The Days Forward

West Point Class of 1969

By Ray Dupere

10th Anniversary – An Opportunity to Share

In one of my Days Forward stories, I opened by saying that today’s candidates are far better qualified for West Point than I ever was.  So, I have always looked back on the opportunity I had to attend the Academy as a gift from God.  With that being said, it follows then that the life I have been allowed to live ever since attending West Point has been a gift as well.  And The Days Forward is as much a part of that gift as many other parts.

Any perusal of The Days Forward will quickly reveal that it is indeed exactly what it purports to be … a collection of “the extraordinary stories of those ordinary Americans” that were fortunate enough to be members of the West Point Class of 1969 … otherwise known as the “Best of the Line”.  And because it is a collection of extraordinary stories, The Days Forward is also, then, extraordinary, as well.

It is extraordinary because it would probably never have come into being if not for the premature death of Bill Rice, G-3.  It probably also would not have come into being if Bill & Suzanne were not the proud parents of Chris Rice, Class of 2010.  And of course it would not have come into being without Suzanne Rice herself.  The Days Forward exists because of these three, and those of us who have been privileged to become the authors of some of those stories.

And if truth be told, without The Days Forward most of those stories would probably never have been written.  I know that is certainly true in my case.  When I wrote my first story that was all it was … one story.  I had only one story I really wanted to tell and The Days Forward give me the opportunity to tell it.  Without that opportunity I would never have been motivated to write it down.  But once the first one was written, other stories followed much more easily.  So, for me, The Days Forward gave me the forum I needed to record some of the things that God has allowed me to do.  So, for that I truly want to say thank you to Chris and to Suzanne and to say, “Happy 10th Anniversary” to The Days Forward!  May the stories keep on coming until there are no more stories to tell.

The Good Old Defense Finance and Accounting Office – 1974

     For lack of any better ideas, when I resigned my commission a year after coming back from Vietnam, my wife and I decided to try out life in the Green Mountain State of Vermont.  When we first started to work on implementing our plan Avril imagined herself as a high school choir director and I a high school math or science teacher.  Half of our plan worked out perfectly when she became the choir director at Hartford High School in White River Junction, Vermont.  The other half of the vision had me standing in front of five classes a day in our middle school teaching fifth grade math.  Life doesn’t always work out quite as you might imagine.

Ray’s School – Hartford Memorial Middle School  (hmms – facebook)

     Even though the 125 or so 11-year-old kids were not highly stimulating, I still enjoyed working with them none-the-less.  I especially enjoyed working with the kids in my one class of over-achievers.  We ended up working through the required textbook by the end of February, so I had to ad-lib for the remainder of the year.  It was actually quite fun to try all kinds of new ideas out on them, all of which they excelled at and enjoyed.  Interestingly, years later I found out that one of my absolute brightest students, a young Hispanic girl, graduated from West Point with the Class of 1985.

     Though I enjoyed working with my students, the kids I ended up spending the most time with were the students in my wife’s various choirs and ensembles.  After my teaching day was done, I would wander over to the high school and hang out with them as my wife finished up the day working with different kids on songs or duets or whatever might be happening at the time.  Being a young couple in our late twenties with no kids of our own, quite a few of the teens enjoyed spending time with us … and we with them.

     While all of this was happening, we were also getting more and more involved with a little Baptist church that we had discovered while driving around with our realtor looking for a house.  And as part of that increasing involvement, we became quite avid helpers with the church youth group.  Almost all the kids in the youth group went to the high school my wife taught at, and several were even in her choir.  So, our first year of teaching was spent learning our jobs, and growing in our faith, and doing typical high school teacher and youth group leader type stuff.

     Towards the end of our first year, we began to become quite strong in our desire to want to live our lives as fully-devoted followers of Jesus Christ.  To that end we became quite burdened with a desire to share our faith with the teens that we were routinely interacting with on a daily basis.  So, during the summer between our first and second year we began to plan for a special event that we would hold at our house the first week of school in September.

