Blast from the Past: Back to the Beach

Back to the Beach: Ernandez returning to Normandy one final time

Buddy Ernandez, then and now, shown above a cemetery for Americans killed at Omaha Beach during the Normandy Invasion, June 6, 1944.

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By Stephen Guilfoyle

Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 12:00 am

Buddy Ernandez doesn’t get seasick. This son of Lando takes pride in it, telling a yarn about a deep-sea fishing trip he took once with a jet fighter pilot.

The pilot, who could do fantastic maneuvers and barrel rolls, spent the voyage literally spilling his guts. Buddy just smiled and fished.
Rough or easy, the sea doesn’t bother Buddy. After all, he’s been in rougher, tougher places at sea.
The English Channel, to be precise.
June 6, 1944, actually.
That day, he was with 3rd Platoon, C Company of the 18th Regiment of the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division — “the Big Red One.”
The first wave went in at 6 a.m. The 16th Regiment was in that wave.
If not for a mix-up, Buddy would have been in that outfit, and he is certain he wouldn’t be here, alive today, to tell his story.
The 16th and the rest of the first wave got torn to pieces by German machine guns and cannons raining bullets and shells down all morning. More than 1,500 men were killed in that first wave, Buddy says.
So the call went out. The second wave started going in around 7, hours early. The second wave included the 18th Regiment, which included Buddy.
Buddy boarded his Higgins boat, a landing craft, and headed out over rough waves to his part of the “Longest Day,”
when the Allies captured Normandy, France, starting the offensive that would end World War II in Europe.
Buddy saw things that day he still can’t get out of his mind, blood and guts, real blood and guts, arms and legs, pieces of real men hanging off metal “hedgehogs,” blood in the water, blood on the sand.
Yet for all the horror, next week he’s going back, back to that beach.
Omaha Beach.

“Greatest Generation”

This will be Buddy Ernandez’ third trip back, he says, but “it’s probably the last one.”
Ernandez is one of the greatest generation. He and millions of other young American men fought the Nazis, liberated death camps, fought real evil. Then they came home and built things, cars, planes, homes, creating a booming economic engine. They landed a man on the moon.
But the men who fought World War II are now senior citizens, and they are dying out — some reports put it at 1,000 a day.
Buddy just turned 84. When he first hit the beach, he was younger, much younger – 2009 marks the 65th anniversary of the Normandy invasion.
He was not yet 17, a student at Edgemoor High School, on the day everything changed for his generation. On Dec. 7, 1941, Japan launched a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entered a war on two fronts, fighting Japan and the Nazis in Germany.
Before that, this Lando boy, this son of the mill village, had few worries. He had a couple of good coon dogs and he loved to hunt, shooting squirrels and other small animals in the hills around Fishing Creek.
But life changed. It was a frightening time, he says. He remembers reading in the old Charlotte newspapers about six men killed when German U-boats sunk fishing ships off the coast of North Carolina.
He registered for the draft when he turned 18, and he was called up a year later, in 1943.

Training, deploying

Buddy went to Camp Webster in Macon, Ga., for basic training. His drill instructor was tough as nails. When his company reported, the lavatory in the two-story barracks was spotless the first night.
“‘You know who keeps it this clean?’ the sergeant asked us. ‘You do,’” Buddy says, acting the role and pointing his finger.
Buddy tells stories with elaboration. He takes time for details. He gestures, raises his arms for emphasis. He often closes his eyes, as if trying to picture the scene. After a few minutes, he really settles in. He relaxes into his natural Lando accent and the tale comes at its own speed of his time on “O-mee-ha Beach.”
Basic finished after about four months, and everyone was ordered onto a train and sent to Union Station in Washington, D.C.
“A man will meet you at the station and tell you where to go,” they were told.
At the station, he was put on a truck and taken to Fort Meade, Md. He carried his duffel bag to a parade ground. He and thousands of other young men were told to wait until they heard their names.
It took forever. Soldiers played poker and gin rummy, Buddy says, while they waited. There was a lunch break in the middle of the day. At the end of the day, Buddy was the only man left standing on the parade ground.
The lieutenant, a guy “so young, he looked like he had just graduated from Clemson,” was not happy to see Buddy. He questioned Buddy, who said his name was never called.
The lieutenant took Buddy to see a colonel, and the colonel heard both out. The colonel asked Buddy to find his name in the list, and it was there. Then the colonel asked the lieutenant to read the name aloud. He stuttered, yet insisted he had called it out on the field.
“The colonel says, ‘If you can’t say it now, you obviously couldn’t say it then,’” Buddy says. But the train he was to take had left hours before.
Buddy had some spending money in his pocket. He’d sold Butler and Leeds, his coon dogs, to a Rock Hill man who admired the dogs yet promised to sell the dogs back, no questions asked, if Buddy made it back.
The colonel found Buddy a bunk. A week later, another mass of men filled the parade ground. Buddy was put on a train again, sent to Camp Shanks, N.Y, briefly, then put on a boat in a six- to eight-boat convoy to England, to train for the invasion.

