My Official Apology to the Salem County Historical Society

I got blackballed from the society after unfortunate exchanges with your desk manager and Harlan Buzby. I was told “The name of Laird will never be mentioned again at the Salem County Historical Society.” Harold Smick, Sr., was convinced by your account secondhand and never spoke to me again.

Problem is, you leave a huge hole in your own history by amputating my family’s contribution. I’m asking you to restore my family to SCHS history even if you leave me out of it forever. What my family contributed over 50 years:

My grandfather, Leon W. Miesse, authored one of the most significant military diaries of World War I as an infantry captain in the illustrious Rainbow Division under Douglas MacArthur during the offensive that won the war. Published under his and my name in 2018, the 100th anniversary of Allied victory. I was summarily refused an opportunity to place a few copies in the front desk to let Salem people buy them. 

I lost my temper, broke nothing, but was unpleasant, because… Leon Miesse was a well known, unpaid contributor for many years to the Society. Year after year, even into his late eighties, society members brought him pieces of the Salem Oak, which he transformed with his router into candlesticks and other finely turned mementoes to be sold by the Society. For no pay. Now the Oak is gone. Leon Miesse is gone. And he is to have no memory at the Society because of me? Because I got mad when a 20-something newcomer to Salem told me, “Lots of people made knickknacks out of the Salem Oak.”

No, they didn’t. My grandpa did. The official ones.

Okay. I apologize for getting irate.

My sister, Susan Laird, was editor of a Society publication called “The Way It Used to Be,” a bimonthly magazine (sponsored by the Sunbeam) in the Bicentennial years covering Salem County’s contribution during the Revolutionary era and its after-effects. She was an early feminist and wrote much about the Underground Railroad and women like Harriet Tubman. I succeeded her as editor during an off-year after college and was on hand to organize “The Reenactment of the Skirmish at Quinton’s Bridge,” a full-blown military operation involving colonial and Queen’s Rangers troops, as well as a restaging of  the floating bridge over which Andrew Bacon saved the day for Mad Anthony Wayne on Lower Alloways Creek. Your desk manager responded reluctantly and incompletely when I asked, politely, for ‘Sunbeam’ page copies of the multiple newspaper columns and pages I wrote and photographed for that event. To this day, the road signs I wrote along the British path are still standing and legible. My “partner in crime” for “The Reenactment” was Stony Harris, who led the way.

My father was for many years the president of the Society (as was my mother, also now deceased). He created the society logo you may be still be using now for all I know. In his old age honoring Salem’s past was my dad’s quiet way of atoning for the sin of having killed the enemy face to face in his P-47 fighter plane. He didn’t want to be remembered for his 88 combat missions over North Africa and Italy. He was content to look back into his own birthplace of Salem and find the parts to be proud of. Pretty sure he was the one who dug John Rock out of oblivion and made him not an artifact or statistic of history but a story. Here’s the Reference section from Wiki. My dad died in 1999. Note how many story-type references are dated AFTER 1999 and how few before. 

Thing my dad did also in his later days. Two septuagenarians, he and John Hassler (former president of the City Bank), rebuilt the colonial kitchen fireplace in the Alexander Grant House. On their hands and knees. With trowel and concrete. Betting there’s no plaque there honoring either one of them. They wouldn’t have asked for one. They just did it. 

As I was trying to renegotiate the placement of my grandfather’s book at the desk, I got an angry call from Harlan Buzby. How dare I speak disrespectfully to the Society archivist? So I looked him up and discovered he had published a ‘John Rock’ book that closely resembled research my dad had written up for a series of society newsletters. I read what he had written (borrowed almost word for word) and accused Harlan Buzby of plagiarism and he never responded or got another book review.

When Smick Senior got involved and banned me forever, without ever hearing my side of what transpired. Who had always pretended to be my grandfather’s admiring friend and my dad’s and my respectful acquaintances. All gone in a one-sided moment. He never returned my call. He always had a smile and little behind it.

Then I find that my whole family has been blackballed, none of whom have been here in Salem as long and faithfully as we have.

What is left to me? Bend my knee. Apologize to you all. I do. All I ask is fairness. Forgive and retrieve my family’s history of contributions to the Society, whatever you think of me.

P.S. Afterthought. It might be the case that I myself merit a nod of recognition from the Society for at least this bestseller and the 20-some books that followed. Maybe the Sunbeam would be interested. No. I worked for them once. Maybe if I wrote the story for them… But I’m no Acton. Forget it. I’m married to a woman. And I carry no grudge. I just want Christian forgiveness for my family.

The Salem Oak has fallen. Has it taken with it the historical legacies of Salem as well? Look at his old 

old old pained face. He knows who everyone is, don’t you doubt it. I see Grandpa. Who do you see?