right across Florida
Boulevard and two short blocks west of Bernardo Street. Willie Talmadge Cothern
was 33 years old and waiting with other expectant fathers for the birth of his
child. Willie Von and Wayne Harolyn at ages 12 and 6 were in school, perhaps
with vague inklings that the attention they had been receiving was being
splintered into unequal time, that the balance of power was shifting under them
much like the uneasy alliance among all armies, all families.