The Big Red One

That was how he ended up in the 18th Regiment. He also learned the 16th was the unit he should have been assigned to. Both were in the 1st Infantry, the Big Red One, but the 16th was a week ahead of the 18th while they trained for the invasion. Until D-Day, that is.
The Big Red One was an experienced, busy division. Its men had landed in North Africa, Sicily and Italy. The ones who survived were experienced and tough. Guys like Buddy beefed up platoons that had suffered heavy casualties, but it gave the fresh replacements a chance to work with battle-tested soldiers.
Buddy’s convoy landed at Liverpool, England, and he made his way to a camp near Portsmouth, where they trained for more than a year.
They knew their job and they knew the plan. They were to take the beach, off-load tanks and supplies and fuel. They were to head inland to assist airborne troops who went in June 5 to places like Sainte-Mere-Eglise, Cherbourg.
But when they hit Omaha Beach, everything went bad.

The Longest Day

Only one unit landed at its intended location that day. Nothing else went right, but the few officers who survived were innovative.
The 16th hit the beach first, Buddy says.
“About all of them died,” he said. So the klaxon on their boats called, “All hands on deck, all hands on deck.”
The second wave had to go in early.
He got in his Higgins boat with 30 other soldiers, rode the waves and hit Omaha Beach for the first time in his life.
The men were loaded down with every piece of equipment that could be conceived, but once they landed, Buddy says, soldiers started stripping down to the essentials – ammo and weapons, ammo and weapons.
The beach was almost impossible to pass through — barricaded with concrete, concertina wire, mines.
Buddy remembers how his squads got through. A destroyer, the USS Frank-ford, turned parallel to the beach and shelled the German positions, stopping the deadly fire that was pinning down the men on that part of the beach.
Buddy fought 12 to 14 hours, dodging bullets, firing his Browning Automatic Rifle, stripping ammo off the wounded and the dead, trying to stay alive.
It was night, around 9 p.m., when his fighting stopped, briefly. With a little time to regroup, they headed inland.
“I got one thing that nobody can ever take away,” Buddy says. He was there, on “Bloody Omaha,” the biggest battle ever fought, and he survived.
He was 19 years old.
The war in Europe
Buddy walked every mile, he said, from the beach, with fire fights every day and many nights, 50 miles to battles in Belgium. His last combat action was in Aachen, the first German city conquered in the war.
He helped liberate a work camp. It wasn’t one of the death camps that epitomize the evil of Nazi Germany. But it was also not a pleasant sight. He had to delouse the workers, mostly women and young children.
He then helped drive the displaced Czechs and Slavs back to their homelands in the Balkans.
He became part of the occupation until he got orders to head west. He boarded a boat, the Mexican Victory, which carried him past the white cliffs of Dover and back to the United States.

The Statue of Liberty

On the 15-day sea voyage back, counselors told the men to put the war behind them, to forget the bad and look forward to the good that would come when they got home.
If he saw it on his way over to Europe, he doesn’t say. But he does mention it as part of his return. When the Mexican Victory pulled into New York harbor, Buddy saw the Statue of Liberty. It meant something to him.
The troops took a short hop to a nearby station and Buddy and the soldiers were put on a train, again. This time he got a sleeper cabin in a fancy Pullman car.
He and his fellows were unloaded at Fort Bragg, N.C., and told to stick around if they wanted to serve in the peacetime army, or hit the road. He wanted to get the hell out, so he hit the road, hitching a ride to Charlotte with a guy whose brother showed up in a car.
A bus from Charlotte took him back to Chester County, to the old company store in Lando. His siblings were all babies, so there was no one to meet him. He walked the last bit to his home.
His mother “grabbed him by the neck,” he says. She cried.
“I’m glad to see you home,” she told him. She knew he would be getting out sooner or later, but she didn’t expect him “so soon.”
It was Jan. 17, 1946. He had been away for almost three years.

