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One Black, One White — Vets Share Stories, Common Ground

Story and photos by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

War certainly changes people, and unfortunately some of the young men and women of this generation are learning the lessons some of their grandfathers and grandmothers learned when they were soldiers as part of what was described as “the greatest generation” during World War II.

Two men who didn’t know each other — one black and one white — both experienced the tragedies and loss of the war. Their sons
decided in 2009 to take them to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., that had opened in 2004 to see how the country remembered their sacrifices and the suffering of their comrades.

By 2009, the men knew each other well, not because of the war or
their war experiences; their children brought them together.

Each saw the war through a different branch of the service and a different perspective: Fred Drew Jr., now 94, was drafted into a segregated military — the Army Air Corps, and Holly Easter, now 92, joined the United States Marine Corps.

Drew, trained as a machinist, became an Army machinist, and Easter, who had experience on bulldozers as part of the CCC — Civilian Conservation Corps — wanted to “drive something with a gun, so they put me on a tank,” Easter was quoted as saying in a recent St. Louis Post-Dispatch article.

Drew remembers joining the service at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri and training at “Scott Field” before going to Tampa, Fla., for more training.

When the orders came for the black unit to ship out, Drew said he was ready to go.
“After some of my experiences in the South, I was glad to go overseas,” he said.

When Drew, a technical sergeant, went on leave while he was in Florida and wanted to eat at a local restaurant, he might not be able to do so because of segregation.

“It used to burn me up,” he said, when restaurants in Tampa wouldn’t serve black soldiers, but they did serve the German prisoners” who were there at the time.

“It’s something when you go to defend your country and prisoners of war have more rights in your country than you do,” he said.

Another incident occurred on a passenger train as he was traveling between St. Louis and Florida.

Drew said he was in the “Jim Crow” car with other African Americans. A woman was traveling with a sick baby, and she asked for the air conditioning to be turned off or up because it was too cold in the car.

The conductor refused to change the temperature. When he left, Drew and two other black sergeants with whom he was traveling, adjusted the air conditioning.

When the conductor returned, he threatened to throw the soldiers off the train. They called his bluff, and the conductor called the MP, riding in the “whites only” car on the train.

Not only was he white but he was also a private. Drew and company pointed out that they outranked the MP, and the situation was resolved amicably. The air conditioning remained off.

At the end of the war, Drew said he and other black soldiers returned home on a train that was desegregated. “The ranks were mixed,” he said. “President (Harry) Truman desegregated the armed forces with the stroke of a pen.”
While desegregating the Armed Forces involved meetings, research, discussions and finally the signing of an executive order, it seemed like it happened overnight.

The president could not, however, change the hearts and minds of people who had built walls of prejudice around them, cutting many black Americans off from opportunities that any white American enjoyed.

Although Drew and his family lived in St. Louis during the war, in 1959 they moved over to the Illinois side of the river, settling in Centreville where Drew continues to live today.

He and his late wife, Willie Mae, had seven children, and they went to St. Regis Catholic School.
St. Regis was integrated when the Drews became parishioners, he said. “The Catholic church seemed better about integration than other segments of society,” Drew said.

One of Drew’s daughters, Valerie, remembers the family’s move and her entry into St. Regis’ fourth grade. At the time, she remembers three black classmates. However, by the time she graduated, the school had become more integrated.

Later, she became the only African American college student at Wabash Valley Community College in Mt. Carmel.
Because of her many “firsts” and “only”s, Valerie said she has “stood by myself many times” as she grew up.
Later, finishing her degree at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill., she was about to become a member of another exclusive or small group: an interracial couple.

She met and later married Holly Easter’s son, Les. At the time neither family was thrilled with the idea, Valerie Easter said.
“His mother thought it was a phase” the two were going through, and it would pass. Now married 36 years, it’s one of the longest “phases” in history.

In those early years, the Easters developed their ideas about African Americans from television, Valerie said.
Prejudice, Valerie said, knows no color. “There’s prejudice on both sides.”

These days, Fred Drew describes his daughter’s father-in-law as “one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.”
Both enjoyed their trip to Washington to see the memorial and to talk about the war.

Les Easter, Valerie’s husband and Holly’s son, shot a video of the veterans’ experiences and turned it into a DVD of their two different views of the war from their personal experiences.

Les Easter and his nephew worked hard to make the DVD more than a vacation video. The DVD includes footage of the segregated military, of Holly Easter’s tank experiences and music from that time period.

The DVD was one of 100 documentaries accepted in the San Diego Black Film Festival, with Les and Valerie Easter attending the festival at the end of January.

While the documentary did not win any prizes, Valerie said it was a great experience and also a place to learn more about film making and marketing.

They may be entertaining ideas about making another documentary sometime in the future.
Valerie said it is important to remember the past, to learn about it. “We need to acknowledge it,” she said.
Anyone interested in buying a copy of the DVD can email The Messenger. Your email address will be forwarded to the Easters who are making some final edits to the DVD.

Please send inquiries to The Messenger at cathnews@bellevillemessenger.org.