The names of those who gave their lives and of those who remain missing are inscribed

in the order they were taken from us.

-Dedication on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Washington, DC

Jimmy Haley was 13 years old when a U.S. military officer knocked on his front door. He says he can still hear his mother loudly crying out, “Oh no,” when the officer said her son, John Haley, Jr., had been killed in Vietnam. That was September, 1967, and Jim Haley, now 57, cannot mask the pain of that day. “The Haley family was never quite the same after that one tragic day in 1967,” Jim once wrote in a letter to the Courier Post newspaper. Jim is an intelligent, sensitive and emotional man who deeply cherishes his family. They support him lovingly – and over 40 years later, so does the little town where he lives today, Runnemede, New Jersey.

John Haley as he appears in the Triton High School Class of 1966 Yearbook.

John Haley was taken from us two weeks short of his twentieth birthday, but he left powerful memories that keep him alive in our hearts. The pain and sadness never go away, but those memories nurture our caring for one another, allowing perhaps more intensity and intimacy in our important relationships. John could only be taken from us if we allowed his memory to die. Good families and good communities help us keep him alive.

I knew John Haley, although not well, growing up as kids together. While we lived two blocks apart and spent eight years going to St. Teresa’s in the 1950s, John was more rough-and-tumble than I was. Fittingly, he was attracted to the U.S. Marine Corps machismo and tradition. For me, the Air Force was just fine. I knew John to be a fearsome pitcher in the major leagues of Runnemede’s Little League. No one happily went up against him. His brother Jim said John would have him shagging balls when he hit batting practice on the big American Legion field. “He had me out on the railroad tracks on the other side of the fence line. He was really strong,” Jim says. “I stunk,” he adds, not considering the seven-year age difference in such a comparison with his revered big brother.

The Runnemede Little League field (September 2011) where John Haley honed his competitive skills -- and where his mother worked the concession stand.

Bill Sampolski also grew up with John and knew his family well. Today he is Commander of Runnemede VFW Post 3324. Over forty years later, the memories come to him vivid and easy:

“I hung around a lot with John. He was a jokester, always telling stories and jokes and laughing.

“His mom was a sweetheart, always over at the Little League concession stand working with the other ladies.

“It was really hard on his Mom & Dad. They were great people, a nice family. I spent a lot of time at his house.”

The story of John’s death appears on page 26 of the Courier Post on Wednesday, September 6, 1967 under John’s picture – the classic Marine Corps portrait:

A Runnemede Marine who “signed up for Vietnam” died of shrapnel wounds last Friday when 140-mm Vietcong rockets crashed into six billets at the Leatherneck’s 4^th Logistic Command post five miles from Da Nang.

The Marine was Lance Cpl. John M. Haley Jr., 19, son of Mr. And Mrs. John M. Haley, of 12 W. 7^th Avenue in Runnemede. In the attack 38 other Marines were wounded.

Lance Cpl. Haley enlisted on Aug. 26, 1966, taking basic training at Parris Island, S.C. He graduated from Engineers School at Camp LeJeune, N.C. last February. After a stay at Camp Pendleton, Calif., he was sent to Vietnam on July 6.

Cpl. Haley was assigned to the 4^th Fleet Logistic Command at Phu Bai, and worked as a repairman on bulldozers, cranes and other heavy equipment.

A graduate of Triton Regional High School in June 1966, Cpl. Haley worked as a pressman in a hosiery mill until his enlistment.

His mother, Mrs. John Haley, says her son “wrote 17 letters in 18 days, and the letters were very cheerful.” She said he “took life in stride and didn’t have any fear.”

The Haleys have two other sons, Lawrence, 16, and James, 13.

John's gravesite at Beverly National Cemetery, Beverly, NJ.

The following Wednesday, September 13, 1967 a Requiem High Mass at St. Teresa’s in Runnemede celebrated John’s life. Jim Haley says all he can remember is a huge crowd of people and very respectful treatment on the highways as the throng of cars made their way to Beverly National Cemetery for burial.

A couple of months ago I decided to find out more about John’s life and what happened to his family. What I’ve learned is a real lesson in the power of remembering in a caring community.

