Hard Work and Home Cooking Sustain Octogenarian Through Tough Times
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
By Cathy Patton
WELCH – His has been called “The Great Generation.” When you know his life story and the story of others ones like him, you'll understand why.
“I was raised as rough as you can get,” says 82-year-old Clarence “Red” McBride. “My daddy, Sam McBride, did sharecropping in Tazewell County , Virginia . My mother, Celia, got sick when I was young and I had to drop out of school when I was about 12 to help support the family. When she died, my baby brother was just three-years-old.
“My grandfather was a prospector in McDowell County and helped find seams of coal for coal companies. We ended up moving to Skygusty and I got a logging job. I had nine brothers, and we all worked.”
In addition to the tough times at home, McBride says earnestly that his looks also caused him problems.
“I was a red-headed, freckle-faced kid, and that was a disgrace to society back then,” he laughs. “It seemed that almost everyone who came along thought they had to peel my head. I had to learn to protect myself.”
The self-preservation that McBride learned while growing up served him well when he became a hand-loader at No.6 Gary and later when he was drafted during World War II.
“No, I didn't like the Army,” he says, pausing to remember the name of his company. “I was in Fox Company, 43 rd Infantry Division, and served in New Guinea and the Philippines . It was bad. We all thought we were going to die, so we stuck together as best we could. We made the decision to fight until we were killed.”
As feared, death came too soon for many of McBride's buddies. When it claimed his commander, PFC McBride was placed in charge of two platoons that together numbered around 100.
“They say I was a commander for about 16 months, but it didn't seem that long to me,” he says. “I never would ask a man to do what I wouldn't do. I went first all the time.”
McBride attributes his survival to two things; “The Lord kept me here because he had something else for me to do, and because I'd never let a radio man anywhere near me. They usually stayed near the officers and the Japanese were fond of picking the officers off.”
Before it was over, McBride had suffered 34 bouts of malaria, was shell-shocked and had a number of wounds that continue to plague him to this day.
“They had to carry me off the battlefield,” he says. “I got steel in my mouth. A grenade went off between my feet and legs and I ended up with shrapnel in them. They still bother me,” he says.
After recovering at a hospital in Japan , McBride was promoted to Sergeant and sent home in 1946.
“They told me that I'd received the promotion during the war, but I didn't know nothing about it. I was ready to go home. I didn't want those Sergeant stripes and told them so, but they sent me to a back room and made me put them on. I wasn't about to argue with them.”
The typically good-natured McBride may not have argued about his stripes, but there was a time during the war that he gave another commander a piece of his mind.
“The commander thought he knew everything and was trying to be cute. I knew he was going to get my men hurt and I told him so. He got two of them hurt real bad. For what I said to him, he could have had me put in front of a firing squad, but I didn't care. I cussed him out anyway.”
McBride knew he was due several medals because of his war-time service, but he wasn't about to argue about that either. Happy to be discharged, he returned home and 10 days later returned to work at No.6 Gary. It took 62 years for the father of four to finally receive the recognition that he deserved. He smiles modestly when he explains how it occurred.
“My son-in-law contacted his Congressman and the Congressman, who was on some kind of special committee, got them for me,” McBride says. “They say I didn't get them when I was supposed to because the Japanese had destroyed our records. I got the metals, along with the special Sergeant stripes, July 18.”
McBride is pleased with the long over-due Purple Hearts, Bronze Star and Rifle Medal, he finally received, but not nearly as pleased as he is with the life he made for himself and his wife Polly and their four children, Gerald, Betty Jean, Lois and Harold.
Returning home, it wasn't long before McBride faced a more subtle but equally daunting foe, fluctuations in the coal industry that created economic deprivation and hardship on his family and scores of others like them.
“I was determined to never accept public assistance,” McBride said. “The only thing I knew to do was work, so that's what I did. I'd work at the mine and then I'd come home and work on the farm. And the kids worked, too. My oldest daughter would always go home after school and help Polly around the house. I'd pick up the other three and we'd go door-to-door selling fresh eggs and sausage. We'd regularly be out peddling then to midnight. The next day would roll around and we'd do it again. I know it was hard on the kids, but it taught them to work. We never went hungry when the mines were idle.”
At one time, McBride's 75-acre Browns Creek spread was home to 3,000 laying hens, 156 hogs and 75 cows. Depending on the economy, his health and his family's needs, over the years, he either increased or decreased the farming. Never, though, did he ever consider giving it up.
“It's how I was raised and what I know to do,” he says. “I got broke up pretty bad in the mines and Polly would have to take over, but we did what we had to do.”
In explaining his accidents McBride skips the minor mining accidents and goes straight to the major one. “In 1953, a mining accident left me with a fractured skull and my back broken in four places. I was off work a year, but then I went back. Mining was more dangerous back then, but I always loved it.”
In 1998, both McBride and his wife were severely injured when methane leaked into a well.
“I flipped on the light switch in my pump house and the next thing I knew the walls blew out. I got burned pretty good and my eye was injured, but Polly got the worst of it. She was in the hospital for a while.”
Though he still bears the scars from the methane explosion, the mining accidents and the war, McBride harbors no bitterness about the ill fate that has befallen him periodically during his life.
In retrospect, he feels blessed to have overcome his misfortune. Throughout his life, McBride has also served as a forest fire fighter supervisor, president of the local union, mine boss, and he and his wife have been members of the North Welch Church of God for 50 years. He has also cultivated a special low-acid “Honey Bee” tomato. Because he has always been industrious and diligent in his affairs, McBride says he was able to provide for his family, as well as his father and several brothers at various times during their lives.
“You have to have drive to do what you need to do,” he says. “I wouldn't do anything differently. I take each day as it comes, and look forward to learning something new from it. I try to take each day and make everything out of it that I possible can,”
McBride smiles, then adds, “Hard work and home cooking always helped me. My mother was one of the best cooks around, and almost 58 years ago I married somebody who can cook exactly like her. Most every morning I eat fresh eggs, salt-cured pork and home-made biscuits. I'm comfortable now. I've had a rough life, but a good one.”