     When the designated Saturday arrived, we ended up with about 25 teens over at our house where we plied them with hot dogs and hamburgers and everything a teen could want to eat.  The mealtime was then followed by a time of sharing and singing of songs.  Avril and I and some of our youth group kids shared about how we had become Christians and about how important our faith in God was to us and the way we lived our lives.  We closed out the evening by inviting them to come back the next Saturday night for a Bible study for any who were interested.  The following Saturday about 15 of the original 25 showed up.

     After that first Bible study session I realized that the kids who had decided to come back needed to have Bibles of their own.  So, I went to a nearby Christian bookstore and ordered a dozen Bibles.  I wanted to make sure that each one of them who didn’t already have a Bible had one of their very own.  In due course the Bibles arrived, and we passed them out to all the kids.  We really enjoyed seeing them diligently use them over the next year as we met almost every Saturday night for our group studies.

New Bibles For Bible Study  (pelahatchienews.com)

     The twelve brand new Bibles ended up costing me $142 and change, which was a good hunk of money in those days.  But I really felt that it was something that God wanted me to do.  Not long after giving the Bibles out I received a very official looking piece of mail from the Defense Finance and Accounting Office at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Ohio.  In it was a check for some back pay that I was owed.  There was a note explaining that a random audit of my pay records had been performed and that I had been underpaid at one point during my time in Vietnam.  The check in the envelope represented the amount that I was owed plus any accrued interest.  The check was for $142 and change.  To this day I remember the amount because God taught me a great lesson through this experience.  When you step out in faith and do what you believe God is calling you to do, He will be with you every step of the way.

     The following year Avril and I left White River Junction, Vermont, and I headed off to Dallas Theological Seminary to study for full-time ministry.

Dallas Theological Seminary – a Long Way from Vermont

But when we left, we left behind quite a few young teens who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and who went on to live their lives for Him.  One young girl from our group ended up becoming a medical missionary, and one of the young men ended up going to seminary himself and becoming a minister of the Gospel.  As I’ve said before, God has truly given us a blessed life indeed.

Pro Deo et Patria – Country – 2021

Of the three hallowed words that comprise our beloved motto, I would in this article like to write about “Country” and what that word means to me.

I have always thought that I lived one of the most blessed childhoods that any kid could ever want.  Though to me I was simply living the only life I knew, yet it was in many ways magical and surreal.  That’s because I was born into and raised in the Army.  I was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, and raised mostly in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with overseas stints in Panama and Okinawa.  From 1954 to 1957, we lived in Fort Gulick in the Canal Zone in Panama … and for an eight-, nine- and ten-year-old, it was a fantastic place to live.  We lived in a nice house on a corner lot and across the street in front of my house was a jungle with wild banana trees and vines to swing on and iguanas to chase.

Jungle with Banana Trees (photo by Kelley Rees CostaRicaDailyPhoto.com)
An Iguana to Chase (Dave-CostaRicaDailyPhoto.com)

And across the street next to my house was the post theater with free cartoons every Saturday morning.  And then a block away behind our house was the post swimming pool.  Oh, and beyond the jungle was Gatun Lake, which at the time was purported to be the largest man-made lake in the world.  It was, simply put, a glorious place to live.

Arrow marks where Ray Lived (courtesy of Bill Roddy)

You might at this point in my story wonder what any of that has to do with the subject of Country; to me it had everything to do with it.  How it happened I don’t really know but for as long as I can remember I always seemed to understand that the life that I was blessed to live was a result of the simple fact that my dad was a soldier in the United States Army.  I understood that he was serving our country and I had this sense that what he was doing was a wonderful thing.

I think that one of the things that helped to instill these kinds of thoughts in me were the periodic trips that our family would make back to my father’s hometown in Connecticut.  Plainfield was a small little mill town in Eastern Connecticut that simply was no match for some of the sights that I saw growing up.  And although I absolutely loved our visits with my grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, I knew that I was blessed that my dad had chosen to stay in the Army after World War II rather than return to Plainfield.  I loved my life, and I loved the United States of America for making my life possible.

