By Michael Brewer
Special to the Alpine Mountaineer
“Everything that is old is new again.” Except this time, the newness was a total reset from the days of old when Vietnam veterans were not only dismissed but disparaged and degraded in the minds of some of our citizenry.
The Honor Flight Southland Mission 18 was both a reframing and a replacement memory for those soul-wounding experiences, where our integrity and humanity were trampled upon.
Yes, this writer was called a “baby killer.” I had eggs and tomatoes thrown at me during an event in Chicago in October 1969. I sat beneath an oak tree in Lincoln Park and cried, found an Irish pub and drank until closing.
Michael Brewer with Maria Pullman, his guardian for three days.
Later that week, my father took me to a Veterans of Foreign Wars post to celebrate my coming home. He asked the bartender to get me an application to join. The young bartender, following the letter of the law at the time, said, “I am sorry, Mr. Brewer. Your son cannot join the VFW as he is not a veteran of a foreign war.”
As many know, it was not a declared war. Same for Korean War veterans. So, we went underground and shared nothing of our experiences for 25 to 30 years.
There is more, but then it would sound like whining, which we were frequently accused of doing. Let it be known that for many of us those experiences just lingered beneath our daily consciousness like a macabre Stephen King novel.
And now comes the Honor Flight to D.C. My Army medic pal John Arambula and my former sergeant with the 7th Marines, Bob Boytor, and I got moved up on the waiting list and packed up to fly to Washington, D.C., for the weekend of May 16 to 18 to visit all the war memorials.
Much of this program is planned as surprises – and they are! Big time! Many of the life-changing experiences are best left a secret for upcoming Honor Flight participants. What I can say is that leaving LAX and the greeting we received at the Baltimore airport were so loving that grown men cried like babies. All my buddy John could say was, “Did I just die and go to heaven?”
Robert Boytor (left) was Michael Brewer’s sergeant in Vietnam.
A unique feature of this program is the guardian aspect. Each veteran has a guardian of their choice or one assigned to them. I elected to have one assigned and, man, was I a lucky hombre!
My guardian was Maria Pullman, a newcomer to California and former news anchor in Wausau, Wisc. Nothing like traveling with a fellow journalist – a Loyola Chicago grad, same place as my soul-wrenching experiences 56 years ago.
These guardians are close to what one would think of as a guardian angel. They never leave your side and help with every triviality of traveling so the veteran can fully absorb the program and be free to float among fellow veterans without losing track of the agenda.
I cannot recall every being engulfed with such compassion and attention. It does change you and it does reorder those defamatory days and leave one with a new greeting: “Welcome home – from all of us!”
0 Comments