No Ordinary Joes (49 page)

Bob’s health continued to decline slowly over the next few years. He had a triple bypass, an aneurysm, a ruptured appendix, restless leg syndrome, gout, and failing kidneys, and his gallbladder had to be removed. He had stents implanted and a new aorta made from a vein in his leg. The doctors marveled that he was still able to stay semiactive. He took to calling himself “the Gray Ghost from the West Coast.”

His relationship with Marty, who had recently divorced, also continued to deteriorate. Marty had moved briefly to Atlanta to try to reconcile with his ex-wife and children, but soon moved back to the Bay Area and started hanging out with the meth crowd. He found a new girlfriend, but he was arrested and sentenced to a five-year prison term in San Quentin for having sex with her sixteen-year-old daughter. He finally got up the
courage to write his father, apologizing for his drug use and the way he had burned bridges behind him. He admitted to having attempted suicide four times, but said he had now found religion and hoped to qualify for PTSD compensation upon his release. “The shrinks say I have double PTSD because of your history and mine.” He closed the letter with “I want to shake your hand again, Dad, and hug Barbara. I love you, Dad.”

Bob received the letter and, after considering his response for a week, sent this reply:

Marty wasted little time in responding, saying he was sorry if Bob misunderstood the intent of his first letter. He said he felt ashamed and knew he’d been “a piece of crap” the last few years and didn’t expect forgiveness, including from his two children. He closed this letter with “I remember who was there while I was growing up and I love you for it.”

Bob stuck the letter in a drawer. He wanted to believe his son’s words; he wanted to believe that Marty could somehow turn his life around. He remembered riding on a motorcycle together and how proud he was to have such a tall and handsome son. He remembered how happy he was when Marty got accepted into college. So how did it go so wrong? There was a part of him that wanted to reach out again, like he’d done so many times. But at what cost? He felt betrayed. Marty’s behavior ran so contrary to his own sense of right and wrong, strength and weakness. Drinking two six-packs of beer, he believed, was a far cry from the dope-smoking of Marty and his generation. As much as it pained him, he thought it was too late in his life to spend the emotional capital to repair the wounds.

The one thing that kept Bob from becoming depressed over his son was the continued fountain of love and joy he gained from Barbara. On the occasion of her birthday in 1997, he wrote this to her:

T
here were moments in interviewing each of the men when I was brought either to tears, or laughter, or complete amazement. On my penultimate interview with Chuck, he told me he had recently flown to Florida for a heartwarming visit with Irene Damien, his high-school sweetheart. She was still married to the man she met after Chuck joined the Navy, but she was now totally paralyzed. Chuck had gone to visit her after her husband had called to tell him Irene wanted to see him one last time before she died.

Every time I met with Chuck, I was impressed with the strength of his determination. He’d suffered a lot of physical setbacks in the last twenty years, but he was resisting slowing down. He seemed almost obsessed with being the best grandparent he could possibly be to somehow make up for being an absent father. Thinking back on all the time I spent with him, two things stand out. The first was when he told me about providing hospice care for his son when he was dying of AIDS. He had kept that fact from me for over two years, even though Gwen and Marilyn had already told me. He was reluctant to have me include it in his story. But what he did for his son while he was dying, I think, redeemed whatever shortcomings he’d had as a father.

The second was a conversation we had the last time I saw him. It was just before the presidential election of 2008, and it spoke volumes about his generation. Chuck was a lifelong Democrat, and I asked him if he was going to vote for Obama. “I’ll be go-to-hell if I’m going to vote for that goddamn Muslim,” he replied.

In interviewing Tim McCoy, I was regularly struck by his almost evangelical approach to life. Financially, he was far and away the most successful of the four men and the one with the most braggadocio. But every time
I would get to thinking that this guy was too full of himself, out popped a sign of his kindness and consideration, like his total devotion to his wife, Jean, who was confined to a wheelchair. When I asked him to name his greatest accomplishment, he didn’t hesitate: “Taking care of my wife.”

When I first met Gordy Cox in 2001, I figured he had six months to live, tops. He already looked like a cadaver. But the little bantam rooster somehow kept hanging in there, feisty as ever. The last time I saw him was at his prefabricated home in central Oregon, and there was so much cigarette smoke in his living room that I worried it would clog his oxygen tube. But this was a guy who by all rights should have died several times in prison camp.

But of all the interviews and research I conducted for this book, nothing came close to matching what happened on my visit with Bob Palmer. At that point, I had not talked to any of the other men. I had traveled across country to the Maryland shore from my home in Oregon to meet with him and Barbara. They had generously offered to let me stay in a spare bedroom. In return for their hospitality, I was prying into all the dusty neglected corners of their lives.

During our interview, Bob sat in the pink easy chair in his living room, his voice animated and full of energy, his blue eyes as clear as the water in Crater Lake, where he’d spent countless hours as a boy. Barbara sat in a nearby chair.

