PUBLISHER’S NOTEBOOK: Silent heroes

I’m too much like my father. In many ways that’s a good thing. Dad was always quick with a funny comment — well, most of the time it was funny. I get accused of the same trait, except that I’m probably only funny in my own mind.

Dad had two careers in his lifetime and was totally dedicated to both. His first career was in the military, serving 21 years in the Army. His second career was as a diesel mechanic working for companies like Brown & Root, HW Moore and Halliburton. Both careers left my mother to attend to raising us kids, all five of us. I worked a little harder at trying to balance life and career, not always succeeding. But when your career is a leader in the military, balancing life and career is nearly impossible. And it proved that way for Dad.

For spouses of members of the military there are no ceremonies for their sacrifice. While Dad would leave for 30 days at a time to train in the field, Mom was left behind to deal with us kids. We weren’t an easy lot to handle. Mom was a German citizen who met my dad when he was stationed in her hometown of Koblenz. She taught herself how to speak English and didn’t learn how to drive a car until she was in her 40s. It was like herding cattle on foot for her. If we wanted to join activities like baseball, we would have to ride our bike to registration get the forms, ride back home so she could fill them out and then take them back. We had the freedom to choose our own activities and we had to keep track of the important dates or else we’d miss out. Dad didn’t have time to worry about whether or not I played baseball. His time was completely devoted to the military. When he was home our individual activities took a backseat to family time. We ate dinner together every night and our weekends were typically family activities.

Mom experienced many hardships on her own. Balancing the family budget on a military salary was tricky to say the least, stretching every penny. She was fantastic in the kitchen but even a great chef will struggle when the food budget is paper-thin. We kids would often joke that our favorite meal was green bean soup. Don’t ask me what all she put into it, but when it was green bean soup night you ate a lot of buttered bread just to fill your stomach. Green bean soup is both tasteless and non-filling. Liver and onions was another dish because liver is cheaper than steak. Her skills came to life after Dad retired from the service and joined the civilian world. She could actually afford ingredients to make unbelievable meals and after I left home whenever I returned my favorite German dish Rouladen would be served.

Mom’s greatest sacrifice came from February 1968 to February 1969 when dad was deployed for a tour of duty in Vietnam. We spent that year in Delta, Colorado, in a small house with Mom pregnant with their fourth child due in April. She had support from my dad’s parents, brothers and sister. But evenings with us cramped in that tiny home had to be challenging. She must have done a great job because I remember that year as a happy part of my childhood.

Her biggest challenge would come two years prior when I was 3 and diagnosed with some type of leukemia. She told me that one day the lymph nodes in my neck were swollen. She took me to the military doctors and they diagnosed me with leukemia and told her I wasn’t going to survive. Fortunately, this happened when we were stationed in Germany and, her being a German citizen, she admitted me into a sanitarium where the doctors there told her I wouldn’t make it another week. She recalled how she would go there every day for an update but was never allowed to see me. I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been. I was there for months. Obviously, I survived and I never had another issue since. I asked my mom how she was able to get through that period.

“I prayed the rosary a lot.”

I asked, how did Dad cope?

“He worked even more. That’s always been his coping mechanism.”

Many nights after my mom thought we were all in bed and a sleep she would sit at our dining room table with a cup of a coffee and a cigarette and would get overwhelmed in her thoughts. Many nights she would just sit there and cry. I never felt Dad was neglectful; he simply had a job to do. During his military years that I can recall — mostly after his tour in Vietnam — he was totally dedicated to training his men. He had seen firsthand that it was truly a matter of life and death to prepare young men for combat. The sacrifices my mother and us kids made were just assumed on his part. It was part of being a military family.

Mom passed away just prior to their 40th anniversary in 1998. She was only 58.

What I found ironic was that within a year Dad would retire from Halliburton. Her death was overwhelming for him. He began dating a couple of years after mom passed. He called me one day out of the blue not too long into his dating phase and said he wouldn’t be dating anymore. When I asked him why, he simply stated, “They’re not your mother.”

He would pass away from lung cancer in 2013, true to his word that he’d never date again.

Behind every military personnel there is someone supporting them. As we honor our Veterans we should take a moment and think of those who made their service possible. My mom was my greatest supporter too when I served.

Thank you for reading the Frontiersman.