Sometimes parents and children struggle to find common ground. Some more than others ...
He was a doer. I was a reader.
He was a truck driver. I was a writer.
He had been to war. I stayed home.
He had kids. I was divorced.
He worked with his hands, fixing things.
I got baffled trying to empty a pencil sharpener.
He was there for people he loved and who loved him.
I’d lie on the couch, feeling sorry for myself.
Whenever a problem arose, his response was, “Let’s see what’s wrong.”
My response was always, “What do you want me to do about it?”
When he got sick, no one ever knew about it. He remained tight-lipped, not wanting to appear weak.
When I got sick, everybody knew about it. I issued statements to the media.
In 1984, he was in the hospital. I was at work.
When they called, there wasn’t much time left.
◆ ◆ ◆
He was in the Navy as a young man. I never left dry land.
He was 18 in World War II. I was 18 in the era of Vietnam.
He worked the radio on a destroyer escort in the Pacific, USS Fair.
I wrote movie reviews on my college newspaper, Ball State Daily News.
We were both from Indiana.
He was part of the flotilla that brought Ernie Pyle’s body back from Ie Shima, near Okinawa.
I was entering the profession that was Ernie Pyle’s life, that he revered.
Ernie Pyle.
The combat reporter who brought the war home to America, by talking to soldiers and generals.
The scrappy son of Hoosiers and Pulitzer Prize winner killed by a sniper in 1945.
On Aug. 3, Ernie Pyle would have been 110.
On Aug. 13, my dad, Paul Richey, would have been 86.
◆ ◆ ◆
Ernie Pyle.
That’s where my father and I intersected.
Ernie Pyle, the man who could talk to anybody, just like my father could.
Ernie Pyle, the man who could write and make sense of it all, something I struggle to do.
When I was younger, I never got it, that there was a place where our divergent lives would cross.
But there was.
And now, so many years after both men passed on, whenever I think of Ernie Pyle, I think of my dad.
Happy birthday, Radioman Richey.
Rodney Richey, 640-4861, rodney.richey@heraldbulletin.com, says that one of his father’s only printable nicknames was “Paperhanger,” after the wallpaper business his family operated briefly. It was also his dad’s CB radio handle, back during a much similar time. Richey’s own handle was “Shakespeare.”
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Rodney Richey: Ernie Pyle was our hero
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