I dropped by the little house on W. 7^th Avenue first, but apparently no Haleys have lived there in a long time. The current owner bought the house last summer and is busily remodeling the 1920’s era home. On the off chance someone at the VFW might know something I walked over there – it’s just across the Black Horse Pike and behind the hosiery mill building where the newspaper said John worked after high school. Folks at the Runnemede VFW knew a lot more than just something.

Memorial display inside Runnemede VFW Post 3324 commemorates the three borough residents killed in the Vietnam War: James Gilch, John Haley and Francis Hayes.

They have a memorial wall inside the building for the three men from Runnemede who died in Vietnam: John Haley, Francis Hayes and James Gilch. When I asked if anyone knew how to find John’s family, they not only said yes, they told me exactly how to get to Jim Haley’s house – and what kind and color of car would be parked in front of it.

I’m guessing the VFW folks called the Haley’s to tell them I was coming. When I knocked on the door, Jim’s wife opened it and asked me to come right in. She didn’t seem surprised. Jim was sitting in his recliner looking over the day’s mail, and I was stunned when I saw him. “You look just like John,” I blurted out. We agreed to meet a couple of days later to talk about John and the Haley family.

South Vietnam’s war was in more turmoil than usual just before John’s death. The U.S. was propping up a government there, and presidential elections were scheduled for Sunday, September 3, 1967. This exercise in democracy seriously threatened the Communist opposition. It prompted the Viet Cong, the guerrilla resistance arm of North Vietnam to threaten and carry out numerous retaliatory attacks on Americans  – to teach us a lesson, I guess. Attacks were escalating all over the country, and John’s death was apparently a result of one of those actions. The VC sent rockets into the living quarters of John’s unit, no doubt to inflict maximum pain on the American people back home. Destroying an armored personnel carrier or an aircraft may be militarily effective, but killing and wounding the soldiers sends a message to the families back home. John Haley’s family took the full force of that message.

Runnemede's tribute to all its military veterans who served the country in uniform.

The day I talked with Jim Haley, his family had gone out so we could be alone. Talking about John is not easy for him. Jim told a lot of stories about their father, John Sr. There was a lot more to say about the father, of course; he’d had a lot more life. But also, father and son were apparently so alike – talking about his father was really Jim’s way of talking about his brother. John Haley, Sr., Jim says, was a true character. “There are so many Jack Haley stories,” he says.

Originally from southwest Philadelphia, he had enlisted in the Army in the mid-1930s. He was discharged in Washington, DC on December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Rather than clearing out and going back home to Philadelphia, he hung out with his buddies and they went out for a night on the town celebrating his discharge. The next day he was still in the barracks, and the Army told him the discharge was nullified – he was now in for the duration.

Wilkie Buick in north Philadelphia where John Haley, Sr. worked as a mechanic most of his adult life. Image courtesy http://www.phoodie.info/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/buick.jpg

John Sr. was a ground vehicle mechanic in the Army – just as his son John Jr. would be 25 years later in the Marine Corp. Jim said his dad was a “Sgt. Bilko type,” always with some scheme going on. He hated bugs and rodents and refused to sleep anywhere he thought they might get to him. A favorite bed was atop the canvas cover over the back of military trucks. He lived that way campaigning through Europe for the all of World War II.

John had met Virginia while he was stationed in DC, and they were married. After the war they came back to Philadelphia and eventually moved out of what he thought was a bug-infested row house to live in the comfort of a detached, single-family home on 7^th Avenue in Runnemede. Once a mechanic, always a mechanic, and John spent most of his working life as a mechanic at Wilkie Buick on North Broad Street in Philadelphia. He and Virginia generously gave their time to the community – John with the Runnemede Volunteer Fire Department and Virginia with the Little League Auxilliary. That’s how life was lived in Runnemede in those days – families were paramount, and the adults gave their all to make sure life was sweet for the children.

Gravesite of John's parents, Virginia and John Haley Sr. This is the reverse side of John's grave marker. The three are forever together.

