Bucksaw Joe receives final tribute
Honour Korean War veteran gets proper gravestone and full U.S. military funeral at Eel Ground First Nation
Telegraph-Journal
November 09, 2006
TELEGRAPH-JOURNAL
Dorothy Francis, aunt of Joe Simonson, receives a folded American flag from a member of a U.S. Army honour guard following Wednesday's service at Eel Ground First Nation. Simonson, born on the reserve located near Miramichi, was a Korean War veteran and was posthumously honoured with a formal military funeral.
EEL GROUND - The man they called Bucksaw Joe came from a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of place: a parcel of ground on the outskirts of Miramichi known as Eel Ground First Nation.
Just past the UPM-Kymmene pulp mill, there's a motel and sports bar, a couple of small stores and the North Shore Micmac District Council offices. Make a left toward the Miramichi River and you'll find a sprinkling of houses, a school and the band hall.
And a small Catholic church, where dozens of people gathered Wednesday afternoon for Joseph Simonson's second funeral.
Bucksaw Joe wasn't a blink-and-you'll-miss-him kind of guy, but the Korean War veteran still managed to be overlooked for more than a decade until finally getting his due on Wednesday.
It was as happy a funeral as you'll ever see.
Rather than subdued and teary-eyed, the crowd filed into the church boisterously, awaiting a ceremony 11 years in the making.
Born in the 1930s, Bucksaw Joe had a hard upbringing, losing his mother Ida when he was young and attending residential school in Nova Scotia, far from his Eel Ground home.
He jumped at the chance to take advantage of the dual citizenship afforded to First Nations, and moved to Michigan, where he enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to fight in Korea. He was still a teenager.
Little is known about Simonson's exploits in the armed forces. That he served in Korea was an afterthought for those who knew the man after he moved back to Eel Ground in his 40s and earned his nickname through hard work in the woods.
"He used to say 24 hours was not long enough for him," said John Francis, an uncle Simonson lived with for a few years after moving back home.
Francis said he bought Simonson his first chainsaw but, true to his name, he refused to use it before finally giving in after a few months.
"After that, he was untouchable," said Francis, who remembers Simonson riding his bicycle into Newcastle for his morning Tim Hortons coffee, then biking out to the woods, chainsaw and all.
All that's left from his time in Korea is a grainy photo and some discharge papers, but that was enough to get Bucksaw Joe his military burial ceremony.
A U.S. Army honour guard slowly carried a folded American flag out of the church and into the small cemetery, where Simonson's grave is tucked away in a back corner, now marked with a proud white marble slab.
The crowd looked on in awe as the guards performed the unfolding of the flag. Retired Lt. Peter Duston stood off to the side a short distance away and blew the familiar notes of Taps while Dalton Francis wafted sweetgrass smoke into the overcast sky and held a ceremonial feather high in the air.
After the guards refolded the flag, they presented it to Dorothy Francis with condolences on behalf of the United States and the president.
"That's never happened to me before," said Francis, John Francis' wife. "He was like a brother "... I feel happy because he's got a headstone now."
Simonson's final resting place did have a marker before Wednesday.
Fittingly, it was a chunk of an old tree mounted on a pair of thin metal stakes. The simple monument bears the stenciled words "Joseph Simonson "Bucksaw" March 8, 1934 - Nov. 25, 1995" and features a Korean War emblem and a faded U.S. flag.
Dorothy's daughter Florence Paul made the makeshift gravestone in 1996 out of a pine tree her husband had cut down.
"He never had a marker and every time we came over (to the grave), there was nothing there," said Paul. Then, gesturing to the bright new stone, she said, "That's beautiful. That's what we wanted for him."
The old marker will be replaced at the foot of the grave, said Paul, who remembers her cousin hauling her through the woods on his homemade sled.
"He'd pile the pulp on and he'd pull with her sitting on top," Dorothy Francis laughed.
Bucksaw Joe might have gone unrecognized forever if it weren't for a curious cousin named Hector Pictou, who inquired at a nearby legion hall while picking blueberries in Maine two years ago.
Duston was a service officer at the American Legion Post 8 in Cherryfield, Me., at the time. When he heard the story of a First Nations man and Korean War veteran who had never received his due from the country he fought for, Duston set out to find Simonson's records.
Unfortunately, Duston believes many of Simonson's documents were destroyed by a fire at a St. Louis warehouse that wiped out millions of records in 1974. But after three months of searching, he managed to find a photocopy of Bucksaw Joe's discharge papers somewhere in a Maine archive.
"It was like a mystery to track down who Joe was so we could get him the stone," said Duston, a former history teacher who has assisted other veterans in getting appropriate markers or medals. "If we hadn't found it in Maine, I don't know where we would have found it."
After taking care of the appropriate documentation, it was just a matter of working with the band to set up the ceremony, which also saw Chief George Ginnish presented with a U.S. flag flown at the Capitol in honour of all Micmac servicemen.
Now Bucksaw Joe can rest in full military honour.
And if you're walking by, you can't miss him, even if you blink.
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