THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 29, 1995 TAG: 9505290041
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL BEPPLER, Staff writer
LENGTH: Long : 188 lines
Too often, we analyze, assess and criticize individuals behind war - Robert McNamara and his book on the Vietnam experience being the latest example - when we should be looking inward and opening a window on our feelings so that we might hasten the healing of our grief for those who did the fighting - and those who died fighting.
If not today - Memorial Day - when?
So, moving beyond the rationalizations and recriminations, from the Revolutionary War to the Persian Gulf War, let us now praise some fighting men, from the Vietnam era as it turns out, who will never be famous. Whose names won't resound in history books, who never got the ink that a McNamara or a Kissinger or a Kennedy gets so routinely in the U.S. media.
I want to talk about six people - all baby boomers from working-class families in small-town America. Their lives crossed paths with mine as we grew up in Lancaster County, Pa., during the 1950s and 1960s. Then we went our separate ways.
I started college in September 1966, welcoming the accompanying draft deferment. By the time I finished school, the government had started a draft lottery system; on Dec. 1, 1969, my birthday was drawn 198th. That number turned out to be three above the cutoff point during my year of eligibility.
But these six peers, by choice or chance, entered the military and ended up fighting the Vietnam War. If you are of a certain age, you, too, knew such men from your hometowns.
By recalling these men whom I knew, may we honor the many who fell - and be mindful, too, of that always timely saying: ``There but for the grace of God go I.''
Kenny Witmer: Penn Manor High School, class of '66. He was part of my high school lunch gang, trading barbs and jokes with alacrity. A wiry guy with a sharp mind and quick wit, he could have gone on and done almost anything he wanted after college. But he left college voluntarily in 1967 to pursue his dream of piloting helicopters. He fulfilled that dream, but died May 13, 1969 - six days shy of his 21st birthday - when his Army chopper was shot down in Vietnam. We should all die doing something we love - but not at 20 years of age, and not in a lousy jungle so far from home.
Jacob E. ``Jack'' Frey: Penn Manor High School, class of '63. Jack's mother and my mother shared a semi-private hospital room in Lancaster General Hospital in 1948, when his younger brother, Don, was born on Aug. 13, and I followed a day later. Our families together enjoyed picnics and activities like Cub Scouts and youth baseball while we were growing up.
Jack and a couple buddies quit college and joined the Marines in September 1966.
On Jan. 27, 1968, while on a ``sweep'' near the demilitarized zone not far from Dong Ha, Jack and about 60 others from the 3rd Marine Division were ambushed. ``Most of the guys were killed,'' he said recently by phone from his home in Millersville, Pa. ``The rest of us were wounded.''
A North Vietnamese bullet tore into Jack's head, smashing about a third of the upper left side of his skull. He lay for hours in mud near a rice paddy while rescue helicopters were shot down nearby. Before he could be evacuated, the exposed part of his brain became infected. He was initially taken to a field hospital outside Da Nang, where he regained consciousness a week later.
He was flown to Drake Air Force Base Hospital in Japan and, in mid-February 1968, was moved to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital - 90 minutes by car from his family in Millersville. He remained at the Philadelphia facility seven months before going home to wait for the infection to clear up so he could have further surgery. In January 1969, he returned to the Naval Hospital and surgeons inserted a metal plate to replace the bone that had been torn away from his head.
Meanwhile, in the spring of 1968, he had gotten started on a massive rehabilitation project. After being wounded, ``I couldn't understand English,'' he said. ``I didn't know my name. I couldn't speak. People might as well have been speaking French to me.''
Also, the wound had erased from Jack's memory most of what he had learned from the day he entered kindergarten.
Margarite ``Bunky'' Baxter, an acquaintance from Millersville State College who had corresponded with Jack while he was in Vietnam, started coming to the Naval Hospital regularly from her home in nearby Sharon Hill. She was then teaching high school English, having graduated from Millersville in 1967.
``She brought a `magic slate' and taught me to read and write again,'' Jack said.
On June 8, 1969, Jack and Bunky were married, and in January 1970, Jack re-entered Millersville State College - not as the chemistry major he had been for three years before leaving, but as an elementary education major. ``I probably wasn't ready to go back then, but I struggled and stuck with it,'' he said.
``It took me years to get back on my feet, especially emotionally. . . . Gradually, the paralysis in the right side of my body went away.''
In 1973, Jack received his degree.