An American life

He got a job at a printing company, took some classes under the G.I. Bill, but after showing fellow members of the American Legion that he could cook, he talked himself into opening a restaurant. His mother had taught him to cook as a young man and he liked it.
He opened the Columbia Street Grill, a restaurant where the Cyclone now stands. He was leasing the space, but later opened his own restaurant, Buddy’s Drive-In, on the J.A. Cochran Bypass, in the ’60s.
He met Beverly at a Sugar Bowl a few years before and the two got married, had a daughter. They worked hard to build a nice life for themselves. They ran the restaurant for almost 30 years.
They’ve leased half of the drive-in to various Chinese restaurants over the years. But they keep the other half for themselves, keeping it ready and clean. Every Fourth of July, they cook barbecue for sale. Buddy smokes his barbecue and won’t give up his recipe.
So he managed to put a lot of it behind him, as he was advised.
But he can’t keep it all inside.

Peace

Buddy says that any man who has fought in a war knows it has just one lesson. War is terrible. The man who’s been to war doesn’t believe in war. He wants peace.
When World War II ended, the whole world was at peace.
“Didn’t last long, did it?” he says.
Soldiers like him hailed the creation of the United Nations. What a wonderful thing, he says — an organization that would prevent war.
Yet every few years, there’s another war.
“Where the hell is the U.N.?”
His voice carries obvious disgust over the war in Iraq. It shouldn’t have happened, he says.
Heroes
His experience has taught him much. Though the survivors of World War II are lauded as the greatest generation, though the soldiers who fought are hailed as heroes, Buddy says there are no heroes who can talk about Omaha Beach today.
The only heroes are already over there, buried beneath crosses and Stars of David in the fields of France.
He and his wife will visit those fields again next week, with a British survivor of the battle they met and befriended a few years ago. They are riding over on a ferry from England to France, almost the same sea route Buddy took in 1944.
Media reports say President Barack Obama will speak at a ceremony over there. A soldier attached to the State Department in Paris has obtained tickets for the Ernandezes and their friends to the official program on June 6, 2009.

In a word

The counselors years ago told him to forget it, don’t talk about it, but he can’t forget.
He puts the whole experience into one word, using its real meaning.
His eyes close, his arms shake a little as he says it, as if, there in his den, he’s actually already back there, back in ’44, back “crawling over nothing but dead people.”
As if he’s back on the beach.
“It was the most … awesome … thing ever.”

From The News & Reporter of Chester, S.C.

STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life

Charlie Petrizzo and some of his Labrador retrievers pictured in May at his Waxhaw home/training kennel. 

I got to do a freelance story for the Catholic News Herald, my wife's paper. Was nice to be able to squeeze in a freelance assignment.
Here is a picture and the story below, as well. Please go ahead and hit the story on her site. It's the nice thing to do. And she's got more pictures than I do.

STORY: Festus the Labrador guides wounded Marine back to a normal life

WAXHAW, N.C. — A red fox Labrador retriever named Festus has given Marine Staff Sgt. Nick Bennett something he hasn't had since he heard a whistling noise in Anbar Province in Iraq in 2004.

Bennett has his life back.

Things most people take for granted – picking something up off the bottom shelf at the grocery store, putting on a pair of socks, enjoying a baseball game – had been out of his reach for much of the past 10 years since he heard that whistling sound and was severely injured – physically and mentally.

A long-time Marine reservist who lives in Franklin, Ind., Bennett asked his superiors if he could deploy during Operation Iraqi Freedom when several members of his unit were called up. His family has a long tradition of military service, and he also wanted to serve his country, he says.

He and five others ended up in Anbar Province, in an area dubbed the "Triangle of Death."

Bennett was technically a communications officer, but given his family's emphasis on military service, he says, he didn't go to Iraq just to work in a communications hut making sure fellow Marines could email and phone home. So he also pulled security duty at his forward operating base in Mamadiyah, Iraq.

It was one of the deadliest months of the war, and Bennett and his fellow Marines endured daily mortar attacks and IED blasts while out on patrol. Then rockets started falling on their base.

"The mortars, they thump," he recalls. "The rockets whistle."

