Remembering Uncle Terry: Three Lessons

My Uncle Terry was four years younger than my father. He was born in 1924 and lost his father when he was only seven. His full name was William Terry Mitchell, but we all called him Uncle Terry.

When Terry was still quite young, he learned a harsh lesson. Terry liked to ride his bicycle and was especially fond of following fire engines when there was a run. All the members of my family know, more than seventy years later, that you should not follow a fire engine. One night in Osceola, a wooden-frame house caught fire when there were several children inside. The firemen could not get inside to help them. Terry had nightmares for months.

During World War II, my uncle was drafted and proved to be so good at his job that he was a senior enlisted man at the end of the war and was responsible for two hundred men and a 155-millimeter artillery battery. I heard my uncle joke about his experiences. He once said he was so good at digging foxholes that his commander once told him if he dug another, he’d be charged with desertion. My father assures me that my uncle is not the only GI to have told that one.

By an accident of history, his division, the 104th infantry, was one of the first through Nordhausen Concentration Camp just a few days after liberation in April, 1945. Uncle Terry took some photos of what he saw and I happened to see them when I was not yet into my teens. I did not have nightmares, but they very much impressed me that there was something absolutely unspeakable about the evil of the Third Reich. I am very proud that both my uncle and father risked their lives to play a part in its destruction.

My Uncle Terry was a charming man who I enjoyed visiting every summer. It always troubled me that he was a very heavy smoker. On more than one occasion, I implored him as strongly as a middle-schooler could, that I wished he’d quit. It was in October of 1970 that Uncle Terry’s luck ran out. He had a massive heart attack and was dead a few hours later. He left a wife and four children. He was only 46. Now that I’m about to turn 54 myself, that no longer seems very old at all. It’s an object lesson on the folly of smoking. His four-years-older brother, my father, has now outlived him by thirty-nine years.


While I was very fond of my uncle, I sometimes wonder if by some miracle I could see him for one hour, I honestly don’t know if I would hug him out of love or slug hum out of exasperation that he never gave up those coffin nails. I thought of my Uncle Terry purely by coincidence. In 1991, the Kevin Kline film Dave was released. It concerned a double of the President of the United States who temporarily takes office when the real President suffers a stroke. I the film, the real President was none other than Bill Mitchell.

I thought it was too bad that Uncle Terry hadn’t taken care of himself to have seen.


The patch of the 104th infantry.