Perhaps the classic “Jack Haley story,” as Jim tells it, involves his Dad taking the fire company ambulance over to Wilkie Buick one Saturday morning for repairs. Afterwards, he took it to his old southwest Philly neighborhood, drove down the street where some of his family still lived, put on his uniform hat and turned on the ambulance siren. He screeched to a halt in front of the family house, jumped out waving a straight jacket, yelling, “They’re coming to take you away, Irene, they’re coming to take you away.”

As Jim Haley told stories like that about his father I think we both felt they created part of a life his brother John never got the chance to have. As VFW Commander Bill Sampolski had said, “John was a jokester,” and we can all see him in life doing those sorts of things, like father, like son. Now, when I hear a funny story or a great joke, I know John is there with us.

Runnemede's tribute to those who served in Vietnam from the borough.

In losing John, the family did not have the privilege and comfort of privacy. It was public, and the government and press and seemingly the world were fully involved. Government is not a sensitive, caring entity. Jim still feels the sting of impersonal communications from the government. The telegram telling of John’s death takes up only a couple of sentences with how and when it happened. All the rest is bureaucratic details of how much expense money would be paid depending on various burial options, how the body would be transported and escorted, etc. A letter from President Lyndon Johnson was machine typed and signed, Johnson likely never saw it, since 460 U.S. troops were killed that month. Jim seems to resent the insincerity of that. Years later, after the war was officially over, an unsolicited letter arrived from President Jimmy Carter. Even more impersonal than the Johnson letter, Jim seems to think it may have had something to do with Carter’s presidential campaign – a powerful irony given that John likely died from opposition to a South Vietnamese presidential election.

The public nature of John’s death highlights the enduring support of the Runnemede community. Now 44 years later, the memory of John Haley is kept alive all over the borough, and I believe we will be long gone before that memory fades. Jim said every year at Memorial Day, he and his family are honored guests at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ceremony in Runnemede’s Triton Regional High School. Built as a student project in 1969 to honor Triton students lost in Vietnam, this may have been the first such memorial in the country. Natalie Winch, a Triton teacher spent at least one full summer heavily researching the memorial’s origins. She said:

The memorial at Triton High School to remember and honor its students who died in Vietnam.

“Built in 1970, the memorial located in Triton’s courtyard is the only known monument of its kind to have construction completed DURING the Vietnam War.  The Memorial Program was initiated in May of 1970, during the height of Vietnam War demonstrations and was intended to instill into students the respect and gratitude that our war veterans deserve, regardless of personal views held about America’s role in foreign conflicts.”

She said funding came from sources as diverse as the VFW, school cafeteria workers and history teachers who sold pens and pencils to students. A World War II bomber pilot, Thomas Troncone was a social studies teacher at Triton at the time and apparently was the inspiration for the memorial. He wanted to focus student attention on the one thing all could agree on – honor and remembrance for the Triton students who died in Vietnam. The memorial’s inscription says:

Image from the Courier Post newspaper May 29, 1971. It shows David Demsey placing a plaque on the Triton Memorial to remember and honor his brother Walter who died in Vietnam. This commemorative ceremony has taken place at the memorial every year since 1970.

“Dedicated to the students of Triton who by service or sacrifice aided the cause of their country in the Vietnam conflict.”

Triton High School principal Catherine DePaul says to this day, they have a school-wide event at the memorial to commemorate the memories of those students who died in Vietnam. They invite the families, local officials, a speaker or two, and they telecast it throughout the school for students who are not in the courtyard at the monument. For the students, it’s a lesson not only in history but also in how a community remembers and honors and cares for its own, year after year. And Jim Haley is one they care for.

Another public commemoration turned into a very personal one for Jim Haley. He doesn’t remember the details, but somehow a chalice was created in John’s memory. The family gave it to St. Teresa’s church, and they said it could be kept in the sacristy and used by priests for Mass. Years later, Monsignor Jess, pastor of St. Teresa’s retired and left. Jim said he was surprised when Monsignor Jess called and asked if it would be okay if he took John’s chalice with him. That was a gesture of such tender and personal caring that Jim tears up when he remembers it. Monsignor Jess died not long after, and what happened to the chalice is not known; perhaps Monsignor Jess took it along with him on the next part of his journey.