Shortly after I arrived, he reached out and placed his hand on my forearm. I noticed his little finger, bent and discolored, like that of a catcher who’d absorbed too many foul tips, only I knew that’s not how it got so crooked.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, tears welling in his eyes. “I’ve wanted to tell this story for a long time. People need to know what happened to us in those prison camps.”

Barbara got up to bring him a glass of water. As she passed his chair, he reached out and let his fingers trickle across the side of her leg. In return, she slid her hand over his shoulder, letting it linger for an extra moment.
I thought of my own parents, people from the same generation, and even though I never doubted their love and devotion to each other, I couldn’t remember a similar display of affection, at least not publicly.

As I waited for Barbara to return from the kitchen, my eye caught a flat, brightly colored box sitting on the lamp table next to Bob’s easy chair.

“What’s this?” I inquired.

“A Passion Wheel,” he answered.

I got up to examine it. It had a plastic spinner and a dozen multicolored sections, each with a sexy title: Cop a Feel … French Kiss … Dance Naked.

“It’s a game, sorta like spin the bottle,” he says. “My stepdaughter Lynn gave it to me last Christmas.”

Barbara walked back into the room. Actually, it was more of a bounce than a walk. At eighty, she was amazingly fit, a chorus-line member of the Happy Hoofers, a tap-dance team that performed around the state. I eyed her smiling at Bob, one of those secret little glances couples do. It occurred to me that I was in a room with two octogenarians, husband and wife, who were still physically in love: real, honest, hands-on love. Maybe their generation wasn’t as sexually and emotionally repressed as my contemporaries believed. She pulled out a copy of his 1938 high-school yearbook and pointed to a quote next to his class picture: “His favorite saying, ‘Where is Barb?’ will remind us of him always.”

It was nearing the end of the second day of my visit. Bob looked tired, but in my thirty years of interviewing people about their lives, I’d never had anyone so appreciative or eager to tell his story. “Thank you for being here,” he repeated.

I’ve heard it said many times that we need to let the men and women of Bob’s generation know that we applaud and appreciate the sacrifices they made in order that future generations could enjoy the many freedoms and benefits our society has to offer.

“It’s what we had to do,” he said. “We didn’t have any choice.”

Slowly, he rose from his chair, ready to call it a day. It was past his
bedtime. “We’ll start going through the box tomorrow,” he promised, referring to a seventy-pound box of memorabilia he kept in his closet. It contained photos, patrol logs, POW documentation,
Grenadier
newsletters, love letters, transcripts from the 1946–1948 war crimes trials.

“Wait,” I said, pointing at the Passion Wheel. “Before you say goodnight, let me give this thing a spin for you.”

I spun the wheel. It made a couple of quick revolutions before skidding to a halt, the arrow pointing directly at “Feel Above the Waist.” Bob winked at Barbara, then headed down the hall toward the bedroom. He would shower before turning in, just as he did every night. On his list of priorities, cleanliness was near the top; two years without a shower in prison camp can do that to a guy.

Barbara got up to follow him to the bedroom. She stopped and clasped my hand. “Every day before you arrived he’d say, ‘I wish that writer guy would hurry up and get here.’ This means so much to him.”

She walked down the hall and turned into the bedroom. Behind her, I gathered my notebook and reached for the light.

Then I heard Barbara scream. “Bob’s collapsed. Help!”

It took me only a second to reach the room. Barbara was standing at the end of the bed, frantically pointing to the floor. Stripped to his Skivvies, Bob was splayed across the carpet. I knelt next to him, cradling his head in my hands.

“Bob! Bob!” I shouted.

“Check his pulse,” urged Barbara.

I eased his head back to the floor and felt for a pulse in his neck. All I felt was the blood rushing through my own fingers.

“Is he dead?” cried Barbara.

I’d never seen a dead person, let alone touched one, but I had no doubt Bob was already dead, probably gone before he hit the carpet.

“Call 911!” I instructed.

I looked down at him; his face was already turning a purplish blue. His eyes and mouth were open. He gasped slightly, like a fish that’s been lying on the dock for several minutes.

I stroked his forehead, and then felt for a pulse again. Nothing.

Barbara knelt down next to him, gently touching his lips. “Don’t die, Bob, please don’t die,” she whispered. “I love you, I love you.”

I had never seen anything so tender.

It took less than two minutes for the paramedics to arrive. They quickly pulled out the shock paddles, but just as quickly put them back in the case. It was already too late. Bob Palmer was gone.

At Barbara’s request, I stayed at the house for three more days, doing what I could to comfort and support her and the family. I helped write Bob’s obituary, met with neighbors and friends, and listened to Barbara’s stories. A month later she flew out to Oregon with his ashes, and as she put it, “I kept them right between my legs the whole flight.” With her daughter, Lynn, we drove to Crater Lake National Park, where Bob had spent much of his youth, and we scattered his ashes, surrounded by the deep blue water and the wind whistling through the conifers.