Norwich
The Valley News asked parade-goers to tell us about the veterans they were especially thinking of on this Memorial Day.
Here are some of their stories.
Dick Porter enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1969, the year after he graduated from Hanover High School.
Part of his work entailed training military dogs to detect mines. He was devastated when his first dog died after an intentional hit-and-run.
“He always loved animals,” recalled his widow, Susan Jenks-Porter Van Pelt, who graduated with Porter in 1968. “He had a raccoon that he adopted from the wild. Or, she adopted him, I should say. She did not like me at all.”
Porter received his second dog in early January 1971. On Jan. 24, the dog stepped on a mine. Both of the dog and Porter were killed.
Van Pelt now lives in New Jersey, but she lived for many years in Lyme and returned to the Upper Valley for Memorial Day. She and a group of Porter’s classmates held a tribute to him and laid a wreath on his grave.
“Today, I’m remembering, more than anything, his sense of humor, his laugh,” Van Pelt said. “He was a lot of trouble. But he was a lot of fun, too. He was ready to do anything, at anytime. And he did.”
“I was an army brat,” said Roquel Ardin, of North Hartland.
Her father, Jesus Ardin, was in the Army for roughly 30 years, and her two brothers, both now deceased, were in the Air Force.
That was part of why Ardin herself joined the Navy in 1974.
“I looked up to my dad a lot for doing something that was so important,” she said. He served in WWII, the Korean War and part of the Vietnam War before retiring in 1970.
But once enlisted, Ardin said, she encountered sexism in the service: Instead of serving on sea duty, which was required for male soldiers, Ardin was sent to isolated duty in “middle-of-nowhere, Greece” along with 350 other women.
Three years into her service, Ardin broke her neck and was sent home.
“Back then, for women in the military, they looked for any excuse to get rid of us,” Ardin said. “They didn’t want us there at all. It was really, really restricted.”
Still, she said, “it was a dream come true to serve my country like my dad did.”
Though she has used a wheelchair for the past three years, Ardin has remained an active participant in veterans’ affairs. She recently won a slew of medals from the National Veterans Golden Age Games.
And, thanks to adaptive sports technology through the National Disabled Veterans Summer Sports Service, Ardin recently went waterskiing for the first time in her life.
“When I’m holding onto the reins behind that boat, I’m just screaming my head off,” she said. “I feel like I’m flying. It’s like nothing else you could ever imagine.”
Brian Livingston, of Norwich, recalled how his stepfather, Bob Kohn, would stand up and salute the Memorial Day parade each year, despite his mixed feelings on militarized violence.
“He was a pacifist by nature,” Livingston said. “And he thought a number of wars that we’ve fought in this country were useless endeavors.”
Kohn, an army captain in WWII, had struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder for years “before it even had a name,” Livingston said. “He didn’t want people to be subjected to that for unnecessary conflict.”
Livingston said his stepfather instilled in him “a nuanced perspective into the kind of people who served in the war,” which he said was important to him in dealing with the deaths of some of his classmates in Vietnam.
“He believed in service, and yet at the same time he would think long and hard about the necessity of a war,” he said. “So even though I’ve always been anti-war, I also appreciate the people who put their lives on the line.”
Gail Edgerly, of Wilder, sympathizes with the families of fallen soldiers. But she was also thinking of soldiers who returned from service with wounds, some hidden. In particular, she recalled a relationship she once had with a man who was a Marine in the Vietnam War, and who experienced severe post-traumatic stress after his service.
“He carried a lot of resentment, and was very upset at the government for his non-reception as a soldier when he returned,” she said, adding that it took him years to admit that he needed professional help, and even longer to make real progress with his treatment.
“To me, that’s the crisis, and the crime is that we don’t give these men and women what they need to recover and be integrated back into the society — the country — that they were fighting for,” she said.
She no longer keeps in touch with the man. “It just got too scary,” she said. “To me, that mental woundedness is what needs to be attended to first and foremost.”
David Goodrich, of Norwich, expressed pride for his two sons, Matthew and Christopher, both of whom are veterans. Christopher was stationed in Iraq from 2008 to 2012, then served in the reserves until 2016. Matthew was in the Air Force from 2009 to 2014.
“Both of them felt early on that it was the right thing to do, to serve their country, and I supported their choice,” he said. Matthew was 11, and Christopher was 10, when 9/11 took place. “I think that probably had a big impact on them,” he added.
Being a parent of two young veterans challenges his assumptions about what it means to serve, he said. Even now, he tends to think of veterans as those who fought in WWII or the Korean War.
“I frequently drive down the road and see a veteran plate with a little kid driving — meaning, I think of them as a little kid,” he said. “At first I think, oh, that must be their dad’s car, but then I remember, hey … my kids are in the service! That’s probably a veteran driving that car, not the kid of one.”
“It’s just wild to think about kids who are my sons’ age and younger who are veterans. It makes me feel old,” he said. “I can’t say I never worried about them. But for me, it’s also a source of pride.”
Joe Porter, of Norwich, was considering the life experiences of grandfather, Gerard Blanchette, who was in the Navy for 31 years.
“That’s a really long time to dedicate yourself to your country,” Porter said. “Like, a crazy long time.”
Blachette, who is still alive today and who marched in the parade on Sunday, was a submariner “who saw a lot of important historical things,” Porter said. “He saw the Cuban missile crisis, and he worked out of Pearl Harbor. He was stationed in a Maine shipyard, then was transferred to Hawaii.”
For Porter, having a grandfather who served for more than three decades is a family history that gives him pause. “I know he was fighting for a greater good,” he said. “Personally, I am not going to serve in the military. But for him to stand up and fight, not just for me and not just for his family, but for a lot of people — his whole country — to me, is really special.”
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at eholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.