Angel on a Leash (29 page)

The Angel By My Side,
published in 2002, won two awards from the Dog Writers Association of America. The book is still available in trade paperback through various sources.

Yorkie Doodle Dandy

T
he most wonderful things happen to me because of my life in dogs. Here's a story that has come to me in pieces over the years and has impacted me in a lot of ways.

In the mid-1990s, I was asked to guest host the show
Pet News
on the Fox News Channel, sitting in for my friend Brian Kilcommons, the great dog trainer. It was a two-hour show that included interviews and features from the world of pets. My invitation came from Chet Collier, who in addition to being president of Westminster, was an executive vice president of Fox News.

The show was shot at the Fox News studios in New York and was live on Saturday morning, repeated on tape on Sunday morning. It was indeed a “variety” show, featuring dogs, cats, fish, reptiles, birds, shelters, charities, you name it. I even hosted a doggy wedding one of the times that I was there.

One of my guests one week was a gentleman named Bill Wynne. Bill had served in the US Army Air Corps in World War II and was based in the South Pacific as an aerial photographer. One of his GI buddies had found a Yorkshire Terrier, of all things, in a foxhole in New Guinea, and Bill bought her for about $6.

Bill named the dog Smoky, and they became inseparable companions, with Smoky traveling in Bill's duffel bag and accompanying him on twelve combat missions. Bill was on the show to tell the story of Smoky, as chronicled in his book,
Yorkie Doodle Dandy.

While we think of military dogs as being German Shepherds or some other large-breed dogs, Bill told us the story about how Smoky was a notable 4-pound exception to this definition. She helped run wires and cables in places inaccessible to the troops; for example, she pulled a string with phone wires attached through 70 feet of an 8-inch pipe under a landing strip, doing a job in two minutes that would have otherwise required days of digging and exposure of Allied airplanes to the enemy.

Now, I suppose that I'd have to say that their helping the Allies win World War II had a significant impact on my (eventual) life, but Smoky and Bill just may have been responsible for everything that I am doing today in the world of therapy dogs. This detail didn't come out in the TV show, but Bill told me the whole story recently.

It began during the war, in 1944, when Bill was hospitalized with dengue fever at the 233rd Station Hospital in Nadzab, New Guinea. Bill's buddies brought him his mail, and they also brought Smoky to cheer Bill up. Two nurses saw Smoky and asked Bill—depending on if they could get permission from their commanding officer—if he would let them take Smoky on their rounds to visit battlefield casualties that were coming in from the Biak Island invasion.

“I told them sure, and they were back in ten minutes, bubbling over, with permission from the CO to do that,” Bill said.

Not only that, the nurses had gotten permission from the CO to let Smoky stay on Bill's bed overnight. So they would pick up Smoky at 7 a.m., work with her all day, and then bring her back to Bill at night. They took care of all of her needs.

“I had always wondered about that CO,” Bill told me. “He had to be a doctor, but he had the compassion and the vision to allow a dog to visit the injured troops in the hospital and sleep overnight on my bed, too.”

He finally got the answer a few years ago. “I was watching the History Channel and there was a show about World War II, talking about the 233rd Station Hospital in New Guinea. It said that the hospital staff was made up of Mayo Clinic National Guard volunteers and was commanded by none other than Dr. Charles Mayo himself, then an Army major.”

What a great endorsement for therapy dogs. In my world, I give extra credit for the compassion and vision of the medical professionals in understanding what we do with our dogs, and today we can see that these traits have apparently served Dr. Mayo quite well, indeed.

After seeing Smoky work in the battlefield hospitals, Bill realized that this could be her calling. For as long as they were in the war in the South Pacific—an additional eighteen months in combat—Bill brought Smoky to the Army and Navy hospitals regularly to visit and lift the spirits of the troops injured in battle.

Bill taught Smoky an array of tricks, and she would entertain the troops long before Bob Hope could get there. Bill used airplane parts to build a scooter and to create a “high wire” act, and he taught her to run between his legs, jump through hoops and over obstacles, play dead, climb ladders, and weave through pickets. Smoky helped everyone pass the time, and she helped to settle a lot of anxieties.

After the war, Bill and Smoky returned to Cleveland and went into show business for ten years, with Smoky performing her tricks learned in the South Pacific for appreciative audiences. They continued to visit hospitals and the troops in Smoky's adopted home country, doing so for twelve years. At the same time, Bill worked as a professional photographer; he had a thirty-one-year career with the
Cleveland Plain Dealer
and spent more than ten years working on NASA research programs.

On this day, on Fox News with me, Bill was a great interview, and
Yorkie Doodle Dandy
was a great story. And, as I came to realize several years later, I was hearing the story of what was probably the first recognized therapy dog, Smoky. If I had been into therapy dogs at the time of this show like I am now, I would have happily pointed that out then.

