<THEME MUSIC>

Kamilah Kashanie (KK): With Memorial Day weekend coming up, we’re thinking about sacrifice, the bonds that form between people who literally go through war together, and how it affects those on the battlefield and back home.

It’s the StoryCorps Podcast from NPR. I’m Kamilah Kashanie.

Our first story comes from Gena Gear, who was a switchboard operator in the Army Signal Corps stationed in Germany during the first Gulf War. That’s where she met Army Specialist Jodi Walz, who played trumpet in the Army band.  

At StoryCorps, Gena told their 22-year-old son Ryan, about how Jodi stood out to her in a sea of soldiers.

Ryan Walz (RW): What made him different than other men in the military? 

Gena Gear (GG): Oh, he was definitely different [laughs]. He had a sense of duty about his job. But on the other hand, didn’t care. He was quick witted. And I remember he told me that he was in formation, and the general comes by, gets to your dad. And he says, ‘Soldier, looks like you got grass on your boots’. And your dad says, ‘It’s camouflage, sir’. 

Both: [Laughs]

GG: And he was so charming and so confident and so just kind actually. And I remember once in a while the band would let me ride the bus with them. And I was sitting next to him, and he said, ‘I want you to listen to this’. And it was the slow version of Chuck Mangione’s ‘Feel so good’.

RW: Mmhmm.

GG: And he says, ‘I’m going to play that at my wedding’. And I said, ‘Well, whoever you get married to is going to be so lucky’. I know it sounds corny —

RW: [Laughs] It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard.

GG: I know. But anyway, and then when we got married, he played that song at our wedding, and it was so romantic and it’s one of my favorite memories.

RW: What do you think he liked about performing? 

GG: He liked playing high notes.

RW: I have this image of this older, heavier weight guy just, like, walking up in front of the stage, like he owns the place, putting the trumpet to his face and just blowing as hard as he can with his eyes closed. And he’d get done, and he’d be just so ecstatic.

GG: Yeah. And he loved playing for Memorial Day. You know, when they would go around the cemeteries?

RW: Mm hmm.

GG: And he felt that it was necessary to do that, to pay tribute to these people. He was honored to do it. The military, sacrifice, service, and playing taps, he took that job seriously.

RW: Yeah.

KK: Eventually, they moved back to the US. They left active duty, and they had Ryan and his brother. And then things started to take a turn.

GG: I think what he had in the military, he didn’t have it in civilian life anymore. A greater good. Like whatever scaffold he had been standing on started to crumble and he didn’t have a way to either build a new identity for himself,

RW: mmhmm.

GG: Or rebuild what he had because he couldn’t ever go back. And then he started to drink more and more and more. 

RW: And it wasn’t that he was, like, violent when he was drunk either —

GG: No, no.

RW: It was — He was just drunk. [laughs]

GG: But I couldn’t stay in the relationship anymore because my goal was to protect you guys. I remember, at some point, I did leave him a note and I thanked him. I thanked him for those years that were good times. And I wanted to thank him for allowing me to raise you guys. I think on some level he knew that it was better that you were with me. And I think he knew.

RW: Well, he told me.

GG: He told you that?

RW: Yeah. I could tell it was really bothering him. But it was like he was admitting that he wasn’t good enough for his kids or something.

<MUSIC>

KK: Ryan and his dad had a tense and complicated relationship, but one of the few things they had in common was music. 

When Ryan joined the school band, he had to choose an instrument. The family was tight on money, so they decided he should play one of his dad’s extra trumpets.

GG: But it wasn’t the bridge to a relationship that you would think it would be.

RW: I would play and he’s like, ‘You can’t play very high’. I’m like [laughs] ‘oh, thanks for that. I’m, like, in seventh grade. But, you know’ 

So as I started becoming my own person, it felt like he didn’t make it a priority to reach out or connect to me. And that was pretty hurtful. I remember in high school, I would invite him over to pep band or something, and then he’d show up with, like, whiskey in his breath. And I’d be like, ‘Oh, my God, this is terrible’.

GG: Mmhmm.

RW: You know, he’d go into his performance mode, and clapping my band director on the back, and being a bombastic, likable guy.

GG: Right. Right.

RW: Which is kind of, in public, the only mode he had.

GG: Right. He wasn’t the super hero and he wasn’t the villain. He was just complicated. 

RW: Yeah. And I was coming to terms with, ‘Okay, well, that’s the relationship I’m going to have with him.’

<MUSIC>

KK: A few years after Ryan graduated from high school, his dad died from COVID. And while they were planning his military funeral, Ryan had a decision to make.

GG: I think it was your idea to play taps right? At his funeral?

RW: Yeah. I wanted to play taps because he would have wanted me to play taps. I think mostly what was going through my mind at my dad’s funeral was, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t played it yet. And, it’s also emotional.’ 

GG: Yeah.

RW: His old commander, Dan, he was right there by me. And Dan was a long time trumpet player, too. And right before I got up to do that, he was like, ‘just, uh, treat it like a job. Just do it. And then you think about it later.’

GG: But you didn’t ever waver on whether to do it or not. 

RW: Yeah. Well, when you play taps, you’re showing them respect. But you’re also letting them know that we’re still thinking about you. We still appreciate your service. We still appreciate what you did. And you’re still allowed to — to rest, you know, peacefully. 

GG: I think that is a testament to your strength and your character. That despite flaws that he had, we can set that aside, making sure that he was honored and respected.

RW: Hmm.

GG: And to have that come from his son, he would have taken pride in that. 

<MUSIC>

KK: That was Gena Gear and Ryan Walz remembering Army Sergeant First Class Jodi Walz, a Desert Storm veteran and a member of the Honor Guard. He retired in 2019.

After the break, how a Vietnam Veteran spent his post-service years honoring the ones who died. Stay with us.

<MUSIC>

<BREAK>

KK: When Duery Felton came back from serving in Vietnam, he dealt with, in his words, “bitterness and hatred” from folks who didn’t agree with the war.

Duery Felton (DF): I was not welcomed back to the States. We were told leaving the military, do not wear your uniform. One lady called me a baby killer. 

KK: Then in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall went up in Washington DC. It was engraved with the names of the service members who died in the war — over 58 thousand. And Duery decided to go see it. He remembered that day with his friend Rick Weidman. 

DF: Going to the wall, I had mixed feelings, but as we were walking about, people would leave things all over the wall. Anyone could leave something. No one could recognize certain objects there so I pointed them out. One of the things I immediately recognized was the military hospital pajamas because I wore them a long time. So we decided we were going to make this a collection, and I was asked to come in and assist in setting all this up.

Rick Weidman (RW:): They created the job around you. So it’s not that you chose to work at the memorial but it chose you?

DF: It chose me. I really do think that it chose me. There are about 8 million Vietnam era veterans and out of that number I for some reason was the one chosen for this. I don’t know why, but I’ve often thought about that.

KK: Duery was the first curator for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection. He helped identify and care for the thousands of objects that were left at the wall.

RW: What was it that kept you coming back?

DF: During Vietnam, and I very seldom speak of this, we had walked into an ambush and one of my friends had been killed, and I stopped to look at his body. And my sergeant came up to me and said, ‘We have to keep moving forward. That’s why we have medics. The medic will get him.’ I had to go against everything I’ve learned growing up, as regards to having feelings for people. In order to survive I had to learn to detach. Unfortunately, not everyone has learned to reconnect.

RW: There’s nothing you can do to help any one of those guys. The only thing you can do is to help understand them better and leave that as a legacy so they’re not forgotten. I don’t understand how you do it, Duery. Your strength is always what has knocked me over. You’re the man.

DF: No Rick you are. Thank you. Thank you for being my friend.

<MUSIC>

KK: That’s Duery Felton and his friend Rick Weidman. Duery spent 28 years working with the memorial and its collection, and retired in 2014.

It’s been 6 years since Duery recorded with us, and I had a few more questions for him about the items people were leaving at the wall. So I called him up.

KK: What was happening before you started, like, collecting them and curating them? Like they were just outside, sitting in the weather? Would they get damaged? Like would people steal from it?

DF: All of the above. And we started noticing that there were things being left for people’s birthdays. 

KK: Oh, wow. 

DF: Then we start saying things like diplomas saying ’this is for you Dad.’ 

KK: Is there anything you remember that sticks out to you?

DF: Um yeah. There was a manila envelope. On the front it was ’Duery, you will understand.’ It was this person’s war diary. 

KK: And they left it at the wall. Wow. 

DF: Left it at the wall. I have never met this person.

KK: What do you think they meant by that? 

DF: He was speaking to me. It was his experience in Vietnam. I’m a combat veteran in Vietnam. You have to understand everything that was going on. It was a difficult time to be a veteran.

KK: So does leaving stuff at the wall, you think give people some sense of closure? 

DF: Some sense of closure, but I could tell you, a lot of times there aren’t any names as to whom they’re referencing. I was seeing things coming from the corpsmen medics, ‘I wonder if I did enough to save your life.’ This other person is saying, ‘Doc, because of you, I’m alive.’ It’s a shame that these people will probably never meet, so there will never be closure.

KK: Do you feel like the work that you were doing at the memorial wall gave you a sense of closure? 

DF: Oh, man. It wasn’t — would it be called closure? Maybe I’ll say it gives me a sense of worth. Sense of value.

KK: So now that you’re retired, if people are at the wall in another 20 years or they’re looking at the artifacts of the memorial museum, what do you want them to remember from all of it? 

DF: The up close and personal meaning of this. It was being curated by the public. The public was saying, for whatever reason, ‘this is important to me’. In the past, history was written from the top down. This is really history being written by the common person. 

<MUSIC>

KK: That’s all for this episode of the StoryCorps podcast. It was produced by Jey Born and me, and edited by Jasmyn Morris, who’s our Executive Editor. Eleanor Vassili is our lead producer. Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd. Our fact-checker is Natsumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to John White.

To see what music we used in the episode, go to StoryCorps – dot – org, where you can also check out original artwork by Lyne Lucien.  For the StoryCorps podcast, I’m Kamilah Kashanie. Catch you next week.