One of my most poignant memories as a child occurred at 5:30pm when the evening cannon would go off signifying that it was time to bring the flag down at the end of the day.  We did not always live close enough to hear it routinely, but sometimes we were nearby when it happened and the impression of what would happen then has stayed with me for a lifetime.  Wherever you were and whatever you were doing you had to stand at attention with your hand over your heart and wait until the last note of the bugle faded away.  Even if you were riding in a car, the car would stop and everyone would get out and face the direction of the flag and pay your respects.  My fondest memory of such times was when we would be playing Little League games at the ball fields on the huge parade ground in the center of Fort Bragg.  All the games would stop and everyone … players, coaches, umpires and spectators would all pay their proper respects to our flag.  As a child I think these memories did more to instill a sense of patriotism in me then perhaps anything else.

The culmination of my childhood sense of patriotism probably occurred at the end of our first day at West Point on July 1, 1965.  My decision to attend West Point was embedded in me sometime around the age of ten or eleven or twelve.  From that time on, I made it my goal to pursue being an Army officer like my dad.  He had not gone to the Academy, but he had told me that if I truly wanted to be an Army officer than that was the only way to go.  No other way was better as far as he was concerned.  So, when we raised our right hands out on Trophy Point and swore our allegiance to the Constitution and to our Country, it was for me the culmination of a childhood dream.  A dream that the United States of America had made possible.

It was probably through reading the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn which impressed me with the concept of the Mississippi River as being something special.  Or maybe it was one of the many movies that I went to in the post theater across the street from my house in Panama.  How ever it happened as a child growing up, to me the Mississippi River meant something very special. It was sort of the dividing line in the middle of our great country which divided the East from the West.  And I remember how entranced I was when I realized at the age of 29 that I was going to actually literally be crossing the Mississippi for the very first time.  It was in the Spring of 1975 when I was traveling with my wife from Vermont to Texas to visit Dallas where I would be attending seminary in the Fall to study for the ministry.  Since that first time I have probably crossed it a half a dozen times since, but every time I am thrilled at the prospect.  The thrill I get is not just because it is so immense, but also because to me the Mississippi is that long thread from North to South that binds our Country together.

The Mississippi River and its Tributaries Bind the Country Together (courtesy of the National Park Service)

The final vignette which speaks of Country to me flows out of my trip that I made in July 2018 to honor our classmates who fell in Vietnam.  It occurred while I was doing a recon of the Fort Snelling National Cemetery in South Minneapolis, Minnesota.  The cemetery is quite large and quite beautiful with well over 200,000 graves in it.  You would think that being as large as it was that it has have some rough spots here and there … but it was in fact meticulously maintained.  I was so struck by its size that I drove around and took pictures from several different vantage points.  Each picture that I took contains row upon row of graves as far as the eye can see, and none of the graves are duplicates in any of the pictures.  Each picture is a completely separate scene.                                           

Views of Fort Snelling, MN (courtesy of Ray Dupere)

I remember at one point in my tour I was quite moved to be in the presence of so many veterans’ graves.  I also felt a great sense of patriotic pride as I looked around at the wonderful effort that we as a country put into remembering our fallen heroes.

“Country” to me is not just one thing but many things.  It is our flag and it is our land.  It is our history and it is our people.  It is our founding fathers, and it is our future.  It is our hopes and our dreams and our sense of being.  It is simply put, the United States of America, the greatest country that has ever been thus far in the history of mankind upon this earth.

Let Me Do My Job – 1996

You’ve probably figured out by now that one thing I had to deal with as a pastor and as a chaplain were issues surrounding death and dying.  So, it was not uncommon for me to receive phone calls from parishioners asking me to visit people in the hospital.  The following are two such stories of that particular kind.