The piercing whistle he heard on Nov. 11, 2004, was a rocket attack. When the blast from the 107mm shell struck him, badly wounding his legs and arms, Bennett was getting into a Humvee to assist other Marines who had come under attack. He had been in Iraq for less than three months.

An expression of 'caritas'

Outside a home set amid the rolling green hills south of Charlotte, N.C., one mild May morning, a man claps and whistles, and a collection of Labrador retrievers comes bounding up to him. Their tails wag as he pets and hugs each one.

Charlie Petrizzo has turned his three-acre property into a kennel and training operation for these Labs to become service dogs for people like Bennett.

Petrizzo formerly worked in financial services, where he focused on making money. Now retired, this cradle Catholic feels compelled to put his faith into action.

Project2Heal is that calling.

The "puppies," as Petrizzo affectionately calls them, get all the attention, but the idea is to help people. The dogs he breeds, raises and sometimes fully trains at Project2Heal are his way of expressing Catholic charity, he says.

"Charity comes from the word 'caritas.' It means Christ-like love."

Petrizzo knows something about what the people his dogs help have endured. He suffered two near-death experiences in his life, including getting electrical burns while standing on an aluminum ladder.

"I call that the gift that keeps on giving," he says with a wry laugh, explaining that he has had to deal with subsequent medical problems that trace back to that accident.

A family Labrador retriever helped him heal, and dogs have remained a source of comfort for him. So after years as a Fortune 500 executive, he searched for a way involving dogs that would enable him to help others who needed similar healing.

That way became Project2Heal, which breeds Labs and donates them to other organizations to train as service or companion dogs. They serve the disabled or injured vets such as Bennett, but they are also trained to help children who suffer from seizures, autism spectrum disorder and more.

Petrizzo works with up to 50 volunteers at Project2Heal who handle the daily operations. They start when each litter of carefully bred pups are just two days old, Petrizzo says, "imprinting" them with the sights and smells they'll need to understand later as trained service dogs. When the most promising puppies are just weeks old, they are given to service dog training groups for specialized training.

In the case of Bennett's service dog Festus, Project2Heal sent the pup to Indiana Canine Assistant Network (ICAN), which then matched him with Bennett one year ago. It was ICAN's 100th service dog, and its first with a combat wounded veteran.

Festus went to the Indiana Women's Prison to be trained by the inmates there. Many service dogs are trained by inmate handlers in prisons across the country.

Bennett spent two weeks at the prison with Festus to see if they would hit it off, and they did – right from the start.

Festus looked at Bennett, and the dog's eyes said, "Everything is going to be OK," the wounded Marine recalls.

'There to pick me up'

Now, three-year-old Festus is now helping the former Marine in ways he never imagined.

There's the "brace" command. Bennett says it, and Festus lets Bennett lean on his back for support. This enables him to put on his socks and reach for items on the bottom shelf at stores.

Before Festus came along, Bennett says, he simply didn't go to the store by himself. Now, he can go out anytime he wants.

Festus helps Bennett walk straight, too – keeping him from sidling too much in one direction because of his leg injuries.

And the "nudge" command makes possible experiences like going to a Chicago White Sox game, despite the worry of loud noises and crowds triggering his post-traumatic stress disorder.

"Like a lot of teams, they have fireworks when the White Sox hit a home run," Bennett says, but the whistling and exploding noises of fireworks can set off a PTSD episode, in which he can be frozen, zoned out for 20 minutes or more.

Without Festus, "I'd be hoping the White Sox do not hit a home run," Bennett says. But the dog nudges him, pushing his cold doggy nose into the side of Bennett's leg until he snaps out of the trance. Now his PTSD episodes last only five minutes or so, he says.

But the simple things Festus does are what truly amaze him, Bennett says.

"I can go do a flight of stairs like I did 10 years ago," he says, choking up.

Despite having had 26 surgeries to repair his hands and legs, he still feels pain from his injuries, but the pain has lessened considerably. And, he adds, "If I fall, he's going to be there to pick me up."

Festus has not just helped Bennett, though. Bennett's wife, his sole caregiver, is not afraid to leave him now to run errands or take time for herself.

"The anxiety that he has lowered in her, you can't ask for anything more in this world," he says.

Because Petrizzo bred the dog that has given him his life back, Bennett calls him a "major angel." He first met Petrizzo when he and Festus completed their training, when ICAN held a graduation ceremony, but Bennett wants to visit North Carolina and see where Festus and all the other service dogs got their start with Project2Heal.