John Haley and others no longer with us walked this hallway at Triton High School.

The pain of losing our young people is powerful and never goes away. Norman Corwin, the world-class poet of the golden age of radio recently passed away, and I was surprised to read this in his obituary:

“I was a kid in World War I, and I lived in a tenement house,” Mr. Corwin told NPR. “And there was a woman — a family that lived on the floor below my family’s, which had a young son in the war. He was on a submarine chaser, which was torpedoed and all hands lost. I remember to this day, going up the stairs and hearing the sobs of his mother through the door. How can you forget that? All these years later, it haunts me.”

We ache for the lives that never were, the families never built, the children who were never born, the human connections denied. Yet, the power of our memories can sustain us as we imagine those we lost into our lives today. I went to an auto repair facility for a new battery one day last week. As I watched the mechanics at work, I saw John Haley there. Such work may have been his life. And I thought about what was written under his Triton yearbook picture: “Interested in cars…has his own ideas concerning Triton.” A budding mechanic and a budding character!

Commemorative display at Triton High School honoring students who died serving their country. Included here is James Reese, class of 1976 who died in a helicopter crash at sea.

While taken early from us, they gave much back. Memories of who they were, who we believed and hoped they would be, the very best of them, are locked in time. They were with us long enough to give those things, and no more. Bittersweet it may be, but better the tang of bittersweet than the emptiness of never having tasted. The Runnemede community has perpetually cherished this gift John left for all of us.

John Campbell, of Glassboro, NJ, wrote a book, They Were Ours, detailing the lives and memories of the 43 Gloucester County men who died in Vietnam. One of the surviving family members has this to say about the restorative power of memory:

“Tears won’t bring any of them back. The fond memories will keep you going. Say a prayer and remember that you loved him and he loved you. That will sustain you.”

That, and the power of a caring and supportive community, one like Runnemede, NJ. “Taken from us”? They can only be taken from us if we allow their memory to die.

Vietnam veterans honored at the Triton Memorial as their names appear on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC:

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We remember and honor the past with monuments like this Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

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We also honor and remember the past by passing hope along to future generations. Triton High School brings military veterans into the school for a Veteran's Day program. Students can discuss war and peace and everything in between with the military vets.

Find out what it means to me

-Sung by Aretha Franklin

The worst crime you can commit in a prison is disrespect. You will be tolerated as a murderer, robber, rapist, pedophile, even a robber baron. Everybody in prison is guilty of some crime. But, do something that disrespects another inmate, that can get you killed. After you’ve lost everything, the one human thing you try to hold onto is respect, the basic dignity of your humanity. I think holding onto respect is what I saw last Saturday when I visited the Occupy Philadelphia encampment. Sensing that government and corporations are taking away everything, in effect disrespecting them, many people are finding in their humanity enough courage to resist. They’ve tent-citied City Hall and are saying, This is our land, who do you think you are?

Attitude matters.

Chris Hedges got it right in a recent Truthdig column. He wrote: “This rebellion creates a real community instead of a managed or virtual one. It affirms our dignity. It permits us to become free and independent human beings.” Yes, it affirms dignity. While reading Hedges I can hear George Bailey ranting at Henry Potter, the richest man in Beford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life. “Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?” How long do they have to sleep in tents outside City Hall?

The richest people in this country today, unlike 1947 when that movie was made, own 90 percent of everything there is to own. That’s all the money, all the equity in corporations, all the houses and property and most of anything else that’s not nailed down. Said another way, the richest one percent of individuals in this country own more than the poorest 90 percent. That’s the truth of Capitalism as it’s committed in these United States in 2011. There are 400 individual people in this country who have a combined “net worth” greater than the poorest 150 million here. I’m sure their sociopathy is all that allows them to sleep at night. All this while U.S. corporations sit atop $2 trillion in cash they don’t know what to do with and tens of thousands of people who want to work have no jobs. The student loan scam is reaching Madoff proportions as debt now exceeds $1 trillion and a whole generation is slowly becoming enslaved. I think it’s disrespectful that a young person spends four college years preparing for a meaningful spot in the marketplace, is willing to repay the $30,000 or so in student loans and can get no better job than mopping a greasy floor in a donut shop for poverty wages.

