This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
CHARLES NORMAN SHAY


When he was a boy, Shay’s family and other Penobscots dressed in ceremonial regalia for pageants. During the Depression, his parents set up tents in Lincolnville Beach, Maine, where they lived over the summer selling baskets and other crafted Indian items while Shay danced for the tourists. “We’d also travel across the state performing at hotels.” Back row L-R: Leo Shay, Howard Ranco, Roland Nelson. Front row: Bruce Poolaw, Lucy Poolaw, Florence Nicolar Shay and Charles Shay (who was known as Little Muskrat when he danced).


hearts, bronze and silver stars, when we came back to our reservations, we didn’t talk about our experiences. We weren’t asked.” He reenlisted and served in Austria. He returned to combat as a


medic in Korea and was awarded the Bronze Star with two Oak Leaf clusters, again for valor in saving lives. After serving a short time in the southern Pacific, where atomic bombs were being tested, he joined the Air Force, before retiring in 1954 as a master sergeant. Then he worked in Vienna for the International Atomic Energy Commission and later for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, before finally returning home to Indian Island. As a child, Charles had to walk across the Penobscot River in the


Shay's book, Project Omaha Beach: The Life and Military Service of a Penobscot Indian Elder, published by Polar Bear & Company, an imprint of the nonprofit Solon Center for Research and Publishing.


depths of winter to attend school off the reservation. His mother wanted her son to be more integrated with the larger community, so he dutifully made the trek in all weather, despite Maine’s frigid conditions. Years later, in Korea, those experiences had hardened him enough to face a Siberian cold front that descended over the Chosin Reservoir, plunging temperatures to as low as −35°F. “It was bitter cold. Medical supplies froze – plasma became use-


less. To defrost morphine syrettes, we put them in our mouths before they could be injected. Frostbite was a major problem, killing too many men. But our mission extricating a Marine division was successful, and we were evacuated on Christmas Eve.” In 2003, shortly after he returned to Indian Island to retire, his be- loved wife, Lilly, passed.


36 AMERICAN INDIAN SUMMER 2018


PHOTO COURTESY CHARLES NORMAN SHAY


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