Maybe when he does, Project2Heal will be in a new location.

Petrizzo has long dreamed of moving Project2Heal into a newer, larger home. He has more than one breeding dog, and each can have up to two litters a year. His pups are highly sought after by many organizations that train service dogs, because the breeding stock he uses is so highly regarded, as is the training and imprinting the Project2Heal staff do just days after the dogs are born.

Petrizzo can't keep up with the demand in his current home-based facility. He is getting assistance from parishioners at nearby St. Matthew Catholic Church, but he is also reaching out for more support because he sees a growing need – both among veterans like Bennett returning from combat, as well as with children suffering from autism spectrum disorder and other conditions.

And because he sees the good the dogs are doing.

He recalls one particular call from the mother of an autistic child who had a service dog from Project2Heal.

One day, the mother told him, she watched as the Labrador retriever brought a ball over to her son, and the child tossed it away, as if it were an annoyance. The dog brought the ball back and the child tossed it away again. Boy and dog continued to repeat the game of fetch for about 10 minutes, and soon the autistic boy began laughing.

The mother cried as she talked with Petrizzo. She hadn't heard her child laugh in years.

The amazing things dogs like Festus give back seem simple to "normal" people, Petrizzo says. But it's really all about charity – "caritas," the love of Jesus – because "a dog's love is the closest thing on earth to God's love."

Holding him up on all sides

The close bond between Festus and Bennett is no coincidence, Petrizzo and Bennett both agree.

Before he deployed to Iraq, Bennett told friends about his favorite Scripture passage, Exodus 17:10-12, which he considers his own intercessory prayer. It describes the Hebrews' battle against the Amalekites.

When the Hebrews were told to fight, Moses held up his arms. As long as he kept his arms raised the Hebrews prevailed, but when Moses grew tired and lowered his arms, the Amalekites started winning the battle. So Aaron and Hur held up Moses' arms.

"That's what I thought I would be needing" in Iraq," Bennett says: help on all sides. And he thinks he got it. From the moment he was injured by the rocket attack to his trip to medical facilities in Iraq, Germany and back in the United States, he believes he has been supported by the prayers of many.

And now Festus is holding him up, giving him back his life, he says.

Petrizzo notes that right after he was born, Festus had a different name. He was part of a litter named using a red theme.

It's also a nickname some of Bennett's friends had for him. It comes from the Bible and means "drawn from the water." The original name holder freed his people from slavery, leading them through the desert toward a new life, to a Promised Land.

They call him Festus now, but he started out as Moses.

SportsTalk makes fun of Kalon Davis' Eyes.

In a recent post on Sportstalksc.com, fun was poked at a Clemson offensive lineman.

See here.

They need to be careful. We knew about him long before.