I went to Occupy last Saturday to learn what’s going on. My basic questions:

1. What do these people want? Who are they? Where have they suddenly come from?
2. Why now? What prompted this?
3. What will come of it? Can it last? When it ends, will it have mattered?

Symptoms are in the signs.

I don’t think I have answers to my questions yet, but I have some ideas. Between talking with people at the encampment and reading so called news coverage and commentaries, a fuzzy pictures begins to emerge. Admittedly this picture is framed by strong opinions I’ve previously stated in my own posts:

• The U.S. government is corrupt beyond any hope of redemption. Rather than a government of the people, it is a government of the corporations. KBR has more influence in Washington, DC than any ordinary 100 million U.S. citizens.
• We are brutalizing our young people instead of nurturing them. If they are not gunned down on the streets, if their lives don’t sink in the drug culture and prison institutionalization, they are enslaved for life with loans to pay for education.
• We are the most violent nation in the history of the world, and this violence is deeply rooted in a culture of fear and ignorance. The economic cost of this violence is bankrupting us as we soldier over the world showing our self-righteousness and what we think is our might.
• The United States has devolved into corporatocracy where humans are valued solely for their ability to produce and/or consume. If you don’t produce or consume, you have no worth. That’s total disrespect of the human being. Read the Catholic Worker Aims & Means for clarification.

Looking up....

When I asked one young woman about her best hope for an outcome of this movement, she impressed me most by sitting quietly and thinking about her response for a good 30 seconds. The long pause was respectful in itself. She said she wanted to see people taken care of. Her experiences suggest that the interests of business and government are more important than the welfare of people. She said she has student loans and little hope of any job beyond minimum wage. She said health care should be a basic human right instead of a business. She said she once had to go to an emergency medical facility and in spite of having medical insurance, it cost her $750 because there was only one doctor there, and he did not participate in the insurance coverage she had. “It’s just not fair,” she concluded. She wants a country where people are treated fairly, where people take care of one another, and she doesn’t see that now in this country.

Sometimes the faces tell it all.

A young man about to graduate from college wants to go on to a Ph.D. in philosophy. He wants to use philosophy as an underlying support for teaching a better way to build a society where people are not manipulated by media and the marketing establishment. After nearly $100,000 for the undergraduate degree, he wonders how he can fund this dream – and make enough to pay off student loans. He said he sometimes thinks about dropping out of the whole system, but “I feel like I’ve already been sucked in,” he said. Like sixties hippies he and friends have talked about going to a different country and living off the land in a sustaining community. Given the constraints of globalization, he sees no way to make that happen; again he’s trapped.

A 40-year-old “blue collar” worker in dire straits said he simply can’t find a job. He wants to work. “Where have the jobs gone?” he asked. He said he’s been surviving on food stamps and the kindness of family and strangers. I was struck by the caring in his face. There is real concern among these folks not just for themselves but for all the people of this country. They simply want the “level playing field” politicians and business people bandy about with such toothy disingenuousness.

Having a say, mightier than the sword.

An “Idea Wall” was posted in Philadelphia where anyone could have their say with a black ink marker on a side of plywood. Much of it is visible in pictures at:

http://wetracy.smugmug.com/Society/Occupy/19581385_hWFkcw#1535888827_KnT47z2

Here are a few items written on that wall:

• Get corporations out of government
• Take care of our own people USA
• Government regulation of GREED
• Economic human rights for everyone
• Bring home the troops. Worry about our own country.
• End war, live simply, care for the Earth, share its wealth with all.
• Money is NOT happiness
• We are all human and bleed the same. Treat everyone equal. Bring our troops home.
• Help our kids and end world hunger.
• Stop bailing out the rich.
• Love and respect everyone in our new democracy.
• No Gods, no Masters.
• End racist war against immigrants.
• Corporate owners, not slave owners. Pay the workers.
• Love each other
• Help clean up neighborhoods
• We need to post a list of issues to communicate to the general public so they know what we are fighting for.

