11-15-02, Voice in the Crowd
The Bell Tolls for
Joe Murphy
By Pete Chaney
IPS Features
Each year there are less and less of us grayheads
attending ceremonies at the National Cemetery on Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
This year on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month
I was there for the ceremonies. Zach
Wamp made a good speech. An army
brat, Zach knows what it’s like. The
services were moving and I began scanning the white grave markers on the
hillside beyond the seated audience.
Each stone was inscribed with a name, a date of birth, a
date of death and the branch of service. Nothing
more. You could not put on one
brief slab the sum total of a man or woman’s life.
Each had its share of triumph and tragedy.
War and peace, until they reached this final peace.
The sum total of their lives must live on in our memories and in our
hearts.
My first veteran was my father when it was still called
Armistice Day. He was in France
when the fighting stopped. Pneumonia
made him miss the ship home, having to catch a later one. As a child I played with a cigar box of medals he had put
aside, never talking about them. I
still have his enlistment papers in the Home Guard of Virginia which became part
of the 29th Infantry Division for World War I.
Then there was my turn to go and later to become a
veteran myself. There were so many
faces and names that have slipped from memory with only a few standing out, some
for no particular reason. Others,
for definite reason. There was Don
Orndorff, a Pennsylvanian who was trapped at Bastogne during the Battle of the
Bulge. He said he got used to it
when he was under fire. But when he
went out for R and R he didn’t want to go back.
There was Fuzzy Francisco who was one of the jeep drivers for Gen. George
Patton. Alfred Kallenbach was
special, a German who came to America after World War II, was drafted and sent
back during the Cold War. So many
names live on in my memories.
Being a member of VFW Post 4848 over the years, I have
made and lost friends. Guss Howe
will always stand out in my heart. For
four or five years, I saw him every day, was with him during his losing battle
for cancer. We still remember the
tales he told of being on Air Force One. My
favorite was how he fixed Lady Bird Johnson a dry martini which she rejected,
saying it tasted terrible. Guss
took it back to the plane’s galley, waited a few minutes and brought the same
drink back. She thought it tasted
perfect.
Frank Cloud was a great guy, tall, imposing, the picture
of a Southern gentleman with courtly manners.
He died that winter we had ice on the ground for days.
When we finally had his funeral on a ground mushy with thaw, I reached
the cemetery and Bob Blair grabbed me for a pallbearer.
He put me and Tom “Peanut” Stanfield on the same side of the coffin
as two of only four pallbearers. I
had fallen on the ice and cracked a rib. Peanut
was ill and I’ll never know how we made it to the grave through that soggy
soil.
Ralph Astin was a veteran among veterans.
Captured by the Germans in World War II, he escaped and was send to the
South Pacific where he became a POW the second time.
His civilian life was spent working for veterans.
Whenever you see the pavilion at the National Cemetery, you can thank
Ralph for his dream and work toward putting it together.
That’s what one man, one veteran can do.
George Hancock was almost like part of the furniture at
Post 4848. He was always there and
his heart never left the place. When
friends tried to get him to take better care of his health, he said, “You just
don’t understand,” and ordered another bourbon and water.
No matter how many veterans and friends you never get
used to shock or become immune to the pain of the loss.
Joe Murphy had suffered heart trouble but everyone just
assumed he would be around forever. A
fervent Democrat, he picked on me, calling me that “damned old Republican.”
He was a member of the National Democratic Committee.
But we agreed more than we disagreed.
Ralph Wilson called to tell me Joe died Veterans Day. No day is a good day to die, but it was appropriate that a
veteran like Joe leave us on that day. He
served during World War II and was an icon at VFW Post
1289.
An imposing man with his white hair, he had a teasing
twinkle in his eye as if he found some humor in everything.
Lips under his heavy white moustache were always ready for a mischievous
grin. He had so many achievements
to his credit it would take a book to list them.
One of my favorite poems is the verse by John Donne, “
. . . any man’s death diminishes me. . . never send to know for whom the bell
tolls; it tolls for thee.”
The bell may have tolled for Joe Murphy but he will live
on in our hearts where he will always be young.
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