A Company of Heroes (23 page)

My dad had many flaws that showed up right about the time I didn’t want them to, in my early teens when I was trying to figure out who I was. Those flaws seemed big at the time, but I’m a little wiser now and his flaws don’t seem that big at all. I look at the positive side of his life. He was a truly caring man, although caring might not be the exact word. When I look at all his writings, how he spoke about the men of Easy Company, I can see that he truly cared for others.

In his later years he had several silent heart attacks, which can go on unnoticed for some time and cause a lot of damage. He was in and out of hospitals, but always kept a certain undeniable
joie de vivre
. He joked that the nurses didn’t know his true age. He had an octuple bypass in April 1988 and recovered from the surgery, but never fully. Too much damage had been done. He passed away in September 1988, far too young.

I have chosen a very safe life on purpose, so I don’t have many risks. I’ve been a high school teacher at the same school for thirty-two years. But Dad was much more a risk-taker. I give much credit to him for that. He really put himself out there. That was his philosophy in life: drive hard and never settle for mediocrity. If you’re going to be in the military, or a journalist, or a media representative, or a high school teacher—whatever you’re going to do—be the absolute best at it.

The philosophy helped him stay positive and resilient through many rocky years. I think of a quote from another letter Dad wrote to Dick Winters, this one written a few years before Dad died. Dad’s words sum up his life and personality well. He had experienced a number of financial, health, and relational setbacks by then, but still found the courage to write:

 

 

 

Daddy’s been gone since 1975. He talked a lot about the war when I was growing up, but I didn’t pay attention very closely to his stories. He talked only when he had been drinking, and mostly I was trying to avoid him then.

I’m not saying this quite right. Today, I understand so much more of what Daddy went through in the war. I just wish I understood it back then. I would have listened much more closely if I did.

My father, LaVon P. Reese, was born in Kempton, Indiana, on February 10, 1921. He had two brothers and one sister. His mom worked in a hospital as a nurse’s aide, but I don’t know what his dad did because he died when I was way young. I was born in 1947.

People called my father Von or Reese. His middle name was Paul, after his dad, so I don’t know how his parents came up with LaVon.

I know Daddy’s upbringing was rough. The family didn’t have much money and needed to work hard. I called his sister to get some pictures and she said, “Honey we didn’t have a camera back then; we just didn’t have anything.”

I think that’s why a lot of these guys went into the paratroopers—it was a chance at a good job. It’s also why they could handle the war—because they were raised so tough.

Dad graduated from Kempton High School. He worked odd jobs after graduation until he went into the service.

That’s about all I know about his earlier years. He didn’t talk about them much, and I never asked him any questions.

General George S. Patton—now that’s who Daddy talked about all the time. I don’t remember anything specific about what he said, but it was always General Patton this or that. The war was hard on Daddy. I know he had to shoot some young guys, and that always bothered him.

Dad was one of the original Toccoa men. He mentioned that. I always knew he was in Easy Company, and that’s been verified a number of ways. Stephen Ambrose mentioned him a few times in
Band of Brothers
, although we didn’t know about the book until the movie came out. After Normandy, Dad was promoted from private to corporal.
¹⁷
He was with the men toward the end of the war in Germany where his main interest was chasing women.
¹⁸
In Austria, he boarded a girlfriend for a while in a private house.
¹⁹
Dick Winters wrote that Dad joined the ranks of the NCOs just before the Holland campaign.
²⁰
Daddy’s picture is on the front cover of Don Malarkey’s book: it’s a group of Easy Company guys, and he’s in the back row, the third from the right.

In 2001, Floyd Talbert’s brother phoned and filled us in, and we went over to Normandy with HBO. Several of the men remembered my dad. They said he was always a good athlete.

In addition to his other duties, Daddy was also a pathfinder. I’ve got some information about that. The 506th actually had three guys in their ranks who were trained as pathfinders—Red Wright, Carl Fenstermaker, and my dad.

You think of the guys parachuting into Normandy or Holland, but Dad was one of the few men who actually parachuted into Bastogne. It happened on December 22, 1944, just days after the Germans broke through the Allied lines in the Ardennes. Two sticks of pathfinders from the 101st Airborne Division jumped into Bastogne. Their mission was to set up signal beacons to guide in planes to get new supplies to the men. The resupply mission succeeded, thanks to the efforts of my dad and the pathfinders.

Joe Watson is a cousin of my mother’s. He and Daddy bailed hay during summers after the war. It would get hot up in the haymow, and they’d get to talking. Daddy told Joe he was pretty scared when they parachuted into Bastogne. He said the Germans threw everything they had at them, and their plane was just coming apart. He wanted to jump out before he was allowed.

Daddy told Joe about a situation up there at Hitler’s lair. I guess the boys were celebrating and all, and they just lined up and all pissed in Hitler’s bathtub. They just lined up and let ’er go. That’s what Joe said anyway.

After the war Daddy went to college at Ball State, here in Muncie, Indiana. He married my mother, Bernice, right after the war in ’46. My mother was a bookkeeper and worked in an office. They had an apartment in Muncie while Daddy was getting his degree. She helped support him when he was getting that.

My husband Lester says to remember that Floyd Talbert stood up for Mom and Dad when they got married. I never met Floyd, but I guess that when they got back from the war he and Daddy remained friends for a lot of years. Daddy never went back to many of the reunions. I don’t know why. I wish he was here now so I could ask him about these things.

Daddy became a high school history teacher and got a job in Kokomo, where he also taught health and physical education. He was a great athlete and coached high school basketball and baseball. History was always his favorite: anything to do with World War II, that’s all he talked about. I’m proud he was able to get his college education. Oh Lord, he just loved history and sports. There’s a couple guys around here that knew him, in fact he coached them, and they always talked about how good of a coach he was.