The fundamental unit of society showed up to be counted.

My first question was what do these people want? Turns out that’s irrelevant linear thinking. The question is the answer – these people are here, they are in the face of government and power. You don’t need stated “goals” when your action is one of Witness. I see this movement very much in terms of Witness. As Chris Hedges said, “All it can do is ask us to use our bodies and voices, often at personal risk, to fight back.”

The concept of witness seems either taken for granted or not well understood. Simply, it suggests that a person will not do what is wrong if other people are around to see it – either you know what you are doing is wrong or the judgment of others has the power to convince you it is wrong. The best example I’ve seen is the climax of the movie Witness, set on an Amish farm. A corrupt police official is killing people to prevent his crimes from being known, and the last one he has to kill is a good cop who is resisting him. As he points a shotgun at the good cop a group of Amish men from surrounding farms come on the scene. They see what he is about to do, and he feels their judgment. The good cop asks is he’s going to kill them all. Finally, he accepts the judgment of the Witness and gives up.

It's not just about them.

I see the power of the Occupy movement as Witness. The government and the corporations and the outrageously rich know their policies and practices are wrong. As large groups of people stand up and tell them what they are doing is wrong, they must pause and at least reconsider. Some will be moved to an examination of conscience and perhaps better, more humane behavior. Obviously, this strategy doesn’t have the immediate gratification of a SEAL Team strike or a missile fired from an overhead drone, but it does respect humanity. Therein lies its strength. Witness and non-violent resistance have achieved things far more positive than all the wars and oppressions of history.

One young man I talked with on Saturday kept referencing Gandhi. Without killing or disrespecting a single person Gandhi extracted his country from brutal British tyranny and oppression. Nelson Mandela, without killing or disrespecting a single person (although he was sorely tempted by violence) freed his country from European oppression and its legal racism – and went on to forgive those who had sinned against him. Martin Luther King, without killing or disrespecting a single person, freed this country from the evils of institutional racism. Ironically, last Sunday a memorial to him was dedicated in Washington, DC, and intellectual Cornel West was arrested on the steps of the Supreme Court for pointing out that the government of this country is disrespecting the people. While he clearly broke the law, the government was too embarrassed to file criminal charges so they let him go. That’s the power of Witness and a demand for R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

More than just young people have something to say.

My old hero, Ammon Hennacy, always said “Force is the weapon of the weak.” I think the powerful in the country are going to find themselves overmatched by disrespecting this Occupy Movement and the ordinary citizens of this country.

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Veterans of all ages are coming out.

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In the name of Justice, a woman in a wheelchair.

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It's about more than money.

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-Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time)

The junk always ended up behind the Texaco station in Wichita Falls, Texas. Broken fan belts, flattened cans oozing oil, radiator hoses, mangled gasket pieces; so this was the place I went to discard a memory. I thought my little ritual fire would do the job. I knelt before anxious flames fueled by pictures, letters and SWAK envelopes that linked a part of my heart to Candace Williams of Pennsylvania. I thought the smoke and ashes were all that was left. Maybe I was wrong. In his poem, The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost said:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

It was the spring of 1966, and I was a 19-year-old Airman stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base. My $117.90 military pay each month didn’t support my appetites — car, gas, beer, drive-in movies and burgers — so I had a part-time job at the big Texaco just south of town. A couple of nights a week pumping gas and checking oil doubled my income, taught me unsavory aspects of auto maintenance as business and kept me out of mischief. After all, I had a girl back home.

In the Air Force, 1967.

A lot of young guys who go into the military leave girlfriends behind. In defiance of the “dear john letter” cliché, they expect the relationships will last. They rarely do from all I’ve seen. People move on. But memories persist, especially mine, like that “…vast structure of recollection” Proust mentions. As a friend once told me, “You remember everything, and you remember EVERYTHING.” While my heart left Candy Williams in a pile of ash behind the Texaco in 1966, my head still bears the weight of it all.