The first involved a call from an elderly lady in my congregation up in Hampden, Maine, asking me to visit her older sister who was in the hospital following a heart attack.  Since such requests were not unusual, I agreed automatically.  But then she went on to tell me that I needed to be careful because her sister did not believe in God and got very angry whenever anybody tried to talk to her about God.  I thanked her for that information and headed out to the hospital.

Eastern Maine Medical Center, Bangor

After inquiring about her room number at the information desk, I headed to the room and found Edna easy enough.  I introduced myself and as soon as I told her that I was her sister’s pastor she looked like she was a deer caught in the headlights.  It was quite obvious that she was very uncomfortable with me being there, so after talking for a few minutes about rather innocuous things I said my good-bye and went home.

A couple of weeks later I received a call from the same church lady telling me the same sister was back in the hospital after another heart attack asking if I would visit her again.  I said I would and headed back out to the hospital all the while asking God what in the world I was going to say to Edna this time around.

I found out her room number and this time as soon as she saw me, she was again the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.  We talked for a couple of minutes about nothing and then out of nowhere I asked Edna if she would do me a favor.  She asked what favor and I proceeded to tell her that since she was in the hospital for the second time in two weeks with a heart attack, I would consider it a great favor if she would please just let me do my job … at which point she very simply said yes.

At that point I began to explain to her about how God loved her, and He wanted her to be able to know for sure how she could go to heaven if she were to die of her next possible heart attack.  I explained how Jesus died on the cross for our sins and about the promise of God the Father that whoever believed in Jesus should not perish but would have everlasting life.  I then asked her if she would like to receive the forgiveness that Jesus promised and be able to have the assurance of heaven … to which she said yes.  I prayed with Edna and when we were finished, she had tears running down her cheeks and she thanked me profusely for coming to see her.  Following this, Edna recovered quite well and began attending church with her sister for a number of years afterwards.

**************

The second story also started with a phone call from a younger woman named Kate asking me to visit her brother who was in the hospital dying of emphysema.  When I agreed to visit him, she told me he was a Vietnam veteran and suggested that perhaps if I wore my Maine National Guard chaplain uniform it might help break the ice.

 

Maine National Guard Patch & U. S. Army Chaplain Corps Patch

 I agreed and went home to change and then headed out to the hospital.

U.S. Army Chaplain Uniform

After asking for the room number, I found the room and was surprised to walk in and find a man simply sitting on the edge of his bed looking up watching television.  He had absolutely no tubes or IV’s or anything.  He was just sitting there with his feet dangling down looking up at the TV.  Thinking maybe I had the wrong room, I asked if he was Kate’s brother and when he said he was, I then introduced myself as her pastor.

For about a good half hour we proceeded to talk about Vietnam and where we had been assigned and we talked about all kinds of other things as well.  Eventually when the conversation began to slow down, I asked if I could tell him a story.  He agreed quite easily so I then began to tell him the story about the little old lady named Edna mentioned above.  That story had become a favorite of mine since it became a very easy way for me to break the ice about spiritual things with someone I didn’t know well.  I would simply tell the story and then ask whomever if they would please, like Edna, let me do my job.  So, this is what I did with Kate’s brother dying of emphysema.

He readily agreed so I shared with him just as I had with Edna that God loved him and wanted him to know how he could be sure that if he died, he would go to heaven.  In his case I asked him if it was true what Kate had said that he was dying of emphysema.  He said that is what he had been told by the doctors.  I asked him how could that be since he had no tubes or IV’s or anything.  He said he didn’t quite know anything other than that’s what the doctors had told him.  So, like with Edna, I asked him if he would like to receive the forgiveness that Jesus promised and be able to have the assurance of heaven … to which he said yes he would.  I then prayed with him and when we were finished, he had a big smile on his face and he thanked me for coming to see him.  It was about 4:00pm so I said my good-bye and said that I would be back the next day to check in on him and see how he was doing.

Later that evening about 8:00pm I received a phone call from Kate saying that her brother had died.  Like the thief on the cross … it was simply one more reminder that it is never too late to take the time we have to get right with God.

