Have A Good Memorial Day

I don’t know what happened to it. In the CBOT Visitors Gallery, there used to be a display of all the CBOT members who fought in WW2. I don’t know why it was removed, or even what happened to it. It always bugged me but there was nothing I could do about it.

It wasn’t much to look at. Silver frame and the interior of it was black felt with ridges. The names were white lettering and placed into the felt with hooks at the top of the letters.

I couldn’t tell you the names, or how many, but they were there.

I was a part of the last memorial bell ringing on the trading floor. Gary Katler and C.C. Odom helped me get it done. The Medal of Honor convention was in Chicago, and five of them came to CME/CBOT (by this time CME had bought CBOT and we had integrated the floors) to ring a ceremonial opening bell. Of the five, only one is still living. He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. I saw him last November and he has a cane.

A lot of guys from CME probably fought in WW2 back then too. I knew a few of them. One person was a nose gunner on a B17. Another person was on an LST on D-Day. There was never any formal recognition of WW2 at CME like there was at the CBOT. We had a lot of Vietnam vets on the floor in my day.

If you graduated from high school in the 1960s, going to war was a real possibility for you. There was a draft. If you had a low number, you were assuredly going.

The people who went never spoke about it much. But at least they came home. There were some I knew and traded with I never even knew had spent some time in Vietnam until years after the floor closed. They just didn’t talk about it even in casual conversation.

I don’t know how many from the Chicago exchanges didn’t come home but we remember them and all their buddies that didn’t make it home today.