“Time is but a stream I go a-fishing in,” said David Henry Thoreau. A lot of fish go down that stream, never to be seen again. He also said, “To regret deeply is to live afresh.” I’ve lately been living afresh my past time with Candy Williams. I am as enchanted by the simple unknowns themselves as I am by the sheer inability to know. Wonder in itself is an answer. Like impenetrable parallel universes conjectured in string theory physics, I know the world of Candy Williams went on without me, and what happened in that tributary of the stream of time is unknowable to me. So I flounder about knowing a quest is useless. I accept the unknowable, yet I still wonder. As the old Christmas Carol says, “I Wonder As I Wander.”

Exactly when we first met I don’t remember; I know it was the summer of ’64. Nearly 50 years ago, an entire lifetime. I lived in Pennsauken, NJ just over the river from Philadelphia then. She lived near Great Bend, PA, within a stone’s throw of the New York state line. Summer vacations for both our families included a week of camping at Stony Mountain Family Campground in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains. I remember loading up our fire-engine-red 1954 Chrysler on a summer Saturday morning and laboring up the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s Northeast Extension headed for Stony Mountain. Around the same time, Candy’s family was loading up their green
Volkswagen van for their southward trek to Stony Mountain. We were there the same week that year. The classic summer romance bloomed, but this one persisted into the fall, and then the winter beyond. With neither car nor money, I would walk and hitchhike the 200 miles to her house where her parents let me sleep on the sofa for the weekend. I did a lot of walking in those days. During the week, we kept the post office busy with letters back and forth.

Blue Ridge High School. This is the parking lot where we parted in March, 1965.

By late March, 1965, I had failed at high school, family and seemingly society in general. I had dropped out of school and was headed for the military — a last resort for messed up 18-year-old kids! I spent a bittersweet last weekend of March with Candy at her house. On Monday morning, March 29, I rode with her on the school bus to Blue Ridge High School in New Milford, PA. In the parking lot, we parted. She went inside to finish her senior year. I walked off alone bound for Vietnam, a place I’d never heard of. Two days later I was in Texas dealing with military basic training. A year later I was burning pictures and letters behind a gas station in Texas. I’d gotten the word she was dating a guy in her town, a guy with a future even less promising than mine. So I didn’t wait for the dear john letter. The next year I was in Vietnam.

The stream of time babbled on, and until the early nineties I never thought about Candy Williams much. Once in a while I’d wonder what ever happened to her. That’s when I took a business trip up to Oswego, NY and passed through Great Bend on Interstate 81. Curiosity got me off the big highway for a look around at the place where teenage memories were made. I retraced the several miles I’d walked on back roads to her house after a hitchhiking ride had dropped me from the Interstate so many years before. I had coffee in the large diner that had replaced a tiny diner where Candy and I would sit together in a booth with cups of coffee and chocolate ice cream in little stainless steel cups. I drove slowly past her grandparents’ home in Great Bend where we spent Thanksgiving day in 1964. It all looked familiar, yet different. Nothing is the same even as yesterday, let alone 30 years ago. I looked at the parking lot of the high school where we parted that spring morning in 1965, and I measured my walk from there to the Interstate where I could start hitch-hiking home at three miles.

It may not have been Proust’s smell and taste, but the visions triggered my relentless recollections. Over the next few days I thought about Candy Williams and that time past. Mostly I couldn’t get out of my head the image of a young man, all alone, walking down a back road in Pennsylvania looking for a ride with a stranger. His stated plans to achieve a GED and go to college after the military no doubt sounded whimsical to reasonable people. While I don’t remember feeling anything but optimistic as I walked that road, when I look back I am struck by the utter aloneness of that young man with the uncertain future, a blind naivety, and coming memories that would haunt like the persistent flames of love letters.

This past summer I was on the road a few weeks. I steered a course for a couple of days around Great Bend, Pennsylvania. While I have no interest in romance I do feel a void in the strand of memory that went haywire in 1966. Loose ends from almost 50 years ago. Who knows why I care, but I do. What did Candy Williams do with her life? Marriage? Children? Work? What memories might she have of that time past? Are her parents and other family members still around? Does that place bear any witness to what we were or did? I decided this time to look around and maybe talk to some folks, sort of poking around the edges of recollection.

