#432 Joe Bonsall (The Oak Ridge Boys) Shares a Poignant 4th of July message about his mother caring for his combat-wounded father.

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Jesus family this Christmas, give them six explanation see chickens and camping Joe I specifically asked you on the show lot about blisters here on the show right now. This network have followed you, of course, for a lifetime, but they may not know the journey your families had and this is been July 4 week we can talk about this great country. I know that you your your blood runs red white blue but people don't know your story and your particular your your mother story of her journey with your dad and I would like this is all detailed and in your book, G.I. Joe and Lily, which is a wonderful book if you get a chance please go get this book. I actually teared up when I read it. It is a beautiful story of your folks. Tell us a little bit about your mom and dad, well my my mama got are both World War II veterans by both pretty much ran away from home and join the Army and my mother was a woman going to court lack and my father with men might be in country and on the first wave of the packet the day on the day at Utah Beach.

He fought 50 days then and got hit hard in St. Lo, France after taking out a German machine gun that single-handedly. He was awarded the bronze Star got purple hearts are being shot shot up pretty badly and and a silver star and those metals are why he's buried in Arlington today along with my mother. They met when he came home from the war. My mother was working like a fit with women's Army Corps and my Long Island at Mitchell field in Iraq regarding but I forget the word you know getting the guidance correctly back into the states and my mother met my father, then they got married three days later they had me in 1948 when my dad was 39 years old. His work in factories and 39 he had a debilitating stroke.

He had a piece of shrapnel catching this carotid artery, and it cut off the blood flow to his brain damage the spring. It took away his right arm for the rest of his life. He never got anything in my right arm again his leg. He could walk on it with a cane for several years but eventually was wheelchair-bound and his speech with 98% going, they could say he could speak maybe 2% of what you know you that you could understand and most of them are curse words that he learned in the veterans hospital when he first came out of came out at about being unconscious so anyway fact of the matter is that the spending some time in the veterans hospital from trying to rehabilitate him a government far as they could send them home and my mother looked after, until the day he died 1975. She was so dedicated to him. I think the be real honest.

My mother was not only a wonderful soul and a great Christian Folden and my inspiration to this day, but my mother, I believed she loved this country. She cried when the flag went by, she loved those men that served and I think they all were encapsulated in my father. I think in him, she saw the sacrifice that every one of those guys made to solve the more common home.

Many of them in pieces and she did her words were I I won't throw them away like an old shoe.

I remember her saying that and she never did Manheim and she looked after him and we all looked after him, but there was just nothing like the dedication that my mother had to making sure that he was taken care of and looked after she she she spent her whole life doing that yes, she loved him, but man it was even more than that it was that was that some kind of angelic God-given you know you talk about caregiving Peter I read your book as well and I know what you've been through in your life. I don't I don't know that everybody can do it. I don't know that I can do it, or that I could do it. I like to think I could.

I mean I love my wife. We been married a long time. She's precious to me from happening. Iraq II think I could take on the mantle like you did but you know you you just thought you just don't know if it's a hard row to hoe and my mother man was just magnificent. She said she just was magnificent and they rest together Arlington Cemetery him that if it's it's it's that they had a great love story. Yes, as you grew up in this environment and you the book G.I. Julie Jill G.I. Joe and Lily was rather candid you. You did not gloss over the painful parts of growing up in a home with a wounded fit of alcoholism. All these kinds of things were were part of this journey with your dad and your mother and me. She really she was an extraordinary woman. Clearly in it that comes up so beautiful in the book and you wanted your father to you, to dishonor him you just had to just we have to look at it for what it is or my father when he was even an old age. Him and I got very close at the X he got older we would I would go up there to Philly and surprise visit him in the little row house.

We grew up in an and we would sit in the back kitchen there on the table and play penny-ante poker for six, seven, eight hours all night long and the pennies turned Nichols which turned to quarters. Many thought getting out the green I love so much money to my father. It's amazing stroke victim and all he could take her place poker must learn that in the Army, but I gotta tell you, he always he would be candid with me and he would say Bonsall that's what he called me and he make his hand like a gonna go law, a God thing will know know know and he paid for that were his whole life and in his younger days.

Yeah, he drank he had nightmares. He was a pain in the candlelit with some to be honest, because of what he went through, but we all understood them though at the same time my mother especially and I remember you saying that the machine gun. What would you say Joe about families of that city wounded like this because we have so many that are coming back with all types of traumatic brain injuries, all types of neurological events that never recover from this and your you to we had your mother came from different stock you know she's she's she's an extraordinary woman. But there there not allow your mother's out there, but there a lot of people out there have to do what your mother did when automating things and you know you know at your book and encourage so many people I have heard over the years since my book came out with 3003 now, but it still felt regularly. I've heard from so many young soldiers and their wives who wanted to be like my mother. After reading that book and it's always blessed my heart and I know it certainly would hurt if she knew that the young soldiers of today were reading her story is use the pallet you're going to write my story on Joey at always tell me and I was promised her I would and I wish he had lived at that that the see the book but I I I think she knows that I thought I read her story, but to get back to your thought there in your exactly right. War is hell absolute hell battle is hell. You see things in your adrenaline rush is such that there is nothing like it at all and then to come back to normal figure tried to is very hard for these men. It was hard for my father. I saw it up close, man.

It was ugly and our young people today have seen things and done things I equate it like this. Have you ever been in a car wreck. I mean like a really good bang up car wreck or maybe you could have even died. The noise and smell the bent medal that sounds everything that happened. You're right there that adrenaline that happens I was in a wreck like that one time and every time I walked into my garage and could smell that smell of the oil or whatever in the garage. I got a little creeped out for a long time because of that, Rick stayed in my mind combat is like that feeling every day of every week of every month continue these men go through this for days and days and days and days.

What happens to that adrenaline rush where does it go visit even out the just go crazy and I think that we need a strong sense of understanding of these people because it's tough. If you've ever been a good fistfight growing up in Philly, I was in a few think that rush that happens when when you get punched in the face of your punching somebody in the face I've done it. It's a heck of a rush.

Combat is worse than that and its continuous appraiser a big told mantle on the mind and the body and the spirit and the spirit of of a young man and we just need to understand if the these guys better and we need to take care of them better not.

I do think president from trying to do that and and we need to and we need to look after him that that that they're the best of the state that they gave of themselves and I think we owe it to them. But you're right. I don't know. I like to think my mother's are out there. I like to think there's people out there you're out there.

I think I'm out there like I said earlier I don't know for sure though, but the if it's tough it's tough. This PDF will thing is is really hard with Dr. Jill Bonsall of the Oak Ridge boys talked about his journey in his family's journey through caring for his father who was horribly wounded during World War II and his mother took him from lessons like Jill, we only got about a minute left.

If you want to see more about joke go to Joseph Bonsall.com Joseph Bonsall.com Joe, I just want you to know, and I appreciate you calling a just just take a moment to spotlight these wounded vets and their families. And I'm sorry we bumped up against the clock. It we got a run, but thank you so much and I don't have a backup. You're doing a great work. Good luck on your show brother.

Thank you, Jill Bonsall of the Oak Ridge boys. If you see a wounded vet. Look at their family as well.

Look at their family.

This is when Joe's messages and G.I. Joe and Lily go to Joseph Bonsall.com for more. This is hope for the caregiver will be right back don't go away and you never struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you. I'm Gracie Rosenberger in 1983 I experienced a horrific car accident leading 80 surgeries in both legs and became questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me. But over time the questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God that understanding along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs led me to establish standing with help more than a dozen years we been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people on a regular basis.

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