``My wife is my savior,'' said Jack, who has an 80 percent medical disability. ``I was a real project for her.
``. . . And a lot of people were praying for me.''
Today Jack teaches retarded children at a school near Lancaster. He and Bunky have two sons: Nathan is finishing his junior year at Penn State, majoring in sociology; Josh, an accomplished pianist, has decided to put music on the back burner and will enter the Air Force Academy this summer.
Dennis Eshleman: Penn Manor High School, class of '66. Quiet and thoughtful, Dennis was an above-average pitcher for the school baseball team. Not college-oriented, he joined the labor force after graduation, only to be drafted into the Army. He died while on patrol in Vietnam on Jan. 29, 1969. He was 20 years old.
With a break or two, and maybe a better fastball, he might have signed a pro contract. Perhaps then he would have been able to get into a National Guard unit, as Dan Quayle did, and maybe then Dennis Eshleman would have been here to rejoice with me in 1980, '83 and '93 when our beloved Phillies reached the World Series.
Jay Herr: Penn Manor High School, class of '66. A straight-arrow who was quiet and shy and a true gentleman, Jay won a county wrestling title but fell short in his quest to win a state title as his older brother, Jere, had done a few years earlier. From a farming family, Jay might have tried for an agriculture deferment but chose to enlist in the Marine Corps after high school. He was in Vietnam only a few months before he was killed Aug. 20, 1967. He was 18 years old.
Jim Charles: A friend from church, Jim was a joy to behold whenever he visited our house. So outgoing; so energetic; so full of life. He amazed my brothers and me by playing the piano without sheet music and belting out off-color drinking songs that had us in stitches. He had been happy-go-lucky in 1965 when he enlisted in the Marines after high school. Later, visiting us after boot camp, he wowed us with bombast about his drill instructor and barracks mates. Jim stepped on a land mine in Vietnam and lost a leg.
Randy Robison: Penn Manor High School, class of '67. A year behind me in school, he labored with me to master pronunciations and vocabulary in Mrs. Baldwin's French class. He sat on the far side of the room, near the windows; I sat in the first row, near the door.
We didn't know each other well. But we became fast friends on Dec. 1, 1969, when we found ourselves together on the bus that took us to the New Cumberland Army Depot for draft board-ordered physical exams. He had been in and out of art school, he told me, and had been reclassified I-A. We parted that day wishing each other good luck in staying out of the army.
About 19 months later, my mother sent me a newspaper clipping: Not only had Randy been drafted, he had been killed in Vietnam on July 14, 1971. He was 22 and had two months remaining on his tour of duty. The newspaper article quoted Randy's mother: ``He didn't believe in the war. He was just putting in his time. If my boy had given his life in a war that means something, then maybe I'd feel different. But this is all so senseless.'' MEMO: Bill Beppler is a copy editor for The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
ILLUSTRATION: BILL TIERNAN
Staff
Cindy Verser and her sons volunteered to put flags on 26,000 graves
at Hampton National Cemetery.
The Frey family: Josh, left; Nathan; his wife, Bunky; and Jack. A
North Vietnamese bullet tore into Jack's head, smashing about a
third of the upper left side of his skull. The wound erased most of
what he learned from the day he entered kindergarten. After
recovering, with his wife's help, he went back to college and got a
degree in education.
Bill Beppler, left, in his 1966 yearbook photo from his days at Penn
Manor High School in Millersville, Pa., and, at right, today.
With his sharp mind, Kenny Witmer could have done almost anything he
wanted after college, but he left school voluntarily to pursue his
dream: piloting helicopters. He died six days shy of his 21st
birthday.
Most of the soldiers in ``Jack'' Frey's division were killed in an
ambush in 1968, but he survived, lying for hours in the mud with a
massive head wound. He lost most of his memory and had to relearn
how to speak. Today he's married with two sons.
Dennis Eshleman was an above-average pitcher for the school baseball
team who, with a break or two, might have signed a pro contract and
avoided active duty. He died while on patrol in Vietnam in 1969.
Jay Herr, from a farming family, might have tried for an agriculture
deferment but enlisted in the Marines. He was in 'Nam just months
before he was killed in 1967. He was 18.
Randy Robison went to Vietnam to put in his time, his mom said, not
because he believed in the war.
Jim Charles enlisted in the Marines after high school. At age 20, he
stepped on a mine and lost a leg.
KEYWORDS: MEMORIAL DAY VIETNAM WAR VETERANS by CNB