Rest in peace for two (three)

On Monday (yesterday) I got news, via e-mails, that two fellows of significance to me personally, had died after illnesses. They were Bob Graham and Roger Bennett. Not exactly good news for a Monday!

Bob had served with me on the VÍA Citizens Advisory Council. Altho' we weren't closely related as Grahams, I liked to call him "Uncle Bob". This despite my having a REAL Uncle Bob, i.e., Robert Graham, my dad's older brother.

As for Roger, he was the final pianist for the Cathedral Quartet, before Glen Payne and George Younce decided to retire the gospel quartet. When that happened (as the second Millennium was ending), Roger and best friend and fellow Cathedrals member Scott Fowler chose to start a new gospel singing group, which took the name Legacy Five. In addition to continuing playing the ivories for the new group, Roger was MC. Roger developed leukemia in the early 1990s, underwent treatment and proceeded into remission. Out of that experience he was able to write some fantastic Southern Gospel songs! But then the leukemia returned, in a more virulent form, and for years doctors at MD Anderson Hospital in Houston tried all manner of techniques to overcome the new cancer. But now Roger has ended his fight with the disease and gone home to be with Jesus. Even now I can hear him singing in Glory with Glen and George!

As for the third death hinted at in my title, I'm currently substituting for an English teacher at Alamo Heights High School, some of whose classes are seniors taking dual credit (i.e., college credit, too). They are watching a DVD of a recent film called "Unknown Soldier: Searching for a father" by a filmmaker named John Hulme (pronounced "Hyoom"). He's just over thirty at the filming, and the film is the story of his search for the father he never knew. You see, his dad, Marine 2LT John W. "Jack" Hulme, died on 30 June A.D. 1969 during a rocket attack in Quang Tri Province of (South) Vietnam -- just weeks after John had been born.

The story opens with John's call to one Dennis Headapole, who had served with his dad in 'Nam, and who expresses gladness to get the phone call. Then quickly we see John himself driving into Washington DC, to the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall. His dad's name is on "The Wall", of course. These two introductory items alerted me that the search would have a good ending, but also to steel myself for a return trip to my youth, when the war in Vietnam was tearing our country apart. I don't have a name of family member or dear friend up there on "The Wall" -- and yet because the war was such a dark shadow over my teenage and young adult years, just hearing about the Vietnam Memorial in a song on the radio will cause me to tear up! And when I visited "The Wall" on Memorial Day of A.D. 1999, I was struck by how the highly-polished granite was a perfect mirror, with my image. It was a sobering reminder to me that but for the grace of God MY NAME would have been on that wall, too!

As I watch "Unknown Soldier" I feel like I'm getting to know three fellow Americans, and appreciate their story of how 'Nam affected their lives, and to love them. They are John himself, who never wanted to know much about his father or how he had died over there, until his wife pressed him for information on his family, including the dad who died in combat; and his mother Ellen, a Jew who had married into a devout Catholic family and then suffered watching her new husband go off to an unpopular war and never return to meet his son.

And the Marine Lieutenant -- "Jack" Hulme. As I saw images of the handsome young football player, college "frat rat", and gung-ho Marine, and heard family members, boyhood and college friends and military buddies tell their memories of him, I found my self loving him and thinking how much alike we were. No, not the football-player and Marine, maybe. But the young man who wanted to serve his country in the military, enjoyed fraternity life, loved his lady -- and the son he never got to hold -- and liked to sing and go to parades. THIS was a guy with whom I could identify! Had we two KNOWN each other back in the Sixties, I'm certain that John W. "Jack" Hulme and I would have been best friends, and loved each other as brothers.

So, when Ellen in sharing with John what she remembered of his dad, finally broke down and wept in his arms, and again when his buddies gave details about his death on the battlefield, and with black-and-white photos to see one heard a tribute at his funeral and then "Taps", I felt the tears well up. Yes, I never truly met the man, nor have I met his son or widow, but the detains of his life were SO TOUCHING for me personally, that I now feel as tho' a piece of me was blown away in that rocket attack over there on 30 June '69.

And if God willing I ever return to "The Wall", I shall have a name for which to search. 2LT John W. "Jack" Hulme, rest in peace, Sir! I salute you for your service and sacrifice for our country.

And, "Uncle" Bob and Roger Bennett, you two rest in peace, too!