Fw: [weihsien_camp] Fw: Museum returns Weihsien parachute silk

Subject: Museum returns Weihsien parachute silk

Leopold, Please seethat the Weihsien net gets this,

Thank you,
Mary

The Smithsonian’s Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., has returned to me a piece of parachute silk embroidered with the liberation day date and the scene of our seven heroes parachuting from the B-24 overhead. Next to each parachute, in the order in which they dropped, each liberator has pencilled his autograph.

Since 2004, when The Museum of American History opened its exhibit, The Price of Freedom, America’s Wars, the museum has displayed this piece of art from Weihsien with a collection of Weihsien photographs and treasures.

Where did it come from? In 1997, when I successfully tracked down the American liberators, Carol Orlich, widow of liberator, T/5 Peter Orlich, gave me this treasure which she told me had been folded for years in a dresser drawer, almost forgotten, in their bedroom. Carol, who died this year, and I were never able to find out what lady embroidered this piece of parachute silk and gave it to Peter as a gift when he was departing from Weihsien for his next assignment in Tsingtao. Carol told me she thought that teenager Betty Lambert might have been the one who gave it to Peter. You may recall that Peter, the radio operator on the team, was the youngest American, single, and the object of love from young and old in Weihsien. In those few weeks, Betty became Peter’s girl.

A bit of history: “Eddie” Wang Cheng Han, the Chinese interpreter, was younger.

Before this treasure went to the museum, I showed it often to audiences and to small groups to whom I was telling the story of Weihsien. Sworn in as a member of the New Jersey General Assembly in January, 1998, I had been invited a few sessions later to show this parachute silk and tell my story on the platform in the hallowed General Assembly chambers. (This is New Jersey’s House of Commons.) The chamber was packed that day — standing room only -- when this General Assembly surprised me to tears by bringing to the platform Weihsien liberator, Ensign Jimmy Moore, flown in from Dallas, Texas. On the platform of the Assembly chamber, a surprise reunion after 57 years! I was still holding this piece of parachute silk when I was hugging Jimmy Moore. The New Jersey TV Network cameraman wept, he said, so he could hardly focus his lens. Jimmy Moore, son of Baptist missionaries to China, had attended and graduated from the Chefoo School. You’ll recall that the whole Chefoo School, students and teachers, were interned in Weihsien. Jimmy was one of us.

The parachute tells its own story. The lady had finished embroidering the scene: the date — August 17, 1945 — the B-24, the roof of the church, the liberators and their parachutes. But the emboidery stops abruptly after finishing the signatures of Ray Hanchulak and halfway through Lt. James J. Hannon. I can only guess. Did she give this to Peter — unfinished — when Peter Orlich was hurriedly leaving Weihsien?

I feel happy the embroidery of the signatures is unfinished. The un-embroidered signatures are so clear in the hand writing of each liberator.

Some of you have visited this extraordinary, now-permanent, exhibit, The Price of Freedom. So you will wonder, as I did, why this piece of parachute silk has been removed and returned to me.

“Routine object rotation” doesn’t say enough, so let me add the letter from the Museum of American History that makes me feel better.