LEST WE FORGET
March 10, 2016, marks the 92nd anniversary of the birth of Ernest Boots Thomas, a WWII hero who grew up in the small town of Monticello, Florida. What more fitting time could there be to stop and remember the generation of those who gave their lives for us? Let’s step back in time for a moment:
It was a bitterly cold night in November of 1937. Though the unusually low temperatures discouraged outdoor activities, a meager crowd of family members and diehard fans had still gathered beneath the glaring lights at the local football field. Monticello High’s football team (the Tigers) was scheduled to play the rival high school team from Chattahoochee, and the evening’s game promised to be an exhilarating one.
Despite the cold, the young men that made up the Monticello Tigers were eager to begin the night’s game. Football star Olin Cooksey, though suffering from a bad ankle, hoped to secure a victory for his hometown. Fellow teammates Folsom Maxwell, Bascom Grant, and Franklin Floyd also prepared to lend their hand in overcoming the Chattahoochee team.
Thirteen-year-old Boots Thomas, the lightest member of his team (weighing in at only 113 pounds), joined his teammates on the field as the clock marked the commencement of the game.
The Monticello Tigers exerted themselves to their fullest, and the evening’s excitement exceeded the crowd’s expectations. The school’s newspaper proudly recorded:
“The most spectacular play of the game took place when Maxwell returned a punt from his own ten to his forty and just before being downed slipped a quick lateral to Cooksey who sidestepped his way through the whole Chattahoochee team, but his bad ankle made it possible for the visitors to overtake him and he was downed on their eighteen. . . . The half ended with the Tigers leading 12-0.”
Eager applause and joyous celebrations marked the impressive victory. Indeed, for the 418 students enrolled in Monticello High, sports, schoolwork, and family occupied the majority of their thoughts and time that November of 1937. Few of them had noticed the war clouds gathering thickly over Germany and the rest of Europe, and Chancellor Adolf Hitler was still only a strange-sounding name to most Americans.
During the next four years, the young men who had achieved that stunning football victory graduated high school and prepared for their life ahead. When war broke out in Europe at the end of 1939, Olin Cooksey and other Monticello boys headed north to Canada to enlist in the Canadian armed forces in order to lend their hand against the German invaders. For the rest of the young men in Monticello, the bombing of Pearl Harbor soon arrested their attention, and local enlistment offices were crowded with those who sought to aid in the defense of their country and their homes.
Mothers, proud of their sons’ devotion and courage but fearful of their dangerous future, tearfully bid farewell to the children they had so lovingly raised. For many, those tears would return before the war ended, tears of sorrow over a life so prematurely ended. Roseland Cemetery and other burial places across the nation are a silent reminder of the price that the families of Monticello and the United States paid in the Second World War.
The arrival of Boots Thomas’ 92nd birthday is a fitting moment to pause and remember the selflessness and the sacrifice given by him and the young people of his generation on our behalf. Let us honor their memory. And let us continue to thank those veterans who are still with us, as the Governor of Florida requested in February of 1981: “the Governor and Cabinet of the State of Florida urge all citizens . . . to remember the brave service of Sgt. Thomas and other veterans of World War II. Truly, their example is our heritage.”
Copyright 2016 Psalm 78 Ministries