Since I didn't do it then, I am doing it now. Bill Wynne and Smoky shaped my world.

Near the end of the interview, I told Bill that my dad had been in the South Pacific during the war—what a coincidence—and that I was happy to hear his story. “Thanks for all that you guys did for all of us.”

“What did your dad do in the South Pacific?” Bill asked me.

“He flew a P-38 on photo recon,” I answered. “He was in the Philippines, in the 26th Photo Recon.”

Bill lit up. “That was my unit! What was your dad's name?”

“Jerry Frei.”

“I knew your dad!”

Oh my God. Here it was, more than fifty years later, and suddenly I felt like I was in the Philippines, listening to two old soldiers talk about the war. They were both modest and self-effacing of what they had done for our country, as so many of that “Greatest Generation” were. After hearing Bill's Smoky stories and remembering my dad's stories about flying in the war, I can see in my mind the aerial photo taken of Dad's plane as he piloted his last mission.

When I finished the show, I ran to the telephone and called my dad, and I told him the Smoky story.

“I knew that dog, and I knew Bill. Great dog, great guy,” Dad said. “I remember all of those things that he told you about.”

I knew that Dad had a couple of close Army friends that he had corresponded with after they returned home, but he told me that he had not been in touch with Bill. So I put them together, and my dad, for the first time, went to a reunion of the 26th Photo Recon Squadron the following summer. There, he had some time with Bill and a lot of other old friends that had been in the war with them.

All of that made it well worth my while to have put up with a doggy wedding and snakes and birds and other stuff during my run on
Pet News
just to know that I was able to reunite the two of them.

In 2007, my friend Susan Bahary was a special guest of the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America's national specialty in New York on Westminster weekend. Susan was a longtime friend of mine from the Afghan Hound world, a great artist and sculptor, and I had followed her success in her artistic accomplishments. She called me and invited me to stop by the annual dinner at the New Yorker Hotel, as she had someone that she wanted me to meet. That was easy for me to do; I was staying at the New Yorker and heading out for dinner, so I could easily drop in.

When I got there, I was surprised to see Bill Wynne. Bill had apparently told Susan the story about him and my dad. She thought it would be nice to get us together again and didn't tell either of us of her plan. It was a nice reunion. We spoke about my father, who had passed away six years earlier.

Later that week, Bill paid me a wonderful compliment, one that I will always treasure. As part of our Westminster preshow publicity effort, I had appeared on the
Today Show
with some of our entered dogs. Bill saw the segment and sent me an email telling me, “I saw a lot of your father in you.”

On Veterans Day in 2005, a memorial bronze sculpture of Smoky, created by Susan Bahary, was unveiled in the Cleveland Metroparks. It is beautiful, modeled after a famous photo of Smoky sitting up in Bill's combat helmet. In 2009, Bill was inducted into the Ohio Senior Citizens Hall of Fame and into the Press Club of Cleveland Journalism Hall of Fame.

In 2008, USA Network did a feature on Smoky and Bill for the Westminster telecast, with me doing the voice-over of the story of “the small dog with the giant legacy.” At the end of the piece, coming back live to Lester Holt and me in the booth, I was able to tell the story about my father's reunion with Bill. I held the 26th Photo Recon hat that Dad had left me after his death.

“This is a tribute to Bill Wynne and all of you guys and gals of the ‘Greatest Generation,'” I said. “We salute you though the person of Bill Wynne and his dog, Yorkie Doodle Dandy (Smoky).”

Postscript:
Bill is working on another book about Smoky, this one called
Angel in a Foxhole.

“ Just as my father did with a football, I know that I am changing people's lives with my dogs, visiting people in the street and visiting people in hospitals and other health care facilities. ”
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My Father, My Dogs

P
art of Cheri's job at Ronald McDonald House is to serve as a liaison to all of the faith groups in our Upper East Side neighborhood. One of them, the Bethany Memorial Reformed Church, asked her to fill in for the pastor while he was away on his honeymoon in the spring of 2009.

She was asked to deliver two sermons. The second one was for Father's Day, and she decided that it would be a good idea for me to deliver that one. I declined the opportunity at first, but then, somehow, as a wife can do, she convinced me to do it. Admittedly, the Father's Day theme was more appropriate for me than for her, so I thought I would give it a shot.

In my life, I stand before a TV camera that puts me in front of millions of people, and I have gotten to the point where that doesn't make me too nervous anymore. But standing in a pulpit in front of a congregation is a whole 'nother story. However, as I worked to put together my presentation, I started to welcome the opportunity to share my father with someone on this Father's Day.

Good morning. My name is David Frei. I am happy to be a part of this wonderful Father's Day service here at Bethany Memorial Reformed Church.

I always welcome the chance to talk about my father, Jerry Frei. I was—and I still am—quite proud of him as my father, my mentor, and my friend.