Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
They stood alone for a moment, recognized at the Garfield Elementary School gym; first two children in the bleachers with a parent now deployed, then a dozen whose parents have been.
Then the veterans in the chairs on the floor, standing one by one, hats and garrison caps of the American Legion and VFW; Desert Shield, Desert Storm, Korea, Vietnam, peacetime, Army, Air Force, Marines, United States Navy.
A father and son, Hollis and Rusty Jamison, men and women.
The man at the podium called for more to stand.
“I see some others whose names we haven't called,” he said. “I'm not gonna miss anybody, I've got all the time in the world.”
Phil Weaggraff, at the podium, a science teacher at the school, saved two honorees for the end, Don White of Palouse, World War II, who was not able to attend, and G.A. Perry of Palouse, in a wheelchair, two of his great-grandchildren presenting flowers to a soldier in Patton's Army.
At one end of the gym children in risers stood to sing: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” lifted their young voices.
Weaggraff introduced William J. Harmeyer, born part Blackfoot Indian, who, in the second semester of his senior year at University of Arizona, got a draft notice for Vietnam.
He later served as a green beret medic. On a parachute mission with the aid of South Vietnamese soldiers, Harmeyer's chute failed to open properly. It slowed his freefall enough that an entanglement in branches saved him, but the unit was quickly ambushed on the ground. One of the South Vietnamese was an infiltrator.
At the podium, Harmeyer asked the children to think of what it would be like to live in a country that permitted a family one car which could never be sold, only fixed. He talked of the Declaration of Independence, of countries that have used it as an example to write their own.
He talked about what led to the Declaration, in which contained 28 points of contention with English rule.
“King George made it known that his soldiers could choose any colonists' home to take as their own,” he said. “The 29th point was the intent to become sovereign and independent.”
He concluded and thanked the crowd.
The University of Idaho Vandaleers stood to sing.
“Tell him I fought the blue, proud and true, through the fire, tell my father so he'll know. Tell him how I wore the gray, just the way he taught me; tell my father, when you can, I died a man.”
Weaggraff at the podium spoke again, telling the assembled that special guest speaker Kenneth W. Alsterlund could not be there; instead being needed at a VFW Western States Convention in Boise.
In his place, Weaggraff introduced Joe Harrison III, Commander of Potlatch VFW No. 10300, an Air Force, Army and National Guard veteran of Desert Storm, who left a wife and two girls, age four and six months, to ship out to Saudi Arabia in 1990.
He told of veterans he knew from long ago.
“I feel blessed to have grown up in the '60s and '70s,” he said. “Many of my teachers were World War II veterans. My art teacher worked in the operating room of the U.S.S. Hornet. A doctor asked him to go retrieve some supplies, and just as he stepped into a corridor and shut the door, a Japanese kamikaze plane hit and killed everyone in the room. He taught me to appreciate the beauty of God's creation.”
“My uncle Brownie fought in Patton's Third Army. He was on a troop ship headed for Japan when Truman dropped the bomb. One can delegate authority, but can never delegate responsibility.”
He paid tribute to George Washington.
“Because of him, we would be a nation of laws, not a nation of men,” Harrison said.
On the gym walls were Basquiat-like ink and watercolor paintings of the Statue of Liberty, and rippling flags in crayon.
It was the 11th year of the Garfield veterans assembly.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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