Jury duty, just sitting around

So I got called for jury duty again. This time it was magistrate's court.
When I got there, I was just one of eight jurors. There was a Highway Patrolman, and the magistrate arrived a little bit later. No lawyer or defendant.
I thought that was interesting. The judge said that they would try the accused in absentia, but he showed up, by himself, a few minutes after the judge started court.
No lawyer, I thought. No family, I thought. This is going to be interesting.
The judge had spent a lot of time explaining the process, but I was a bit bored, having covered it for years and being a confirmed know-it-all. But when the guy showed up late and alone, I knew it was going to be interesting.
A lawyer who represents himself, the saying goes, has a fool for a client. The average Joe who decides to represent himself has an absolute freaking moron for a client.
It took a while for it to become clear what the charge was. Had to be vehicular, because it was a Highway Patrol case. Wasn't even going to be a first offense DUI, because the judge mentioned there was no alcohol involved.
When we got right down to it, the guy was charged with ... (drum roll please) failure to have his trailer chained to his vehicle.
The trooper, a nice corporal, testified. Played a tape of the "incident."
I wasn't on the jury, but I stayed anyway. Didn't have a note pad, so I'm getting details from memory. But in December, he was driving on Cherry Road, turned onto Celanese and pulled in to or near the Home Depot. The trooper had stopped the guy for failure to wear a seat belt, but the guy had said he had a note to excuse him from wearing the seat belt. The trooper said he accepted that, and did not charge the man for that crime, but noticed walking up to the vehicle that there was no chains. So he gave him a ticket for that.
You couldn't hear the man clearly on the tape, but you could tell he was mouthing off, from the get-go.
When he came in, he didn't really apologize for being late, and when the judge asked him if he "had anything before we proceed," a standard thing judges ask, he did not respond.
The man had been given a January appearance date on the ticket, and in January had requested a jury trial, which was set for Feb. 26.
According to this guy, who was popping off more than a few times during the brief trial, when he met with the judge, the judge told him he WAS going to throw him in jail for 30 days, so he requested the trial at that time.
"That's why we're here," he said.
The judge said when they met, he asked the man if he had, since he had gotten the ticket, gone ahead and gotten chains for his trailer. The judge said the man asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Sounds like the guy thought the judge was trying to trip him up into admitting something.
The judge said he was wanting to work with the guy. The trooper was willing to work with the guy. If he had gotten chains for the trailer, they would have dismissed the case. But he refused to answer the question and the judge told him the potential sentences.
Magistrate's court can be a bit more informal than "big" court. In all the big courts I have been to, the charge is clearly stated, and almost always, the potential sentences are laid out as well. They weren't at this trial, so when the jury went in to deliberate, the trooper, being kind to what he thought was the average citizen with better things to do, told me I was free to go.
But I am curious by nature and was free to stay, and asked him some questions.
The potential sentences are a $115 fine (which gets about doubled with court costs) or up to 30 days in jail.
Before I talked to the judge after the case, I was thinking this guy could have paid $115 and put this behind him. Yet he requested a jury trial.
He didn't really defend himself, but he doesn't have to. When he was "questioning" the trooper, he made some statements, which the judge said was testimony. But he flatly called the trooper a liar, twice. He said the trooper testified that he had a tan, four-door Jeep.
Which were TWO big lies, to this guy. I couldn't make out the color of the vehicle on the tape. Might have been white, might have been tan. But the trooper might have said four-door but meant four-wheel drive. I don't really recall what he said there.
A lawyer, had the man hired one, would have honed in on such a "discrepancy" and quizzed the trooper extensively about the difference in what he testified from memory and what was on the tape. He would have shown the jury there was a discrepancy, if there was one, and planted the idea in the jury's mind that there was a lie or two being told But calling a career highway patrolman who had served on the governor's protection detail a liar just didn't work.
He just came across as surly.
The trooper spoke in a calm voice through his testimony, but had a bit more emotion in his voice in summing up. He saw what he saw. He's been doing this a long time, he said. The patrol works to save lives.
In summation, the accused called the trooper a liar again, said the jurors didn't want their daughters getting stopped by a cop like him.
"He's one of the bad ones," he said.
It was absolutely over the top.
Over a violation that could have been dismissed without even a fine, had he bought chains for his trailer. Over a violation he might have paid a $230 fine and court costs penalty.
The jury spent more time going to the bathroom before deliberating than it did deliberating. It wasn't 10 minutes.
While the jury was out, the man started asking what the judge would do about sentencing him. He seemed like he had chosen that time to try to be reasonable. He wanted 30 days to get his affairs in order. I wasn't sure the guy would necessarily get prison time. So it struck me as both defeatist, after having requested the trial to begin with, to start asking about an accommodation in sentencing.
Sentencing in big court is a bit more formal than this was handled Wednesday.
But at a certain point, after the jury had left and some paper work had been filled out, they slapped the cuffs on him.
So began another back and forth about how he viewed he had been bullied by the cop and the judge.
But what was also hysterical was the guy working security for the judge, while they were waiting, goes up to the now-guilty fellow, and says, "We went to high school together, didn't we?"
It took a second for the guy to recognize the constable, but they had. So they spent a few minutes visiting while awaiting the sentence.
I have always wanted to serve on a jury and I have never had the chance to be one of the 12 Angry Men (and women). Not in the box. The closest I came, dear old Walter Bedingfield, a late, great defense attorney in Barnwell County who was so good because he knew all the cops when they were in high school and he had their high school hijinks in his back pocket for leverage, struck me because I worked at the paper.
I got called in York County, but after the first day, zip. No juries needed.
I love the criminal justice system and I think it is morbidly slow, but generally it works.
But this experience in the end just struck me as a colossal waste of time. I blame only the guilty dude for it. He had a chip on his shoulder, instead of a seat belt. He never elaborated and no one asked what medical issue he has that gets him an excuse to not wear it. I myself wonder if the excuse is signed, "Epstein's mother." (Dated reference, I know.)
But what was patently obvious to a first-time observer like me was confirmed by the constable.
"He was just like that in high school," he said. "Always had problems with authority figures."
Mostly, that is police. He gets pulled over a lot — he says it's because of the seat belt issue. But he has always paid those tickets.
The constable said the guy was a decent wrestler in high school, but had trouble with the coaches.
"Authority figures."
I talked to the judge afterward, actually getting a couple of interesting tidbits of information that might make some decent stories. He was interested in me and my job as well. And he has a keen interest in demographics, with some population figures and changes over the past decade on tap in his mind. Seemed like a smart guy.
His time was wasted. The trooper said he and all his fellow troopers have about 10 percent of their job time allocated for court time.
But he spent the morning, from about 9 to 10 a.m., handling 100 to 150 tickets in that same courtroom.
He then spent about an hour at a trial that was totally unnecessary.
The trooper tried to say it wasn't. But it was a waste of his time.
They say a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This case proved it. This was a waste of the guilty guy's time, too. His little knowledge of his "rights," had it been balanced with just a little knowledge of his responsibilities, might have spared him 30 days.
Summary courts, as municipal and magistrates courts are known in South Carolina, rarely end up with someone going to jail, the judge said. Not on a traffic case that doesn't involve alcohol, for sure.
Maybe he'll learn something in there. I doubt it
The only person's time that wasn't wasted was mine, I think. The jurors who served got the hell out of there as soon as they could. But I stuck around.
It was great entertainment. A laugh riot. Like watching "Cops," but in the courtroom.

My USC-Clemson front

www.scnow.com

The puzzle

The St. George's Cross

The Bronze Pelican

Father Frank, the pastor of Jesus Our Risen Savior Parish in Spartanburg, delivered the homily at Dad's funeral Mass.
He didn't get into too many specifics, and some in the family were initially disappointed in that.
He has a theme he uses often, my mother said. He talks about visiting cemeteries and mostly finding pleasant stories by piecing together the information on the headstones.
He also once saw his own name on a headstone and high-tailed it out of there.
And he started Dad's homily by talking about some cemeteries.
Like all of us, we believed Dad was the greatest man to walk the earth, actually exceeding a certain carpenter's son from Nazareth, so we wanted the specifics. I also wanted them because he and Mom visited the day before and he quizzzed her, and he took notes.
He did allow a eulogy of sorts right before the Mass ended, which is not strictly in the Catholic rite. And I got to say the words I said below, to offer a little glimpse.
And Fr. Frank did get into some specifics later in the homily.
My dad went to Ireland as a young man, he said.
"And they didn't want to give him back," he added, making us laugh. He went for a summer visit and got stuck when World War II broke out. Fear of U-boats.
I don't want to dismiss the sermon as an easy, boilerplate homily, though, because of the way it made me think when Fr. Frank also talked about the puzzle.
The list of things he might have said would be just pieces in a puzzle, he said. You don't know what the whole picture is until you put it all together.
And before the day was out, I got what he meant.
But I have to add to Fr. Frank, that sometimes, you can make out part of the puzzle as you do it.
My wife and son did a 1,000-piece puzzle on the dining room table once.
Was this red dot a flower on the house? Nope. Later, it turned out to be part of the small canoe of the guy on the lake.
Surrounding me at the funeral were pieces in my father's puzzle.
Three young men were the altar servers. They were brothers, all sons of a friend of my sister Anne. The Ravan boys. They are all my father's godsons.
As we were sitting in the limo, waiting to go to the cemetery, a young lady approached the car to talk to Mom. I thought it was a woman I remembered, but it was her daughter. She was the spitting image of her mom, now grown up. She used to come over to the house and was Dad's second unofficial grandchild in Spartanburg.
But she was his goddaughter.
Her mother? My mom and dad were her sponsors when she decided to become a Catholic.
Boom boom boom.
Pieces of the puzzle, right there, and pieces in the same area of the puzzle.
I also thought as we came back to church for a lunch provided by the Bereavement Guild at the church about Dad's obituary. I wrote the main body of it, and mentioned that my father had received two awards from the Catholic Church and Boy Scouting, the Bronze Pelican and the St. George's Cross.
I don't know what specifics were cited when my father was nominated, but here's what a current application form for the award says about them --

• "The St. George Award is a national recognition approved by the National Catholic Committee on Scouting. The Bronze Pelican Award is a diocesan recognition defined by the Diocesan Catholic Committee on Scouting with the approval of the local ordinary. Either award may be presented to any adult who is working in the Scouting Program. It may be given to clerics, laity, or Scouters of other faiths. 
• "The purpose of these awards is to recognize each recipient's outstanding contribution to the spiritual  development of Catholic youth in the program of the Boy Scouts of America. Other awards are available to  recognize general Scouting achievements by districts, local councils, regions, and the national office.  However, recommendations for the St. George and Bronze Pelican Awards should carefully detail how the nominee meets the selection guidelines described below. 
• "... In most cases, the Bronze Pelican is presented to a first-time selected  nominee. The St. George Award is presented to a nominee who has previously received the Bronze Pelican Award and who has continued to significantly influence Catholic Scouting for at least two additional years."

In a life having gone to hundreds of Masses, I vaguely remember a piece here or there of a few sermons, even from priests that I respect, admire and love.
But I can remember walking home one night, accompanied for a time by Mr. Nicholas Palazzo, our adult scout leader, who was teaching the class so us Scouts in Troop 56 could get our Ad Altare Dei awards. That's the award for Catholic Boy Scouts. We had already gotten our Parvuli Dei awards, the award for Catholic Cub Scouts. I remember a specific lesson Mr. Palazzo told me after class about the Beatitudes and about mercy.
We were definitely a Catholic Scout troop and one of the tasks they took seriously was teaching us our faith -- in a way that got us medals we could hang from our uniforms.
Again, I don't remember what my dad did for his, because they obviously wouldn't let him sign off on his own kids. But I remember we drove upstate once when he got his Bronze Pelican, and I think Monsignor Vier of St. Raymond's was there to give it to him. I remember he got his St. George's Cross at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, the same day my brother got his Ad Altare Dei there.
Boom boom boom. More pieces of the puzzle. Same area of the puzzle. The picture really took shape.
It didn't occur to me until I started writing this to add in my father's two daughters and his two sons, whom he, along with Mom, made sure got to church every Sunday when we were growing up. Whom he put through seven to eight years of parochial school. Two daughters who got one to two years at Catholic high schools. The schooling was not free in any way.
At the luncheon after the funeral and even more clearly now, I see "the guy on the canoe in the middle of the lake" in the puzzle that is my father.
Given that we are not yet complete, and we are not sure to what degree of success it has happened, still it is clear, my father was a man who brought other people to God.
My pastor has a theme he uses often in his sermons.
"Who here wants to go to Heaven?" he asks. All the hands go up.
"Who here wants to be a saint?"
The hands go down.
Which perplexes and confounds him. Because by definition, if you go to Heaven, you are a saint. So to go to Heaven, you have to try to be a saint.
"We are called to be saints," he says, chiding us.
I don't know how many times my father was a godfather. I think about the two times I have been asked and done it, and I realize what a poor job I have been doing with my goddaughter Gracie and my godson Talmadge. That I hope to change.
I don't know how many Cub and Boy scouts he counseled on their way to a chest ribbon or two. Had to be more than a few to get those awards. The Bronze Pelican might have be pro forma thank you for anyone who pitches in. But the St. George's Cross? Not for a slacker.
So the clear picture I am getting from this part of the puzzle that is my father is this -- he was a holy man.
It is not hyperbole. I am not bragging on him. Rather, it is daunting to have that example to follow up to.
About a week or so before he died, Fr. Frank came to visit him. He gave him, he told my mother, the Anointing of the Sick. That is the more-used name of the Sacrament that doubles as Last Rites. And he did mention that my father would obtain a plenary indulgence upon death, so Dad got the Last Rites. He also took Communion, which in that context, is called Viaticum. Food for the journey. Fr. Frank also asked Dad if he had anything to confess. He said he did.
Fr. Frank promptly kicked my mother and sister out of the room and heard Dad's confession. A couple of minutes later, he was out and looking for Mom and Catherine.
"Where did you go?" he said.
Mom said she figured he would need some time, and Fr. Frank said, "You, maybe. Not him."
Knowing he had confession, an anointing and communion, I put on Facebook, as a joke, that Bud was an instrument of grace. But that's usually been the case.
It was just a bit of Catholic humor.
Now that I'm putting the puzzle together, I realize.
It was no joke.
The fact that there is a new saint in heaven is no joke.
The fact that we can call him St. Bud. That's a joke.

One he would tell, over and over again.

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