good talk

The most common name for an English King is "Edward," and my father met the last of these. During the Korean War my father was Officer-in-Charge of the Brook Park Tank Plant, also known as the Cadillac Tank Plant, outside of Cleveland. My father was a reserve officer who didn't even like the Army because it didn't produce anything. In its wisdom at the time all able-bodied men who attended Akron U. had to take ROTC and this provided an officer corps for WW II, all they had to do was plug it in. For WW II he had to go overseas but for the Korean War, not as big, he stayed stateside. We never lived in Cleveland, the Army gave him a car and he drove back and forth, hey we were Akronites. Ha, ha, yes that's what a resident of Akron, Ohio is called. The Duke of Windsor, the former Edward VIII who gave up his throne "For the woman I love," as part of his official duties as English Royalty toured the plant as it was the largest tank plant in the country at that time. A picture was taken afterwards of the participants in this event and there was my father and other Army officers in uniform and the Duke looked very dapper in a suit but there was also this little fellow wearing factory workers' clothes. I said to my father, "Who's he?" And my father replied, "He was a worker at the plant who was from England and he wanted to meet the Duke." I've been told by an English guy that Eddie was probably too soft-hearted to be King, this guy was telling me about a Welsh Coal Miners Strike that Eddie had gotten all worked up about. Nobody would have wanted this guy in that picture except for the Duke, believe me this guy looked terrible, my father wouldn't have wanted that worker in the picture and neither would anybody else. Edward Windsor didn't want to be the King of England but he really did care about his People, it didn't matter how grubby they looked, it didn't matter how grubby they were, he really did care about them. I once told another English guy about this picture and he got a real serious look on his face and said, "That's a very historic picture," and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I don't know if it still exists, I'm not in it. I think my older brother, Bob, might have it.