1LT Peter J. Lantz
The wear blue community
is comprised of hundreds of amazing men and women, who each feature
their own layered story. I am privileged to share Mike Brown’s wear blue tale
below. Mike is a great American. He graduated from West Point in
1966, and is the only Vietnam Cobra pilot known to survive being shot
down. Author of Missile! Missile! Missile! A Personal Experience, Mike runs as a member of the Joint Base-Lewis McChord wear blue Chapter.
I am always intrigued by Mike’s courageous life and and impressed by
his careful reflections; I am glad to call him a friend. Please read his
words carefully, as I think you will find an engaging story and
thoughtful conclusion:
“I can't remember when I didn't think of myself as a runner.
As
a farm kid growing up near Sandpoint, Idaho, there weren't always
ready-made activities available to fill up discretionary time. Biking
and running were attractive escapes for me, so I learned early to do
both. I found that running was something in which I had a sort of
informal competitive edge over many of my peers. I can remember
intensely competitive footraces in which I engaged as far back as first
grade. I didn't win all of them, but the activity fed an urge to
demonstrate that I could do something better than the next guy.
Over
the years, I learned to enjoy the escape that running provided. As a
kid, I'd plan runs to explore nearby places that I wanted to know
better. I discovered that while running, I'd often run as much as
several miles before I became suddenly conscious of the fact that I
couldn't remember anything about the terrain over which I'd just run.
My mind would be so consumed in other thoughts, that the physical act of
running would become a sort of “automatic pilot” mode which released my
mind to a variety of other pursuits. It became a way of escaping into
my thoughts in a way that gave me a means to focus my mind in such a way
that no other environment seemed to provide. A teenager has a lot of
thoughts that require intensity and focus.
When I was in high
school, I felt a natural attraction to competitive track. We had what
could be best described as a quarter mile dirt path around a field out
behind the school. In those days, Sandpoint had three boys' sports—no
girls sports. They were football, basketball, and track. Partly
because of the physical environment, there wasn't much interest in
track. The practice field was usually covered with snow until April,
and after that, the running path was mostly mud. Every spring, someone
would take a pickup and go to one of the railroads to get cinders to
spread on the track. That was our cinder track.
My younger
brother, Kevin, and I both found that running in track was a pretty
reliable way of gaining recognition from our peers and from the coaches
and teachers in our school environment. Kevin ran the mile and I ran
the half-mile. As high schoolers, we were pretty good. I ran the half
around 2:00-flat, and Kevin could run the mile in about 4:30. The two
of us were the entire Sandpoint representation at the Idaho state track
meet when I was a high school senior in 1962.
After high school, I
entered West Point with the Class of 1966. At West Point, running is
normal life. It's hard to imagine that a cadet's life would get through
a day without some kind of running. Beyond the normal routine, I was
on the Plebe cross-country team my first year at the Academy. Several
conflicting interests, including the challenges of academics, led me to
discontinue my competitive running activities after Plebe year.
Nonetheless, I'd occasionally get myself out on mind-clearing runs
around the Academy grounds throughout my four years there.
My membership in the Class of 1966 positioned me in a way of which I was not aware at the time for my current interest in wear blue: run to remember.
Our class would go on to become what is known as the “bloodiest” class
in the history of the Academy. In terms of service, all but one of my
classmates served in the Vietnam War. More than thirty of our class
made the ultimate sacrifice in that war. One of those sacrificed was my
First Class (senior) year roommate, Pete Lantz. Pete and I were more
than just roommates. He was probably the closest friend that I made in
my cadet years. That friendship extended beyond our cadet life. We
continued our friendship, along with our wives, when we were both
stationed at Fort Hood following our graduation.
Pete would leave
Fort Hood for Vietnam in June of 1967. I followed in August 1967.
Sometime in late November or early December, I was reviewing the
casualty reports in the ARMY TIMES when I found Pete's name listed in the KIAs.
I knew none of the details; I would not learn anything more than the
fact that he'd been killed until many years later. After Pete had left
for Vietnam, his wife, Dagmar, had relocated to the New York City area,
and I had no contact information for her. In those days, one couldn't
simply enter someone's name in a Google window and find them.
More details of Pete's death came years later when I read Rick Atkinson's The Long Gray Line in
1990. The book was a history of the service and sacrifice of the Class
of 1966. In order to tell the class's story, Atkinson focused on about
ten of our classmates. Pete was one of them. For the first time, I
was able to learn some of the details about where and how Pete died.
One of the things that I learned was that his daughter, Kristel, was
born two weeks before Pete's death. He died without ever having met
her.
Pete's memory has been an important part of my life. In
2005, through Internet contacts, I was able to locate his widow,
Dagmar. At the time, she was living near a site in North Carolina where
I was working on a consulting assignment. We were able to meet, and I
was able to learn much more about Pete's death and its aftermath. Much
of this included a variety of difficulties—some of which had never been
resolved—that had befallen Dagmar. Among these was the retrieval of
Pete's class ring. The assistance of several classmates helped to
resolve this and other issues. I also committed to write Pete's
obituary for the West Point alumni magazine, ASSEMBLY.
Another
of my classmates who was featured in Rick Atkinson's book was John
(Jack) Wheeler. Jack served in Vietnam, and after he returned, he
acquired a law degree. He subsequently held a number of influential
positions in business and government, but what's most important here is
that Jack headed the Vietnam Memorial Fund. This was the group that
built the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.
In a way
that was much needed at the time, the Wall struck a chord among
Americans. The Vietnam War had been a very divisive experience for the
country, and there was much residual bitterness after that war. The
Wall represented something that all but the most callous could agree
upon—that regardless of policy disagreements during and after the war,
there could be reconciliation with respect to honoring the service and
sacrifice of those who sacrificed. More than anything else, the Wall
became a symbol of remembrance of the service and sacrifice of a
generation of American military. That need to reconcile probably
resulted in the Wall's becoming the most visited monument/memorial in
the nation's capital.
To this point, I've discussed two ideas
that are very much a part of my life: running and remembering. To me,
the genius that we know as wear blue: run to remember represents
a unique integration of these ideas. I've also tried to demonstrate
how they are, and have been, a part of my personal life. I was calling
on Pete Lantz's spiritual encouragement on difficult runs long before I
ever heard of wear blue.
wear blue: run to remember capitalizes
on the runner's ability to scrub his or her mind in order to focus
while running on the memory of a person. It provides a vehicle for a
sort of spiritual communication. We call on our memory of that person
or those persons to join us in our immediate activity. We're able to
sense that person's or those persons' presence as our minds transfer
their focus from the strain of our physical activity to an enhancement
of our memory of a person or persons. The memory provides us with an
energy for running that we, in and of ourselves, cannot provide.
But wear blue: run to remember does
something more. I've written of the kind of closure that has been
provided by the Vietnam Wall. It's a closure borne of remembrance. It
does that uniquely and beautifully in a way that few memorials have
accomplished. wear blue: run to remember incorporates that and takes it a step further. That next step is called letting go. The essence wear blue is that it is a running community that is a living memorial. We
don't stop at remembrance. As Lisa has so eloquently stated it so many
times, 'We gather, we remember, and then we go out and we do something life affirming.'
What
a brilliant and apt metaphor for the grieving process! I can think of
no other activity that so appropriately memorializes the service and
sacrifice of our Fallen. "
Mike Brown at a Saturday Run in DuPont, Washington. Photo Courtesy of Nancy Bamford.
2 comments:
Extremely touching. Peter Lanz and Mike Brown thank you for your service
Awesome article...
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