My first stop was breakfast. The big diner that replaced our tiny diner is still there. A bored young waitress silently delivered a menu and returned to her roost at the counter. The menu read:

Dobbs Country Kitchen

Since 1967

So, it hadn’t taken long for things to start changing. Our tiny diner was gone within two years.

Dobbs Country Kitchen, July 2011.

A shopping center behind the diner had been anchored by a grand Western Auto store in 1965. It’s now a dreary strip of old, tired stores. What had been the Western Auto apparently was a supermarket until a couple of years ago; it looks like it’s been empty a year or two now. In a sporting goods store, I talked with the owners. They had recently moved there to escape an urban environment. They knew little of what the place was like 50 years ago.

I tried to find the old house where Candy and her family lived. It was a couple of miles back in the hills over dirt roads amid pastures and woods, and when I was there 20 years ago I did find it. No luck this time. Maybe the last decade’s housing “boom” got new houses built back there, but nothing looked familiar. Vehicles parked in driveways now are shiny SUVs; they used to be old pickup trucks.

Blue Ridge High School doesn’t look any different than I remembered it in 1965. Even the parking lot where we got off the school bus looked the same as I remember it. There was no great inspiration or any flood of feeling. Institutions are meant to seem timeless and rarely show much age. I took pictures and went on.

This is what remains today of what was a modern Western Auto store and shopping center in 1965.

I came across a man named Williams. Being 70 and having lived his life there he did remember a lot. But he said all the Williams in his family had died or moved away. It felt comforting, even reassuring to talk with someone with a connection to that time. He knew of the tiny diner from 1965. He called it that “little tin can.” He agreed the people working in the current diner know nothing of the area’s history. “They don’t know anything — and they don’t care,” he said with more than a hint of exasperation. He knew the Interstate was locally called the PennCan Highway, since it was built to go from Pennsylvania to Canada. He knew it was always big news so many years ago when “there was a wreck up on the PennCan.” Gory details passed over phone lines and CB radio, among neighbors at the Western Auto and the diner — small town news. He even remembered Civil Air Patrol functions for kids who liked airplanes. But he knew nothing of Candy Williams or her father, Jack, or that family.

While doing some Internet research I got an unexpected jolt. I found the Blue Ridge 1965 high school yearbook and Candy’s page. Each student’s entry has a quote, some catchphrase they were known by, and two interest areas they chose to remember. Reflecting our letter-writing activities, she was known to frequently say:

“Hey Kathy, I got another letter.”

Her two interests were:

New Jersey [where I lived]

Stony Mountain [the campground where we met]

The Blue Ridge High School 1965 Yearbook page showing Candy Williams.

That seems to have been the sum total of her senior year. Youthful devotion, anticipation and excitement ended ignominiously a year later in flames behind the Texaco. It makes me feel sad now, perhaps sadder than I felt in 1966. It makes me think of the loss of innocence and bleak disappointment in The Last Picture Show, a movie filmed 20 miles south of Wichita Falls in Archer City just five years later.

My last stop was 40 miles down the road. I visited with Phil Hoff. His parents owned Stony Mountain Campground in the sixties. He and I are the same age, and we became friends in those days. Candy had a sister, Cindy, and the four of us were always together when I was in the area. I thought Phil might know something of what happened to the Williams family through the years. Sadly, he hadn’t thought about them in years. But then, he’d gotten married, had a family and built a business over all those years. Too busy to wonder after lost streams of time.

My search, such as it was, ended there. The pragmatic among us, I know, will say there are information resources available that will capture a good part of the life of Candy Williams. True, but I’m known to often say, “leave things be.” Like the wonder of a cloud of stars in the night sky, recollection will suffice; nothing I could know would
satisfy more.

Walt Whitman says it all for me in his poem, When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the
lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Surely the life of Candy Williams is among those stars. And that’s enough.

The universe as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope