Thanksgiving November 26, 2015

Yet another Thanksgiving has arrived sudden like without much fanfare or warning making this one my 56th.

I'm celebrating this annual holiday alone for the first time in my life. I am house and dog sitting for some good friends, the Ellingtons, who worship with me at Clear Creek Neighborhood Church in Idaho Springs, Colorado.

Sitting on a rocking chair facing the south window of the Ellington home in Empire, Colorado some 42 miles west of Denver, I am enjoying the peaceful solitude of the wintry Central Mountains near the Continental Divide.

My only companions are Eli and Maggie the Ellingtons two tiny dogs. Their race or breed is unknown to me.

The pyramid shaped mountain peaks off to the southwest spread across the horizon rising pointedly 11,000 feet high up into foggy skies. It's a cold, blustery morning only 22 degrees with a wind chill factor of some 12 degrees.

There's a wispy, flaky snow blowing around looking like millions of little white gnats, possibly portending a greater snow coming in over the Divide to the west. This tiny town of less than 300 lays very hushed in this high mountain valley.

I can see the West Fork of Clear Creek winding off to the south below a ridge of dark green piney mountain peaks.

The ticking of the clock on the fireplace mantle and the clicking on of the furnace are the only sounds emanating from this quiescent and subdued house.

It's the perfect setting for reviewing past Thanksgiving Days. In my youth the Schoenbeins which included my mother (my father, Bruce Sr died in 1967) one brother and three sisters would pile into our Plymouth an apt name for a vehicle on Thanksgiving, and head to Danvers an ancient hamlet originally named Concord situated over on the high prairie in McClean County. As the saying goes, over the river( Mackinaw) and through the woods over to grandmothers house we go.

My maternal grandmother Helene Wittmeier Weigelmann along with her husband, Rudolf, my grandfather were war refugees from the Ukraine in the old Soviet Union. They immigrated, legally, I might add to the United States in 1952 seven years after the end of the Second World War.

After they arrived in New York Harbor they boarded a west bound train for central Illinois where a job and housing was prearranged via the sponsorship of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

My grandparents and their children my mother, uncles and aunts all knew first hand the loving provision of God's mercy. They escaped war torn Russia with only what little belongings they could carry and walked or rode in horse drawn wagons. Almost all vehicles had either been confiscated or destroyed during the war and fuel was non existent.

My people were German nationals living in a nondescript village near Kiev and Chernobyl in the Ukraine. My grandfather was the manager of a communist state farm at the time.

After the Wehrmacht lost what would become the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 the Germans advised their civilians to retreat back into Germany with them or suffer the consequences of the great and terrible wrath of the Red Army which was sure to follow.

Total casualties on both the Axis and Soviet sides during this insane bloody five month long battle were a reported 1-2 million killed, wounded and taken captive. 91,000 German soldiers were captured. Only 5,000 of that figure survived to be repatriated years after cessation of hostilities. This battle is regarded by  most historians as the largest and bloodiest single battle in the history of warfare.

Had the tables been turned my family probably would have remained in the Ukraine and my mother would not have met my father and thus my siblings and I would never have been born. To say that this historical battle affected my life is a complete understatement.

So, as I sit here alone feeling a bit sorry for myself missing family and friends on this Thanksgiving day I look out to the Rocky Mountains to the south through Union Pass and I can't help but be thankful to God Almighty for his love for me, for my parents, grandparents, family and friends and most of all for this wonderful gift of the mystery that is life. Amen.

BR Schoenbein
November 26, 2015- Thursday