Daddy and Mom liked to have a good time. They fished, camped, and did a lot of swimming, boating, and skiing. Anything outdoors, that’s what they loved. Daddy was very muscular and loved to show off his physique, especially when he was drinking. He played a lot of cards here at the Legion in Sharpsville. We talked to Dick Winters, and he remembered my dad. Winters said the men nicknamed him “Blackjack,” because Daddy loved to play cards so much.

We lived on a farm near Kokomo. My parents didn’t work the farm for their living. It was my grandfather’s farm, and there were four houses on it. Grandpa had given Mom and Dad one of the houses to live in when they got married and Daddy got the job teaching school. This was my mom’s folks—they had 220 acres, corn, beans, wheat, milk cows, and Daddy helped out from time to time when they needed work done. Their son ran the farm later on. A lot of my growing-up years were spent trying to avoid my parents. So when I got old enough, I came to town a lot with my girlfriends.

As far back as I recall, I remember Daddy drinking. He didn’t let it get ahold of him at first. The drinking got bad about when I went into junior high, then it got better for a while, then it got worse again until he died. There were about fifteen really rough years where the drinking took hold of him completely. He had trouble keeping a job then. As a teacher you need to watch that.

Mother probably could have done more to encourage him to stop. She got on him, but she liked to drink, too, and they liked to go out dancing at places where a lot of drinking was going on. Whenever Daddy drank, he sat up at night and started talking—I don’t know when he ever slept—then Mother got on him, and he got mad at her, and they argued.

Daddy could get so mad, so mean, when he was drinking. Whenever he drank he reminisced about the war. He went and sat on the back porch with his rifle, mumbling and yelling and shooting into the woods behind our house. When I started dating Lester in high school, Daddy got to drinking one night really bad and searched for his rifle. Mother gave Lester the gun and said, “You get this out of the house.” Lester did. Daddy never threatened us with his gun. I wouldn’t want it to come across that way. But when somebody’s drinking and holding a rifle, you never know what kind of damage he might do.

Daddy liked to pick fights and found it hard to keep friends because he argued so much. Once, we had friends over playing cards, and Daddy picked a fight with the guy. It got so bad we called the police. Do I remember what the fight was about? Oh grief, no. Undoubtedly it wasn’t anything worth fighting over. Daddy was probably bragging about the war, and the guy probably made some negative comment because he wasn’t there. That might have set Daddy off. I really don’t remember. I was young and probably in the other room trying not to hear.

As a kid growing up in that kind of environment, mostly I was just worried about being embarrassed. When a person’s drunk, he can act pretty silly. I was always worried to be out in public with Daddy when he had been drinking.

I think I’m coming across that he was bad to me, and it was never that way. When he was sober, he could be a great guy. It’s just that I don’t have a lot of memories of when he wasn’t drunk. Daddy had his fun moments. I remember him playing ball in the yard with me.

I got a phone call here about two months ago from my nephew. He said, “You know, I remember your dad every year on New Year’s Eve. He called right at midnight, at 12:01. I’d look at my dad and he’d say, ‘Well I bet that’s Von calling to tell us GERONIMO!’ That’s what he always said when he called up on New Year’s Eve.”

It’s funny, when I graduated from high school in 1966, I wanted to become a hairdresser. But Daddy wanted me to become a teacher, like him. My dad’s sister was a hairdresser, and she lived about an hour and a half away. From time to time I went there by bus and spent a week with her. Now I wish I’d become a teacher—that’s the joke—I’d have made a little more money than I’m making now.

Lester and I got married right after we graduated. I was an only child, and there were nine kids in Lester’s family, so that’s what I married into. Mother couldn’t have asked to have a better son-in-law. Lester and I have two children.

Right about when Lester and I got married, Daddy lost his job in Kokomo because of the drinking. So my parents moved to Indianapolis, about an hour from us, and Daddy got a job in another school system. Mother quit her job in Kokomo and moved with him.

Mom and Dad often came up from Indy on the weekends and took the children back home with them. That was always one good thing about Daddy. He sure loved his grandkids. He got out there and taught them how to ride bikes, or got down on the floor with them and rassled. He showed them how to do pushups and stand on their heads.

How did Daddy die? Well, he fell off the porch while drinking and needed to go to the hospital. Then he passed away the second day in the hospital, just real suddenly. The autopsy showed cirrhosis and artery blockage. Six or seven things were listed. Basically, they felt that the alcohol had taken his life too early. He was only fifty-four. My parents went to church some, but not a lot. I hope he went to Heaven. That’s all I can say.

There was a funeral. I have to brag on my husband a bit here. Lester wanted Daddy to have a military funeral. But it was July 3 when he passed, just before the July 4 weekend, and we couldn’t find any veterans around. Lester called everywhere. I told Lester not to worry about it, but he said, “Absolutely not, Marcia, your dad lived and breathed that war, and he is going to have a military service.” So he got it all worked out, and I was so thankful that Lester pushed to get that done. He’s a wonderful man.

After Daddy died, Mother remarried a fellow who came over from Czechoslovakia after World War II, another military guy. She found some happiness in that marriage. He was a drinker, not quite as bad as my dad was, but he died of cirrhosis, too. His death took longer and was harder. Mother got lung cancer and died in 1993. She and Daddy both smoked and drank and partied a lot. It took its toll.

I’ve been reading up on this some. As hard as it is to talk about bad memories, there’s a purpose to it. These young guys coming back from the war today, they need to be encouraged to talk to someone if they’re having problems. There are places that can help soldiers nowadays, but back then you weren’t supposed to talk about anything.