RIP Edward McCann, USA – Vietnam

A Semi-final Resting Place, Part 2 – 2018

Glen Ivey West Point 1969
Glen Ivey 1947-1972

San Marcos Cemetery, San Marcos, Texas: The San Marcos Cemetery is what I think of when I think of a cemetery. It was not large, nor was it flat, nor was it isolated, nor was it visible from the nearby main road. Rather it was secluded on a gentle knoll with lots of trees and simply lovely in every way. However, it did present one of the problems which I had always imagined might occur on the trip. As it turned out the cemetery had at least two family plots for people named Ivey. Whether they were related or not I never found out, but the information I had been given by the cemetery prior to leaving on my trip was for the wrong plot. I wasn’t too worried when I was the first to arrive and discover the error. I knew that Karl Ivey had been there the day before so I expected that he could set us straight once he arrived, and in any case a nearby cemetery worker was able to redirect me accordingly. As with the service the day before, the 15 of us at Glen Ivey’s service was also under a scorching sun, and although there were trees everywhere, they were not spreading out over Glen’s grave. Of the twelve services that I ended up doing, over half of them were on days that were quite warm. But true to form, Texas laid claim to being supreme by having the hottest weather of all. To read Glen Ivey’s Memorial Article click here.

 

Remembering Guy Hester
Guy Hester 1945-1970

Oakwood Cemetery, Winona, Mississippi: I tend to suffer from an obsessive-compulsive tendency. I say suffer because that is my wife’s claim. My claim is I am meticulous. It is why I tried my hardest to get as much information as I possibly could from the cemetery offices before ever leaving my home in Connecticut. I already mentioned that in one case I was sent the wrong information. In the case of Oakwood, I was sent no information at all. However, I knew that Guy Hester’s widow, Elsie Lynn, would be present so I did not fear being unable to find Guy’s grave when the proper time came. Though I was not able to visit all the cemeteries the day before, when I had the chance I did try to, and Oakwood was no exception. I drove up and down the lanes looking for a Hester family headstone, but to no avail. The next day when I and the almost 30 others arrived for the service, Elsie Lynn was there and the headstone was easy to spot, but I never saw it. There were a number of times when my obsessive-compulsive nature proved insufficient to the task, but God never did. To read Guy Hester’s Memorial Article click here.

James LeRoy Smith West Point
James LeRoy Smith 1944-1971

Blue Ridge Memorial Gardens, Beckley, West Virginia: If you have never been to West Virginia you need to do yourself a favor and visit it. In some respects, it is like no other state I know. If you are not going up the side of a hill or mountain you are going down, or vice versa. Which actually makes Blue Ridge Gardens a bit of an anomaly. Not that it doesn’t have any slopes, for it does to be sure, but it is not nearly as hilly as I might have expected. And as it turns out, Jim Smith’s grave is on a relatively flat portion of the cemetery in any case, which, of course made it easier on the 15-16 of us who attended. It is at least reasonably possible that I am one of the most experienced members of our class when it comes to trying to find specific graves in specific cemeteries. As a minister I have spent more than my fair share of time in them. I had fairly specific information. I knew that Jim’s grave was in the Everlasting Life Section, Site 39, Plot A3. And I had a map with an X marks the spot designation. But it still took some time to find it. I probably walked right by it several times before finally spotting it once and for all, but once I finally did it felt good. It was going to be the last time I would be responsible for finding a grave on my trip. The next time at Arlington that job would have already been done by somebody else. To read Jim Smith’s Memorial Article click here.

Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Virginia: In my post-trip after-action report I mentioned the special nature

Henry Schroeder West Point
Henry Schroeder 1947-1991

of being at Arlington National Cemetery. As a retired National Guard Chaplain, just being there was very special for me. But to be there to lead a memorial service for Hank Schroeder that would be attended by 45 classmates and spouses was almost beyond words. Even now as I try to write I find it much harder than for the paragraphs above. With those the words flowed easily, but for Arlington I am almost without words. Perhaps that is because from the top of my now-balding head to the bottom of my flat feet I am a military man. I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia, and raised on military bases all my life as a child. I probably heard the name Arlington National Cemetery before I ever really knew what it was or understood its significance. Even to this day I have not yet been able to give it the time and attention it deserves. The two times I have been there were both for very specific purposes, so I have not yet been able to visit as a tourist. I have yet to visit the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which I have to say is a bucket list item for sure. I do not have the credentials to be laid to rest there, but Lord willing I will see it again. To read Hank Schroeder’s Memorial Article click here.

West Point Cemetery, West Point, New York: I hope that what I am about to say is not considered sacrilegious. To my mind, the thing that makes the West Point Cemetery special is simply the fact that it is at West Point. That and of course the people that are buried there. As cemeteries go, it is not the most beautiful one I have ever been in. It is not the largest one. It is not the most well-kept one. Nor is it the most significant one. But it is the only one at West Point, and for that reason it has a specialness that no other cemetery can hold a candle to. There are many great people buried at Arlington, but there are great people buried in cemeteries all over our country. But West Point is like no other place, and those of us who were privileged to go there know that only full well. I was not a very special person before arriving at West Point, and I was not a very special cadet while I was there. I cannot speak for the twenty or so who attended, but just being a cadet made me feel special, and I have felt special ever since. B Arnold and the Traitors could sing, “We got to get out of this place!” with pure passion and truth, but every one of us knew we would never be able to get West Point out of us. And that is what makes the West Point Cemetery so special. For those like Joe Silva, Jon Shine, Pick King, Paul Sawtelle, John Woodrum, Harry Thain, Chip Oliver and Ken Yonan, who end up being buried there, it is like saying that when our time has come, we simply want to go home one final time.

 

 To read Joe Silva’s Memorial Article click here.

Joseph Silva West Point
Joseph Silva 1946-1970

 

To read Jon Shine’s Memorial Article click here.

Jonathan Shine West Point
Jonathan Shine 1947-1970

 

To read Pick King’s Memorial Article click here.

T. Pickett King West Point
T. Pickett King 1946-1971

 

To read Paul Sawtelle’s Memorial Article click here.

Paul Sawtelle West Point
Paul Sawtelle 1946-1971

 

To read John Woodrum’s Memorial Article click here.

John J. Woodrum West Point
John J. Woodrum 1947-1971

 

To read Harry Thain’s Memorial Article click here.

Harry Thain West Point
Harry Thain 1944-1972

 

To read Chip Oliver’s Memorial Article click here.

Frank G. Oliver West Point
Frank G. Oliver 1947-1972

 

To read Ken Yonan’s Memorial Article click here.

Kenneth Yonan West Point
Kenneth Yonan 1947-1972

 

Before I close, I would like to say a special thank you to all those who attended the twelve services. It was a great encouragement to see how selfless our classmates were in hosting me during my travels, and in taking the time to attend, as well. In several cases, former roommates and friends travelled great lengths to attend different services, whether from Washington, D.C. to Detroit and West Virginia, or from Florida and Texas and Chicago to Montana, or from various points of origin to Texas. At every service, there was at least one other classmate besides me in attendance, and often many more. It was also encouraging in three instances to see local folk turn out as well due to the event being publicized in hometown newspapers. All in all, it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life and ministry.

A Semi-Final Place: I titled this piece “A Semi-Final Place”. Obviously, I did so with a distinct purpose in mind. It is because no cemetery is the final resting place for anyone. The Bible teaches us that all souls will one day all be raised from the dead … the just and the unjust alike. No one who has ever lived will remain in the place where they were laid to rest. Even those who due to some misfortune or another did not have the luxury of a “final resting place” will be raised from the dead. According to God’s perfect plan there will come a day when everyone’s soul will be reunited with their body. The fact of the bodily resurrection from the dead is part of the declared purpose and plan of God. In fact, there will be two resurrections, and not just one. And as Revelations 20:6 says, “Blessed and holy are those who attain to the first resurrection.”