Man scours globe to honor Oklahomans

By Mandy Carter

“Every day, somebody dies, somebody’s memory fades a little more. The information is slipping away. I don’t want that to happen.”

Michael Beach, Maysville, is on a historical mission. His goal — find and preserve as much information about Oklahoma soldiers killed in battle and buried overseas as he can.

Beach, a former U.S. Navy man with a family military history, feels a deep and abiding connection to not only the living veterans he once shuttled from Ardmore, his place of residence at the time, to the hospital in Oklahoma City as a volunteer, but to those fallen Oklahoma natives resting in military cemeteries all over the world.

It all started when his grandfather passed away, and Beach decided to pay his respects by visiting Normandy France last year, where his grandfather served in World War II. While there, he visited the cemetery where so many casualties of war are buried.

It was there, walking amid the countless white crosses, seeing the names of the soldiers and where they were from, he was struck.

“I was walking around the cemetery — looking at the headstones, and it was such a moving experience,” Beach recalled. “It hit me when I came to the first Oklahoma grave. The only thing I could think was, ‘What can I do for this person?’

“I had a bunch of rose rocks, maybe 25 at the time,” he continued. “So I kept looking for Oklahoma headstones, and I gave them a rock ... something from home. It was very important to me that each of these men have something from our great state that will be with them for eternity. ”

There are 144 white crosses bearing the state name in the Normandy cemetery alone, and, according to Beach’s research, almost 2,000 worldwide, excluding the United States.

Beach returned from that trip determined to do more. The idea grew in his mind’s eye. He collected more rose rocks, the state rock found in the red soil of Southern Oklahoma, and set off again this past June, returning the first week of December from a trip calculated to pay tribute to as many soldiers as possible, and often coordinated to be in specific places on significant dates.

“I spent from June until August in Europe,” he said. “There are 20 cemeteries in Europe. I spent July 4 at the cemetery in England, and July 14, France’s Bastille Day, at a French cemetery with friends.”

Beach added there is a military cemetery in Tunisia, in North Africa, as well, but he hasn’t been able to get to that one as yet.

From Europe, he spent three months in a work exchange program in Japan, then ventured on to Manila, in the Philippines, where there are more than 800 Oklahoma soldiers buried.

“I wanted to be in Manila on Veteran’s Day,” Beach explained, adding that he designed his trip so the last stop was Hawaii on Dec. 7, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Now back at home in Maysville, Beach is busy compiling information and organizing photographs for a book about the soldiers and the cemeteries.

In his travels, he spoke with many of the superintendents of the cemeteries he visited, and was surprised to find they were as interested in information and history about the soldiers buried on their soil as Beach was.

He brought home a new determination to help them get it.

“The cemeteries are looking for information on the people buried there,” he said. “They’d like to have photos, letters, information on how they lived, what they liked, who they were, so they can have a connection with people visiting the cemeteries.”

Beach has now made it a personal mission to gather as much of that information as he can and forward it on to respective cemeteries overseas in an effort to return the favor for all the history he gained about natives of his own state from them, and preserve the memories of the soldiers buried there.

There was the story of a Native American soldier from Eastern Oklahoma named Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw fighting in World War I, one of the original Code Talkers. His body was returned to Oklahoma soil, but his story remains vital halfway around the world.

“I picked up so many nuggets of information,” he said. “Little unexpected things, that just really made me feel good.”

Anyone with photos, memories or information concerning Oklahoma soldiers buried on international soil is encouraged to contact Beach at mbeach969@hotmail.com.

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