Steven Henshaw: Berks man who lost his father in WWII describes powerful bond of Gold Star Family members
May 30—Stewart "Rusty" Lerch, the guest speaker at a pair of Memorial Day services hosted in Reading Monday by the Combined Veterans Council of Berks County, talked about the loss experienced by those who made the supreme sacrifice for our freedom.
The sacrifice includes the families of the warriors.
"Freedom is not paid for by the blood of our fallen heroes alone," said Lerch, 78, of Temple. "It is also paid for by the Gold Star Families they leave behind. It is the loss of a loved one who can never be replaced."
The last few words of that sentence have a great deal of meaning to Lerch, a Gold Star Family member, even though he never knew his father, as he pointed out at the start of his speech at the Civil War Memorial in Charles Evans Cemetery.
Lerch was 7 months old when his father, Stewart E. Lerch, was killed at age 23 on May 21, 1944 while serving with the Army in the Southwest Pacific during World War II.
His mother, a bride at 20, a mother at 21 and a widow at 22, never remarried, Lerch said before his speech, a day shy of the 78th anniversary of his father's death.
His father is buried at a cemetery in the Philippines.
Anna Lerch, who died in 2014 at age 92, continued working after husband's death, with a job in a factory that made munitions for the war effort. His mother was one of three women who learned to work a drill press at Parish Press Steel, which later became Dana Corp. in Reading, before going to work at the Rosedale plant in Muhlenberg.
"She worked at Rosedale ordnance during the war, and, of course, just like all of the other widows, they just picked themselves up and went back to work, because they knew they had to supply the munitions for the troops," Lerch said before the ceremony.
Even though he never knew his father, Lerch knows about the void in the heart left by the loss of a beloved service member who did not return from combat, and how the bond that is formed is shared by all surviving loved ones.
"Gold Star Families come from every corner of the nation, from many faiths and social backgrounds," he said in his speech. "Our powerful bond is forged by what we have in common: the telegram, the box or suitcase filled with our love one's letter or personal possessions, and for us World War II orphans, the 'Wall of Silence.'"
Children left fatherless during World War II often took emotional refuge behind what some have called a Wall of Silence, keeping questions about the man in a picture frame to themselves in order to avoid retraumatizing their mothers, which is why some of these survivors refer to themselves as orphans. Lerch is a member of the American World War II Orphans Network.
Lerch married a Gold Star Family member, a rare occurrence of Gold Star children marrying each other, he said. Sandra Lerch lost a brother during the Korean War.
"When you enter a Gold Star Family's home, you may notice a picture of a young man or woman in uniform that never changes or grows old," he said. "Perhaps it is a baseball glove that never collects dust or a pair of rollerskates that never wears out.
"Maybe it's a room that has model airplanes hanging from the ceiling."
Diane Price, master of ceremonies, said Memorial Day touches veterans deeply.
"It's estimated 30% of us know someone who has died because of their military service," she said before introducing the guest speaker. "But it touches even more deeply those family members and friends (from the community or church) that the individual grew up in."
